Maximilien Robespierre Quotes

Absolute power corrupts even when exercised for humane purposes. The benevolent despot who sees himself as a shepherd of the people still demands from others the submissiveness of sheep. The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its anti-humanity.

The concentrating of powers in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.

One must not forget, however, that Russia had to free herself from the most frightful mis-government ever inflicted upon a long-suffering people.

Despots and democratic majorities are drunk with power.

The dictator, in all his pride, is held in the grip of his party machine. He can go forward; he cannot go back. He must blood his hounds and show them sport, or else, like Actaeon of old, be devoured by them. All-strong without, he is all-weak within.

Despotism is the only form of government which may with safety to itself, neglect the education of its infant poor.

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.

For 73 years a totalitarian regime ruled the country. Totalitarian regime.

I beheld absolutism in all its power; and I felt encouraged to enter into a struggle against Augustin I.

I admit that what you have just heard might be for the welfare of the country, were it not that the presence of despotism are always dangerous.

No dictatorship can have any other aim but that of self-perpetuation, and it can beget only slavery in the people tolerating it; freedom can be created only by freedom, that is, by a universal rebellion on the part of the people and free organization of the toiling masses from the bottom up.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

They (who) seek to establish systems of government based on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rulers … call this a new order. It is not new and it is not order.

In all tyrannical governments the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and whenever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty.

Revolution is engendered by an indignation with tyranny, yet is itself pregnant with tyranny

The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

To live under a tyranny is to live without high thought, a life worse than the animals, for what is tyranny but a government framed with the express object of making men so base and vile that they do not know whether they are awake or asleep in the world?

When the people are sheep, the government is always a wolf.

An oppressive government is worse than a man-eating tiger.

… we cannot conceive of the authority of a despot who knows all his subjects on sight.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive, that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty

… the meanest and worst of all forms of government

Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country... They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.

A democratic despotism is like a theocracy: it assumes its own correctness.