Top 40 Joseph de Maistre Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “In a democracy people get the leaders they deserve.”

— Joseph de Maistre

2. “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.”

— Joseph de Maistre

3. “To know how to wait. It is the great secret of success.”

— Joseph de Maistre

4. “The great fault in women is to desire to be like men.”

— Joseph de Maistre

5. “Every country has the government it deserves.”

— Joseph de Maistre

6. “Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.”

— Joseph de Maistre

7. “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.”

— Joseph de Maistre

8. “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

9. “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

10. “Every individual or national degeneration is immediately revealed by a directly proportional degradation in language.”

— Joseph de Maistre

11. “What is needed is not a revolution in the opposite direction, but the opposite of a revolution.”

— Joseph de Maistre

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

— Joseph de Maistre

13. “All pain is a punishment, and every punishment is inflicted for love as much as for justice.”

— Joseph de Maistre

14. “Christianity was preached by ignorant men and believed by servants, and that is why it resembles nothing ever known.”

— Joseph de Maistre

15. “Man in general, if reduced to himself, is too wicked to be free.”

— Joseph de Maistre

16. “Man’s destructive hand spares nothing that lives; he kills to feed himself, he kills to clothe himself, he kills to adorn himself, he kills to attack, he kills to defend himself, he kills to instruct himself, he kills to amuse himself, he kills for the sake of killing.”

— Joseph de Maistre

17. “What a miserable world! – trouble if we love, and trouble if we do not love.”

— Joseph de Maistre

18. “Genius does not seem to derive any great support from syllogisms. Its carriage is free; its manner has a touch of inspiration. We see it come, but we never see it walk.”

— Joseph de Maistre

19. “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.”

— Joseph de Maistre

20. “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

21. “Reason speaks in words alone, but love has a song.”

— Joseph de Maistre

22. “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

23. “A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.”

— Joseph de Maistre

24. “Nothing is necessary except God, and nothing is less necessary than pain.”

— Joseph de Maistre

25. “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

26. “It is not the mediocrity of women’s education which makes their weakness; it is their weakness which necessarily causes their mediocrity.”

— Joseph de Maistre

27. “The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.”

— Joseph de Maistre

28. “There is no easy method of learning difficult things. The method is to close the door, give out that you are not at home, and work.”

— Joseph de Maistre

29. “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

30. “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

31. “There is no philosophy without the art of ignoring objections.”

— Joseph de Maistre

32. “It is one of man’s curious idiosyncrasies to create difficulties for the pleasure of resolving them.”

— Joseph de Maistre

33. “This world is a military expedition, an eternal combat. No doubt all chose who fought courageously in a battle are worthy of praise, but also there is no doubt that the greatest glory goes to the one who returns wounded.”

— Joseph de Maistre

34. “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

35. “Women have a genius for love; men can only learn the art indifferently.”

— Joseph de Maistre

36. “How strange is the blindness of men in our age. They boast of their knowledge, and are ignorant of everything, since they are ignorant of themselves. They know not what they are, nor what they can do. An invincible pride bears them on continually to overthrow every thing which they have not made; and in order to work out new creations, they separate themselves from the source of all existence.”

— Joseph de Maistre

37. “Now, there is no such thing as ‘man’ in this world. In my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and so on. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare I’ve never encountered him.”

— Joseph de Maistre

38. “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

39. “Christianity is preached by the ignorant and believed by the learned. And in this way is like no other thing.”

— Joseph de Maistre

40. “The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man. Thanks to number, the cry becomes a song, noise acquires rhythm, the spring is transformed into a dance, force becomes dynamic, and outlines figures.”

— Joseph de Maistre

41. “The concept of number is the obvious distinction between the beast and man.”

— Joseph de Maistre

42. “Government is a true religion: it has its dogmas, its mysteries, its ministers. To annihilate it or to submit it to the discussion of all individuals, is the same thing.”

— Joseph de Maistre

43. “Providence – for whom everything, even an obstacle, is a means.”

— Joseph de Maistre

44. “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. We are all born despots, from the most absolute monarch in Asia to the infant who smothers a bird with its hand for the pleasure of seeing that there exists in the world a being weaker than itself.”

— Joseph de Maistre

45. “It is frightening to see distinguished intellectuals fall under Robespierre’s ax. From a humane standpoint they can never be too much mourned, but divine justice is no respecter of mathematicians or scientists.”

— Joseph de Maistre

46. “The most powerful sovereign has only two arms; his power depends on the instruments he uses and what he is given by public opinion.”

— Joseph de Maistre