Frases de Maximilien Robespierre

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“Se puede abandonar a una patria dichosa y triunfante. Pero amenazada, destrozada y oprimida no se le deja nunca; se le salva o se muere por ella.”

“Los países libres son aquellos en los que son respetados los derechos del hombre y donde las leyes, por consiguiente, son justas.”

“Hay algunos hombres útiles, pero ninguno es imprescindible. Sólo el pueblo es inmortal”

“Se puede derrocar un trono por la fuerza, pero solo la sabiduría puede fundar una república.”

“Porque siento compasión por los oprimidos, no puedo sentirla por los opresores.”

“El gobierno de la revolución es el despotismo de la libertad contra la tiranía.”

“¡El hombre ha nacido para la felicidad y para la libertad y en todas partes es esclavo e infeliz!¡La sociedad tiene como fin la conservación de sus derechos y la perfección de su ser; y por todas partes la sociedad lo degrada y lo oprime!¡Ha llegado el tiempo de recordarle sus verdaderos destinos!”

“Al definir la libertad, el primero de los bienes del hombre, el más sagrado de los derechos que le otorga la naturaleza, habéis dicho, con toda razón, que estaba limitada por los derechos de los demás, pero no habéis aplicado este principio a la propiedad, que es una institución social. Nuestra declaración parece hecha no para los hombres, sino para los ricos.”

“Los siglos y la tierra son los despojos del crimen y de la tiranía; la libertad y la virtud apenas se han posado un instante sobre algunos puntos del globo. No creo, sin embargo, que la virtud sea un fantasma, ni creo que haya que desesperar de la humanidad, o dudar un solo momento del éxito de vuestra gran empresa. El mundo ha cambiado, y todavía tiene que cambiar.”

“Se pretende gobernar las revoluciones con las argucias de palacio; las conspiraciones contra la República siguen los mismos trámites que los procesos comunes. La tiranía mata y la libertad se ve obligada a pleitear; y la ley con que se juzga a los conspiradores se rige por el código que ellos mismos han hecho. La lentitud de los juicios quivale a la impunidad, la fluctuación de la pena estimula a todos los culpables.”

“He temido a veces la posibilidad de quedar manchado a los ojos de la posteridad con las vecinas impurezas de tantos infames como se encontraban introducidos en las filas de los sinceros defensores de la humanidad. Comprendo que sea fácil para la liga de los tiranos del mundo hundir a un hombre solo.”

“Hay dos clases de egoísmo. Uno, vil, cruel, que aísla al hombre de sus semejantes, que busca un bienestar exclusivo al precio de la miseria de los demás. El otro, generoso, bienhechor, que confunde nuestra felicidad en la felicidad de todos, que asocia nuestra gloria a la de la patria. El primero engendra los opresores y los tiranos; el segundo, los defensores de la humanidad.”

“Bajo el régimen despótico, todo es ruin, todo es mezquino, la esfera de los vicios, como la de las virtudes, es reducida. El poder de la calumnia se limitaba a dividir a los hermanos, a malquistar a los esposos, a edificar la fortuna de un intrigante sobre la ruina de un hombre honrado. No desataba revoluciones más que en las antecámaras y en los gabinetes de los reyes: la más noble de sus hazañas consistía en cambiar de puesto a un ministro o en desterrar a un cortesano.”

“Queremos reemplazar en nuestro país el egoísmo por la moral, el honor por la honradez, los usos por los principios, el decoro por el deber, la tiranía de la moda por el imperio de la razón, el desprecio de la desgracia por el desprecio del vicio, la insolencia por el orgullo, la vanidad por la grandeza de alma, al amor al dinero por el amor a la gloria, la buena sociedad por buena gente, la intriga por el mérito, la presunción por la inteligencia, la brillantez por la verdad, el cansancio de la voluptuosidad por el encanto de la felicidad, la ruindad de los grandes por la grandeza del hombre, un pueblo amable, frívolo y miserable por un pueblo sublime, poderoso y feliz, es decir, todos los vicios y todas las ridiculeces de la monarquía por todas las virtudes de la República.”

“El rey debe morir para que el país pueda vivir.”

“Nací para combatir el crimen, no para gobernarlo”

“El que pide con timidez se expone a que le nieguen lo que pide sin convicción.”

“¿Hasta cuándo el furor de los déspotas será llamado justicia y la justicia del pueblo, barbarie o rebelión?”

“Lástima es traición a la patria.”

“Nada es justo más que lo honesto; nada es útil más que lo justo.”

“El fundamento único de la sociedad civil es la moral.”

“Los que niegan la inmortalidad del alma se hacen justicia.”

“Si la virtud es perfecta, tal vez el hombre sea el imperfecto.”

“No podemos hacer una tortilla sin romper los huevos.”

“Cuando el gobierno viola los derechos del pueblo, la insurrección es para el pueblo el más sagrado e indispensable de los deberes.”

“El peor de todos los despotismos, es el gobierno militar.”

“Es urgente que cada ciudadano sepa, con el fin de hacer valer y hacer cumplir lo que les corresponde, los derechos que adquiere por nacimiento. La ignorancia es la base del despotismo y el hombre es verdaderamente libre el día en que pueda decir a los tiranos: "Retírate, soy lo suficientemente mayor para ser capaz de gobernarme a mí mismo!”

“Cuando la tiranía se derrumba procuremos no darle tiempo para que se levante.”

“El terror no es más que la justicia rápida, severa, inflexible”

“Almas de fango, que no estimais mas que el oro, no quiero tocar vuestros tesoros, por impuro que sea su origen.”

“Una gran revolución no es más que un crimen estruendoso que destruye a otro crimen.”

“Si invocan el cielo, es para usurpar la tierra.”

“Si el resorte del gobierno popular en tiempos de paz es la virtud, el resorte del gobierno durante la revolución son, al mismo tiempo, la Virtud y el Terror; la virtud sin la cual el terror es mortal; el terror sin el cual la virtud es impotente”

“Me honra saber que muchos me están recordando por las personas de todos los institutos, o sea, que me están diciendo las acciones que hago, es para estar orgulloso. ¿no?”

“Debemos temer el valor de nuestras opiniones, la flexibilidad de nuestros deberes.”

“Cuando la fuerza pública no hace sino secundar la voluntad general, el Estado es libre y pacífico. Cuando la contraría, el Estado está esclavizado.”

“Es mucho más urgente hacer honorable la pobreza que proscribir la opulencia: la choza de Fabricio no tiene nada que envidiar al palacio de Craso.”

“Se ha dicho que el Terror constituía la fuerza del gobierno despótico. ¿Se parece acaso el vuestro al del despotismo? El gobierno de la Revolución es el despotismo de la libertad contra la tiranía. ¿Hasta cuándo se seguirá llamando justicia a la violencia de los déspotas, hasta cuándo a la justicia del pueblo se llamará barbarie o rebelión? ¡Cuánta ternura para con los opresores, cuánta inflexibilidad para con los oprimidos! Todo aquel que no aborrezca absolutamente el crimen no puede amar la virtud: nada hay más lógico que esto. Piedad para la inocencia, piedad para los débiles, piedad para los desdichados, piedad para la humanidad.”

“La debilidad, los vicios y los prejuicios son los caminos de la realeza.”

“En los Estados aristocráticos la palabra patria sólo significa algo para las familias patricias que han usurpado la soberanía. Sólo bajo un régimen democrático el Estado es realmente la patria de todos los individuos que lo componen.”

“Libertad, Igualdad, Fraternidad.”

“The people only ask for what is necessary, it only wants justice and tranquility, the rich aspire to everything, they want to invade and dominate everything. Abuses are the work and the domain of the rich, they are the scourges of the people: the interest of the people is the general interest, that of the rich is a particular interest...”

“What is a person who, among men equal in rights, dares to declare his fellows unworthy of exercising theirs, and to take them away for his own advantage!”

“But there do exist, I can assure you, souls that are feeling and pure; it exists, that tender, imperious and irresistible passion, the torment and delight of magnanimous hearts; that deep horror of tyranny, that compassionate zeal for the oppressed, that sacred love for the homeland, that even more sublime and holy love for humanity, without which a great revolution is just a noisy crime that destroys another crime; it does exist, that generous ambition to establish here on earth the world’s first Republic.”

“I know we cannot flatter ourselves that we have attained perfection; but holding up a Republic surrounded by enemies, fortifying reason in favour of liberty, destroying prejudice and nullifying individual efforts against the public interest, demand moral and physical strengths that nature has perhaps denied to those who denounce us and those we are fighting.”

“XXIX. When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and each portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.”

“No doubt if all men were just and virtuous; if cupidity were never tempted to devour the people’s substance; if the rich, receptive to the voices of reason and nature, regarded themselves as the bursars of society, or as brothers to the poor, it might be possible to recognize no law but the most unlimited freedom; but if it is true that avarice can speculate on the misery and tyranny itself on the despair of the people; if it is true that all the passions declare war on suffering humanity, then why should not the law repress these abuses? Why should it not stay the homicidal hand of the monopolist, as it does that of the common murderer? Why should it not concern itself with the subsistence of the people, after caring so long for the pleasures of the great, and the power of despots?”

“I defy the most scrupulous defender of property to contest these principles, short of declaring openly that he understands this word as the right to despoil and assassinate his fellows. So how have people been able to claim that any sort of restriction, or rather any regulation of the trade in wheat, was an attack on property, and disguise that barbaric system under the specious name of freedom of trade? Do the authors of this system not perceive that they are inevitably in contradiction with themselves?”

“What is the first object of society? It is to maintain the imprescriptible rights of man. What is the first of those rights? The right to life.”

“In every country where nature provides for the needs of men with prodigality, scarcity can only be imputed to defects of administration or of the laws themselves; bad laws and bad administration have their origins in false principles and bad morals.”

“Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution? What is this spirit of persecution that has come to revise, so to speak, the one that broke our chains? But what sure judgement can one make of the effects that can follow these great commotions? Who can mark, after the event, the exact point at which the waves of popular insurrection should break? At that price, what people could ever have shaken off the yoke of despotism? For while it is true that a great nation cannot rise in a simultaneous movement, and that tyranny can only be hit by the portion of citizens that is closest to it, how would these ever dare to attack it if, after the victory, delegates from remote parts could hold them responsible for the duration or violence of the political torment that had saved the homeland? They ought to be regarded as justified by tacit proxy for the whole of society. The French, friends of liberty, meeting in Paris last August, acted in that role, in the name of all the departments. They should either be approved or repudiated entirely. To make them criminally responsible for a few apparent or real disorders, inseparable from so great a shock, would be to punish them for their devotion.”

“It is indeed a great interest, the conservation of your colonies, but even that interest is connected with your constitution; and the supreme interest of the nation and of the colonies themselves is that you conserve your liberty and do not overturn the foundations of that liberty with your own hands. Faugh! Perish your colonies, if you are keeping them at that price. Yes, if you had either to lose your colonies, or to lose your happiness, your glory, your liberty, I would repeat: perish your colonies.”

“Things have been said to you about the Jews that are infinitely exaggerated and often contrary to history. How can the persecutions they have suffered at the hands of different peoples be held against them? These on the contrary are national crimes that we ought to expiate, by granting them imprescriptible human rights of which no human power could despoil them. Faults are still imputed to them, prejudices, exaggerated by the sectarian spirit and by interests. But to what can we really impute them but our own injustices? After having excluded them from all honours, even the right to public esteem, we have left them with nothing but the objects of lucrative speculation. Let us deliver them to happiness, to the homeland, to virtue, by granting them the dignity of men and citizens; let us hope that it can never be policy, whatever people say, to condemn to degradation and oppression a multitude of men who live among us. How could the social interest be based on violation of the eternal principles of justice and reason that are the foundations of every human society?”

“Every citizen fulfilling the conditions of eligibility that you have prescribed has the right to public office.”

“You will follow us soon! Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood!”

“The People is always worth more than individuals.”

“Happily virtue is natural in the people, [despite] aristocratical prejudices. A nation is truly corrupt, when, after having, by degrees lost its character and liberty, it slides from democracy into aristocracy or monarchy; this is the death of the political body by decrepitude....”

“Offences committed by people’s representatives should be severely and promptly punished. No one has the right to claim to be more inviolable than other citizens.”

“Men of all countries are brothers, and the different peoples should help one another to the best of their ability, like citizens of the same state.”

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

“The secret of liberty is to enlighten men, as that of tyranny is to keep them in ignorance.”

“How would the man born blind not have the idea of light? Nature has refused them a soul; they have some right to doubt, not only the immortality of the soul, but its existence.”

“Indulgence for the royalists, cry certain men, mercy for the villains! No! mercy for the innocent, mercy for the weak, mercy for the unfortunate, mercy for humanity.”

“You complain that I have committed illegal acts. Of course I have. We all have. The Revolution is illegal. The fall of the Bastille was illegal. The formation of this republic was illegal, as illegal as liberty itself. Citizens, did you want a revolution without a revolution?”

“Man is born to be happy and free, and everywhere he is enslaved and unhappy! Society exists for the purpose of conserving his rights and perfecting his being, and everywhere society degrades and oppresses him! The time has come to remind him of his true destiny.”

“I am made to combat crime, not to govern it. The time is not here where good men can serve their patrie with impunity; the defenders of liberty will only be outcasts, as long as the horde of rogues is in control.”

“I leave to the oppressors of humanity a terrible testament, which I proclaim with the independence befitting one whose career is so nearly ended; it is the awful truth: “Thou shalt die!””

“This egotism of non-degraded men, which finds a heavenly delight in the calmness of a pure conscience and in the ravishing spectacle of the public good, you feel it in this moment which burns in your souls; I feel it in mine.”

“The confirmation of the Republic has been my object; and I know that the Republic can be established only on the eternal basis of morality.”

“Citizens whose incomes do not exceed what is required for their subsistence are exempted from contributing to state expenditure; all others must support it progressively according to their wealth.”