6 Maximilien Robespierre Quotes on History

Maximilien Robespierre quotes on history

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.

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.

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

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.

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.