De Maistre’s Law
Every nation has the government it deserves.
Source: Letter to X 1811
De Maistre was thinking particularly of the unsettled state of affairs in Europe following the French revolution. The only government of which he really approved was that of the pope whose powers, he believed, should be absolute, untempered by councils, nations or least of all the judgments of individuals. The foundation of social order, he argued in a famous essay, was the executioner.
Orwell’s Corollary
At 50 everyone has the face he deserves (George Orwell notebook, April 17th 1949 in Collected Essays 1968). But Orwell never had the chance to check this one out in his own shaving mirror, being not yet 50 when he died in 1950. These words are the last ones in his notebook.
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