Maximilien Robespierre Quotes

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

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 king must die so that the country can live.

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

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

France seems travailing in the birth of freedom. Her throes and pangs of labor are violent…. Royalty, nobility, and vile pageantry by which a few of the human race lord it over and tread on the necks of the their fellow mortals, seem like to be demolished …. Ye Gods, with what indignation do I review the late attempt of some creatures among us to revive the vile machinery. Oh Adams, Adams what a wretch thou art!

Louis XVI has broken his own crown.

The Revolution has grown cold; all its principles are weakened; there remains only red caps worn by intriguers. The exercise of terror has made crime blasé, as strong liquors made the palace blasé.

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

The guillotine governs.

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

They [the Patriots] mean to bring these charges forward with the publicity possible and to terrify him [the Monarch William V] with the idea that his conduct has been so highly criminal against the state that his head is liable to be brought to the block. His imagination is already strongly impressed with this dread and in convening with me, he has often said that the Patriots mean to treat him as the [English] Republicans did Charles I. [Beheaded him.]

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.

The guillotine was most effective and used until fairly recently.

It is the end. But of what? The end of France? No. The end of kings? Yes.

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.

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.

We have lived six centuries in six years. Let not this costly experience be lost on you. It is time to profit by the crimes of the monarchy, the errors of the Constituent Assembly, the vacillations and eccentricities of the Legislative Assembly, the misdeeds of the decemviral tyranny, the calamities of anarchy, and the misfortunes of civil war.

Assuredly no one of us would ever propose to retain in France the fatal race of kings; we all know but too well that dynasties have never been anything else than rapacious tribes who lived on nothing, but human flesh. It is necessary completely to reassure the friends of liberty. We must destroy this talisman, whose magic power is still sufficient to stupefy many a man. I move accordingly that you sanction by a solemn law the abolition of royalty.

The English have doubtless purchased their liberties at a very high price, and waded through seas of blood to drown the idol of arbitrary power. Other nations have been involved in as great calamities, and have shed as much blood; but then the blood they split in defense of their liberties only enslaved them the more

The vessel of Revolution can arrive at port only on a sea reddened by torrents of blood.

Mine is the soul of a free man; ever since my fourth year it has been nourished on hatred to kings

The ferment here [Holland] has made terrifying progress and if it is not stopped, it is to be feared that it may cause an explosion which will have incalculable consequences…. The patriots themselves … have judged that it is possible to destroy the Anglo-Stadholderian government only by mobilizing the bourgeois. They in their turn are led on by the impetus since they hear only of tyranny on the one hand and liberty on the other.

We regret any country falling off from the cause of withstanding the principles and conduct of those who tyrannize France [the French revolutionists]. The little vigor shown by the Dutch from the beginning of the contest makes their secession of but little real loss.

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.