Maximilien Robespierre: Citizen

“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)

“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)

Death , Support , Nature , Sleep

“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

“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/

Thinking , Nature , Relation ships , War

“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

“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)

“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

“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?