Jean de La Fontaine Quotes

You had better have one King than five hundred.

All executive power --- from the reign of ancient kings to the rule of modern dictators --- has the outward appearance of efficiency

Kings have long arms.

Cambodians dare do nothing of themselves without leave of the king, which is why Christians cannot be made without the king’s approval …. Nothing is done that the king knoweth not.

None of his bishops, abbots or great men, dared to disobey his will on any consideration; but all things divine and human depended on his nod.

Heaven cannot support two suns, nor earth two masters, nor Asia two kings

The monarch is the law

Better be secure under one king, than exposed to violence from twenty millions of monarchs, though oneself be one of them.

Since the origin of the world there has never been a king—even if you were to select the very best—who did not in some measure abuse his authority…

In Prussia it is only kings who make revolutions.

There must be in all [societies and governments] a supreme, irresistable, absolute, uncontrolled authority.

Kings are the publick Pillars of the State Born to sustain and prop the Nation's weight.

Kings govern by means of popular assemblies only when they cannot do without them.

… an anachronistic survival of monarchial privilege.

The state of Monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth: for Kings are not only God's lieutenants, and sit upon God's throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.

One sole sun in the sky; one sole sovereign on earth.

What government can possibly be better than that of the very best man in the whole state?

All this activity is directed by the King in person, and only by him. Besides, he looks after the whole public administration in all its branches With such care and thoroughness that not a thaler [note: a monetary unit] is spent unless he has given his signature. Those who do not see it cannot believe that there is any man in the world, however intelligent and able he may be, who can settle so many things personally in a single day as Frederick William the First, who works from 3 o'clock in the morning till 10, and spends the rest of' the day in looking after and drilling his army....

Our dynasty’s majestic virtue has penetrated into every country under Heaven …. I set no value on objects strange or ingenious and have no use for your country’s manufacturers.

Almost all men are born under it, all men are used to it, few men are used to anything else; till of late years nobody ever dispraised it, ... men were reconciled to mixed monarchy in England by the same causes by which they were reconciled to pure monarchy in Morocco, Turkey, and Hindustan.

For the King, for the people, for the law.

You need a head of state--with continuity. Sometimes this is more important than political power.

Private advantages are often impediments of publick Profit…publick profits should be in a single power to direct, whose Interest is only the benefit of the whole

The state of monarchy is the supremest thing upon earth, for kings are not only God's lieutenants upon earth and sit upon God's throne.

'Twixt kings and tyrants there's this difference known: Kings seek their subjects' good, tyrants their own.