Georges Jacques Danton Quotes

Along the Paris streets, the death-carts rumble, hollow and harsh. Six tumbrils carry the day's wine to La Guillotine.

You [Robespierre] will follow us soon. Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood.

Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing.

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

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

I am thirty-three - the age of the good Sans-culotte Jesus; an age fatal to revolutionists.

The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.

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.

The guillotine was most effective and used until fairly recently.

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

The guillotine governs.

Was the blood which has just been shed so pure?

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

At first, an awful silence prevailed; at length, some cries of “Vive La République!” [Long Live the Republic] were heard. By degrees the voices multiplied, and in less than ten minutes, this cry, a thousand times repeated, became the universal shout of the multitude and every hat was in the air .... Many in the crowd went to the scaffold, and soaked their handkerchiefs in the Kings blood as a souvenir of the event.

The felon would feel only a slight freshness on the back of the neck. With this machine, I chop your head off in a twinkling, and you do not suffer.

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.

Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!

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

Marie Antoinette. Her last words were,"Pardon me sir. I did not mean to do it,"to a man whose foot she stepped on before she was executed by the guillotine

I had rather be guillotined than a guillotiner.

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

A hanging in a good quarrel is an easy death they say, though I could never hear of any that came back to say so.

I want you to go back into the barrack and tell the men to come out after the storm. Tell them to look up at me tied here. Tell them I’ll open my eyes and look back at them, and they’ll know hat I survived.

Well, let's take what people think is a dignified death. Christ - was that a dignified death? Do you think it's dignified to hang from wood with nails through your hands and feet bleeding, hang for three or four days slowly dying, with people jabbing spears into your side, and people jeering you? Do you think that's dignified? Not by a long shot. Had Christ died in my van with people around Him who loved Him, the way it was, it would be far more dignified. In my rusty van.