All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Unhappily, history proves that war is, in a certain sense, the habitual state of mankind, which is to say that human blood must flow without interruption somewhere or other on the globe, and that for every nation, peace is only a respite.
Joseph de Maistre
The arts, in general, need a king; they only flourish under the influence of sceptres.
Joseph de Maistre
Nothing great has great beginnings.
Joseph de Maistre
This makes me think that the French Revolution is a great epoch and that its consequences, in all kinds of ways, will be felt far beyond the time of its explosion and the limits of its birthplace.
Joseph de Maistre
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.
Joseph de Maistre
Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite.
Every nation gets the government it deserves.
Joseph de Maistre
Except the blind forces of Nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin.
Henry Sumner Maine
Nobody is at liberty to attack several property and to say at the same time that he values civilisation. The history of the two cannot be disentangled. Civilisation is nothing more than a name for the old order of the Aryan world, dissolved but perpetually re-constituting itself under a vast variety of solvent influences, of which infinitely the most powerful have been those which have, slowly, and in some parts of the world much less perfectly than others, substituted several property for collective ownership.
Henry Sumner Maine
Note: several property refers to what we call private property.
The study of history lies at the foundation of all sound military conclusions and practice.
Alfred Thayer Mahan
If … we meet a man of acknowledged mental superiority, whether generally or in his special department, it is our social duty by intelligent questioning, by an anxiety to learn from him, to force him to condescend to our ignorance, or join in our fun, till his broader sympathies are awakened, and he plays with us as if we were children. Indeed this very metaphor points out one of the very remarkable instances of social equality asserted by an inferior—I mean the outspoken freedom of the child—which possesses a peculiar charm, and often thaws the dignity or dissipates the reserve of the great man and woman whose superiority is a perpetual obstacle to them in ordinary society.
John Pentland Mahaffy