French Revolution Quotes

The moment in Paris where I saluted Napoleon's tomb was one of the proudest of my life.

Terror is nothing other than justice, prompt, severe, inflexible; it is therefore an emanation of virtue.

The Constitution of the United States, with its elaborate checks and balances, clearly reflected the view that no one was ever to be completely trusted with power. This was in sharp contrast to the French Revolution, which gave sweeping powers, including the power of life and death, to those who spoke in the name of “the people,” expressing the Rousseauean “general will.” Even when bitterly disappointed with particular leaders, who were then deposed and executed, believers in this vision did not substantially change their political systems or beliefs, viewing the evil as localized in individuals who had betrayed the revolution…To the Federalists, the evil was inherent in man, and institutions were simply ways of trying to cope with it.

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

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.

It is marvelous that I have walked for five years along the precipices of the Revolution without falling over them, and that I am still living; and I rest my head calmly upon the pillow of my writings... I have dreamed of a Republic such as all the world would have adored. I could never have believed that men could be so ferocious and so unjust.

Was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood?

Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue.

There is something satanic about the French Revolution that distinguishes it from everything we have known, and perhaps from everything we will ever witness.

I do not know what to make of a republic of 30 million atheists.

Lead the people by reason and the people's enemies by terror.

When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.

It is too early to tell.

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

From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder.

The moment Napoleon takes possession of New Orleans, we must marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation.

Terror is the order of the day.

Revolutions that cannot resist regicide—the French and the Russian come to mind—have a way of ending badly.

In every Revolution a dictator is needed to save the state by force, or censors to save it by virtue.

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?

A totally new era in the history of mankind.

They are as blind to some of the tendencies of the time as the French Noblese was before the French Revolution.

The constitution shall be made, or we will cease to be

Man has set man against man, Washed against unwashed.

Virtue without terror is powerlessness.