French Revolution Quotes

Faced by the actual practice of freedom, the French and American revolutions would be forced to stand by their words. — William S. Burroughs

It [August 10th 1792] was the bloodiest day of the Revolution so far, but also one of the most decisive. — William Doyle

I turn away from the smell of death, pressing my lavender scented handkerchief as tight as I can against my nose. — Meghan Masterson

Because beautiful things never last. Not roses nor snow ... And not fireworks, either — Jennifer Donnelly

The French revolution taught us the rights of man. — Thomas Sankara

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

All men now allow that if any human power could have stemmed the avalanche of the French Revolution, it would have been the reforms of Turgot. — Evelyn Beatrice Hall

More men and women were slaughtered in a couple of weeks of the terror of the atheistic French Revolution than in a century of the Inquisition. — Michael Coren

The French Revolution actualised the Enlightenment's greatest intellectual breakthrough: detaching the political from the theocratic. — Pankaj Mishra

Hunger whets everything, especially Suspicion and Indignation. — Thomas Carlyle

Kill the king but spare the man. — Thomas Paine

The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past. — John Corigliano

The French revolution, he concluded, had not produced any new principles of truths, merely a mass of examples of how things could go wrong. — Mike Jay

God knows what risks we take, God knows all that Danton has done. God and Camille. God will keep his mouth shut. — Hilary Mantel

I tell you, dear Citizen Camille - it's not the deaths I can't stand. It's the judgements, the judgements in the courtroom. — Hilary Mantel

Gradually, you see, our people are coming into the power they have always thought is their due. — Hilary Mantel

The rich are only defeated when running for their lives. — C.L.R. James

My father doesn't have views. He would like to, but he can't take the risk. — Hilary Mantel

And Louis is weak. Let him give an inch, and some Cromwell will appear. — Hilary Mantel

The most lasting and universal consequence of the French revolution is the metric system — Eric Hobsbawm

The Revolution is your bride," he said. "As the Church is the Bride of Christ. — Hilary Mantel

Since the French Revolution Englishmen are all intermeasurable one by another, certainly a happy state of agreement to which I forone do not agree. — William Blake

There is death in the folds of her skirt and blood about her feet. She is for no man. — Joseph Conrad

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

Anything that keeps old words in circulation is to be treasured, the French revolution be damned. — Joseph Bottum

There must be no repercussions to this," says Marie Antoinette. Her quiet voice slides through the room like the whisper of a steel blade. — Meghan Masterson

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

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

People said - though this felt like a heresy - that they had seen Camille make Robespierre laugh. — Hilary Mantel

The French Revolution has been the highest wave of the Gnostic tide. — Nicolas Gomez Davila

Laclos thought, how about a one-way ticket to Pennsylvania? You'd enjoy life among the Quakers. Alternatively, how about a nice dip in the Seine? — Hilary Mantel

92, '93, '94. Liberty, Equality, Fraternity or Death. — Hilary Mantel

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. — Honore Gabriel Riqueti, Comte De Mirabeau

May 29, the Central Committee of the Sections goes into "permanent session" - what a fine, crisis-ridden sound it has, that term! — Hilary Mantel

The "terror" of the French Revolution lasted for ten years. The terror that preceded and led to it lasted for a thousand years. — Edward Abbey

But just as everything was going along politely, quietly and wonderfully - in poured Citizen Danton and his crew. — Hilary Mantel

Had you but seen it, I promise you, your high-minded principles would have melted like candle wax. Never would you have wished such beauty away. — Jennifer Donnelly

What do you think has been the effect of the French revolution? It is too early to tell. — Mao Zedong

I can't divide Camille's loyalties. Who knows? He might make the wrong choice. — Hilary Mantel

The Revolution has got frozen up. They have frozen it up with their talk of moderation. To stand still in Revolution is to slip backwards. — Hilary Mantel

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

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

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. — H.G.Wells

Liberty, equality, fraternity, or death; - the last, much the easiest to bestow, O Guillotine! — Charles Dickens

Tea, late dinners and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see the connection of ideas. — Thomas Love Peacock

Little by little, the old world crumbled, and not once did the king imagine that some of the pieces might fall on him. — Jennifer Donnelly

If our school ever performed a play about the French Revolution, she could play the guillotine. — Robin Benway

To say my day was not going well, would be like saying the French Revolution had been a bit troublesome for Marie Antoinette. — Nichole Chase

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

My principles are only those that, before the French Revolution, every well-born person considered sane and normal. — Julius Evola

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory. — Vladimir Lenin

There is of course one thing that the French love more than anything else: a revolution. They literally cannot get enough. — @Queen_UK

In a few days, I will have them all guillotined in Paris. — Jean-Paul Marat