In "The French Revolution, A History" Chapter 1.1.II, Thomas Carlyle reports that Louis XIV once proclaimed:
"L'État, c'est moi" - The State? I am the State (Carlyle's rendering into English)
Carlyle cites no source for this seemingly incredible statement. In Wiki we find: Louis is claimed to have said "L'État, c'est moi" ("I am the state"), though no proof exists that he said this, but I tend to be skeptical of Wiki's claim: Carlyle engaged in years of research in preparation for writing his History, and read numerous primary sources. It is unlikely that he committed to "the record" a statement from Louis XIV without a source. (But perhaps he did not consider his source sufficiently reliable to cite it formally - it was some sort of "oral tradition" - and so Wiki would be correct in claiming there is no written proof.)
Regardless, the story was "out there" or Carlyle wouldn't have mentioned it at all. Perhaps there is another source, one that Carlyle didn't know about at the time? (In all probability, Carlye's source was Dulaure’s 1834 History of Paris, and because it appears only so much later in the record than the actual event, he chose not to cite it.)
Is it confirmed from any reliable contemporary sources that Louis XIV actually said such a thing?
More importantly, whether or not we have another source (perhaps we'll consider Carlyle a source), is such a statement sustainable? Could Louis have said such a thing and remained within the bounds of the laws of his time? Did the French King represent an embodiment of the State itself? Is it part of the doctrine of the Divine right of kings, or at least implicit therein? Could Louis perhaps have been speaking metaphorically - i.e., as an absolute monarch, his dictates of necessity represented the position of the State on all matters?
If Louis XIV did indeed say such a thing, what can we make of it? From Carlyle's context it appears that it was not simply haughty bellicosity on the part of Louis XIV. Nor was Louis XIV some sort of eccentric, crazy "one off" sort of monarch: He sat on the French throne for over 72 years, brought France to perhaps its pinnacle of power, and is widely considered one of the great monarchs of History. If he said such a thing, IMO it deserves attention.