In jacobins, I exercise that if we believe my accuser's autocratic opinion, it can be considered as a pioneer of dictatorship. First of all, I don't know what opinion dictatorship is, especially in a free society ... unless it only describes the natural coercion of principles. In fact, this impulse hardly belongs to the person who clarifies them; It belongs to universal reason and belongs to all who are willing to listen to its voice. It belongs to colleagues in the Constituent Assembly, patriots in the Legislative Assembly and all citizens who will always defend the cause of freedom. Experience has proved that although Louis XVI and his allies, jacobins and pop clubs are French countries; No citizens made them, and I did nothing but share them. "

—maximilien robespierre, 1792

Robespierre turned the accusation to his accuser and delivered the most famous sentence in the French Revolution to Parliament:

"I won't remind you that the only object of dispute between us is that you instinctively defend all the actions of the new minister and our principles; You seem to prefer power, and we are equal ... why don't you sue the commune, the legislative assembly, the Paris districts, the state parliaments and all those who imitate us? Because all these things are illegal, as illegal as revolution, as illegal as the collapse of monarchy and Bastille, as illegal as freedom itself ... Citizens, do you want a revolution without revolution? What is this spirit of persecution, which points to those who liberate us from the shackles? "

—maximilien robespierre, 1792

It is kind to punish the oppressors of mankind; It is barbaric to forgive them. "

—maximilien robespierre, 1794

"robespierre did not regard the use of terror as a compromise to virtue, but as an enhancement to virtue." [32] For example, robespierre pointed out in his report on the principles of political ethics on February 5 1794:

If virtue is the source of a popular government in peacetime, then in the revolutionary period, the source of this government is the combination of virtue and terror: virtue, without virtue, terror is devastating; Terror, without which virtue is powerless. Terror is only the quickness, severity and rigidity of justice; This is the dissemination of virtue; This is not so much a unique principle as a natural result of the general principle of democracy, which is suitable for the most urgent needs of the country ... The government in the revolution is the dictatorship of freedom over tyranny.