You follow the most ancient of all laws, that which gives to the strongest the goods of the weakest.
100-120 AD
All the actions we produce [...] are of a more perfect nature the more capable they are of uniting with us so as to form [...] one and the same nature.
c. 1660
It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.
1855
It is not a need at all, but rather a mere curiosity that leads only to reveries, to engage in such investigations.
1786
Marble female figure
3200–2700 BCE
The cause of wrong readings: public opinion, passions.
1947
One must not grieve over the cessation of personality as if it were a misfortune. [...] The physical self has ceased to be [...] but the transcendent self remains.
4th century BC
Would God not be able to see everything, to be present everywhere, to be in communication with everything!
c. 108 AD
It is recognized that inmates, if mixed together indiscriminately, corrupt one another and thus become [...] more dangerous enemies of public order.
1864-1866
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Pechell (1724–1800)
1747
Despair [...] is the greatest of our errors.
1746
Customary morality, that which is consecrated by education and public opinion, is the only one that presents itself to the mind as being obligatory in itself.
1861
I have seen many people driven mad by fear; even in the most level-headed, [...] it causes terrible disturbances of the mind.
1580
Very little care is given to common property; everyone thinks keenly of their private interests, and much less of the general interest [...].
c. 350 BCE
Bronze helmet attachment
late 6th century BCE
Immensity is no less essential to God than His eternity.
1715-1716
Let us presuppose a true thing, that glass has a great quantity of pores [...].
1653-1662
France thus seems [...] to have escaped the despotism of a class only to fall under the despotism of an individual, and what is more, under the authority of an individual without authority.
1851/1852
[He] was truly one of those all-too-rare men who, by giving everything within them until nothing is left, thereby show themselves to be related to genius.
1896
The Feast of Acheloüs
ca. 1615
[A quick mind] is [...] the torch that illuminates in doubt, [...] the thread of Ariadne with which one can exit a labyrinth of the most entangled affairs.
1636
The markets make the law for the government.
1776
One gladly mocks a foolishness from which one believes oneself exempt [...], one fears laughing at oneself under another's name.
1758
Ah, my friend! What a difference between reading history and hearing the man! Things become interesting in a very different way.
1759-1774
Portrait head of philosopher ?
4th century BCE
[...] now for serious matters.
1888
My spirits, fed by this freedom [to write], regain new strength.
1574
If I had vanquished my adversary, I would have had many others to vanquish; if I had succumbed, an infinity of good people would have perished [...].
September 57 BC
He did not understand what he was writing, for he omitted the main point [...].
1643-1649
Portrait of a Woman
1785
Suppose that instead of seeking to raise ourselves above our perception of things, we were to plunge into it to deepen and widen it.
1934
A reasoner may well prove to me that I am not free, but the inner feeling, stronger than all their arguments, constantly denies it.
1761
The located thing and the place are in an adequate relation.
c. 1270
This universe is one animal, which contains within itself all animals. There is in it one soul, which spreads throughout all its parts.
c. 253-270 AD
Bronze rod tripod
ca. 1250–1050 BCE
If society intervenes more, one does not have the right to say that individual spontaneity is increasingly sufficient for everything.
1893
Men do not always agree in their judgments on the utility of an action, or of a custom...
1751
Adultery is an act of such a special nature that it has always depended on the court of public opinion, as well as on legal tribunals.
1926
It was to be Kant's merit to examine [...] the very excitation, following which we declare the object that produced it beautiful, and to try to determine its elements [...] within our own sensibility.
1819
Head of the Virgin
1636
Pride, ignorance, and blindness always go together.
1674-1675
For us, there exist only two kinds of evidence: that of feeling and that of deduction.
1817
The ocean of ages will pile upon us; a few geniuses will raise their heads [...] and will know how to defend themselves for a long time.
63-64 AD
He was a charlatan to whom the State was given to heal, who poisoned it with his drug, and who poisoned himself.
1769
Limestone Bes
late 6th–early 5th century BCE
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood [...] by the masses.
c. 375 BC
Sciences and their inventions spread immediately and fly everywhere; for science is communicated as easily as light.
1609
And thus the legislative and executive power come often to be separated.
1690
Glory [...] is a passion produced by the imagination or by the conception of our own power, which we judge to be superior to the power of the one with whom we are comparing ourselves.
1772
Bronze tweezers
ca. 2900–1050 BCE