Jean-Paul Marat
Jean-Paul Marat (24 May 1743 – 13 July 1793) was a physician, political theorist and scientist best known for his career in France as a radical journalist and politician during the French Revolution. His journalism became renowned for its fierce tone, uncompromising stance toward the new leaders and institutions of the revolution, and advocacy of basic human rights for the poorest members of society.
Marat was one of the most radical voices of the French Revolution. He became a vigorous defender of the sans-culottes, publishing his views in pamphlets, placards and newspapers, notably his L'Ami du peuple (Friend of the People), which helped make him their unofficial link with the radical, republican Jacobin group that came to power after June 1793.
Marat was assassinated by Charlotte Corday, a Girondist sympathizer, while taking a medicinal bath for his debilitating skin condition. In his death, Marat became an icon to the Jacobins as a revolutionary martyr, as portrayed in Jacques-Louis David's famous painting, The Death of Marat.
“لا أريد أن أموت حسبما يُشاع.”
“Man has the right to deal with his oppressors by devouring their palpitating hearts.”
“Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.”
“God has always been hard on the poor.”