52 quotes
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.
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.
The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual.
You have driven out the kings: but have you driven out the vices that their fatal domination has bred within you?
Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime.
On Political Morality (1794)
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!"
Last Speech to the National Convention (1794)
The right to punish the tyrant and the right to dethrone him are the same thing; both include the same forms. The tyrant’s trial is the insurrection; the verdict, the collapse of his power; the sentence, whatever the liberty of the people requires.
The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality.
Last Speech to the National Convention (1794)
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!
On the Silver Mark (1791)
A dethroned king, in the Republic, is good for only two uses: either to trouble the peace of the state and threaten liberty, or to affirm both of these at the same time.
Speech on the Trial of Louis XVI (1792)
The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.
On Political Morality (1794)
let all of Europe league against us and Europe will be defeated.
Indulgence for the royalists, cry certain men, mercy for the villains! No! mercy for the innocent, mercy for the weak, mercy for the unfortunate, mercy for humanity.
On Political Morality (1794)
When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is for the people and each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.
Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1793)
poverty corrupts the People’s behaviour and degrades its soul; it predisposes it to crime
By sealing our work with our blood, we may see at least the bright dawn of universal happiness. That is our ambition, that is our goal.
On Political Morality (1794)
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.
Last Speech to the National Convention (1794)
Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a Great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular. The people, the unfortunate, will always applaud me; I shall find detractors only among the rich and the guilty.
Mean spirits, you whose only measure of value is gold, I have no desire to touch your treasures, however impure may have been the source of them.
On Property (1793)
Citizens whose incomes do not exceed what is required for their subsistence are exempted from contributing to state expenditure; all others must support it progressively according to their wealth.
On Property (1793)