The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Preface

Il me souvient á ce sujet d’un souhait que faisait autrefois un homme, qui n’avait ni science ni
ètude...Il souhaitait, disait-il...que tous les grands de la terre et que tous les nobles fussent pendus
et ètranglès avec les boyaux des prêtres. Pour ce qui est de moi...je souhaitais d’avoir les bras et
la force d’Hercule pour purger le monde de tout vice et de toute iniquitè, et pour avoir le plaisir
d’assommer tous ces monstres d’erreurs et d’iniquitè qui font gèmir si pitoyablement tous les
peuples de la terre.
I remember, on this matter, the wish made once by an ignorant, uneducated man...He said he
wished...that all the great men in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled in
the guts of priests. For myself...I wish I could have the strength of Hercules to purge the world of
all vice and sin, and the pleasure of destroying all those monsters of error and sin [priests] who
make all the peoples of the world groan so pitiably.
‘Testament’ (ed. R. Charles, 1864) vol. 1, ch. 2; often quoted as ‘Je voudrais...que le dernier des rois fût
ètranglè avec les boyaux du dernier prêtre [I should like...the last of the kings to be strangled with the guts of
the last priest]’ or in Diderot’s version:
Et des boyaux du dernier prêtre
Serrons le cou du dernier roi.
And [with] the guts of the last priest
Let’s shake the neck of the last king.
1.117 Prince Metternich 1773-1859
I would like to call out to the representatives of social upheaval: ‘Citizen of a world, that exists
but in your dreams, nothing is altered. On 14 March, nothing happened save the elimination of a
single man.
On his own downfall in 1848, in ‘Aus Metternich’s Nachgelassenen Papieren’ (ed. A. von Klinkowström,
1880) vol. 8, p. 232
The Emperor is everything, Vienna is nothing.
‘Aus Metternich’s Nachgelassenen Papieren’ (ed. A. von Klinkowström, 1880) vol. 8, p. 424
The true merit of a statesman...consists of governing so as to avoid a situation in which
concessions become necessary.
‘Aus Metternich’s Nachgelassenen Papieren’ (ed. A. von Klinkowström, 1880) vol. 8, p. 562
The word freedom has for me never had the character of a point of departure but of a goal. The
point of departure is order which alone can produce freedom. Without order the appeal to
freedom is no more than the quest of some specific party for its special objectives and will in
practice always lead to tyranny.
‘Aus Metternich’s Nachgelassenen Papieren’ (ed. A. von Klinkowström, 1880) vol. 8, p. 633
Religion, morality, legislation, economics, politics, administration, all seem to have become a
common good and accessible to everyone. Science appears intuitive, experience has no value for
the presumptuous; faith means nothing to him, and he substitutes for it the pretence of a personal
conviction.
Memorandum to Czar Alexander I (1820)
L’erreur n’a jamais approchè de mon esprit.