French Revolution Quotes - Page 3

• ...the French Revolution gave rise to ideas which led beyond the ideas of the entire old world order. The revolutionary movement which began in 1789... gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf's friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830. This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order.

  Karl Marx

  Communication, Ideas, Order

  Karl Marx (1975). “Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: 1844-45”, International Pub

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• It was the French Revolution that served as the catalyst of this renovation. Its impact was to make the concept of popular sovereignty the new moral justification for the political system of historical capitalism.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Impact, Political, Historical

  Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein (1995). “Capistalist Civilisation”, p.148, Verso

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• The annals of the French Revolution prove that the knowledge of the few cannot counteract the ignorance of the many.... The light of philosophy, when it is confined to a small minority, points out the possessors as the victims rather than the illuminators of the multitude.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Philosophy, Ignorance, Light

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1867). “The Friend: a series of essays ... First American, from the second London edition”, p.214

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• 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?

  Louis Antoine de Saint-Just

  Kings, Men, People

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• A revolution is bloody, but America is in a unique position. She's the only country in history in a position actually to become involved in a bloodless revolution. The Russian revolution was bloody, Chinese revolution was bloody, French revolution was bloody, Cuban revolution was bloody, and there was nothing more bloody then the American Revolution. But today this country can become involved in a revolution that won't take bloodshed. All she's got to do is give the black man in this country everything that's due him, everything.

  Malcolm X

  Country, Men, Unique

  "The Ballot or The Bullet (Detroit Version)". Malcolm X's speech at a meeting sponsored by the Congress for Racial Equality in Detroit, Michigan, April 12, 1964.

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• My History of the Jesuits is in four volumes.... This society has been a greater calamity to mankind than the French Revolution, or Napoleon's despotism or ideology. It has obstructed progress of reformation and the improvement of the human mind in society much longer and more fatally.

  John Adams

  Historical, Mind, Progress

  John Adams, Charles Francis Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.229

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• The French Revolution gave birth to no artists but only to a great journalist, Desmoulins, and to an under-the-counter writer, Sade. The only poet of the times was the guillotine.

  Albert Camus

  Artist, Revolution, Birth

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• The King did not summon the Estates because he needed them, but out of his own pleasure.

  Jacques Necker

  Kings, Revolution, Pleasure

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• Unlike the rationalism of the French Revolution, true liberalism has no quarrel with religion, and I can only deplore the militant and essentially illiberal antireligionism which animated so much of nineteenth-century Continental liberalism. ... What distinguishes the liberal from the conservative here is that, however profound his own spiritual beliefs, he will never regard himself as entitled to impose them on others and that for him the spiritual and the temporal are different sphere which ought not to be confused.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Spiritual, Respect, Confused

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• In a few days, I will have them all guillotined in Paris.

  Jean-Paul Marat

  Paris, Revolution

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• Here, the revolution was prepared. Here it was achieved. Here all the great events were fostered.

  Georges Couthon

  Events, Revolution, Prepared

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• The most lasting and universal consequence of the French revolution is the metric system

  Eric Hobsbawm

  Metrics, Revolution, Metric System

  Eric J. Hobsbawm (1994). “Age of extremes: the short twentieth century, 1914-1991”

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• After the French Revolution, it was not the treason of the king that was in question; it was the existence of the king. You have to be very careful when you judge and execute somebody for being a symbol.

  Adam Michnik

  Kings, Judging, Revolution

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• 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

  Agreement, Revolution, England

  William Blake (2008). “The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake”, p.783, Univ of California Press

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• Tea, late dinners and the French Revolution. I cannot exactly see the connection of ideas.

  Thomas Love Peacock

  Ideas, Tea, Connections

  Thomas Love Peacock (2009). “Nightmare Abbey: Easyread Super Large 20pt Edition”, p.64, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• The fact is that philosophy has been a decisive source of inspiration in all the great crises that Europe has faced. It has been so in the time that preceded the fall of the Roman Empire, when Augustine of Hippo delineated the features of a new spiritual civilization; in the age of religious wars, when Descartes and Hobbes established the principles of modern science and politics; and at the turn of the French Revolution, interpreted by Kant and Hegel as an event destined to change the history of the world.

  Roberto Esposito

  Spiritual, Religious, Philosophy

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• We must institute a coup d'etat, a third revolution, which must beat down anarchy. Dissolve the Paris Commune and destroy its sections! Dissolve the clubs, which preach disorder and equality! Close the Jacobin Club and seal up its papers! ... The triumvirate of Robespierre, Danton and Marat, all the 'levellers', all the anarchists. Then a new Convention will be elected.

  Jacques Pierre Brissot

  Paris, Anarchy, Revolution

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• The French Revolution will be found to have had great influence on the strength of parties, and on the subsequent political transactions of the United States.

  John Marshall

  Party, Political, United States

  John Marshall (1845). “The Life of George Washington: Commander in Chief of the American Forces, During the War which Established the Independence of His Country, and First President of the United States. Comp. Under the Inspection of the Honourable Bushrod Washington, from Original Papers Bequeathed to Him by His Deceased Relative”, p.252

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

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Passion, Men, Imagination

  'Coningsby' (1844) bk. 4, ch. 13

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• It's not uncommon for revolutions to stem from a radicalized group just outside the circle of power. That's what the French Revolution was all about; that's what the American Revolution was. The question is: Will all those groups, because of the nature of partisan polarization and ideological polarization, just fight each other? Or is there capacity to organize?

  Chris Hayes

  Fighting, Circles, Groups

  "The age of illusion". Interview with Jake Blumgart, www.origin.salon.com. June 30, 2012.

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• In his youth, Wordsworth sympathized with the French Revolution, went to France, wrote good poetry and had a natural daughter. At this period, he was a bad man. Then he became good, abandoned his daughter, adopted correct principles and wrote bad poetry.

  Bertrand Russell

  Daughter, Men, Poetry

  Bertrand Russell (1960). “Sceptical Essays”

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• It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be 'treated as cattle'.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Strong, Government, Practice

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• Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
  Liberty, equality, fraternity.
  Watchword of French Revolution.
  And bold and hard adventures t' undertake,
  Leaving his country for his country's sake.

  Charles Fitzgeoffrey

  Country, Adventure, Leaving

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• One wonders why there are so many women who follow Robespierre to his home, to the Jacobins, to the Cordeliers and to the Convention. It is because the French Revolution is a religion and Robespierre is one of its sects. He is a priest with his flock... Robespierre preaches, Robespierre censures, he is furious, serious, melancholic and exalted with passion. He thunders against the rich and the great. He lives on little and has no physical needs. He has only one mission: to talk. And he talks all the time.

  Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet

  Passion, Home, Revolution

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• The ministers and the Jacobins are making the king declare war tomorrow on Austria. The ministers are hoping that this move will frighten the Austrians and that within three weeks we will be negotiating (God forbid that this should happen). May we at last be avenged for all the outrages we have suffered from this country!

  Marie Antoinette

  Country, Kings, War

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