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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.

— Maximilien Robespierre

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Power

More quotes by Maximilien Robespierre

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.

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The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence.

John Adams A Defence of the Constitutions of Government (1787)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick.

Martin Buber What is Man? (1938)

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis God in the Dock (1970)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Maximilien Robespierre (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.