“All grandeur, all power, 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.”

The Count, in Les Soirées de Saint-Pétersbourg, "First Dialogue," (1821).

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Joseph De Maistre 13
Savoyard philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat 1753–1821

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“Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give — such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.”

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Context: I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give — such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

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“All authority is in the throne; and what is the throne? This wooden frame covered with velvet? No, I am the throne.”

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Address to the Legislative Body (December 1813) https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Napoleon%27s_Addresses/Part_V#Address_to_the_Legislative_Body,_December,_1813.; he here echoes the remark attributed to Louis XIV L'état c'est moi ( "The State is I" or more commonly: "I am the State.")

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“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”

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In allem Chaos ist Kosmos und in aller Unordnung geheime Ordnung.
http://books.google.com/books?id=hOUkAQAAIAAJ&q=%22in+allem+Chaos+ist+Kosmos+und+in+aller+Unordnung+geheime+Ordnung%22&pg=PA41#v=onepage
p. 32 http://books.google.com/books?id=Yc5PlU9MyDwC&q=%22in+all+chaos+there+is+a+cosmos+in+all+disorder+a+secret+order%22&pg=PA32#v=onepage (1981 edition)
Originally presented http://books.google.com/books?id=-5oJAAAAIAAJ&q=%22in+allem+Chaos+ist+Kosmos+und+in+aller+Unordnung+geheime+Ordnung%22&pg=PA213#v=onepage at an Eranos conference. (1935)
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“Take Christian morality: what other teaching could have had more hold on minds than that spoken in the name of a crucified God, and could have acted with all its mystical force, all its poetry of martyrdom, its grandeur in forgiving executioners? And yet the institution was more powerful than the religion”

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Context: Far be it from us not to recognize the importance of the second factor, moral teaching — especially that which is unconsciously transmitted in society and results from the whole of the ideas and comments emitted by each of us on facts and events of every-day life. But this force can only act on society under one condition, that of not being crossed by a mass of contradictory immoral teachings resulting from the practice of institutions.
In that case its influence is nil or baneful. Take Christian morality: what other teaching could have had more hold on minds than that spoken in the name of a crucified God, and could have acted with all its mystical force, all its poetry of martyrdom, its grandeur in forgiving executioners? And yet the institution was more powerful than the religion: soon Christianity — a revolt against imperial Rome — was conquered by that same Rome; it accepted its maxims, customs, and language. The Christian church accepted the Roman law as its own, and as such — allied to the State — it became in history the most furious enemy of all semi-communist institutions, to which Christianity appealed at Its origin.

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“I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all.”

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Source: The Conquest of Fear (1921), Chapter III : God And His Self-Expression, § VIII
Context: I was to see myself as God's Self-Expression working with others who were also His Self-Expression to the same extent as I. It was in the fact of our uniting together to produce His Self-Expression that I was to look for my security. No one could effectively work against me while I was consciously trying to work with God. Moreover, it was probable that no one was working against me, or had any intention of working against me, but that my own point of view being wrong I had put the harmonious action of my life out of order. Suspicion always being likely to see what it suspects the chances were many that I was creating the very thing I suffered from.
This does not mean that in our effort to reproduce harmonious action we should shut our eyes to what is evidently wrong, or blandly ignore what is plainly being done to our disadvantage. Of course not! One uses all the common-sense methods of getting justice for oneself and protecting one's own interests. But it does mean that when I can no longer protect my own interests, when my affairs depend upon others far more than on myself — a condition in which we all occasionally find ourselves — I am not to fret myself, not to churn my spirit into nameless fears. I am not a free agent. Those with whom I am associated are not free agents. God is the one supreme command. He expresses Himself through me; He expresses Himself through them; we all.

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