11 Maximilien Robespierre Quotes on Politics

Maximilien Robespierre quotes on politics

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.