Danton Quotes & Sayings

To conquer [our enemies] we must dare, and dare again, and dare for ever; and thus will France be saved — Georges Danton

In revolutions authority remains with the greatest scoundrels. — Georges Jacques Danton

Suppose he found that persistent unsparing voice at his elbow one day, claiming that Danton lacked probity; he had an answer, pat, not a logical one, but one sufficiently chilling to put logic in abeyance. To question Danton's patriotism was to cast in doubt the whole Revolution. A tree is known by its fruits, and Danton made August 10. First he made the republic of the Cordeliers, then he made the Republic of France. If Danton is not a patriot, then we have been criminally negligent in the nation's affairs. If Danton is not a patriot, we are not patriots either. If Danton is not a patriot, then the whole thing - from May '89 - must be done again. — Hilary Mantel

Nature has cast but two men in the mould of statesmen,
myself and Mirabeau. After that she broke the mould. — Georges Danton

At last I perceive that in revolutions the supreme power rests with the most abandoned. — Georges Jacques Danton

As Danton sees it, the most bizarre aspect of Camille's character is his desire to scribble over every blank surface; he sees a guileless piece of paper, virgin and harmless, and persecutes it till it is black with words, and then besmirches its sister, and so on, through the quire. — Hilary Mantel

What did Danton lose his head for, or why was there a Napoleon, if it wasn't to make a nobility of us all? — Saul Bellow

Audacity, and again, audacity, and always audacity. — Georges Danton

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

One must never compromise with tyrants. One can only strike at kings through the head. Nothing can be expected from European kings except by force of arms. I vote for the death of the tyrant. — Georges Danton

I know what you want. One month after the ascension of Philippe the Gullible, M. Laclos found in a gutter, deceased. Blamed on a traffic accident. Two months after, King Philippe found in a gutter, deceased - it really is a bad stretch of road. Philippe's heirs and assigns having coincidentally expired, end of the monarchy, reign of M.Danton. — Hilary Mantel

It's all right for you, you and Danton. I have to go and stutter for two hours at the Jacobins and probably be knocked down again by maddened violin makers and trampled by all sorts of tradesmen.
Whilst Danton spends his evenings feeling up his new girlfriend and you lie around here in a nice fever, not too high. If you're an instrument of destiny, and anyone would do instead, why don't you take a holiday? — Hilary Mantel

As the year goes on, certain deputies - and others, high in public life - will appear unshaven, without coat or cravat; or they will jettison these marks of the polite man, when the temperature rises. They affect the style of men who begin their mornings with a splash under a backyard pump, and who stop off at their street-corner bar for a nip of spirits on their way to ten hours' manual labor. Citizen Robespierre, however, is a breathing rebuke
to these men; he retains his buckled shoes, his striped coat of olive green. Can it be the same coat that he wore in the first year of the Revolution? He is not profligate with coats.
While Citizen Danton tears off the starched linen that fretted his thick neck, Citizen Saint-Just's cravat grows ever higher, stiffer, more wonderful to behold. He affects a single earring, but he resembles less a corsair than a slightly deranged merchant banker. — Hilary Mantel

DANTON: Could you indeed? It's you idealists who make the best tyrants.
ROBESPIERRE: It seems a bit late to be having this conversation. I've had to take up violence now, and so much else. We should have discussed it last year. — Hilary Mantel

We must dare, and dare again, and go on daring. — Georges Jacques Danton

Has it ever occurred to you that Max feels the same basic contempt for you as you do for him?"
"He feels contempt for me?"
"It is something he feels very readily."
"No, I hadn't thought that."
"Well, the whole world isn't driven by your appetites, and people who are not feel themselves your superior, naturally. He struggles very hard to make allowances for you. He is not tolerant, but he is charitable. Or perhaps it is the other way around."
"One becomes tired of analyzing his character," Danton said. "As if one's life depended on it. — Hilary Mantel

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

My only regret is that I'm going before that rat, Robespierre! [to his executioner] Don't forget to show my head to the people; it's well worth seeing. — Georges Danton

The Parisian is to the French what the Athenian was to the Greeks: no one sleeps better than he, no one is more openly frivolous and idle, no one appears more heedless. But this is misleading. He is given to every kind of listlessness, but when there is glory to be won he may be inspired with every kind of fury. Give him a pike and he will enact the tenth of August, a musket and you have Austerlitz. He was the springboard of Napoleon and the mainstay of Danton. At the cry of "la patrie" he enrols, and at the call of liberty he tears up the pavements. Beware of him! — Victor Hugo

Boldness, and again boldness, and always boldness! — Georges Danton

Let us be terrible in order to prevent the people from being terrible themselves! — Georges Danton

The most striking characters are sometimes the product of an infinity of little accidents. — Georges Danton

Good morning," she said. "Are you drunk?"
She noticed what a split second it took for him to flare into aggression. "Do I look it?"
"No. Where is Citizen Danton?"
"I've done away with him. I've been busy dismembering him for the last three hours. Would you like to help me carry his remnants down to the concierge? Oh really, Louise! He's in bed and asleep, where do you think he is?"
"And is he drunk?"
"Very. What is all this harping on intoxication? — Hilary Mantel

You [Robespierre] will follow us soon. Your house will be beaten down and salt sown in the place where it stood. — Georges Danton

To dare, and again dare, and forever dare! — Georges Danton

Saint-Just read for the next two hours his report on the plots of the Dantonist faction. He had imagined, when he wrote it, that he had the accused man before him; he had not amended it. If Danton were really before him, this reading would be punctuated by the roars of his supporters from the galleries, by his own self-justificatory roaring; but Saint-Just addressed the air, and there was a silence, which deepened and fed on itself. He read without passion, almost without inflection, his eyes on the papers that he held in his left hand. Occasionally he would raise his right arm, then let it fall limply by his side: this was his only gesture, a staid, mechanical one. Once, towards the end, he raised his young face to his audience and spoke directly to them: "After this," he promised, "there will be only patriots left. — Hilary Mantel

The Republic is six months old, and it's flying apart. It has no cohesive force - only a monarchy has that. Surely you can see? We need the monarchy to pull the country together - then we can win the war."
Danton shook his head.
"Winners make money," Dumouriez said. "I thought you went where the pickings were richest?"
"I shall maintain the Republic," Danton said.
"Why?"
"Because it is the only honest thing there is."
"Honest? With your people in it?"
"It may be that all its parts are corrupted, vicious, but take it altogether, yes, the Republic is an honest endeavor. Yes, it has me, it has Fabre, it has Hebert - but it also has Camille. Camille would have died for it in '89."
"In '89, Camille had no stake in life. Ask him now - now he's got money and power, now he's famous. Ask him now if he's willing to die."
"It has Robespierre."
"Oh yes - Robespierre would die to get away from the carpenter's daughter, I don't doubt. — Hilary Mantel

The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is an anachronism; and every compromise with one's own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears ... . — Arthur Koestler

After bread, education is the first need of the people. — Georges Danton

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

I resent you - " Robespierre said. His words were lost. "The People," he shouted, "are everywhere good, and if they obstruct the Revolution - even, for example, at Toulon - we must blame their leaders."
"What are you going on about this for?" Danton asked him.
Fabre launched himself from the wall. "He is trying to enunciate a doctrine," he shrieked. "He thinks the time has come for a bloody sermon."
"If only," Robespierre yelled, "there were more vertu."
"More what?"
"Vertu. Love of one's country. Self-sacrifice. Civic spirit."
"One appreciates your sense of humor, of course." Danton jerked his thumb in the direction of the noise. "The only vertu those bastards understand is the kind I demonstrate every night to my wife. — Hilary Mantel

Show my head to the people, it is worth seeing. — Georges Jacques Danton

On March 8 Danton mounted the tribune of the Convention. The patriots never forgot the shock of his sudden appearance, nor his face, harrowed by sleepless nights and the exhaustion of traveling, pallid with strain and suffering. Complex griefs caught sometimes at his voice, as he spoke of treason and humiliation; once he stopped and looked at his audience, self-conscious for a moment, and touched the scar on his cheek. With the
armies, he has seen malice, incompetence, negligence. Reinforcements must be massive and immediate. The rich of France must pay
for the liberation of Europe. A new tax must be voted today and collected tomorrow. To deal with conspirators against the Republic there must be a new court, a Revolutionary Tribunal: from that, no right of appeal. — Hilary Mantel

You must, of course. Robespierre doesn't lie or cheat or steal, doesn't get drunk, doesn't fornicate - overmuch. He's not a hedonist or a mainchancer or a breaker of promises." Danton grinned. "But what's the use of all this goodness? People don't try to emulate you. Instead they just pull the wool over your eyes. — Hilary Mantel

Vadier (on Danton): "We'll clean up the rest of them, and leave that great stuffed turbot till the end."
Danton (on Vadier): "Vadier? I'll eat his brains and use his skull to shit in. — Hilary Mantel

Audacity, more audacity, always audacity. — Georges Jacques Danton

Oh, it were better to be a poor fisherman than to meddle with the government of men. — Georges Danton

The tocsin you hear today is not an alarm but an alert: it sounds the charge against our enemies. — Georges Jacques Danton

In order to conquer, what we need is to dare, still to dare, and always to dare. — Georges Jacques Danton

I had rather be guillotined than a guillotiner. — Georges Danton

With France as she is, poor and unarmed, war means defeat. Defeat means either a military dictator who will salvage what he can and set up a new tyranny, or it means a total collapse and the return of absolute monarchy. It could mean both, one after the other. After ten years not a single one of our achievements will remain, and to your son liberty will be an old man's daydream. This is what will happen, Danton. No one can sincerely maintain the contrary. So if they do maintain it, they are not sincere, they are not patriots and their war policy is a conspiracy against the people. — Hilary Mantel

Boldness, more boldness, and perpetual boldness!. — Georges Danton

I have left my balls to Robespierre and my legs to Couthon. That should help the Committee of Public Safety for a while. — Georges Danton