Robespierre Quotes

“I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen.

I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man...

Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters - seldom in any school of writing.

Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object.

...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration:

'The world is my country; to do good my religion.'

Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'.

Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him.

'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.'

Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France.

So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument.

But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part.

Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking.

{The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}”
― Thomas A. Edison, Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison

“Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“And Robespierre, the Incorruptible, who loved us so much he cut off our heads so we would not be troubled by too many thoughts.”
― Jennifer Donnelly, Revolution

“A sensibility that wails almost exclusively over the enemies of liberty seems suspect to me. Stop shaking the tyrant's bloody robe in my face, or I will believe that you wish to put Rome in chains.”
― Maximilien Robespierre

“There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?

...The Bible tells us, that those assassinations were done by the express command of God. And to read the Bible without horror, we must undo every thing that is tender, sympathising, and benevolent in the heart of man. Speaking for myself, if I had no other evidence that the Bible is fabulous, than the sacrifice I must make to believe it to be true, that alone would be sufficient to determine my choice.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“There are matters in that book, said to be done by the express command of God, that are as shocking to humanity, and to every idea we have of moral justice, as any thing done by Robespierre, by Carrier, by Joseph le Bon, in France, by the English government in the East Indies, or by any other assassin in modern times. When we read in the books ascribed to Moses, Joshua, etc., that they (the Israelites) came by stealth upon whole nations of people, who, as the history itself shews, had given them no offence; that they put all those nations to the sword; that they spared neither age nor infancy; that they utterly destroyed men, women and children; that they left not a soul to breathe; expressions that are repeated over and over again in those books, and that too with exulting ferocity; are we sure these things are facts? are we sure that the Creator of man commissioned those things to be done? Are we sure that the books that tell us so were written by his authority?”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“...and I sometimes think that the fading out of the individual personality is what one should desire, not the status of a hero—a sort of effacement of oneself from history. The entire record of the human race has been falsified, it has been made up by bad governments to suit themselves, by kings and tyrants to make them look good. This idea of history as made by great men is quite nonsensical, when you look at it from the point of view of the people. The real heroes are those who have resisted tyrants, and it is in the nature of tyranny not only to kill those who oppose it but to wipe their names out of the record, to obliterate them, so that resistance seems impossible.”
― Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

“He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.”
― Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

“Ask Robespierre. Ask the man with the conscience which is more important, your friend or your country— ask him how he weighs an individual in the scheme of things. Ask him which comes first, his old pals or his new principles. You ask him, Camille.”
― Hilary Mantel, A Place of Greater Safety

“The idea of a specifically Robespierrist terror was a myth, invented by the Termidoreans, the men who overthrew Robespierre, who themselves were very much implicated in the recourse to terror.”
― Marisa Linton, Choosing Terror: Virtue, Friendship, and Authenticity in the French Revolution

“In a line worthy of Robespierre, Sayyid Qutb said that a “just dictatorship” would “grant political liberties to the virtuous alone.”26 Hassan al-Banna, whose bedside reading was al-Ghazali, also regarded the Soviet Union under Stalin as a model of a successful one party system.”
― Robert R. Reilly, The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis

“Sei capace di dipingere dèi ed eroi, cittadino pittore? è un'assemblea di eroi quella che ti chiediamo. Dipingili come dèi o come mostri, o anche come uomini, se te ne viene l'estro. Dipingi Il Grande Comitato dell'anno II. Il Comitato di salute pubblica. Fanne quello che vuoi: santi, tiranni, briganti, principi. Ma mettili tutti insieme, in una bella riunione di famiglai, come fratelli.”
― Pierre Michon, Les Onze

“You can be sure that the elite want to promote the liberal position as much as possible – because they can never be toppled by liberals. Liberals have been bred by the elite to be bland, banal, comfortable Last Men and Ignavi. The elite fear only the radicals – because the radicals are prepared to get their hands dirty. Why are there no statues of Robespierre? Because the elite despise him above all others, and they have succeeded in making the world ashamed of and disgusted by radicals. Like everything else, there are good radicals and bad radicals, but without radicals nothing ever changes. Why are the elite still in charge after destroying the world’s economy? Because they themselves are radicals (bad radicals), and they can never be toppled by weak liberals who’d rather go shopping than protesting.”
― Ranty McRanterson, Freedumb and Dumbocracy: Libertarians, Dogs, Goyim, the Internet, and Last Men

“Are you a serious player, or just someone larking and larping around, and trying on different dresses as you eat your vegan pseudo-burgers – the meat without the meat, the thing without the thing? Citizens, do you want the revolution without the revolution? Well?”
― David Sinclair, Without the Mob, There Is No Circus

“[Robespierre] He fully lived up to his nickname, the sea-green incorruptible; incorruptible he certainly was, he spent money on his wardrobe but on remarkably little else. He had no close friends, women meant nothing to him, nor did food or drink; he lived mainly on bread, fruit, and coffee. He was never heard to laugh; seldom seemed to smile. There was an extraordinary intensity about him. 'That man will go far', Mirabeau said shortly before he died, 'he believes what he says'.”
― John Julius Norwich, France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle