“[Remark the day after the guillotining of the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier on 8 May 1794]: ‘Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tete, et cent annees, peut-etre, ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable.’
It took them only an instant to cut off that head, but it is unlikely that a hundred years will suffice to reproduce a similar one.”
Quoted int J.B. Delambre, “Eloge de Lagrange,” Memoires de l’Institut (1812)
Excerpted from: Shapiro, Fred, ed. The Yale Book of Quotations. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
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