In each of us [...] there exist two beings [...]. One is the individual being. The other is [...] the social being. To constitute this being in each of us, such is the end of education.
1922
Must we therefore entrust the practice of all virtues of this class to the sure, though blind, instinct of feeling and taste?
1751
By natural reason alone, we can indeed make many conjectures to our advantage and have fine hopes, but by no means any assurance.
1643-1649
As the state of society becomes democratic, [...] the power of opinion exercised by the father over his sons becomes less great, as does his legal power.
1835-1840
Marble cornice fragment
2nd century CE
As long as one desires, one can do without being happy; one expects to become so: if happiness does not come, hope is prolonged [...].
1761
Especially in winter, when the days are short, [...] one does not dare to venture to come and go through the streets, for lack of light.
1662
How has this stubborn will to serve become so deeply rooted that it now seems that the very love of liberty is not so natural.
c. 1552-1553
The just man is one who, in his relations with others, wants only equality.
4th century BC
Seated goddess (Aphrodite?)
4th–3rd century BCE
Who can be happier than the one who only does what pleases them?
1741-1784
A religion that was clear would soon be finished; our sacred interpreters would have nothing to tell us if God had spoken too clearly.
1768
The face of the entire universe, which remains always the same, although it changes in an infinity of ways.
1661-1676
Enjoy your happiness, your glory, and above all the goodness of your character: for the wise, there is no sweeter reward [...].
46 BC
Madonna and Child
ca. 1480
The development of the State exhausts the country. The State eats the country's moral substance, lives on it, fattens itself on it, until the food runs out, which reduces it to languor through starvation.
1943
Others hastily stitch together small accounts and small commentaries, from which they form a fabric full of inequalities.
1623
[...] heat is the cause of heating.
c. 1270
To bring a being into the world solely for it to be there, without subjective passion, [...] deliberately and in cold blood, would be a very questionable moral action.
1851
Limestone cippus of Philon
ca. 2nd–3rd century CE
One only succeeds on the condition of letting one's nature act. Constraint prevents success.
4th century BC
To maintain one's conclusion, without proving it [...] I call that begging the question; which is entirely unworthy of a philosopher.
1715-1716
The common person says very well that one cannot do two things at once.
c. 108 AD
The two hypotheses are equivalent for the mathematician. But the same is not true for the philosopher.
1922
Bronze hydria (water jar)
early 4th century BCE
[...] all our knowledge consists only in our judgments.
1803
Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
1851/1852
God placed the soul in the world so that, seeing the evils of which matter is the principle, it might return to the Father and be forever freed from such contagion.
c. 253-270 AD
It is not individuals, but the species alone that can reach this goal.
1797-1798
Bronze bowl from a thymiaterion (incense burner)
late 4th century BCE
This word [great] has, at the very least, only a relative meaning. It is impossible to measure it once and for all.
1926
Old discoveries do not stand in the way of new ones.
63-64 AD
The dogma of the Trinity therefore requires man to think the opposite of what he imagines and to imagine the opposite of what he thinks [...].
1841
If we were to make smells, tastes, and sounds succeed one another in her, she would see herself as a color that is successively fragrant, savory, and sonorous.
1754
Terracotta statuette of Harpocrates
2nd century CE
God [...] will judge us on our actions, and not on our understanding of the Hebrew language.
1763
No one was seen so beaten by wounds that he did not try in his last breath to take revenge still [...] and console his own death in the death of an enemy.
1580
Today the victory was in the hands of the enemies, if they had had a leader who knew how to win.
100-120 AD
There is scarcely any absurdity or mischief which may not be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience.
1861
The Public Garden at Pontoise
1874
Even misfortune has its charms in great extremities; for this opposition of fortune elevates a courageous spirit, and makes it gather all its forces which it was not using.
1746
Our circle [...] resembles a lost thing: poor frightened birds, the same dovecote no longer gathers us.
1513-1527
Riches and dignities are [...] the only goods visible to all eyes, the only ones reputed to be true goods, and are universally desired.
1758
This power [to punish] is not absolute and arbitrary [...], it is to inflict on him the penalties that calm reason and pure conscience naturally dictate and ordain, penalties proportionate to his fault.
1690
The Assumption of the Virgin
ca. 1337–39
A good [leader] never has weapons that are too short; what they lack in length, their bravery knows how to supplement.
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
[To make a] critique of philosophy as a nihilistic movement.
1888
Why be surprised [...] if divinity judges it more advantageous for me to leave this life at this very moment?
4th century BC
Terracotta appliqué
3rd century BCE