"Man is insatiable for power; he is infantile in his desires and, always discontented with what he has, loves only what he has not. People complain of the despotism of princes; they ought to complain of the despotism of man."

Maistre, Joseph De on Despotism
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"We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place."

Maistre, Joseph De on Evil
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"If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil."

Maistre, Joseph De on Evil
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"In the works of man, everything is as poor as its author; vision is confined, means are limited, scope is restricted, movements are labored, and results are humdrum."

Maistre, Joseph De on Fallibility
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"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."

Maistre, Joseph De on Free Will
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"It can even come about that a created will cancels out, not perhaps the exertion, but the result of divine action; for in this sense, God himself has told us that God wishes things which do not happen because man does not wish them! Thus the rights of men are immense, and his greatest misfortune is to be unaware of them."

Maistre, Joseph De on Free Will
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"Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free."

Maistre, Joseph De on Freedom
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"Without doubt God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it. He directs angels, man, animals, brute matter, in sum all created things, but each according to its nature, and man having been created free, he is freely led. This rule is truly the eternal law and in it we must believe."

Maistre, Joseph De on God
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"Every country has the government it deserves."

Maistre, Joseph De on Government
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"I do not know what the heart of a rascal may be, but I know what is in the heart of an honest man; it is horrible."

Maistre, Joseph De on Heart
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"Nothing is necessary except God, and nothing is less necessary than pain."

Maistre, Joseph De on Necessity
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"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."

Maistre, Joseph De on Opinions
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"All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice."

Maistre, Joseph De on Pain
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"To know how to wait. It is the great secret of success."

Maistre, Joseph De on Patience
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"There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections."

Maistre, Joseph De on Philosophers and Philosophy
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"It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them."

Maistre, Joseph De on Problems
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"Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists."

Maistre, Joseph De on Religion
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"I don't know what a scoundrel is like, but I know what a respectable man is like, and it's enough to make one's flesh creep."

Maistre, Joseph De on Respectability
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"The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but an immense altar on which every living thing must be sacrificed without end, without restraint, without respite until the consummation of the world, the extinction of evil, the death of death."

Maistre, Joseph De on Sacrifice
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"Man is so muddled, so dependent on the things immediately before his eyes, that every day even the most submissive believer can be seen to risk the torments of the afterlife for the smallest pleasure."

Maistre, Joseph De on Temptation
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"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."

Maistre, Joseph De on Violence
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"War is thus 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. 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."

Maistre, Joseph De on War
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"A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none."

Maistre, Joseph De on Constitutions
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