Maximilien Robespierre
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.Collection: Equality
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.Collection: Freedom
The king must die so that the country can live.
Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.
To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.
Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.
Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.
Pity is treason.
The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual.
Softness to traitors will destroy us all.Collection: Traitor
Omelets are not made without breaking eggs.Collection: Eggs
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.Collection: People
Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?Collection: Citizens
When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him - that's where the money is.Collection: Bankers
Terror is nothing more than justice, prompt, secure and inflexible.Collection: Justice
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Kings
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.Collection: Hero
The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.Collection: Government
By sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness.Collection: Blood
Is it to be thought unreasonable that the people, in atonement for wrongs of a century, demand the vengeance of a single day?Collection: Revenge
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.Collection: Kings
One can...never create [freedom] by an invading force.Collection: Peace
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.Collection: War
No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.Collection: One Love
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.Collection: Men
Establish liberty on a rock of brass.Collection: Rocks
Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.Collection: Justice
Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible. It is then an emanation of virtue.Collection: Justice
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!"Collection: Sleep
lf the attribute of popular government in peace is virtue, the attribute of popular government in revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror, virtue without which terror is fatal, terror without which virtue is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.Collection: Government
It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die that the country may liveCollection: Country