Most of the quotes concerning the French Revolution given in this article come from the book " Historiquement correct " by Jean Sévillia.
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Solzhenitsyn: "Since men are not endowed with the same abilities, if they are free, they will not be equal, and if they are equal, it is because they are not free."
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There is a revolutionary idea of perpetual invention that still endures today. It is an idea that is also contained within the idea of Progress. That everything remains to be invented. René Guénon said: "There are no new ideas on earth."
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Robespierre: "If Louis can be the subject of a trial, he can always be acquitted; he can be innocent: what am I saying? He is presumed innocent until he is judged; but if Louis can be presumed innocent, what becomes of the Revolution?"
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Westermann to the Convention: "There is no more Vendée: it died under our free sword. I crushed the children under the hooves of our horses, massacred the women who will no longer give birth to brigands. I have not a single prisoner to reproach myself for. I exterminated everything."
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Carrier (after drowning 10,000 innocent people in the Loire): "We will turn France into a cemetery, rather than fail to regenerate it in our own way."
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"The Vendée must be annihilated because it dared to doubt the benefits of liberty."
Baudot (Commissioner of the Convention to the armies of the Rhine and Moselle) calls for "guillotin-style regeneration" for Jews who "put greed in place of man, of the fatherland, and their ridiculous superstitions in place of Reason.".
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10 months of Robespierre's dictatorship: 500,000 people were imprisoned, 300,000 placed under house arrest, and 16,594 guillotined.
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The words republic and democracy promulgated during the French Revolution (and therefore today) are to Roman and Greek definitions what academic paintings are to classical art.
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Cabanis (a philosopher who helped Bonaparte seize power) said of the constitution of December 15, 1799: "The ignorant class will no longer exert its influence on legislation or on the government; everything is done for the people and in the name of the people, nothing is done by them or under their unthinking dictates."
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Financial statement of the victims of the Terror:
- 31% workers or craftsmen
- 28% farmers
- 20% merchants or spectators
- 9% nobles
- 7% clergy
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François Furet: "The guillotine feeds on its moral prediction."
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Laplanche (representative of the Convention): "It is on the principle of humanity that I purge the earth of liberty of these monsters."
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Alain Gérard (regarding "By principle of humanity…"): "The desire to free oneself from all experience, from all tradition, condemns the revolution to drift and, ultimately, to total violence."
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Jean Sévillia: "The law of suspects has no precedent in modern history."
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"Was the blood then so pure? (Barnave, July 1789, after the first murders of innocent people). The real people must be exchanged for an ideal people: among the population, the bad will disappear, the good will remain."
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Rousseau in The Social Contract: “Every wrongdoer who attacks social rights becomes, by his crimes, a rebel and a traitor to the nation. The preservation of the state is incompatible with his own. One of the two must perish.”
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