Again, it may be said, that to love justice and equality the people need no great effort of virtue; it is sufficient that they love themselves.
Maximilien RobespierreRead
The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Education is the key to freedom, while ignorance breeds oppression.
This quote from Maximilien Robespierre emphasizes the critical role of education in achieving personal and societal freedom. It suggests that an informed populace is essential for maintaining liberty, whereas a lack of knowledge and understanding allows tyranny to flourish, as it prevents individuals from recognizing and challenging oppression.
Themes
EducationFreedomIgnoranceTyrannySociety
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of education at a community event.
More from Maximilien Robespierre
All quotes βTerror 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.
Maximilien RobespierreRead
Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.
Maximilien RobespierreRead
Any law which violates the inalienable rights of man is essentially unjust and tyrannical; it is not a law at all.
Maximilien RobespierreRead
The revolution is the war of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty against its enemies. The constitution is the rule of liberty when victorious and peaceable.
Maximilien RobespierreRead
Peoples do not judge in the same way as courts of law; they do not hand down sentences, they throw thunderbolts; they do not condemn kings, they drop them back into the void; and this justice is worth just as much as that of the courts.
Maximilien RobespierreRead
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Virtue, though she gets her beginning from nature, yet receives her finishing touches from learning.
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Continued adherence to a policy of compulsory education is utterly incompatible with efforts to establish lasting peace.
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Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.
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In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.
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There is no shortage of wonderful writers. What we lack is a dependable mass of readers.
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The problem in our country isn't with books being banned, but with people no longer reading. Look at the magazines, the newspapers around us - it's all junk, all trash, tidbits of news. The average TV ad has 120 images a minute. Everything just falls off your mind. You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
Ray BradburyRead