Human weakness [...] allows itself to be carried away by superstition and pride, or falls into negligence and contempt for sacred things.
100-120 AD
...the moral law demands that the greatest good of which we are capable be realized.
1793
Ask me no questions, and I'll tell you no lies.
1840
The problem of freedom is therefore born of a misunderstanding: it has been for the moderns what the sophisms of the school of Elea were for the ancients.
1889
Marble portrait of the emperor Caracalla
212–217 CE
To excel, without making one's excellence felt, that is the conduct that makes one loved everywhere.
4th century BC
The union of the mind with the body infinitely debases man; and it is today the principal cause of all his errors and all his miseries.
1674-1675
This internal conflict increases the terror, and gives a more hideous aspect to the phantoms that persecute the unfortunate victims of superstition.
1757
Wherever there is uneasiness, there is desire, for we incessantly desire happiness.
1689
Die-counter or draught piece
3900 BCE - 100 CE
[One must discover] the true motives hidden under pretexts, the secrets of state.
1623
Philosophy does not hide it. It makes Prometheus's profession of faith its own: ἁπλῷ λόγῳ τοὺς πάντας ἐχθαίρω θεούς [In a word, I hate all the gods].
1841
It is, in itself, a matter of profound indifference whether a thing be true, but it is of the highest importance whether it is believed to be true.
1888
Light is not the quality of a subject; it is the act that emanates from a subject, but does not pass into another subject; only, if another subject is present, it will experience an affection.
c. 253-270 AD
Terracotta plaque with Pelops and Hippodamia
27 BCE–68 CE
There is no country where wealth settles [...]. Like the seas [...], wealth, after bringing abundance and luxury to certain nations, withdraws from them to spread to other lands.
1772
No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
c. 375 BC
For a relation to be real, five things are required: two on the side of the subject, two on the side of the term, and one on the side of the things that are the object of the relation.
c. 1270
There is an internal war in man between reason and the passions.
1670
Surprised, or Infidelity Found Out
1732
Motion is independent of observation, but [...] it is not independent of observability. There is no motion when there is no observable change.
1715-1716
Such is the consequence of presenting the same idea under one aspect or another, that [...] I firmly believed I had not learned it from Condillac.
1801
Democracy loosens social bonds, but it tightens natural ones. It brings relatives closer together at the same time as it separates citizens.
1835-1840
There are [...], at the base of our civilization, a certain number of principles that [...] are common to all [...]: respect for reason, for science, for the ideas and feelings that are the basis of democratic morality.
1922
Man with a Tankard
1650
Men [...] teach each other how their strength grows, weakens, and is extinguished. Finally, those who die first say that they are no more, by ceasing to say that they exist.
1755
The feeling of personal dignity as fabricated by society is broken. One must forge another for oneself [...].
1934-1942
[It is better to] entertain and instruct one's fellow citizens than to ruin them.
1741-1784
[Heraclitus was the] founder of a sect that did not flourish much.
45 BC
Bronze statuette of Athena
ca. 2nd–3rd century CE
To nurture an endless affliction [...], is an unreasonable weakness; to feel none would be inhumanly harsh.
42-43 AD
One does not realize the vitality of institutions that place right on the side of force; one does not know with what tenacity people cling to them.
1869
True freedom is to be and to remain chained by the bonds of His love.
c. 1660
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
Heinrich(?) vom Rhein zum Mohren (1477–1536)
late 1520s
When one does not feel inclined for war, one must strive to reign through the arts of peace.
1512-1527
Wherever [religion] reigns, do we not see the people enslaved, devoid of vigor, energy, activity, stagnating in shameful lethargy [...]?
1766
Just as we say a thing is destroyed absolutely when it passes into the insensible [...], so we can say it is produced [...] when it comes from the insensible.
c. 350 B.C.E.
I see death with indifference when I consider it the point at which life fatally ends. I brave it in a general way, but in detail I am less resolute.
1580
Mont Sainte-Victoire and the Viaduct of the Arc River Valley
1882–85
A harvest of scents and flowers, perfuming the air and the earth.
1546/1563
After having laid down the true principles of political right and tried to establish the State on its foundations, it would remain to support it through its external relations.
1762
The fires of dawn are not as sweet as the first glances of glory.
1746
Even in the most chaotic scenes, there is always a witness or two [...] who, immersed in the crowd, are not part of the crowd: having been witnesses, they will be judges.
1926
Terracotta warriors
6th century BCE(?)
Woe to a people foolish and barbarous enough to think there is a God for their province alone! It is blasphemy.
1764
From the moment desire and fear are in your power, what can you still worry about?
c. 108 AD
Those who show themselves to be slaves of a passion degrade themselves in the eyes of the wise; and those who know how to cover it up escape this discredit.
1636
I beg those who wish to read these Meditations not to form any judgment on them until they have first taken the trouble to read all these objections and the replies.
1641
Male head wearing a helmet
ca. 600 BCE