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Quotes by Maximilien Robespierre

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
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.
– Maximilien Robespierre
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.
– Maximilien Robespierre
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.
– Maximilien Robespierre
Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular.
– Maximilien Robespierre
Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.
– Maximilien Robespierre
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.
– Maximilien Robespierre
Is it to be thought unreasonable that the people, in atonement for wrongs of a century, demand the vengeance of a single day?
– Maximilien Robespierre
Pity is treason.
– Maximilien Robespierre
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.
– Maximilien Robespierre
The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual.
– Maximilien Robespierre
The king must die so that the country can live.
– Maximilien Robespierre
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
– Maximilien Robespierre
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.
– Maximilien Robespierre
To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.
– Maximilien Robespierre
What is the end of our revolution? The tranquil enjoyment of liberty and equality; the reign of that eternal justice, the laws of which are graven, not on marble or stone, but in the hearts of men, even in the heart of the slave who has forgotten them, and in that of the tyrant who disowns them.
– Maximilien Robespierre