Becky

“Our problem is not to trace the emergence of a world market, of a sufficiently active class of private entrepreneurs, or even (in England) of a state dedicated to the proposition that the maximization of private profit was the foundation of government policy...By the 1780s we can take the existence of all these for granted...”
― Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789–1848

“Repeat the names,” my mother instructs, and we listen while Paschal recites the names of the months.
“Vintage, Fog, Frost, Snow, Rain …” He hesitates on the sixth month.
“Wind,” she says helpfully. We are all sitting at the caissier’s desk, and it is very important he get this right.
“Wind,” he repeats after her. “Seed, Blossoms, M-Mead—”
“Meadows,” I say.
“Meadows, Harvesting, Heat, and Fruit.”
Isabel claps. “Very good.”
“And what year is this?” my mother asks.
Paschal frowns. “Seventeen ninety-three?”
“No,” Isabel says forcefully. “It is Year Two.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“The first year began on September twenty-second, seventeen ninety-two.” The day France declared itself the First Republic.
“But how?” He doesn’t see how he could have been alive before time began.
“That is the decree of the Convention,” she explains.”
― Michelle Moran, Madame Tussaud

“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world!”
― Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

“They call me a tyrant . . . One arrives at a tyrant's throne by the help of scoundrels . . . What faction do I belong to? You yourselves. What is that faction which, since the Revolution began, has crushed the factions and swept away hireling traitors? It is you, it is the people, it is the principles of the Revolution. . . .

[trans. G. Rudé, ellipses sic; Last Speech to the Convention (July 26, 1794)].”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Robespierre