Quotes on French Revolution

The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.

Justice has its anger, my lord Bishop, and the wrath of justice is an element of progress. Whatever else may be said of it, the French Revolution was the greatest step forward by mankind since the coming of Christ. It was unfinished, I agree, but still it was sublime. It released the untapped springs of society; it softened hearts, appeased, tranquilized, enlightened, and set flowing through the world the tides of civilization. It was good. The French Revolution was the anointing of humanity.

Nothing will make me change my principles. Even with the knife at my neck I shall still declare, up to this day, the poor have done everything; it is time for the rich to take their turn... The selfish people, the young idlers, must be made useful, whether they like it or not, and some respite be procured for the useful and respectable worker.

Man is only truly great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.

I had been brought up in a church which decides everything and permits no doubts, so that having rejected one article of faith I was forced to reject the rest.

Monarchy is an outrage which even the blind of an entire people cannot justify... all men hold from nature the secret mission to destroy wherever it my be found. No man can reign innocently. The folly is too evident. Every king is a rebel and a usurper. Do kings themselves treat otherwise those who seek to usurp their authority?

Any institution which does not suppose the people good, and the magistrate corruptible, is evil.

Man is only great when he acts from passion.

I have left my balls to Robespierre and my legs to Couthon. That should help the Committee of Public Safety for a while.

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.

I trust we shall never be reduced to the painful extremity of seeking the aid of Mirabeau.

When one meddles with the direction of a revolution, the problem is not how to make it go but how to keep it under control.

It is the height of stupidity to claim that men who for a thousand years have had the power to berate us, to fleece us and to oppress us with impunity, will now agree, with good grace, to be our equals.

I bold it impossible, that the great monarchies of Europe can subsist much longer; they all affect magnificence and splendor.

This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation and we live in it.

Back in my 20s, when I wrote 'A Place of Greater Safety,' the French Revolution novel, I thought, 'I'll always have to write historical novels because I can't do plots.'' But in the six years of writing that novel, I actually learned to write, to invent things.

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive But to be young was very heaven.

To be born, or at any rate bred, in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution.