"We are not truly civilized if we concern ourselves only with the relation of man to man. What is important is the relation of man to all life."

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The legislator commands the future; to be feeble will avail him nothing: it is for him to will what is good and to perpetuate it; to make man what he desires to be: for the laws, working upon the social body, which is inert in itself, can produce either virtue or crime, civilized customs or savagery.

— Louis Antoine de Saint-Just