A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.
– Joseph de Maistre
Every country has the government it deserves.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.
– Joseph de Maistre
If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.
– Joseph de Maistre
Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.
– Joseph de Maistre
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.