The Enlightenment and The French Revolution
Nobles of the Robe played key roles in the French Enlightenment. The most famous, Montesquieu, was one of the earliest Enlightenment figures. During the Revolution, the more liberal nobles who supported the French Revolution tended to be Nobles of the Robe, whereas the Nobles of the Sword were more conservative and tended to oppose the Revolution.
Read more about this topic: Nobles Of The Robe
Famous quotes containing the words french revolution, french and/or revolution:
“The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“In matter of commerce the fault of the Dutch
Is offering too little and asking too much.
The French are with equal advantage content,
So we clap on Dutch bottoms just twenty per cent.”
—George Canning (1770–1827)
“There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)