Tanith Lee Quotes

Robespierre, this pedant of freedom!

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

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

Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution.

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 shall die in the belief that to make France free, republican and prosperous, a little ink would have sufficed - and only one guillotine.

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.

One wonders why there are so many women who follow Robespierre to his home, to the Jacobins, to the Cordeliers and to the Convention. It is because the French Revolution is a religion and Robespierre is one of its sects. He is a priest with his flock... Robespierre preaches, Robespierre censures, he is furious, serious, melancholic and exalted with passion. He thunders against the rich and the great. He lives on little and has no physical needs. He has only one mission: to talk. And he talks all the time.

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

In France, the leader of Jacobinism perished on the guillotine; with us, the change of leadership was achieved by means of arrest and banishment. The technique of the process is gentler, but its essence is the same.

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

What President Bush has done speaks more than words about his feeling of compassion and commitment to people.

No universal history leads from savagery to humanitarianism, but there is one leading from the slingshot to the atom bomb.

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.

Democracy’s opportunity. Here is the opportunity to be of service to the people. Here is the chance for this party to have been of service to the people of the United States. Here is our chance to have been of help to the poor man. Here is our chance to have relieved him of the burdens and to have given him the benefits of a government that could have promoted the enterprises and furnished the conveniences and the facilities needed by every man, woman, and child in this country.

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

Heard that the mob at Paris had rushed into the Senate and proclaimed the downfall of the dynasty, proclaiming a Republic! This was received with acclamation…. Not one voice was raised in favour of the unfortunate Emperor! How ungrateful!

The revolution can only defend itself by attacking.

Citizens, did you want a revolution without revolution?

Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

[In the French Revolution] there is much to approve and much to condemn…. An essential change was necessary for the happiness and dignity of a great people, long in a state of degradation.

I will flight for the people until my last breath.

It is a miracle that I can see at all and continue serving the American people.

My dad spent most of the '50s and early '60s actually acting as sort of an advance man for the Justice Department, as a civil rights lawyer. So it was actually reading his papers after he passed away a few years ago that first started me thinking about this... What fraction of your life do you spend in service to your fellow man?

I so respect Sen. McCain's service to this country, and no one certainly knows more about torture than he does, and so I recognize that.