Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

French general and politician (1757–1834)

Namesake of Fayetteville

military officer, politician, aristocrat, army officer

Quotations with a citation

I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can. I shall not speak much for fear of saying foolish things; I will risk still less for fear of doing them, for I am not disposed to abuse the confidence which they have deigned to show me. Such is the conduct which until now I have followed and will follow.

Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.

Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.

True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate, just as national sovereignty is above the secondary agreements of the government.

An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas, and the truth of prophecy, has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover, and with the conviction of a geometrician. On leaving college, where nothing had displeased me more than a state of dependance, I viewed the greatness and the littleness of the court with contempt, the frivolities of society with pity, the minute pedantry of the army with disgust, and oppression of every sort with indignation. The attraction of the American revolution transported me suddenly to my place. I felt myself tranquil only when sailing between the continent whose powers I had braved, and that where, although our arrival and our ultimate success were problematical, I could, at the age of nineteen, take refuge in the alternative of conquering or perishing in the cause to which I had devoted myself.

I would never have drawn my sword in the cause of America, if I could have conceived that thereby I was founding a land of slavery.

In the libraries

Open Library Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution--Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790 · 2018 View library record ↗ Open Library Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette; Volume 1 · 2023 View library record ↗ Open Library Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette; Volume 2 · 2022 View library record ↗ Open Library The letters of Lafayette and Jefferson · 1929 View library record ↗

Read Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

The letters of Lafayette and Jefferson 1929 Find a copy Lafayette in the Age of the American Revolution--Selected Letters and Papers, 1776-1790 2018 Find a copy Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette; Volume 1 2023 Find a copy Memoirs, Correspondence and Manuscripts of General Lafayette; Volume 2 2022 Find a copy

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

If the liberties of the American people are ever destroyed, they will fall by the hands of the Romish clergy.