E. Belfort Bax Quotes

Still dreadful news from Paris. The Commune have everything their own way, and they go on quite as in the days of the old Revolution in the last century, though they have not yet proceeded to commit all the same horrors.

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

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.

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

The guillotine governs.

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.

The guillotine was most effective and used until fairly recently.

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!

From this window we see the palace where the King is misled by perfidious counsels. Terror and fear have often issued from yon palace: let them return to-day in the name of the law, and let all those who inhabit that palace know that the King is alone inviolable, that the law will strike down the guilty without respect of persons, and that there is not a guilty head which can escape its sword.

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.

When your blood runs down the gutters, don't say you were not forewarned of the danger.

All at present is quiet in Paris. There are Socialist risings in many parts of the country, but all these will do the President [coup leader Louis Napoleon] good, and strengthen his hands, for even the people who have been treated with indignity will pardon him if their châteaux are saved from an infuriated and brutal peasantry.

To fill the minds of the public with hatreds, jealousies, and suspicions is to poison the fountains of public security.

When the Constituent Assembly engaged men of letters to research the penal code in order to repeal the death penalty, even for the condemned, did they imagine that after four years of a revolution enlightened by philosophical ideals, the French would, without cease, kill their fellow citizens?

Republican People, understand me more profoundly, I condemn all the excesses of misguided patriotism. Each one of us must be responsible for public security; none of us can permit ourselves acts of violence that would represent the fury of vengeance rather than love for the motherland.

The very act of protest is dangerous in Venezuela.

Thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us, and this terrible knowledge requires us to act differently.

Terror, terror, terror. Life was a reign o terror in the shadow of the guillotine.

We're all living under the threat of violence and terror these days.

For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep.

In the '80s, you couldn't walk in the neighborhood without looking back to see if anyone was following you. You had your key in your hand before you got to your apartment and you'd rush in so you didn't have to stop.

He that is not in the warres is not out of danger.

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

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.

Terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face.