Quote #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.'

More from Maximilien Robespierre

  1. 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…
  2. To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.
  3. 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 distrus…
  4. The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
  5. In the system of the French revolution that which is immoral is impolitic, and what tends to corrupt is counter-revolutionary. Weaknesses, …
  6. Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.
  7. Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popula…
  8. Any law which violates the inseparable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.

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