Pierre Victurnien Vergniaud Quotes

When you strike at a king, you must kill him.

Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.

Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason.

The day of reckoning came, and that day was the Terror. The heirs of those who toiled made their account with the heirs of those who played.

You have committed a crime against us and against the Revolution, Mayakovsky. All your words thunder with a voice like Niagara Falls. Mayakovsky, you have betrayed us.

Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked ; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!

The net of law is spread so wide, No sinner from its sweep may hide. Its meshes are so fine and strong They take in every child of wrong. O wondrous web of mystery ! Big fish alone escape from thee !

Was the blood which has just been shed so pure?

Some people will have to be afraid. Those who plunder the nation, deliver injustice, will have to feel scared of me. And I am not afraid of admitting this. Government cannot be so lenient that it forgives them.

Where do murderers go, man! Who's to doom, when the judge himself is dragged to the bar?

Fear follows crime and is its punishment.

Let Justice, blind and halt and maimed, chastise the rebel spirit surging in my veins, let the Law deal me penalties and pains And make me hideous in my neighbours' eyes.

After the French Revolution, it was not the treason of the king that was in question; it was the existence of the king. You have to be very careful when you judge and execute somebody for being a symbol.

As long as those responsible are still lurking in the shadows and this culture of silence remains, then certain sections of the community will remain insecure, intimidated and live in fear…. If we succumb to pardoning these men, then we are sabotaging and undermining our own ability to act without fear or favour. We reap what we sow. We will sow a culture of coups for our children. We must therefore, uphold the Rule of Law and Justice.

That king who pardons the perpetrator of violence quickly perishes and incurs hatred.

The “terror” of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years.

Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.

There is no middle course between the throne and the scaffold.

We have crime without punishment.

To punish a man because he has committed a crime, or because he is believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

It is better to destroy 100 innocent people than to let one guilty one escape.

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants

They (tyrants) should be attacked, not as ordinary enemies, but as assassins and rebellious brigands. Kings, aristocrats, tyrants, whoever they may be, are slaves in revolt against the sovereign of the land, who is the human race, and against the legislator of the Universe, who is Nature.

History has shown that when justice is not served in a legal capacity, some people will take matters into their own hands.