Guillotine Quotes

My machine [the guillotine] will take off a head in a twinkling and the victim will feel nothing but a refreshing coolness. We cannot make too much haste, gentlemen, to allow the nation to enjoy this advantage.

We will cut off his head with the crown upon it.

Henceforth, there shall be no more execution by beheading with an axe.

Was the blood which has just been shed so pure?

I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.

Part of my platform is, of course, the guilty must be punished and that we no longer let our children see their guilty leaders getting away with murder. Because it teaches children, you know, that they don’t have to have any morals as long as they have guns and are bullies and I don’t think that's a good message. . . . I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.

The guillotine was most effective and used until fairly recently.

This is an execution, not surgery. Where does that come from, that you must find the method of execution that causes the least pain?

France was given up to fire and bloodshed, she experienced famine, she experienced the worst of things, she was nearly chopped up in pieces forever because of the decision... to exclude, to brand one party as guilty and annihilate them.

In 1800, in the first interparty contest, the Federalists warned that presidential candidate Thomas Jefferson, because of his sympathy expressed at the outset of the French Revolution, was 'the son of a half-breed Indian squaw' who would put opponents under the guillotine.

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

Somewhere within the concept of justice, the worst of the guilty must always be removed. I cannot divorce this, not completely. The people must have justice and so I want to reinstate and enshrine the blessed and holy guillotine!

The guillotine governs.

One of these suburbs is actually named Stalingrad, which goes to show that the French have learned nothing about politics since they guillotined all the smart people in 1793.

It took them only an instant to cut of that head, but it is unlikely that a hundred years will suffice to reproduce a singular one.

So long as danger threatened from without public opinion tolerated the guillotine.

Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination.

As for the bishop, the sight of the guillotine was a great shock to him, from which he recovered only slowly.

There was a basket at her feet. She reached into it and lifted out the head of a young woman, a marquise. She wore Bourbon white to her death, but wears the tricolor now - white cheeks, blue lips, red dripping from her neck. Long live the revolution.

Hanging was the worst use a man could be put to.

Cut off heads for me! Cut off heads for me! The French Revolution cut off forty thousand, and for all that the population did not diminish.

Marie Antoinette. Her last words were,"Pardon me sir. I did not mean to do it,"to a man whose foot she stepped on before she was executed by the guillotine

The system of Terror now proscribed throughout the French Republic cannot for one moment be tolerated in our little country without destroying it forever. Our system of government, our domestic circumstances and our dealings in commerce are all too sensitive to survive a repetition of these scenes of violence.

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

Marie Antoinette was funny, I'm sure she was just misinterpreted. You know the 'Let them eat cake' line. She seems like she was kind of funny, like a Chelsea Handler or Kathy Griffin type.