It is religion that hatched despots and tyrants; they made bad laws; their example corrupted the great; the great corrupted the people; and the debased people became wretched slaves.
1766
passions act upon the imagination, and the corrupted imagination strives against reason [...].
1674-1675
Between neighboring peoples, trade tends to make the same things equally abundant [...] and consequently gives them the same value among all.
1776
Driven from treason to treason by some evil Genius.
100-120 AD
Head of a comic figurine
late 4th–3rd century BCE
The straightest tree will be the first to be cut down. The well with the sweetest water will be the first to run dry. Your knowledge scares the ignorant, your enlightenment offends the fools.
4th century BC
[With fatal necessity], it follows from this that not a single man will be inexcusable before God.
1661-1676
Economists explain to us how production takes place in these given relations, but what they do not explain is how these relations themselves are produced, that is, the historical movement which gives them birth.
1847
Self-love, the different opposing interests [...], the discussions that result from them in society, have obliged men to establish the laws of justice, in order to preserve the advantages of mutual assistance and protection.
1751
Spearhead
3900 BCE - 100 CE
[...] the greatest probability never amounts to certainty, without which there can be no true Knowledge.
1689
After me, the flood.
55-56 AD
In Germany everyone is a prince; we have seen up to thirty highnesses of the same name having for all their wealth nothing but coats of arms and a noble pride.
1733
[...] a great part of these doubts, so difficult to clarify through metaphysics, even the most daring, are easily resolved by chemistry.
1770
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1680
What is needed is an analysis, and one is sure to have perfectly analyzed when one is able to recompose.
1900
Verlaine, by the force of a superior idealism, crossed the painful distance in a single bound; or else he created around himself an invisible reality, as in his verses, a visible dream.
1926
It takes great qualities to make a hero.
1636
Feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the human mind developed only by the reciprocal action of men upon one another.
1835-1840
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1780
Reason is never but the last resort of love.
1772
Those who are capable of inventing are rare; those who do not invent are in greater number, and, consequently, the stronger [...].
1746
This is when a man is unhappy; this is when his city is taken by assault [...]: it is when his true opinions are taken from him and destroyed.
c. 108 AD
The most essential talent of a captain is to know how to seize opportunities when they arise and to act with diligence.
1580
A Female Allegorical Figure
ca. 1740–50
It is [...] this capacity to isolate a partial idea, [...] to separate a subject from its attribute, in a word to abstract and to analyze [...], that animals lack, [...] and which constitutes the entire difference between them and us.
1803
The philosopher is to artists what a pentathlete is to a runner or a wrestler.
End of the 4th century BC
If his words remain only in memory, and no trace of them is found in life, the branch is no longer part of the vine, because it no longer draws its life from the root.
1263-1264
[...] metaphor, ornament, and the other forms [...] will remove vulgarity and baseness from the style; the proper term will give it clarity.
c. 335 BC
Terracotta appliqué
3rd century BCE
The idolatrous current of totalitarianism can only find an obstacle in an authentic spiritual life.
1943
Do all souls form a single soul?
c. 253-270 AD
How sweet it is to meet again after so long an absence and to renew an old friendship when one least thinks of it!
1627
The social subordination of women stands out as an isolated fact in the midst of modern social institutions; it is the only relic of an old intellectual and moral world destroyed everywhere else [...].
1869
Flora and Zephyr
1743
April, the grace, and the smile [...], the scent and the sweet breath.
1546/1563
The inextinguishable regrets [...] have inspired in me a horror of lying that should have guaranteed my heart against this vice for the rest of my life.
1776-1778
The settlement of what belongs to them must be proportioned to what they had the right to hope from fortune, such that each finds it entirely equal to take what is assigned to him or to continue the adventure of the game.
1643-1662
The characteristic feature of Wagner's thought is its astonishing unity: a unity that connects writings from different eras [...] through the commonality of the point of view.
1896
Fragment of a limestone funerary stele with a disk and a crescent
2nd half of the 6th century BCE
The moralist must proceed in such a way as to take as obligatory only what is obligatory and not what seems so to him; that he should take as the subject of his research realities and not subjective appearances.
1893
The way of influence is that of the common philosophy; but, as one cannot conceive of material particles that could pass from one of these substances to the other, this view must be abandoned.
1696
The people, or the nobility, [...] showed all the more pride as their adversary showed more moderation.
1513-1519
There is no philosophical writer, with the exception of Aristotle, Descartes, and Locke, who can claim to approach Kant in the extent and height of influence he has exerted on the minds of men.
1827
Copper alloy spearhead
ca. 2500–2000 BCE
From the moment the terrors of life outweigh the terrors of death, man puts an end to his existence.
1851
We no longer know how to forgive [...], and even the practice of condemning without a hearing has prevailed among us.
79 BC
If one has one's 'why?' of life, one can get along with almost any 'how?'.
1888
The mood to write verses comes from a strong agitation of the spirits [...] which only disposes one to poetry. [...] I take this transport as a mark of a stronger and more elevated mind than the common.
1643-1649
Bronze tweezers
ca. 2900–1050 BCE