Maximilien Robespierre > Quotes

“The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“The king must die so that the country can live.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“A true revolutionary should be ready to perish in the process”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“A sensibility that wails almost exclusively over the enemies of liberty seems suspect to me. Stop shaking the tyrant's bloody robe in my face, or I will believe that you wish to put Rome in chains.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed ... The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“Virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Report on the Principles of Political Morality

“[redacted: no source given].”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“To defend the oppressed against their oppressors, to plead the cause of the weak against the strong who exploit and crush them, this is the duty of all hearts that have not been spoiled by egoism and corruption… It is so sweet to devote oneself to one’s fellows that I do not know how there can be so many unfortunates still without support or defenders. As for me, my life’s task will be to help those who suffer and to pursue through my avenging speech those who take pleasure in the pain of others. How happy I will be if my feeble efforts are crowned with success and if, at the price of my devotion and sacrifices, my reputation is not tarnished by the crimes of the oppressors I will fight.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“Unless you do everything for liberty, you have done nothing. There are no two ways of being free: one must be entirely free, or become a slave once more.”
― Maximilien Robespierre, Virtue and Terror

“Is it not He whose immortal hand... has written there the death sentence of tyrants? He did not create kings to devour the human race. He did not create priests to harness us, like vile animals, to the chariots of kings and to give to the world examples of baseness, pride, perfidy, avarice, debauchery and falsehood. He created the universe to proclaim His power.

[The Cult of the Supreme Being]”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“The most extravagant idea that can be born in the head of a political thinker is to believe that it suffices for people to enter, weapons in hand, among a foreign people and expect to have its laws and constitution embraced. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Oeuvres complètes: 8

“. . . Kings, aristocrats, tyrants, whoever they be, are slaves rebelling against the sovereign of the earth, which is the human race, and against the legislator of the universe, which is nature.

[trans. G. Rudé; A Proposed Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen].”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Robespierre

“Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“The people asks only for what is necessary, it only wants justice and tranquility, the rich aspire to everything, they want to invade and dominate everything. Abuses are the work and the domain of the rich, they are the scourges of the people: the interest of the people is the general interest, that of the rich is a particular interest.”
― Maximilien Robespierre, Virtue and Terror

“To defend the oppressed against their oppressors, to plead the cause of the weak against the strong who exploit and crush them, this is the duty of all hearts that have not been spoiled by egoism and corruption.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“The revolutionary government owes to the good citizen all the protection of the nation; it owes nothing to the Enemies of the People but death.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“There are only two parties in France: the people and its enemies. We must exterminate those miserable villains who are eternally conspiring against the rights of man...We must exterminate all our enemies.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“A nation is truly corrupted when having...lost its character and it's liberty, it passes from democracy to aristocracy or to monarchy. That is the decrepitude and death of the body politic...”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“War is always the first object of a powerful government which wishes to increase its power. I shall not speak to you of the opportunity that a war affords for a government to exhaust the people and to dissipate its treasure and to cover with an impenetrable veil its depredations and its errors . . . It is in time of war that the executive power displays the most redoubtable energy and that it wields a sort of dictatorship most ominous to a nascent liberty . . .

[trans. G. Rudé; pg. 33].”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Robespierre

“They call me a tyrant . . . One arrives at a tyrant's throne by the help of scoundrels . . . What faction do I belong to? You yourselves. What is that faction which, since the Revolution began, has crushed the factions and swept away hireling traitors? It is you, it is the people, it is the principles of the Revolution. . . .

[trans. G. Rudé, ellipses sic; Last Speech to the Convention (July 26, 1794)].”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Robespierre

“Who then shall unravel all these subtle combinations? Who shall trace the exact dividing line that marks off one form of extremism from its opposite? It can be done only by a love of country and a love of truth. Kings and knaves will always try to destroy this love, for they shun reason and truth like the plague.

[trans. G. Rudé; On Revolutionary Government (December 25, 1793)].”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Robespierre

“. . . Equality of rights is established by nature; society, far from impairing it, guarantees it against the abuse of power which renders it illusory.

[trans. G. Rudé; A Proposed Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen].”
― Maximilien de Robespierre, Robespierre

“It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed.”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“Z pozornie nowych pomysłów wyłaniała się stara, gorzka prawda: szczęście ludzkości znajduje się na końcu ponurej, pełnej krzywd drogi. Kto wie, czy to nie ta świadomość wyzwoliła w Robespierze silne emocje religijne? Kto wie czy to nie ta myśl sprawiła, że w późniejszych dziesięcioleciach pewien nastrój religijny bywał mimo wszystko, choć dziwacznie, mocno zakorzeniony w ideologiach lewicowych?”
― Maximilien de Robespierre

“Sólo un criminal despreciable ante sí mismo, repugnante a los demás, puede creer que la Naturaleza no nos puede ofrecer nada más bello que la nada.”
― Maximilien Robespierre