The social contract is [...] the basis of all civil society, and it is in the nature of this act that one must seek the nature of the society it forms.
1762
I know nothing of these vain, useless, and inactive masses [...]. There is action everywhere [...] I believe there is no body without motion, nor any substance without effort.
1695
As long as you do not know the idea according to which someone does something, never praise nor blame their action.
c. 108 AD
Without reason, it is impossible to opine, whether well, or badly, or anything at all.
c. 360 BC
Bronze cauldron
7th century BCE
If one has one's 'why?' of life, one can get along with almost any 'how?'.
1888
In philosophy, [...] a thing has not and cannot have more than one single definition.
End of the 4th century BC
If the speaker and the listener do not agree on the ideas signified by the words they use, the reasoning is not about Things, but about words.
1689
Be resolved to serve no more, and you are at once free. [...] Do not support him any longer, and you will see him, like a great colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.
c. 1552-1553
Standing youth
3rd century BCE
I always had an extreme desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false, in order to see clearly in my actions and to walk with confidence in this life.
1637
[...] the ignorant [...] imagine that the Beings they do not know have marvelous power.
17th century
[The man born blind] put his hand to it and was astonished not to find [...] those solid bodies [...]. He asked which was the deceiver, the sense of touch, or the sense of sight.
1746
The most beautiful claims have always been those of the popes: two keys [...] visibly put them in possession of the kingdom of heaven; they bound and loosed everything on earth.
1764
Fragment of a limestone funerary stele with a disk and a crescent
2nd half of the 6th century BCE
The man without passions is incapable of the degree of application to which superiority of mind is attached.
1772
My soul is given over to eternal terrors; it is not death I fear, but crime.
circa 68 AD
Thus one is alternately the dupe of one's modesty and one's pride.
1741-1784
Hope makes more dupes than skill.
1746
Saint Stephen (with the Angel of the Annunciation)
1389
The love of a simple style, of gentle irony, of the half-tender, half-mischievous innuendo[...]
1926
If he is a man, he is an animal; if he is an animal, he is a substance; but he is not a substance, therefore he is not a man.
c. 1270
We know nothing of these objects except the way in which we perceive them; and this way, which is our own, may well not be necessary for all beings [...].
1781
'The artist stands before his finished work of art as before an enigma, about which he can fall into the same errors as others'.
1896
The Congregation of the Mother of God
1570
The relation of the cerebral state to representation may well be that of the screw to the machine, that is, of the part to the whole.
1919
Through obscure instruments, with great difficulty, a small number of men going towards their images perceive the essence of the model.
1953
These operations, having always been poorly untangled, can only be poorly named.
1817
The happiness of man is not God's end, I mean his principal end, his ultimate end. God is his own end.
1707
Baron Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859)
1859
The divinity, forced by the magical power of a few words, [...] obeys the voice of its priests [...] and, upon their orders, it performs wonders.
1766
Truth, in the great practical interests of life, is above all a matter of combining and reconciling extremes.
1859
Another sign of a prosperity nearing its end is its long duration: fortune grows old [...] with the years, as we do.
1636
Frankness and truth, in whatever century, are still fitting and opportune.
1580
The Dispatch-Bearer
?1879
Socialist theories continued to penetrate the minds of the people in the form of greedy and envious passions, and to deposit there the seed of future revolutions.
1893
Ulysses is true wisdom, which, without being captivated by material charms [...], turns all its desires towards the heavens.
c. 253-270 AD
After eight years, I ceased to be preoccupied with life and death.
4th century BC
Respect for the truth forces me to brave this ridicule.
100-120 AD
Bronze trowel or cutter
2nd millennium BCE
[This figure] leaves to the listener himself the task of guessing what the orator does not say.
86-82 BC
Only the absolute necessity of moral principles for the maintenance of society can keep these principles pure in our minds.
1757
Direct slavery is the pivot of bourgeois industry [...]. Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry.
1847
...which brought a very notable inconvenience to those waiting on the route...
1662
Portrait of a Man
1765
The understanding [...] is the medium of motives, that is, the intermediary through which they act on the will, which is, properly speaking, the very core of man.
1839
Society can be an ensemble [...] of beliefs and sentiments common to all [...]: this is the collective type. Or, it can be a system of different and special functions united by defined relationships.
1893
We may lack the time to act; we will always have enough time to talk.
1518
Were souls all created together at the origin of the world? [...] Questions, as one can see, no less useful than easy to solve.
1623
Terracotta statuette of a woman
3rd century BCE