Joseph de Maistre Quotes
French - Diplomat April 1, 1753 - February 26, 1821


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

Every country has the government it deserves.
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

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

It is one of man's curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.
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

All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.
Joseph de Maistre

Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.
Joseph de Maistre

There is no man who desires as passionately as a Russian. If we could imprison a Russian desire beneath a fortress, that fortress would explode.
Joseph de Maistre

Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.
Joseph de Maistre

All pain is a punishment, and every punishment... is inflicted by love as much as by justice.
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

There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.
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

A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.
Joseph de Maistre

If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.
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

No man has ceased to believe in God before having decided that he should not exist; no book would produce atheism, and no book can restore faith.
Joseph de Maistre

Man in harmony with his Creator is sublime, and his action is creative; equally, once he separates himself from God and acts alone, he does not cease to be powerful, since this is the privilege of his nature, but his acts are negative and lead only to destruction.
Joseph de Maistre

Without doubt, God is the universal moving force, but each being is moved according to the nature that God has given it.
Joseph de Maistre

We recognize in a plant some unknown power, a single, form-giving force, which creates and conserves, which moves unwaveringly toward its end, which appropriates what is useful to it and rejects that which would harm it.
Joseph de Maistre

Man, in spite of his fatal degradation, bears always the evident marks of his divine origin, in that every universal belief is always more or less true.
Joseph de Maistre

Man may well have covered over and, so to speak, encrusted the truth with the errors he has loaded onto it, but these errors are local, and universal truth will always show itself.
Joseph de Maistre

Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its priests. To submit it to the individual discussion is to destroy it; it is given life only through the national mind, that is to say, by political faith, which is a creed.
Joseph de Maistre

Genius is a grace. The true man of genius acts by movement or by impulsion.
Joseph de Maistre