Georges Jacques Danton Quotes

The guillotine governs.

In a few days, I will have them all guillotined in Paris.

Above all, one hideous figure grew as familiar as if it had been before the general gaze from the foundations of the world - the figure of the sharp female called La Guillotine. It was the popular theme for jests; it was the best cure for headache, it infallibly prevented hair from turning gray, it imparted a peculiar delicacy to the complexion, it was the National Razor which shaved close: who kissed La Guillotine looked through the little window and sneezed into the sack.

The guillotine is the ultimate expression of Law, and its name is vengeance; it is not neutral, nor does it allow us to remain neutral.

Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

Cut off heads for me! Cut off heads for me! The French Revolution cut off forty thousand, and for all that the population did not diminish.

Brown’s execution will make the gallows as glorious as the cross.

My machine [the guillotine] will take off a head in a twinkling and the victim will feel nothing but a refreshing coolness. We cannot make too much haste, gentlemen, to allow the nation to enjoy this advantage.

There's something dreadfully decisive about a beheading.

There was a basket at her feet. She reached into it and lifted out the head of a young woman, a marquise. She wore Bourbon white to her death, but wears the tricolor now - white cheeks, blue lips, red dripping from her neck. Long live the revolution.

To kill a man is not to defend a doctrine, but to kill a man.

It's wrong to kill.

The guillotine was most effective and used until fairly recently.

Yesterday afternoon 247 Spanish and Canary Island prisoners were decapitated. Today all the Spaniards and Canary Islanders who were sick in the hospital were decapitated, constituting the last of all those included in the order of Your Excellency.

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

Was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?

It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis must die that the country may live.

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

The ship of the revolution can only arrive in port on water red with blood.

Was the blood which has just been shed so pure?

We will cut off his head with the crown upon it.

As a society are we going to murder people to show that murder is wrong

The system of Terror now proscribed throughout the French Republic cannot for one moment be tolerated in our little country without destroying it forever. Our system of government, our domestic circumstances and our dealings in commerce are all too sensitive to survive a repetition of these scenes of violence.

in Germany in 1851, the death of one Bertha Zillman in 1893 was witnessed by a number of journalists. She was sentenced for poisoning her husband, although the court heard evidence that he beat both her and their children. The execution was scheduled to take place on 31 October at Plötzensee Prison in Berlin at eight o’clock in the morning. Her hair was put up in a bun and her dress cut down to her shoulders, though she was given a shawl to cover herself. When the warden went to fetch her, she was prostrate with fear and had to be helped to the block by two male warders. She silently dropped the shawl and, with one swing, was beheaded by her executioner.