French Revolution Quotes - Page 2

• Most of the Ten Commandments are negative. The purpose of law is not to mandate good behavior. That concept comes from the French Revolution.

  Randall Terry

  Law, Negative, Purpose

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• This year has begun hopefully for right thinkers. After all these centuries of feudal barbarism and political slavery, it is surprising to see how the word of 'liberty' sets minds on fire.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Fire, Years, Political

  Napoleon Bonaparte (2010). “The Corsican: The Virtual Diary of Napoleon Bonaparte”, p.4, Fireship Press

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• From the days of Spartacus, Weishophf, Karl Marx, Trotski, Belacoon, Rosa Luxenburg, and Ema Goldman, this world conspiracy has been steadily growing. This conspiracy played a definite recognizable role in the tragedy of the French revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the 19th Century. And now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their head and have become the undisputed masters of that enormous empire.

  Winston Churchill

  America, Hair, Order

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• The blood of criminals fertilises the soil of liberty.

  Joseph Fouche

  Blood, Liberty, Criminals

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• I'm a let you finish, but the French Revolution had the best severed heads of ALL TIME.

  Kanye West

  Revolution, All Time

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• Man is only great when he acts from passion.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Wise, Wisdom, Passion

  Benjamin Disraeli (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Benjamin Disraeli (Illustrated)”, p.5018, Delphi Classics

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• How could liberty ever establish itself amongst us? Apart from a few tragic scenes, the revolution has been nothing but a web of farcical scenes.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Liberty, Revolution, Scene

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• The consequences of things are not always proportionate to the apparent magnitude of those events that have produced them. Thus the American Revolution, from which little was expected, produced much; but the French Revolution, from which much was expected, produced little.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Events, Littles, Revolution

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.115

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• It was not reason that besieged Troy; it was not reason that sent forth the Saracen from the desert to conquer the world; that inspired the crusades; that instituted the monastic orders; it was not reason that produced the Jesuits; above all, it was not reason that created the French Revolution. Man is only great when he acts from the passions; never irresistible but when he appeals to the imagination.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Passion, Men, Conquer The World

  Benjamin Disraeli (1869). “The Novels and Tales of the Right Hon. B. Disraeli, M.P.”, p.176

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• History is a Rorschach test, people. What you see when you look at it tells you as much about yourself as it does about the past.

  Jennifer Donnelly

  Past, People, Rorschach

  Jennifer Donnelly (2015). “Revolution”, p.214, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• No secular state ever existed and none would exist until the end of the French Revolution, and so we understand that America was built on the Judeo-Christian ethic and we believe that this nominee is going to see to it that those truths are upheld.

  Rod Parsley

  Christian, Believe, America

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• For the average person, all problems date to World War II; for the more informed, to World War I; for the genuine historian, to the French Revolution.

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

  War, Average, World

  Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1990). “Leftism Revisited: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Pol Pot”, Gateway Books

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• The envious are not satisfied with equality; they secretly yearn for superiority and revenge. In the French Revolution of 1848, a woman coal-heaver is said to have remarked to a richly dressed lady: 'Yes, madam, everything's going to be equal now; I shall go in silks and you'll carry coal.'

  Henry Hazlitt

  Revenge, Coal, Revolution

  Henry Hazlitt (1996). “The Conquest of Poverty”

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• This kind of painting with its large frames is a bourgeois drawing-room art. It is an art dealer's art-and that came in after the civil wars following the French Revolution.

  Edvard Munch

  Art, War, Hippie

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• Any one who studies the state of things which preceded the French Revolution will see that that tremendous catastrophe came about from so excessive a regulation of men's actions in all their details, and such an enormous drafting away of the products of their actions to maintain the regulating organization, that life was fast becoming impracticable. And if we ask what then made, and now makes, this error possible, we find it to be the political superstition that governmental power is subject to no restraints.

  Herbert Spencer

  Life, Men, Errors

  "The Man versus the State: Great Essays".

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• It took us a long time to get rid of the effects of the French Revolution 200 years ago. We don't want another one.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Years, Long, Want

  Margaret Thatcher, Iain Dale (1997). “As I said to Denis--: the Margaret Thatcher book of quotations”, Robson Book Ltd

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• You [Robespierre] will follow us soon. Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood.

  Georges Danton

  House, Down And, Salt

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• We don't want to be like the leader in the French Revolution who said There go my people, I must find out where they are going so I can lead them.

  John F. Kennedy

  People, Leader, Want

  John F. Kennedy, Dominique Enright (2003). “The Wicked Wit of John F. Kennedy”, Michael O'Mara Books

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• Jacobins, I have a truth to tell you. You do not know your most deadly enemies; they are the constitutional priests. It is they who protest most in the provinces against anarchists, disorganisers, Dantonism, Robespierrism, Jacobinism... Do not cherish any longer the popular errors; cut at the roots of superstition! Declare openly that the priests are your enemies.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Cutting, Errors, Roots

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• Most observers of the French Revolution, especially the clever and noble ones, have explained it as a life-threatening and contagious illness. They have remained standing with the symptoms and have interpreted these in manifold and contrary ways. Some have regarded it as a merely local ill. The most ingenious opponents have pressed for castration. They well noticed that this alleged illness is nothing other than the crisis of beginning puberty.

  Novalis

  Clever, Opponents, Way

  "Pollen and Fragments". Book by Novalis. Fragment No. 105, 1798.

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• The French Revolution was nothing but a precursor of another revolution, one that will be bigger, more solemn, and which will be the last.

  Francois-Noel Babeuf

  Lasts, Revolution, Bigger

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• The nation-state became powerful in the wake of the French Revolution, whereas the nation-state has become powerless in light of globalization.

  Grace Lee Boggs

  Powerful, Light, Revolution

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The international proletariat first appeared on the scene in the early Thirties of the nineteenth century, and its first great action was the French Revolution of 1848.

  C. L. R. James

  Firsts, Revolution, Action

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• The disorganisers are those who want to level everything: property, comforts, the price of commodities, the various services rendered to the State... who want the workmen in the camp to receive the salary of the legislator... who want to level even talents, knowledge, the virtues, because they themselves have none of these things.

  Jacques Pierre Brissot

  Knowledge, Equality, Political

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

  William Wordsworth

  Heaven, Dawn, Alive

  "The French Revolution, as It Appeared to Enthusiasts" l. 4 (1809). The same lines appear in Wordsworth's The Prelude, bk. 9, l. 108 (1850).

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