Maximilien Robespierre Quotes

Maximilien Robespierre's sayings feel blunt and argumentative about revolution, justice, and politics, suited for readers who enjoy fierce debate.

43 quotes

1. 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.

2. Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?

3. It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die that the country may live.

4. 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.

5. Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.

6. Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs.

7. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

8. By sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness.

9. We must smother the internal and external enemies of the Republic or perish with it; now in this situation, the first maxim of your policy ought to be to lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror.

10. Death is the beginning of immortality.

11. Omelettes are not made without breaking eggs.

12. When work is a pleasure, life is a joy! When work is a duty, life is slavery.

13. Is it to be thought unreasonable that the people, in atonement for wrongs of a century, demand the vengeance of a single day?

14. The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual.

15. A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude.

16. Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.

17. Any law which violates the inseparable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.

18. Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.

19. Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.

20. In the system of the French revolution that which is immoral is impolitic, and what tends to corrupt is counter-revolutionary. Weaknesses, vices, prejudices are the road to monarchy.

21. The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

22. The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage.

23. To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.

24. What is the end of our revolution? The tranquil enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice, the laws of which are graven, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of men, even in the heart of the slave who has forgotten them, and in that of the tyrant who disowns them.

25. The attribute of popular government in a revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror. Virtue without terror is fatal; terror without virtue is impotent....terror is nothing but justice; prompt, severe, inflexible. It is the emanation of virtue.'

26. Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible. It is then an emanation of virtue.

27. Smuggle out the truth, pass it through all the obstacles that its enemies fabricate; multiply, spread by all means possible her message so that she may triumph; through zeal and civic action counterbalance the influence of money and the machinations lavished on the propagation of deception. That, in my opinion, is the most useful activity and the most sacred duty of pure patriotism.

28. Establish liberty on a rock of brass.

29. The revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty when victorious and peaceable.

30. The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.

31. Formerly, when a king died at Versailles the reign of his successor was immediately announced by the cry: "The king is dead, long live the king", in order to make it understood that despotism is immortal! Now an entire people, moved by a sublime instinct, cried: Long live the Republic! to teach the universe that tyranny died with the tyrant.

32. Food that is necessary for man’s existence is as sacred as life itself. Everything that is indispensable for its preservation is the common property of society as a whole. It is only the surplus that is private property and can be safely left to individual commercial enterprise.

33. Softness to traitors will destroy us all.

34. No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.

35. One can...never create [freedom] by an invading force.

36. The king must die so that the country can live.

37. Terror is nothing more than justice, prompt, secure and inflexible.

38. Death is not "an eternal sleep!" Citizens! efface from the tomb that motto, graven by sacrilegious hands, which spreads over all nature a funereal crape, takes from oppressed innocence its support, and affronts the beneficent dispensation of death! Inscribe rather thereon these words: "Death is the commencement of immortality!"

39. 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.

40. “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.”

41. 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

42. “[redacted: no source given].”

43. Pity is treason.