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Maximilien Robespierre (1758 – 1794)


One of the leaders of the French Revolution.
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Maximilien Robespierre
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.
Robespierre quotes
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.
Robespierre
Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?




Robespierre Maximilien quotes
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.
Robespierre Maximilien
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 quotes
The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.
Maximilien Robespierre
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.
Robespierre Maximilien quotes
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!"
Robespierre
By sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness.
Robespierre Maximilien
It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die that the country may live.
Maximilien Robespierre
You will follow us soon! Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood!




Maximilien Robespierre quotes
The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.
Maximilien Robespierre
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.
Robespierre quotes
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.
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