Maximilien Robespierre Quotes

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

The king must die so that the country can live.

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

Softness to traitors will destroy us all.

Omelets are not made without breaking eggs.

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.

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

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.

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

Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

No one loves armed missionaries; the first lesson of nature and prudence is to repulse them as enemies.

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