Political Leaders

"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!"

"The law, the public authority: is it not established to protect weakness against injustice and oppression? It is thus an offence to all social principles place it entirely in the hands of the rich. But the rich, the powerful, have reasoned differently, Through a strange abuse of words, they have restricted the general idea of property to certain objects only; they have called only themselves property owners: they have claimed that only property owners were worthy of the name of citizen; they have named their own particular interest the general interest, and to ensure the success of that claim, they have seized all social power."

"let all of Europe league against us and Europe will be defeated."

"You constantly allege the declaration of human rights, the principles of liberty, and you yourselves believed in it so little that you constitutionally decreed slavery."

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

"To be armed for personal defence is the right of every man, to be armed to defend freedom and the existence of the common fatherland is the right of every citizen"

"To defend the oppressed against their oppressors, to plead the cause of the weak against the strong who exploit and crush them, this is the duty of all hearts that have not been spoiled by egoism and corruption… It is so sweet to devote oneself to one’s fellows that I do not know how there can be so many unfortunates still without support or defenders. As for me, my life’s task will be to help those who suffer and to pursue through my avenging speech those who take pleasure in the pain of others. How happy I will be if my feeble efforts are crowned with success and if, at the price of my devotion and sacrifices, my reputation is not tarnished by the crimes of the oppressors I will fight."

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

"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."

"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."

"Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?"

"Le secret de la liberté est d'éclairer les hommes, comme celui de la tyrannie est de les retenir dans l'ignorance"

"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."

"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."

"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?"

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

"Let tyranny reign a single day, and there will be no more patriots the day after. Yet one or the other has to yield."

"Remember, that there is no more formidable enemy to liberty than fanaticism."

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

"Freedom can never be found by the use of a foreign force"

"It is by the progress of philosophy and by the spectacle of the happiness of France, that you will extend the empire of our revolution, and not by the force of arms and by the calamities of war."

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

"There is one thing more despicable than a tyrant— it is a nation of slaves."

"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."

"Citizens, imagination usually sets the limits of the possible and the impossible; but when you have the will to do good, you must have the courage to cross these limits."

"poverty corrupts the People’s behaviour and degrades its soul; it predisposes it to crime"

"You have driven out the kings: but have you driven out the vices that their fatal domination has bred within you?"

"The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual."

"rather than thinking of Robespierre as the man who ruined the revolution, we should see him as a man that the revolution ruined."

"He was the last word of the Revolution, but nobody could read it"

"There are two ways of totally misunderstanding Robespierre as a historical figure: one is to detest the man, the other is to make too much of him. It is absurd, of course, to see the lawyer from Arras as a monstrous usurper, the recluse as a demagogue, the moderate as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the democrat as a dictator. On the other hand, what is explained about his destiny once it is proved that he really was the Incorruptible? The misconception common to both schools arises from the fact that they attribute to the psychological traits of the man the historical role into which he was thrust by events and the language he borrowed from them. Robespierre is an immortal figure not because he reigned supreme over the Revolution for a few months, but because he was the mouthpiece of its purest and most tragic discourse."

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

"He is above all, a tenacious man"

"[Robespierre] couldn't even boil an egg."

"The whole corpus of Robespierre studies is a hall of mirrors"

"Of no one of whom so much has been written is so little known"

"One wonders why there are so many women who follow Robespierre to his home, to the Jacobins, to the Cordeliers and to the Convention. It is because the French Revolution is a religion and Robespierre is one of its sects. He is a priest with his flock… Robespierre preaches, Robespierre censures, he is furious, serious, melancholic and exalted with passion. He thunders against the rich and the great. He lives on little and has no physical needs. He has only one mission: to talk. And he talks all the time."

"The seagreen Incorruptible."

"No one at the time of the Revolution, went as far as Robespierre in stating what were later to be recognized as the essential conditions of the democratic state. His draft Declaration of Rights, stands out above the Revolutionary talk like a beacon. It illuminates the Revolution and it explains the greatness of Robespierre. Universal franchise, equality of rights regardless of race or religion, pay for public service to enable rich and poor alike to hold office, publicity for legislative debates, a national system of education, the use of taxation to smooth out economic inequalities, recognition of the economic responsibilities of society to the individual, the right of national autonomy, religious liberty, local self-government - such were the some of the principles for which he stood, and which are now taken for granted in democratic societies."

"We did not realize that in killing Robespierre, we would kill the Republic"

"we were wrong that day [Thermidor] if someone were to ask me how [Robespierre] succeeded in taking so much ascendancy over public opinion I would answer that it was by displaying the most austere virtues, the most absolute devotion, the purest principles."

"I have the double regret — I should say the double remorse — of having overthrown Robespierre on the 9th of Thermidor and raised Bonaparte on the 13th of Vendemiaire."

"[Robespierre was] a man without personal ambition, a republican to the fingertips...would to Heaven there were in the Chamber of Deputies today someone to point to those who conspire against our freedom! We were then in the middle of a war, and we did not understand the man. He was a nervous, choleric individual who twitched when he spoke. He was a great man and posterity will not refuse him the title."

"I confess today in good faith that I am angry with myself for having formerly seen in a bad light, within the revolutionary government, Robespierre and Saint-Just. I believe that these two men were better on their own than all the revolutionaries together."

"We shall distinguish in Robespierre two men, apostle of liberty, and Robespierre the most infamous of tyrants."

"He is and will be a lawyer only for the poor."

"Only this is certain, that he remains the most hateful character in the forefront of history since Machiavelli reduced to a code the wickedness of public men."

"With this speech, I have signed my own death sentence. I saw today that the league of miscreants is too strong, that I cannot hope to escape. I die without regrets, I leave you my legacy, it will be dear to you and you will defend it."

"My life? Oh, my life I abandon without a regret! I have seen the Past; and I foresee the Future. What friend of his country would wish to survive the moment when he could no longer serve it — when he could no longer defend innocence against oppression?"

"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."