Skip to content

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

— Maximilien Robespierre

Another quote →

Topics

Government

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.

All Maximilien Robespierre quotes →

You may also like

Ill can he rule the great, that cannot reach the small.

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene (1589)

The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse.

James Madison

Bureaucracy and social harmony are inversely proportional to each other.

Leon Trotsky The Revolution Betrayed (1936)

There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.

John Adams

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.