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Dead Smart People

When you're tired of listening to living idiots.

Français

Reason is entirely mistaken about this concept [of cause]; it falsely takes it for its own child, [when] it is but a bastard of the imagination, which, impregnated by experience, has subjected certain representations to the law of association.

1783

What the State declares to be just and good must be considered as so declared by each individual.

1677

One must always see the symptom of some obstacle in the fact that an artist interrupts his creative work to present himself to the world as a theorist.

1896

There is no [religion] that is not the religion of some country.

1772

Zanobi Strozzi

The Nativity

The Nativity

ca. 1433–34

The whole inferiority of the animal lies there: it is a specialist. It does what it does very well, but it cannot do anything else.

1882

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

1859

[The innovator] has for enemies all those who derived profit from the old institutions, and finds but lukewarm defenders in those who would profit from the new.

1855

It is no more difficult to conceive how an Army of ten thousand men can make a single idea.

1689

Cypriot artist

Limestone funerary stele of a boy

Limestone funerary stele of a boy

3900 BCE - 100 CE

Others do not so much impress upon things the image of their mind as that of their passions, never losing sight of the interest of their party [...].

1623

Softness had, in the course of a long peace, weakened the nation's courage, pleasures had corrupted it, [...] and adversity alone could reawaken the ancient virtue.

1746

Of Mixtion where there is total penetration.

c. 253-270 AD

I am not surprised that wine lovers make such a big deal of the one who, according to them, planted the vine.

1772

Master of Flora

The Birth of Cupid

The Birth of Cupid

1550

Nature has given us a mind eager for knowledge [...] it has created us as spectators of its sublime scenes.

c. 62-65

Forgetting one's intentions is the most common form of stupidity.

1879

There is nothing [...] that does not serve the public good of the present time.

1574

If it is good for you to drink it, then drink it; [...] If it is good for you, and you drink it, do not speak of it before those who do not like things done differently from them.

c. 108 AD

Villers

A Man with the Initials JD

A Man with the Initials JD

1790

The life I am forced to lead does not leave me the disposition of enough time to acquire a habit of meditation according to your rules.

1643-1649

Therefore, what you are describing is not a part of virtue, but virtue as a whole.

c. 380 BC

It is believed that new societies will change their face daily, and I am afraid that they will end up being too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same mores [...].

1835-1840

To be fit for good company, one must have wit as well as politeness.

1751

Jan van Goyen

Castle by a River

Castle by a River

1647

He who has the gift of style makes no other reproach to life than that of being too difficult to paint; but he loves it precisely because of the trouble he takes.

1926

[Faith] forbids doubt and examination; it deprives man of the faculty of exercising his reason, of the freedom to think; it reduces him to the stupefaction of beasts [...].

1766

For the disciple of the Principle, the essential thing is the preservation of one's life. [...] The common men of this age, on the contrary, compromise their lives for their own interests; it is lamentable!

4th century BC

Political, administrative, and judicial functions are becoming more and more specialized. The same is true of artistic and scientific functions.

1893

Lucas Cranach the Elder

The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara

The Martyrdom of Saint Barbara

ca. 1510

Universal suffrage had fulfilled its mission. [...] It had to be abolished, either by a revolution or by the reaction.

1850

The extreme inequality in the manner of living [...] these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we would have avoided nearly all of them by preserving the simple, uniform, and solitary way of life prescribed to us by nature.

1755

One willingly made war in order to command; the other commanded in spite of himself, to repel the war being waged against him.

100-120 AD

Abundance of speech [...] are no small advantages [...] when they are governed by sound judgment, a wise and moderate mind.

86-82 BC

John Crome

Landscape with Boy Fishing

Landscape with Boy Fishing

1818

The cup is to Bacchus what the shield is to Mars. One will therefore say 'the shield, cup of Mars', and 'the cup, shield of Bacchus'.

c. 335 BC

[...] heroism [...] receives a mortal blow only when [its] weaknesses are declared.

1636

The best way to defend the truth [...] is not to argue, for in the end it is better [...] to leave [false scholars] in their errors than to attract their aversion.

1674-1675

Pascal renounced [...] including anything in a scientific study that would recall either the personality of the author or the personality of his predecessors.

1663

French Painter

François Joseph Lefebvre (1755–1820)

François Joseph Lefebvre (1755–1820)

1800

The more one is enlightened and informed about the works of God, the more one will be disposed to find them excellent and entirely satisfying to all that one could have wished for.

1686

Chance is but a word, and the need they have of it to build their systems proves how necessary it is to recognize a first principle.

1755

Europe was spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity where all the elements of our civilization have their origin; and it went on to uproot the other continents [...].

1942

If an author believes that a few happy verses are enough to sustain a work [...], he is still at the ABCs of the craft.

1741-1784

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

Mademoiselle Nys

Mademoiselle Nys

1899

One does not indifferently make clothes [...] from any kind of substance, but one takes a substance that has such a quality, as softness, ease of folding.

c. 1270

If one starts from what is actually given, that is, the world, and says: 'The world is God,' it is obvious that [...] the unknown is explained by something even more unknown.

1851

Glory and tranquility are things that cannot lodge in the same dwelling.

1580

The first judgment, the source of all truth: I am sure of what I feel.

1805

Minoan

Rock crystal bead with striations

Rock crystal bead with striations

ca. 2200–1450 BCE