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Current counts: Authors: 8,146. Quotations: 38,970
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| Maximilien Robespierre
... virtue without which terror is murderous, terror without which virtue is powerless. Terror is nothing else than swift, severe, indomitable justice; it flows, then, from virtue. Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil. Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all. Atheism is aristocratic; the idea of a great Being that watches over oppressed innocence and punishes triumphant crime is altogether popular. Crime butchers innocence to secure a throne, and innocence struggles with all its might against the attempts of crime. Is it to be thought unreasonable that the people, in atonement for wrongs of a century, demand the vengeance of a single day? It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: [King] Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die that the country may live. Omelettes are not made without breaking eggs. Pity is treason. Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country. The general will rules in society as the private will governs each separate individual. The revolution ate its children The warmth of zeal is not perhaps the most dangerous rock that we have to avoid; but rather that languour which ease produces and a distrust of our own courage. |
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