“You who are Prejudice, Abuse, Ignominy, Oppression, Iniquity, Despotism, Injustice, Fanaticism, beware of the wide-eyed urchin. He will grow up.”

“Ignominy thirsts for respect.”

“We must never fear robbers or murderers. They are dangers from outside, small dangers. It is ourselves we have to fear. Prejudice is the real robber, vice the real murderer. Why should we be troubled by a threat to our person or our pocket? What we have to beware of is the threat to our souls'.”

“Monsieur' to a convict is a glass of water to a man dying of thirst at sea; ignominy thirsts for respect.”

“That night, before going to bed, he went on to say, 'Never be afraid of thieves and murderers. They represent the dangers without, which are not worth worrying about. Be afraid of ourselves. Prejudices are the real thieves, vices are the murderers. The greatest dangers are within us. Who cares who threatens our heads or our purses! Let's think only of what threatens our souls.”

“They guillotined Charlotte Corday and they said Marat is dead. No, Marat is not dead. Put him in the Pantheon or throw him in the sewer; it doesn’t matter-he’s back the next day. He’s reborn in the man who has no job, the woman who has no bread, in the girl who has to sell her body, in the child who hasn’t learned to read; he’s reborn in the unheated tenement, in the wretched mattress without blankets, in the unemployed, in the proletariat, in the brothel, in the jailhouse, in your laws that show no pity, in your schools that give no future, and he appears in all that is ignorance and he recreates himself from all that is darkness. Oh, beware human society: you cannot kill Marat until you have killed the misery of poverty!”

“Despots play their part in the works of thinkers. The writer doubles and trebles the power of writing when a ruler imposes silence on the people.”