Ruth Scurr > Quotes

“am inflexible in relation to oppressors because I am compassionate toward the oppressed; I do not recognize the humanity that”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“Among the crowd at the Tuileries on 10 August was an unemployed army captain who watched with horror as the Swiss Guards were murdered and burned. “If he had mounted his horse,” the young Napoleon Bonaparte wrote of Louis XVI, “victory would have remained with him.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“The judicial system, like so much else in old regime France, was extremely intricate and confusing.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“Looking back in 1800, Proyart insisted that Louis XVI had been effectively dethroned, before even becoming king, by a godless and subversive generation nurtured in the Parisian colleges.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“Robespierre agreed, but he already disliked Lafayette—and within a year he would hate him.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“The battle of Fleurus was the first in history to be won by the use of air surveillance: from a manned air balloon tethered to the ground by two long cables the French had been able to observe the enemy’s tactics from on high.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“What has the third estate been until now? Nothing. What should it be? Everything. What does it aim to become? Something.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“bloodshed on the Champ de Mars—of all the crimes in the Revolution so far, the one that would never be forgotten or forgiven.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“Robespierre, of course, had more important things on his mind than the fight brewing between his sister and his landlady.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“The soldiers had got past the Commune guards by guessing their not very difficult password: “Vive Robespierre!”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“General Lafayette was particularly untrustworthy, in Robespierre’s view. Lafayette had retired from public life after the king accepted the constitution in 1791.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“The strange combination of his self-centered rhetoric, clean living, clear principles, and passionate political commitment made him seem like the Revolution incarnate.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“Even his enemies, the aristocrats, had illuminated their houses in his honor, “which I can only attribute to their respect for the will of the people.” (A local newspaper, however, attributed it to the aristocrats’ fear of having their windows smashed.)”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“diligent. From this point on he joined in his siblings’ childish games only to explain or enforce the rules.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution

“On the spot, the Convention allocated a hundred million livres (which it did not have) to provide a musket for every man in France.”
― Ruth Scurr, Fatal Purity: Robespierre and the French Revolution