If we examine the virtues that Christianity recommends, we will see that they are ill-suited for man, that they raise him above his sphere, that they are useless to society, and that they are often of the most dangerous consequence for it.
1766
The first concern [of Logic] must be to seek what is the first thing we are sure of, in order to move from that to all those that necessarily derive from it.
1817
How can I, the slave, get on this bus, use it for my 12 sous just like anyone else? What an extraordinary favor!
1934-1942
The intellect grasps without discoursing [...]. On the contrary, reason [...] only appropriates what it grasps by discoursing.
c. 1270
Woman Sewing
1909
Let us therefore judge philosophers, not by the terms they use, but by the consistency and coherence of their principles.
45 BC
[...] your biblical faith is sincere [...] only when it accepts as the divine word everything, absolutely everything, that one reads in the Holy Scripture; but as soon as you establish distinctions [...] you are splitting hairs, you are nothing but hypocrites who pretend to be believers.
1841
The fortunate [...] feel adversity much more keenly than those who have already experienced it.
1636
Outside of us, reciprocal externality without succession; within, succession without reciprocal externality.
1889
Limestone statuette of a male votary (worshipper)
mid-6th century BCE
[The most sterile of undertakings is] that of the philosophers [...] who have claimed to find the marvelous secret of producing an artificial happiness, a reasoned and reflected pleasure.
1742
He whom his intelligence makes capable of foresight naturally has the authority and the power of a master.
c. 350 BCE
Promises extorted, [...] wrested by force and without right, [...] are in no way binding.
1690
Each language expresses the character of the people who speak it.
1746
Roundel, medallion with head of Hermes
323 BCE - 31 CE
The love of independence was to be succeeded by fear and perhaps disgust for free institutions; after such an abuse of liberty, such a reversal was inevitable.
1893
A great question, on which the solution to many others depends.
1782-1789
No particular quality will make a man proud who takes into account [...] so many other imperfect and weak qualities within him, and, in the end, the nothingness of the human condition.
1580
The populace draws the false conclusion that one must obey superiors only in things good in themselves, and then attributes to itself the judgment of what is good or bad, and finally [...] has no other law than its own conscience.
c. 1552-1553
Limestone ram-bearer
second quarter of 6th century BCE
Certain losses communicate to the soul a sublimity that makes it abstain from all complaint and walk in silence, like tall black cypresses.
1881
Perfect faith is God felt by the heart!
1670
I would rather die than slavishly beg for life and be granted an existence much more dreadful than death.
4th century BC
Society presents such a tranquil appearance that the soul, tired of tormenting itself, yields to a security that is treacherous, in truth, but almost impossible to resist.
1741-1784
Cow in a Barn
1822
They [The peasants] cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must appear [...] as their master, as an authority, as an unlimited power [...].
1851/1852
Hope makes more dupes than skill.
1746
The contemplation of the One is that supreme revelation of the mysteries that the hierophant alone sees in the sanctuary and can only communicate to the initiated.
c. 253-270 AD
It happens much more often, when the affair one undertakes is very good, that it slips away while one defers its execution.
1643-1649
Marble grave relief with two portrait busts
ca. 13 BCE–5 CE
Never [...] has the division of labor been declared good absolutely and without reservation, but only within certain limits that must not be exceeded.
1893
It is a constant that nothing is rarer to find among human writings than a well-made history, complete in all its points.
1623
One must clearly distinguish the strength and beauty of words from the strength and evidence of reasons.
1674-1675
Infinitely small is that by which he is still a man; infinitely great is that by which he is one with heaven.
4th century BC
Bronze jug
late 1st–2nd century CE
[My system] conserves force and direction, and in a word all the natural laws of bodies, notwithstanding the changes that occur in them as a consequence of those of the soul.
1695
Death is a crisis — in the strongest sense of the word — a final judgment.
1836
The face of the entire universe, which remains always the same, although it changes in an infinity of ways.
1661-1676
The greatest evils are found where the greatest remedies are necessary.
1855
A Peasant Woman Picking Fleas off a Dog
ca. 1626–27
It is not poverty that must be rejected, but the idea one has of it; and in this way we will be happy.
c. 108 AD
[One must] get rid of prejudices.
1926
[...] lawsuits, intrigues, war, the disputes of priests, which consume human life, are absurd and horrible things.
1768
Objective validity and necessary universality (for everyone) are therefore reciprocal concepts [...].
1783
Cymbal
7000 BCE - 330 CE
Consider how sweet it is to ask for nothing, how beautiful it is to say: 'I have enough'.
63-64 AD
Justice implies something which it is not only right to do, and wrong not to do, but which some individual person can claim from us as a moral right.
1861
He called Antigonus into Greece, and filled the Peloponnese with Macedonians, he who had driven them out in his youth [...].
100-120 AD
Our desires are our motors, and it is the strength of our desires that determines that of our vices and our virtues.
1772
Portrait of an Officer
1784