"The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power."

Source : Jacob Burckhardt (2012). “Judgements on History and Historians”, p.232, Routledge

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