I knew that base passions seldom subjugate any but weak men, and have little hold on souls of a strong temper [...].
1782-1789
In a short time they become insolent, unless the heart is ill at ease when the countenance is at its best.
1759-1774
Citizens can rightly be judged equal, because the power of each of them, compared to the power of the State, ceases to be significant.
1677
The artistic sense of the contemporary public? It is synonymous with perfect obedience. I much prefer complete ignorance, the kind that leaves natural sensitivity or insensitivity intact.
1926
Mademoiselle Nys
1899
The knowledge of all the opinions and judgments of other men [...] is not so much a science as a history.
1674-1675
Americans show by their practice that they feel the full necessity of moralizing democracy through religion.
1835-1840
[...] it is my soul that commands this bread, and not at all the bread that commands my soul [...] It is therefore feeling, and only feeling, that makes the difference between a divine bread and a profane bread [...].
1841
Education varies with social classes or even with habitats. The education of the city is not that of the countryside; that of the bourgeois is not that of the worker.
1922
Wheat Fields
ca. 1670
The wicked rule only through the cowardice of those who obey them: it is more just that it be so than otherwise.
c. 253-270 AD
[Faith] is a holy confidence in Priests, which makes us believe everything they say, even without understanding any of it. Its effects are to plunge one into a holy stupefaction accompanied by a pious stubbornness.
1768
We never see anything in this world but our own perceptions, and [...] all our knowledge consists only in the relationships we discover between them.
1805
Once one has acquired the habit of virtues, they become as many pleasures; whereas superstition is always odious and inconvenient.
1757
Terracotta plank-shaped figurine
ca. 2000–1800 BCE
What is more rational than to see those who have worked for a thing have more of that thing for which they have worked?
c. 108 AD
Who can flatter themselves that they will read correctly?
1947
One must [...] obey the magistrates and the laws, especially the laws [...] established for the protection of the oppressed.
c. 387 BC
Either he is healthy, or he is sick; but he is not healthy, therefore he is sick.
c. 1270
Statuette of a bird
900 BCE - 100 BCE
Whoever does not hate in himself this self-love, and this instinct which leads him to put himself above everything, is truly blind.
1670
If I have voluntarily braved so many dangers [...] it was so that every citizen would have the freedom to uphold the laws.
100-120 AD
Some fall asleep on the authority of prejudices and even admit contradictory ones, for want of going to the point where they contradict each other.
1746
If to have liberty it is necessary only to desire it, if only a simple act of will is needed, will there be any nation in the world that still deems it too expensive [...]?
c. 1552-1553
Roses in a Bowl
1883
If I doubt all other things, that very doubt convinces me of my own existence, and does not permit me to doubt it.
1689
I hold that the mark of a true idea is that one can prove its possibility, either a priori [...] or a posteriori.
1686
When we are inclined to regard extension as the subject of all sensible qualities, is it because it is indeed the subject, or only because this idea [...] is familiar to us?
1754
As for judging and criticizing me without submitting to this condition, nothing is easier, experience has proven it.
1819
Statuette of a runner
7000 BCE - 30 BCE
Philosophy [...] is not a completed science, it is a science in the making; it is not organized.
c. 350 BC
Reason is never but the last resort of love.
1772
Instead of revenge [...], [the heroic heart] forgives an unjust hatred, and [...] even returns good for evil.
1636
There exist well-known [remedies]; but the gradation to be followed in administering them is so delicate [...] that very few people are able to benefit from them.
1623
Heroic Landscape with Rainbow
1824
Is it not likely that the Brahmans are the first legislators of the earth, the first philosophers, the first theologians?
1764
No one [...] brings himself to do evil without a motive of interest.
79 BC
I am not so accustomed to the favors of fortune as to expect anything extraordinary from it; it is enough for me when it does not send me [...] accidents that would give cause for sadness to the greatest philosopher in the world.
1643-1649
It is a very important thing in this world to know oneself, and to know how to measure one's strength against the greatness of one's State.
1512-1527
A Spanish Garden
1871
Freedom of thought, when it goes so far as to wish to free itself from the very laws of reason, ends by destroying itself with its own hands.
1786
Divine love is not something of God: it is God himself.
1932
All prejudices come from the intestines.
1888
Our illness does not come from without; it is within us; its very seat is in our bowels.
63-64 AD
Limestone statuette of a boy holding a bird
2nd half of the 5th century BCE
In Rome, it was a sign of favor to press down and lower the thumbs [...].
1580
[The government] constantly justified the suspicions [...] of the more revolutionary parties and constantly conjured up [...] the spectre of the old despotism.
1851-1852
It is universally admitted that partiality is incompatible with justice; preference given to one person over another, when there is no reason to prefer them, is unjust.
1861
One only succeeds on the condition of letting one's nature act. Constraint prevents success.
4th century BC
Bronze statuette of a comic actor
ca. 1st–2nd century CE