Maximilien Robespierre Quotes (78 quotes)

Maximilien Robespierre: 78 quotes 14 likes

Famous Maximilien Robespierre Quotes

Maximilien Robespierre

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!"
Source: Last speech to the National Convention http://www.bartleby.com/268/7/24.html (26 July 1794)

“Democracy is a state in which the sovereign people, guided by laws which are its own work, does for itself all that it can do properly, and through delegates all that it cannot do for itself.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"On the Principles of Political Morality that Should Guide the National Convention in the Domestic Administration of the Republic" (5 February 1784/18 Ploviôse Year 2)

“It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die, so that the country may live.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Original French: Je prononce à regret cette fatale vérité... mais Louis doit mourir, parce qu'il faut que la patrie vive.
Speech to the National Convention http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/journal_debats/an/1792/convention_1792_12_03.htm on the judgment of Louis XVI (3 December 1792)

“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.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Original: (fr) Notre révolution m'a fait sentir tout le sens de l'axiome qui dit que l'histoire est un roman ; et je suis convaincu que la fortune et l'intrigue ont fait plus de héros, que le génie et la vertu.
Source: Lettres à ses commettants, 1ère série, n°10 http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/journaux/lettres_commettants/robespierre_lettres_commettants_1_10.htm, (21 December 1792)

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

Maximilien Robespierre

Original French: Le secret de la liberté est d'éclairer les hommes, comme celui de la tyrannie est de les retenir dans l'ignorance
Source: Oeuvres, Volume 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=iSMVAAAAQAAJ p. 253.

“Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?”

Maximilien Robespierre

Original French: Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?
Réponse à J.- B. Louvet http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/robespierre_reponse_louvet.htm, a speech to the National Convention (5 November 1792)

Maximilien Robespierre Quotes about people

“We wish in our country that morality may be substituted for egotism, probity for false honour, principles for usages, duties for good manners, the empire of reason for the tyranny of fashion, a contempt of vice for a contempt of misfortune, pride for insolence, magnanimity for vanity, the love of glory for the love of money, good people for good company, merit for intrigue, genius for wit, truth for tinsel show, the attractions of happiness for the ennui of sensuality, the grandeur of man for the littleness of the great, a people magnanimous, powerful, happy, for a people amiable, frivolous and miserable; in a word, all the virtues and miracles of a Republic instead of all the vices and absurdities of a Monarchy.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

“We want, in a word, to fulfil nature’s wishes, to further the destinies of humanity, to keep the promises of philosophy, to absolve providence of the long reign of crime and tyranny. So that France, once illustrious among enslaved countries, eclipsing the glory of all the free peoples that have existed, may become the model for all nations, the terror of oppressors, the consolation of the oppressed, the ornament of the universe; and that in sealing our work with our blood, we may at least glimpse the shining dawn of universal felicity. That is our ambition, that is our goal.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"On the Principles of Political Morality that Should Guide the National Convention in the Domestic Administration of the Republic" (5 February 1794)

“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.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Original French: Il faut étouffer les ennemis intérieurs et extérieurs de la République, ou périr avec elle ; or, dans cette situation, la première maxime de votre politique doit être qu’on conduit le peuple par la raison, et les ennemis du peuple par la terreur.
Speech to the National Convention (5 February 1794)

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

Maximilien Robespierre

Original French: Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.

From article 19 of the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen http://saintjust.free.fr/DDHC93.htm (21 April 1793)
Original: XIX Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.

“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.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Original French: La plus extravagante idée qui puisse naître dans la tête d'un politique est de croire qu'il suffise à un peuple d'entrer à main armée chez un peuple étranger, pour lui faire adopter ses lois et sa constitution. Personne n'aime les missionnaires armés; et le premier conseil que donnent la nature et la prudence, c'est de les repousser comme des ennemis.
Sur la guerre (1ère intervention), a speech to the Jacobin Club (2 January 1792)

“The policy of the London Cabinet largely contributed to the first movement of our Revolution…. Taking advantage of political tempests (the cabinet) aimed to effect in an exhausted and dismembered France a change of dynasty and to place the Duke of York on the throne of Louis XVI…. Pitt…. is an imbecile, whatever may be said of a reputation that has been much too greatly puffed up. A man who, abusing the influence acquired by him on an island placed haphazard in the ocean, is desirous of contending with the French people, could not have conceived of such an absurd plan elsewhere than in a madhouse.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Quotes from speeches (17 November 1793 & 26 January 1794) in La Révolution: III – Le Gouvernement Révolutionnaire (1883) by Hippolyte Taine, translated as The Revolution Vol. 3 (1885), by John Durand, Book 7 : The Governors, p. 144, footnote 3 https://books.google.com/books?id=dCBKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA144&lpg=PA144

Maximilien Robespierre Quotes about nature

“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!"”

Maximilien Robespierre

Last speech to the National Convention http://www.bartleby.com/268/7/24.html (26 July 1794)

“Happily virtue is natural in the people, [despite] aristocratical prejudices. 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....”

Maximilien Robespierre

Source: Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

“All that tends to... debase them into selfish egotism, to awaken an infatuation for littlenesses, and a disregard for greatness, you should reject or repress. 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. Carried away, too often perhaps, by the force of ancient habits, as well as by the innate imperfection of human nature, to false ideas and pusillanimous sentiments, we have more to fear from the excesses of weakness, than from excesses of energy.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

“We wish, in a word, to fulfill the intentions of nature and the destiny of man, realize the promises of philosophy, and acquit providence of a long reign of crime and tyranny. That France, once illustrious among enslaved nations, may, by eclipsing the glory of all free countries that ever existed, become a model to nations, a terror to oppressors, a consolation to the oppressed, an ornament of the universe and that, by sealing the work with our blood, we may at least witness the dawn of the bright day of universal happiness. This is our ambition, - this is the end of our efforts....”

Maximilien Robespierre

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

“When a nation has been forced to resort to the right of insurrection, it returns to the state of nature in relation to the tyrant. How can the tyrant invoke the state of nature in relation to the tyrant. How can the tyrant invoke the social pact? He has annihilated it. The nation can still keep it, if it thinks fit, for everything conserving relations between citizens; but the effect of tyranny and insurrection is to break it entirely where the tyrant is concerned; it places them reciprocally in a state of war. Courts and legal proceeding are only for members of the same side.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (Dec. 3, 1792)
Source: https://ihrf.univ-paris1.fr/enseignement/outils-et-materiaux-pedagogiques/textes-et-sources-sur-la-revolution-francaise/proces-du-roi-discours-de-robespierre/ Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (Dec. 3, 1792)

en.wikiquote.org - Maximilien Robespierre / Quotes / Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (Dec. 3, 1792) https://ihrf.univ-paris1.fr/enseignement/outils-et-materiaux-pedagogiques/textes-et-sources-sur-la-revolution-francaise/proces-du-roi-discours-de-robespierre/

“It is a gross contradiction to suppose that the constitution might preside over this new order of things; that would be to assume it had itself survived. What are the laws that replace it? Those of nature, the one which is the foundation of society itself: the salvation of the people. The right to punish the tyrant and the right to dethrone him are the same thing; both include the same forms. The tyrant’s trial is the insurrection; the verdict, the collapse of his power; the sentence, whatever the liberty of the people requires.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Maximilien Robespierre: Trending quotes

“Since virtue and equality are the soul of the republic, and that your aim is to found, to consolidate the republic, it follows, that the first rule of your political conduct should be, to let all your measures tend to maintain equality and encourage virtue, for the first care of the legislator should be to strengthen the principles on which the government rests. Hence all that tends to excite a love of country, to purify manners, to exalt the mind, to direct the passions of the human heart towards the public good, you should adopt and establish.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

Soul , Country , Heart , Passion

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

Maximilien Robespierre

Original French: En scellant notre ouvrage de notre sang, nous puissions voir au moins briller l'aurore de la félicité universelle.
Speech to the National Convention (5 February 1794)

Universe , Happiness

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

Maximilien Robespierre

Christmas 1793 speech http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n22/hugh-roberts/who-said-gaddafi-had-to-go

Maximilien Robespierre Quotes

“The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Original: (fr) Le gouvernement de la révolution est le despotisme de la liberté contre la tyrannie.
Source: Speech to the National Convention http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/robespierre_principes_morale_politique_05_02_94.htm (5 February 1794)

“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.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Speech to the National Convention, (5 February 1794), as quoted in The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923, Vol. 1 (1951) by Edward Hallett Carr, p. 154
Variant translations:
The attribute of popular government in a revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror. Terror without virtue is fatal; virtue without terror is impotent. The terror is nothing but justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is thus an emanation of virtue.
As quoted in Red Star Over Southern Africa (1988) by Morgan Norval, p. xvi
If the mainspring of popular government in peace time is virtue, its resource during a revolution is at one and the same time virtue and terror; virtue, without which terror is merely terrible; terror, without which virtue is simply powerless.
As quoted in Rousseau, Robespierre and English Romanticism (1999) by Gregory Dart
Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a special principle as it is a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our country's most urgent needs.
Original French: La terreur n'est autre chose que la justice prompte, sévère, inflexible; elle est donc une émanation de la vertu ; elle est moins un principe particulier, qu’une conséquence du principe général de la démocratie, appliqué aux plus pressants besoins de la patrie.
From Sur les principes de morale politique http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/robespierre_principes_morale_politique_05_02_94.htm

Peace , Justice , Time

“To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty. The severity of tyrants has barbarity for its principle; that of a republican government is founded on beneficence. Therefore let him beware who should dare to influence the people by that terror which is made only for their enemies! Let him beware, who, regarding the inevitable errors of civism in the same light, with the premeditated crimes of perfidiousness, or the attempts of conspirators, suffers the dangerous intriguer to escape and pursues the peaceable citizen! Death to the villain who dares abuse the sacred name of liberty or the powerful arms intended for her defence, to carry mourning or death to the patriotic heart...”

Maximilien Robespierre

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

Forgiveness , Death , Light , Suffering

“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 distrust of our own courage. Therefore continually wind up the sacred spring of republican government, instead of letting it run down. I need not say that I am not here justifying any excess. Principles the most sacred may be abused: the wisdom of government should guide its operations according to circumstances, it should time its measures, choose its means; for the manner of bringing about great things is an essential part of the talent of producing them, just as wisdom is an essential attribute of virtue....”

Maximilien Robespierre

Principles to Form the Basis of the Administration of the Republic (February 1794)

Courage , Time , Spring , Wisdom

“If the mainspring of popular government in peacetime is virtue, the mainspring of popular government in revolution is both virtue and terror: virtue, without which terror is disastrous; terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing but prompt, severe, inflexible justice; it is therefore an emanation of virtue; it is not so much a specific principle as a consequence of the general principle of democracy applied to our homeland’s most pressing needs.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"On the Principles of Political Morality that Should Guide the National Convention in the Domestic Administration of the Republic" (5 February 1784/18 Ploviôse Year 2)
"On the Principles of Political Morality"

Democracy , Justice

“People 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. If it is for their salvation that they take arms against their oppressors, how can they be made o adopt a way of punishing them that would pose a new danger to themselves?”

Maximilien Robespierre

Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (Dec. 3, 1792)

Way , People , Justice , Law

“I utter this deadly truth with regret, but Louis must die, because the homeland has to live. Among a peaceable, free people, respected at home and abroad, you might listen to the advice being given you to be generous; but a people whose liberty is still being disputed after so many sacrifices and battles, a people in whose country the laws are still only inexorable towards the unfortunate, a people in whose country the crimes of tyranny are still subjects of dispute, such a people must want to be avenged; and the generosity for which you are being praised would resemble too much that of a society of bandits sharing out spoils.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (Dec. 3, 1792)

Home , Law , Country , People

“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. If it is for their salvation that they take arms against their oppressors, how can they be made to adopt a way of punishing them that would pose a new danger to themselves?”

Maximilien Robespierre

Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (Dec. 3, 1792)
Original: (fr) Les peuples ne jugent pas comme les cours judiciaires ; ils ne rendent point de sentences, ils lancent la foudre ; ils ne condamnent pas les rois, ils les replongent dans le néant : et cette justice vaut bien celle des tribunaux. Si c’est pour leur salut qu’ils s’arment contre leurs oppresseurs, comment seraient-ils tenus d’adopter un mode de les punir qui serait pour eux-mêmes un nouveau danger?

Justice , Law , Way , People

“A dethroned king, in the Republic, is good for only two uses: either to trouble the peace of the state and threaten liberty, or to affirm both of these at the same time.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Time , Peace

“Louis cannot be judged; either he is already condemned or the Republic is not acquitted. Proposing to put Louis on trial, in whatever way that could be done, would be to regress towards royal and constitutional despotism; it is a counter-revolutionary idea, for it means putting the revolution itself in contention.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Idea , Way

“England! Ha! What good are they to you, England and its depraved constitution, which may have looked free to you when you had sunk to the lowest degree of servitude, but which it is high time to stop praising out of ignorance or habit!”

Maximilien Robespierre

On the Silver Mark (1791)

Time

“The people only ask for what is necessary, it only wants justice and tranquility, the rich aspire to everything, they want to invade and dominate everything. Abuses are the work and the domain of the rich, they are the scourges of the people: the interest of the people is the general interest, that of the rich is a particular interest...”

Maximilien Robespierre

On the Silver Mark (1791)

People , Justice

“What is a person who, among men equal in rights, dares to declare his fellows unworthy of exercising theirs, and to take them away for his own advantage!”

Maximilien Robespierre

On the Silver Mark (1791)

Personality , Men , Exercises

“But there do exist, I can assure you, souls that are feeling and pure; it exists, that tender, imperious and irresistible passion, the torment and delight of magnanimous hearts; that deep horror of tyranny, that compassionate zeal for the oppressed, that sacred love for the homeland, that even more sublime and holy love for humanity, without which a great revolution is just a noisy crime that destroys another crime; it does exist, that generous ambition to establish here on earth the world’s first Republic.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Speech of Thermidor Year II (26 July 1794)

Soul , Heart , Passion , World

“I know we cannot flatter ourselves that we have attained perfection; but holding up a Republic surrounded by enemies, fortifying reason in favour of liberty, destroying prejudice and nullifying individual efforts against the public interest, demand moral and physical strengths that nature has perhaps denied to those who denounce us and those we are fighting.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"In Defense of the Committee of Public Safety and Against Briez" (25 September 1793)

Perfection , Effort , Fight , Nature

“XXIX. When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Maximilien Robespierre" (24 April, 1793)
Original: (fr) XXIX. Dans tout état libre, la loi doit surtout défendre la liberté publique et individuelle contre l'autorité de ceux qui la gouvernent. Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.

People

“No doubt if all men were just and virtuous; if cupidity were never tempted to devour the people’s substance; if the rich, receptive to the voices of reason and nature, regarded themselves as the bursars of society, or as brothers to the poor, it might be possible to recognize no law but the most unlimited freedom; but if it is true that avarice can speculate on the misery and tyranny itself on the despair of the people; if it is true that all the passions declare war on suffering humanity, then why should not the law repress these abuses? Why should it not stay the homicidal hand of the monopolist, as it does that of the common murderer? Why should it not concern itself with the subsistence of the people, after caring so long for the pleasures of the great, and the power of despots?”

Maximilien Robespierre

On Subsistence, (2 December 1792)

Despair , Law , Freedom , War

“I defy the most scrupulous defender of property to contest these principles, short of declaring openly that he understands this word as the right to despoil and assassinate his fellows. So how have people been able to claim that any sort of restriction, or rather any regulation of the trade in wheat, was an attack on property, and disguise that barbaric system under the specious name of freedom of trade? Do the authors of this system not perceive that they are inevitably in contradiction with themselves?”

Maximilien Robespierre

On Subsistence, (2 December 1792)

People , Understanding , Freedom

“What is the first object of society? It is to maintain the imprescriptible rights of man. What is the first of those rights? The right to life.”

Maximilien Robespierre

On Subsistence, (2 December 1792)

Life

“In every country where nature provides for the needs of men with prodigality, scarcity can only be imputed to defects of administration or of the laws themselves; bad laws and bad administration have their origins in false principles and bad morals.”

Maximilien Robespierre

On Subsistence, (2 December 1792)

Law , Country , Bad luck , Nature

“Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution? What is this spirit of persecution that has come to revise, so to speak, the one that broke our chains? But what sure judgement can one make of the effects that can follow these great commotions? Who can mark, after the event, the exact point at which the waves of popular insurrection should break? At that price, what people could ever have shaken off the yoke of despotism? For while it is true that a great nation cannot rise in a simultaneous movement, and that tyranny can only be hit by the portion of citizens that is closest to it, how would these ever dare to attack it if, after the victory, delegates from remote parts could hold them responsible for the duration or violence of the political torment that had saved the homeland? They ought to be regarded as justified by tacit proxy for the whole of society. The French, friends of liberty, meeting in Paris last August, acted in that role, in the name of all the departments. They should either be approved or repudiated entirely. To make them criminally responsible for a few apparent or real disorders, inseparable from so great a shock, would be to punish them for their devotion.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?
"Answer to Louvet's Accusation" (5 November 1792) Réponse à J.- B. Louvet http://www.royet.org/nea1789-1794/archives/discours/robespierre_reponse_louvet.htm, a speech to the National Convention (5 November 1792)

Victory , People , Parting , Making love

“It is indeed a great interest, the conservation of your colonies, but even that interest is connected with your constitution; and the supreme interest of the nation and of the colonies themselves is that you conserve your liberty and do not overturn the foundations of that liberty with your own hands. Faugh! Perish your colonies, if you are keeping them at that price. Yes, if you had either to lose your colonies, or to lose your happiness, your glory, your liberty, I would repeat: perish your colonies.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"On the Condition of Free Men of Colour" (31 May 1791)

Happiness

“Things have been said to you about the Jews that are infinitely exaggerated and often contrary to history. How can the persecutions they have suffered at the hands of different peoples be held against them? These on the contrary are national crimes that we ought to expiate, by granting them imprescriptible human rights of which no human power could despoil them. Faults are still imputed to them, prejudices, exaggerated by the sectarian spirit and by interests. But to what can we really impute them but our own injustices? After having excluded them from all honours, even the right to public esteem, we have left them with nothing but the objects of lucrative speculation. Let us deliver them to happiness, to the homeland, to virtue, by granting them the dignity of men and citizens; let us hope that it can never be policy, whatever people say, to condemn to degradation and oppression a multitude of men who live among us. How could the social interest be based on violation of the eternal principles of justice and reason that are the foundations of every human society?”

Maximilien Robespierre

"On Voting Rights for Actors and Jews" (21 December 1789)

Justice , History , Suffering , Hope

“Every citizen fulfilling the conditions of eligibility that you have prescribed has the right to public office.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"On Voting Rights for Actors and Jews" (21 December 1789)

“You will follow us soon! Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood!”

Maximilien Robespierre

Exclamation of Georges Danton passing Robespierre's house on the way to the guillotine, quoted in the memoirs of Paul vicomte de Barras
About Robespierre

Housing

“The People is always worth more than individuals.”

Maximilien Robespierre

As quoted in Portrayals of Revolution, Images, Debates, and Patterns of Thought on the French Revolution, p. 27, by Noel Parker, Southern Illinois University Press

People

“Offences committed by people’s representatives should be severely and promptly punished. No one has the right to claim to be more inviolable than other citizens.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Original: (fr) XXXIII. Les délits des mandataires du peuple doivent être sévèrement et facilement punis. Nul n'a le droit de se prétendre plus inviolable que les autres citoyens.
Source: "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Maximilien Robespierre" (24 April, 1793)

People

“Men of all countries are brothers, and the different peoples should help one another to the best of their ability, like citizens of the same state.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, proposed by Maximilien Robespierre" (24 April, 1793)
Original: (fr) XXXV. Les hommes de tous les pays sont frères, et les différents peuples doivent s'entraider selon leur pouvoir comme les citoyens du même état.

Country , People , Men , Help

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

Maximilien Robespierre

From article 19 of the Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen http://saintjust.free.fr/DDHC93.htm (21 April 1793)
Original: (fr) Tout institution qui ne suppose pas le peuple bon et le magistrat corruptible est vicieuse.

People , Evil

“The secret of liberty is to enlighten men, as that of tyranny is to keep them in ignorance.”

Maximilien Robespierre

As quoted in Human Rights and Freedoms in the USSR (1981) by Fedor Eliseevich Medvedev and Gennadiĭ Ivanovich Kulikov, p. 221
Original: Le secret de la liberté est d'éclairer les hommes, comme celui de la tyrannie est de les retenir dans l'ignorance
Variant: The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
Source: Public statement (November 1792), quoted in Oeuvres de Maximilien Robespierre (1840), Volume 2, p. 253 http://books.google.com/books?id=iSMVAAAAQAAJ

Secret , Men

“How would the man born blind not have the idea of light? Nature has refused them a soul; they have some right to doubt, not only the immortality of the soul, but its existence.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Last Speech to the National Convention (26 July 1794)

Soul , Light , Nature , Idea

“Indulgence for the royalists, cry certain men, mercy for the villains! No! mercy for the innocent, mercy for the weak, mercy for the unfortunate, mercy for humanity.”

Maximilien Robespierre

"On Political Morality" (5 February 1794)

Cry , Men

“You complain that I have committed illegal acts. Of course I have. We all have. The Revolution is illegal. The fall of the Bastille was illegal. The formation of this republic was illegal, as illegal as liberty itself. Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution?”

Maximilien Robespierre

Misc Quotes
Original: (fr) Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?

“Man is born to be happy and free, and everywhere he is enslaved and unhappy! Society exists for the purpose of conserving his rights and perfecting his being, and everywhere society degrades and oppresses him! The time has come to remind him of his true destiny.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Quoting Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Misc Quotes

Happiness , Perfection , Time

“I am made to combat crime, not to govern it. The time is not here where good men can serve their patrie with impunity; the defenders of liberty will only be outcasts, as long as the horde of rogues is in control.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Last Speech to the National Convention (26 July 1794)

Time , Men

“I leave to the oppressors of humanity a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful truth: “Thou shalt die!””

Maximilien Robespierre

Last Speech to the National Convention (26 July 1794)

Truth

“This egotism of non-degraded men, which finds a heavenly delight in the calmness of a pure conscience and in the ravishing spectacle of the public good, you feel it in this moment which burns in your souls; I feel it in mine.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Last Speech to the National Convention (26 July 1794)

Soul , Feeling , Men

“The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Last Speech to the National Convention (26 July 1794)

“Citizens whose incomes do not exceed what is required for their subsistence are exempted from contributing to state expenditure; all others must support it progressively according to their wealth.”

Maximilien Robespierre

On Property (24 April 1793)

Support , Wealth

“Ask that merchant in human flesh what property is. He will tell you, pointing to the long bier that he calls a ship and in which he has herded and shackled men who still appear to be alive: “Those are my property; I bought them at so much a head.””

Maximilien Robespierre

Question that nobleman, who has lands and ships or who thinks that the world has been turned upside down since he has had none, and he will give you a similar view of property.
Condemning the defense of Slavery, Galleys and Serfdom as property
On Property (24 April 1793)

Appearance , Men

“Death, always Death! And the wretches cast it upon me. What a memory I shall leave behind if this lasts. Life is a burden to me.”

Maximilien Robespierre

SOURCE https://books.google.com.au/books?id=pA4LF2gD61sC&pg=PA419&lpg=PA419&dq=%E2%80%9CWhat+a+memory+I+shall+leave+behind+me+if+this+lasts!%E2%80%9D+robespierre&source=bl&ots=H7X80hMmtp&sig=ACfU3U0gG5lHCy5wZrS4cArBVcEFLBhyjQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjVjpKnvvPyAhValEsFHS7xABkQ6AF6BAgCEAM#v=onepage&q=%E2%80%9CWhat%20a%20memory%20I%20shall%20leave%20behind%20me%20if%20this%20lasts!%E2%80%9D%20robespierre&f=false
Misc Quotes

Memory , Life , Death

“When will the interests of governments be amalgamated with those of the people? Never!”

Maximilien Robespierre

Note found in his notebook, after his death
Misc Quotes

People

“Whoever tries to stop the saying of mass is a worse fanatic than the priest who says it.”

Maximilien Robespierre

Attacking the Dechristianization movement
Misc Quotes