October 17, 2025

[When asked what he had done during the French Revolution] I survived.

Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès (1748–1836), French count, abbot and politician, in F.A.M. Mignet, Notice historique sur la vie e les travaux de M. le Comte de Sieyès (1836), Jay p.340

Assuming you have won election at least once, how do you account for your success? If you have won re-election, how do you account for your continued success?

Sieyès was very much “present at the creation”—at the very start of the Revolution. Indeed, his pamphlet, Qu’est-ce que le Tiers État? had an immense influence on the course of the Revolution that changed France forever. To have survived all that unfolded over the next decades was no small feat.*What is the Third Estate?