A king is a thing men have made for their own sakes, for quietness’ sake. Just as in a family one man is appointed to buy the meat.

John Selden (1584–1654), a jurist, antiquary, and parliamentarian, is best known in quotation history through the posthumous collection *Table Talk*, compiled from his conversational remarks and published after the English Civil War. The sentiment here reflects the seventeenth-century English debate over the nature and legitimacy of monarchy—whether kings rule by divine right or by human institution and consent. In Selden’s characteristically pragmatic, legalistic idiom, kingship is treated as a social arrangement adopted for order (“quietness”), analogous to delegating a household task to one person for the common convenience.

Selden reduces monarchy to a functional, human-made office rather than a sacred or metaphysical status. A king is not inherently superior; he is a delegated instrument created to secure peace and manage collective affairs, much as a family assigns one member the practical job of buying meat. The analogy demystifies sovereignty and implies that political authority originates in communal needs and agreements. Read in its historical setting, the remark quietly undercuts absolutist claims: if kings are made for “men’s” sake, their legitimacy depends on serving that purpose—maintaining order—rather than on an unquestionable divine mandate.