Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistrewas a Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat. He defended hierarchical societies and a monarchical State in the period immediately following the French Revolution. Maistre was a subject of the King of Piedmont-Sardinia, whom he served as member of the Savoy Senate, ambassador to Russia, and minister of state to the court in Turin...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionDiplomat
Date of Birth1 April 1753
CountryFrance
freedom men wicked
Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.
money men knowing
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.
opposites revolution needed
What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.
civilization found altars
Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.
degradation language individual
Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degradation in language.
order giving agents
All grandeur, all power, and 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.
divine-guidance thrones action
We are all bound to the throne of the Supreme Being by a flexible chain which restrains without enslaving us. The most wonderful aspect of the universal scheme of things is the action of free beings under divine guidance.
math men numbers
The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man.
evil earth would-be
If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.
arms kingdoms reign
In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence, a kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life.