All revolutions are moved by the conviction, which causes them to be so incalculably dangerous, that it is bringing a new world, a new order; that, therefore, all the standards, all the laws, of the past have become antiquated; and that it has on its side not power only, but right, so that everything must give way and all opposition, if not contemptible, will be criminal. —Pieter Geyl, Napoleon: For and Against, pp. 8–9