No liberty for the enemies of liberty.

This maxim is associated with Saint-Just’s role as a leading Jacobin during the French Revolution, especially in the crisis years of 1793–1794 when the Republic faced foreign invasion, civil war, and internal political opposition. In that atmosphere, revolutionary leaders argued that the survival of “liberty” required extraordinary measures against those deemed its enemies—royalists, counterrevolutionaries, and sometimes rival revolutionaries. The phrase is commonly cited to summarize the logic used to justify repression during the Terror: rights and toleration were framed as belonging to the civic body of the Republic, not to those accused of seeking its destruction.

The maxim expresses a hard-edged revolutionary logic: a free polity may claim the right to deny freedoms to those deemed intent on destroying freedom itself. Attributed to Saint-Just—one of the most uncompromising leaders of the French Revolution and a central figure in the Committee of Public Safety—it encapsulates the tension between liberty as a universal principle and liberty as a political project requiring defense. In practice, the idea can justify exceptional measures (censorship, repression, even violence) against “enemies,” raising the enduring problem of who defines the enemy and how easily the defense of liberty can become a rationale for tyranny.

« Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté. »