The desire to abase the values of knowledge before the values of action... - Julien Benda

For M. Maurras the practical is the divine, and his “atheism” consists less in denying God than in shifting him to man and his political work. … It is the divinizing of politics.

Up until our own times men had only received two sorts of teaching in what concerns the relations between politics and morality. One was Plato’s and it said: “Morality decides politics”; and the other was Machiavelli’s, and it said “Politics have nothing to do with morality.” Today we receive a third. M. Maurras teaches: “Politics decide morality.”

That teaching according to which intellectual activity is worthy of esteem to the extent that it is practical and to that extent alone.