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Maximilien Robespierre Quotes
1758–1794 France
Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (6 May 1758 – 28 July 1794) was a French lawyer and statesman who was one of the best-known and most influential figures of the French Revolution. As a member of the Constituent Assembly and the Jacobin Club, he campaigned for universal manhood suffrage and the abolition both of celibacy for the clergy, and slavery.
France Heads of state Lawyers Politicians Republicans Also known as: Robespierre, Robespierre, Maximilien
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52 quotes
Any institution which does not suppose the people are good, and the magistrate is corruptible, is evil.
It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die, so that the country may live.
Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (1792)
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
Every citizen fulfilling the conditions of eligibility that you have prescribed has the right to public office.
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.
There is one thing more despicable than a tyrant— it is a nation of slaves.
The secret of liberty is to enlighten men, as that of tyranny is to keep them in ignorance.
Whoever tries to stop the saying of mass is a worse fanatic than the priest who says it.
Remember, that there is no more formidable enemy to liberty than fanaticism.
Freedom can never be found by the use of a foreign force
Citoyens, vouliez-vous une révolution sans révolution?
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.
When will the interests of governments be amalgamated with those of the people? Never!
Men of all countries are brothers, and the different peoples should help one another according to their ability like citizens of the same state.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1793)
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.
Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (1792)
The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.
Let tyranny reign a single day, and there will be no more patriots the day after. Yet one or the other has to yield.
In every free state, the law must above all defend public and individual liberty against the authority of those who govern. Any institution which does not suppose the people good and the magistrate corruptible is evil.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1793)
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.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1793)
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
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