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Joseph de Maistre

87 quotes

“To know the nature of man, the most direct and wisest way undoubtedly is to know what he has always been. Since when can theories be opposed to facts? History is experimental politics; this is the best or rather the only good politics.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nations are barbarian in their infancy but not savage. The barbarian is a proportional mean between the savage and the citizen. He already possesses no end of knowledge: he has habitations, some agriculture, domestic animals, laws, a cult, regular tribunals; he lacks only the sciences.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is an enigma whose knot has not ceased to occupy observers. The contradictions that he contains astonish reason and impose silence on it. So what is this inconceivable being who carries within him powers that clash and who is obliged to hate himself in order to esteem himself?”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Creating difficulties for himself for the pleasure of resolving them is a strange human mania.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Burke said with a depth that it is impossible to admire enough that art is man’s nature: yes, undoubtedly, man with all his affections, all his knowledge, all his arts, is truly the man of nature, and the weaver’s web is as natural as the spider’s.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If sovereignty is not anterior to a people, at least these two ideas are collateral, since it takes a sovereign to make a people. It is as impossible to imagine a human society without a sovereign as a hive and a swarm without a queen, for a swarm, in virtue of the eternal laws of nature, exists in this way or it does not exist.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men never respect what they have made themselves. This is why an elective king never possesses the moral power of a hereditary sovereign, because he is not noble enough, that is to say he does not possess that kind of greatness independent of men and that is the work of time.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the Koran as in the Bible, politics is divinized, and human reason, crushed by the religious ascendancy, cannot insinuate its isolating and corrosive poison into the mechanisms of government, so that citizens are believers whose loyalty is exalted to faith, and obedience to enthusiasm and fanaticism.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The wiser nations are, the more public spirit they possess, the more perfect their political constitution, the fewer constitutional laws they have, for these laws are only props, and a building only needs props when it has become out of plumb or when it has been violently shaken by an external force. The most perfect constitution of antiquity was without contradiction that of Sparta, and Sparta has not left us a single line of its public law. It justly boasted of having written its laws only in the hearts of its children.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, and its ministers. To annihilate it or submit it to the discussion of each individual is the same thing; it lives only through national reason, that is to say through political faith, which is a creed.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Faith and patriotism are the two great thaumaturges of this world. Both are divine; all their actions are prodigies. Do not go to them talking of examination, choice, or discussion; they will say that you blaspheme. They know only two words: submission and belief; with these two levers they raise the world. Even their errors are sublime. These two children of Heaven prove their origin to all eyes by creating and conserving; but if they unite, join their forces, and together take possession of a nation, they exalt it, they divinize it, and they increase its forces a hundred-fold.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any institution is only a political structure. In physics and in morals, the laws are the same; you cannot build a large structure on a narrow foundation, nor a durable structure on a moving or transient base. In the political order, therefore, if one wants to build on a large scale and for the centuries, one must rely on an opinion, on a large and profound belief. For if this opinion does not dominate a majority of minds and if it is not deeply rooted, it will furnish only a narrow and transient base.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is always necessary to call men back to history, which is the first master in politics, or more exactly the only master.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As long as the aristocracy is healthy, the name of the sovereign sacred to it, and it loves the monarchy passionately, the State is unshakeable, whatever be the qualities of the king. But once it loses its greatness, its pride, its energy, its faith, the spirit withdraws, the monarchy is dead, and its cadaver is left to the worms.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sentiment that dominates all Rousseau’s works is a certain plebeian anger that excites him against every kind of superiority. The energetic submission of the wise man bends nobly under the indispensable empire of social distinctions, and never does be appear greater than when he bows; but Rousseau has nothing at all of this loftiness. Weak and surly, he spent his life spouting insults to the great, as he would have offered the same to the people if he had been born a great lord.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are all attached to the throne of the Supreme Being by a supple chain that restrains us without enslaving us. Nothing is more admirable in the universal order of things than the action of free beings under the divine hand. Freely slaves, they act voluntarily and necessarily at the same time; they really do what they will, but without being able to disturb the general plans. Each of these beings occupies the centre of a sphere of activity whose diameter varies according to the will of the Eternal Geometer, who can extend, restrict, check, or direct the will without altering its nature.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men do not lead the revolution; it is the Revolution that uses men. They are right when they say it goes all alone. This phrase means that never has the Divinity shown itself so clearly in any human event. If the vilest instruments are employed, punishment is for the sake of regeneration.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Too many French scholars were the principal authors of the Revolution, too many approved and gave their support so long as the Revolution, like Tarquinius' sceptre, struck down only the tallest heads. Like so many others, they said, It is impossible to make a great revolution without incurring misfortunes. But when a philosopher justifies evil by the end in view, when he says in his heart, Let there be a hundred thousand murders, provided we are free, and Providence replies, I accept your offer, but you must be included in the number, where is the injustice?”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If Providence erases, it is no doubt in order to write.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Providence has given the French nation precisely two instruments, two arms, so to speak, with which it stirs up the world – the French language and the spirit of proselytism that forms the essence of the nation's character.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This makes me think that the French Revolution is a great epoch and that its consequences, in all kinds of ways, will be felt far beyond the time of its explosion and the limits of its birthplace.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Unhappily, history proves that war is, in a certain sense, the habitual state of mankind, which is to say that human blood must flow without interruption somewhere or other on the globe, and that for every nation, peace is only a respite.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is from the shadow of a cloister that there emerges one of mankind's greatest very greatest scourges. Luther appears; Calvin follows him. The Peasants' Revolt; the Thirty Years' War; the civil war in France; the massacre of the Low Countries; the massacre of Ireland; the massacre of the Cévennes; St Bartholomew's Day; the murders of Henry II, Henry IV, Mary Stuart, and Charles I; and finally, in our day, from the same source, the French Revolution.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now the real fruits of human nature – the arts, sciences, great enterprises, lofty conceptions, manly virtues – are due especially to the state of war. […] In a word, we can say that blood is the manure of the plant we call genius.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men gather the clouds, and then they complain of the tempests that follow.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is nothing but violence in the universe; but we are spoiled by a modern philosophy that tells us all is good, whereas evil has tainted everything, and in a very real sense, all is evil, since nothing is in its place.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no chastisement that does not purify; there is no disorder that ETERNAL LOVE does not turn against the principle of evil.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Either every imaginable institution is founded on a religious concept or it is only a passing phenomenon. Institutions are strong and durable to the degree that they are, so to speak, deified. Not only is human reason, or what is ignorantly called philosophy, incapable of supplying these foundations, which with equal ignorance are called superstitious, but philosophy is, on the contrary, an essentially disruptive force.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is the same difference between political theory and constitutional laws as there is between poetics and poetry. The illustrious Montesquieu is to Lycurgus, in the intellectual hierarchy, what Batteux is to Homer or Racine. Moreover, these two talents positively exclude each other, as can be seen by the example of Locke, who fumbled badly when he presumed to give laws to the Americans.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Constitution of 1795, like its predecessors, was made for man. But there is no such thing as man in the world. In my lifetime I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; thanks to Montesquieu, I even know that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare that I have never in my life met him; if he exists, he is unknown to me.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why so many laws? Because there is no legislator. What have these so-called legislators done in six years? Nothing, for to destroy is not to make.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Do not listen to the reasoners; there has been too much reasoning in France, and reasoning has banished reason. Put aside your fears and reservations, and trust the infallible instinct of your conscience. Do you want to redeem yourselves in your own eyes? Do you want to acquire the right of self-esteem? Do you want to accomplish a sovereign act? . . . Recall your sovereign.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am a perfect stranger to France, which I have never seen, and I expect nothing from her king, whom I shall never know.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“'Long live the king,' cry the loving and the loyal, beside themselves with joy. 'Long live the king,' responds the republican hypocrite in dire terror. What does it matter? There is only one cry. And the king is crowned.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Frenchmen, it was to the noise of hellish songs, the blasphemy of atheism, the cries of death, and the prolonged moans of slaughtered innocence, it was by the light of flames, on the debris of throne and altar, watered by the blood of the best of kings and an innumerable host of other victims, it was by the contempt of morality and the established faith, it was in the midst of every crime that your seducers and your tyrants founded what they call your liberty.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The vices are very justly man's executioners.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Providence has already begun the punishment of the guilty; more than sixty regicides, the most guilty among them, have already died a violent death.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is written, By me kings reign. This is not a phrase of the church, a metaphor of the preacher; it is a literal truth, simple and palpable. It is a law of the political world. God makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares royal races; maturing them under a cloud which conceals their origin. They appear at length crowned with glory and honour; they take their places; and this is the most certain sign of their legitimacy.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The eighteenth century, which distrusted itself in nothing, as a matter of course, hesitated in nothing.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing great has great beginnings.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Never have nations been civilized, except by religion.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we do not return to the old maxims, if education is not restored into the hands of priests, and if science is not every where placed in the second rank, the evils which await us are incalculable: we shall become brutalized by science, and this is the lowest degree of brutality.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All grandeur, all power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[M]an cannot be wicked without being evil, nor evil without being degraded, nor degraded without being punished, nor punished without being guilty. In short … there is nothing so intrinsically plausible as the theory of original sin.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reason can make little headway on its own and struggles to be heard; often it has to be – so to speak – armed by the fearsome epigram. French wit pricks like a needle, so that the thread goes through the hole.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the immense sphere of living things, the obvious rule is violence, a kind of inevitable frenzy which arms all things in mutua funera. Once you leave the world of insensible substances, you find the decree of violent death written on the very frontiers of life. Even in the vegetable kingdom, this law can be perceived: from the huge catalpa to the smallest of grasses, how many plants die and how many are killed!”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular, consequences little known because little studied, but which are nevertheless incontestable. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.”
Joseph de Maistre (1753–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source