Madame Roland

Madame Roland

Marie-Jeanne Roland de la Platière (March 17, 1754 – November 8, 1793), born Marie-Jeanne Phlipon and better known simply as Madame Roland, was, together with her husband Jean-Marie Roland de la Platière, a supporter of the French Revolution and influential member of the Girondist faction. She fell out of favor during the Reign of Terror and died on the guillotine.

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• O Liberté, que de crimes on commet en ton nom!
  • O Liberty, how many crimes are committed in thy name!
    • Memoirs, Appendix; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919), and in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922); used by Thomas Babington Macaulay, Essay on Mirabeau. The actual expression used is said to have been "O liberté, comme on t'a jouée!"—"O Liberty, how thou hast been played with!" Exclaimed when on 8 November 1798 Roland mounted the scaffold, and was tied to the fatal plank, lifting her eyes to the statue of Liberty, near which the guillotine was placed. Helen Maria Williams: Letters Containing a Sketch of the Politics of France, Vol. 1, London 1795. p. 201 books.google

Quotes about Madame Roland

• I have been reading Madame Roland's memoirs and have come to the conclusion that she was a very over-rated woman; snobbish, vain, sentimental, envious — rather a German type. Her last days before her execution were spent in chronicling petty social snubs or triumphs of many years back. She was a democrat chiefly from envy of the noblesse.
  • Bertrand Russell, in a letter to his brother Frank, 1918.