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Dead Smart People

When you're tired of listening to living idiots.

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The privilege and superiority of man, endowed with reflection and reminiscence.

Mid-fourth century BC and 322 BC

With regard to great faults, one does not suppress the knowledge of them; one only suspends it for a time.

1636

The Roman Empire [...] turned its arms against itself, less because of the ambition of its leaders [...] than because of the avarice and licentiousness of the soldiers, who drove them out one after another, as one nail drives out another.

100-120 AD

When [the artist] looks at a thing, he sees it for its own sake, and not for his. He no longer perceives simply in order to act; he perceives for the sake of perceiving — for nothing, for pleasure.

1911

Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari

Bathsheba at Her Bath

Bathsheba at Her Bath

ca. 1700

Never read anything by those arrogant polymaths and muddled minds who have the most horrible flaw, that of the logical paradox.

1879

Is this god not a heap of contradictory qualities, which make him an inexplicable enigma?

1766

For the public convenience, it would be necessary to establish [...] lantern-bearers and torch-bearers to lead, guide, and light those who wish to come and go through the streets.

1662

From the perspective of the intellect, affirmation, which signifies composition, is prior to negation, which signifies division.

c. 1270

Roman Artist

Stucco relief panel

Stucco relief panel

2nd half of 1st century CE

To truly know the nature of the people, one must be a prince; and to truly know the nature of princes, one must be of the people.

1855

For every solution, [the ancients] addressed the root, the origin, the Principle that contains them all; and it is this high-level view that made their government superior.

4th century BC

As long as the goal of meditations and research is limited to the sole pleasure of knowing, [...] the understanding is at ease and no necessity presses it.

1609

On the assumption that character were the effect of organization, what could education do?

1772

George Romney

Self-Portrait

Self-Portrait

1795

The feeling of pain is more intense than the feeling of pleasure.

1674-1675

[...] old age upon which all infirmities converge, and that without any relief.

4th century BC

What then are we ourselves? We are that which is essentially us, we are the principle to which nature has given the power to triumph over the passions.

c. 253-270 AD

If you are disgusted with [certain] citizens, make it known: those who [...] still have the freedom of choice, will change their system, will follow another path.

59 BC

Italic

Statuette of a youth

Statuette of a youth

6th century BCE

My spirits, fed by this freedom [to write], regain new strength.

1574

[Theologians] are people of bad faith, who abuse the credulity of the people to insinuate to them what they please, as if the common folk were absolutely unworthy of the truth [...].

17th century

There is [...] a country in the world [...] where they have a way of thinking, especially in morality, which is diametrically opposed to ours.

1751

The money withdrawn from them crossed the provinces and passed on to foreign lands without leaving a trace.

1776

Antoniazzo Romano (Antonio di Benedetto Aquilio)

Saint Francis of Assisi

Saint Francis of Assisi

ca. 1480–81

Their nature is much easier to conceive when we see them gradually come into being in this way, than when we consider them only as already made.

1637

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

1859

[A ruler] knows that if he punished all who insult him, he would have no one left to rule.

c. 108 AD

All good maxims are in the world, [...] one only has to apply them; but that is very difficult.

1746

Cypriot artist

Limestone statuette of Geryon

Limestone statuette of Geryon

probably early 5th century BCE

In matters of the press, there is therefore really no middle ground between servitude and license. To reap the inestimable benefits that freedom of the press provides, one must know how to submit to the inevitable evils it gives rise to.

1835-1840

Philosophy is nothing other than [...] the science of living honestly, or, the art of following the right path in life.

circa 65 AD

Adultery [...is] very different in each of the two sexes, both in its motives and in its consequences.

1926

Ignorance received these maxims, fraud supported them, and the sword sustained them.

1769

Julius Schrader

Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859)

Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859)

1859

He who, a victim of his imagination for the first time, suffers this shame [...] having started badly, feels such vexation from this accident that he is in such a state of agitation that he runs a great risk of not showing himself to better advantage in subsequent encounters.

1580

The word of man is divine, in other words: it is an immense and incommensurable power like thought, of which it is the invisible body.

1841

What does it matter whether one is free or a serf in this valley of miseries? The essential thing is to get to paradise, and resignation is but one more means to that end.

1762

A government that would at the same time be legislative would rightly be called despotic [...].

1797

Etruscan artist

Bronze strainer with loop handle

Bronze strainer with loop handle

5th century BCE

The question of whether the same man remains is a question of name, depending on whether one understands by 'man' only the rational spirit, or only the body [...], or finally the spirit united to such a body.

1704

It is quite extraordinary that since the time men have been thinking [...], it should be a new discovery to know that to think is the same as to feel.

1801

A general rise in wages would lead to a general fall in profits, and the current price of commodities would not undergo any alteration.

1847

It is this kind of stratagem that Scipio used when he attacked the Carthaginians, not in Italy, but in Africa.

1830-1831

Caspar Netscher

The Card Party

The Card Party

ca. 1665

However different the acts so qualified may seem at first glance, it is impossible that they do not have some common ground. For they affect the moral conscience of nations everywhere in the same way.

1893

The splendor of nations [...] has always grown at the expense of their felicity.

1770

[Lawmakers] might be tempted to propose [...] only their own advantage, and to have distinct and separate interests from the rest of the community.

1690

Supernatural compassion for human beings can only be a participation in the compassion of God, which is the Passion.

1942

Paulus Moreelse

Portrait of a Young Boy

Portrait of a Young Boy

1591