Maximilien Robespierre Quotations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The king must die so that the country can live.

You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Establish liberty on a rock of brass.

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

No one loves armed missionaries.

Terror is nothing else than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible.

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.

Omelets are not made without breaking eggs.

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 live

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

When a Banker jumps out of a window, jump after him - that's where the money is.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?

Softness to traitors will destroy us all.

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.