Maria Fairweather

“Madame de Staël understood literature to include philosophy, history, social and political writing.”
― Maria Fairweather, Madame de Stael

“Long before George Orwell, she understood how language could be perverted for political aims; how noble motives could be ascribed, post hoc, to ignoble actions. ‘When . . . they had wanted to sanction every crime, they called the Government the Committee of Public Safety; thereby proclaiming the well-known maxim, that the security of the people is the supreme law. The supreme law is justice.’ And ‘those guilty of doing harm in every period, have tried to attribute some generous pretext to themselves to excuse their actions; there are almost no crimes in existence which their perpetrators have not attributed to honour, religion or liberty.”
― Maria Fairweather, Madame de Stael