A false idea, but clear and precise, will always have more power in the world than a true but complex one.
1835-1840
Every movement of the body corresponds to an act of the will.
1819
The unlimited confidence [...] and the excellent opinion we have [of someone] engage us to beseech them.
1498
The only thing left for the government to do was to become the bank itself, and it did.
1776
Peasant Family in a Barn
1640s
God [...] is, in short, nothing but a clumsy prohibition: Thinking is forbidden!
1888
Praise given at the right moment [...] is sometimes enough to awaken [...] the love of glory, and to endow one with that persistence of attention which produces great talents.
1772
In civilized man, egoism enters into the very heart of higher representations: each of us has our own opinions, our beliefs, our own aspirations, and holds to them.
1893
The essence of religion in general.
1841
Head of a Child
1768
Essentially discontinuous, since it proceeds by juxtaposed words, speech only marks out from a distance the main stages of the movement of thought.
1896
A person is not mistaken in so far as they perceive a certain object, but only in so far as they give or refuse their assent to it.
1661-1675
Giving [...] aid to poverty is like trying to fill a bottomless barrel.
c. 350 BCE
I know that we must suffer [...] the wrongs of our parents. But I also think that one must suffer what can be suffered, and hide what can be hidden.
66 BC
Portrait head of philosopher ?
4th century BCE
We have lost the idea that absolute certainty is fitting only for divine things. We want certainty for material things. For things that concern God, belief is enough for us.
1951
[...] what seems absurd only seems so because it is new, and once we get used to it, the absurdity will seem entirely natural and logical.
1926
The more wit one has, the greater the passions.
1643-1662
There is no finer sight than a city governed by a wise prince; while the most odious of all sights is to see it governed by a tyrant.
100-120 AD
Limestone lower left leg
4th or 3rd century BCE ?
I couldn't teach it to my son, and at seventy years old, to have a good wheel, I still have to make it myself.
4th century BC
Mixtion is the diffusion of two or more bodies throughout their whole, with their qualities remaining, like fire in incandescent iron.
c. 253-270 AD
Place is the surface of an immobile containing body.
c. 1270
Patriotism is annihilated in Holland.
1770
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1650
The greater one is, the more your blows are to be feared!
1743
A world with evil could be better than a world without evil.
1710
No one wants to be pitied for their mistakes.
1747
It is an extreme misfortune to be subject to a master of whom one can never be sure that he will be good, since it is always in his power to be evil when he pleases.
c. 1552-1553
Portrait of a Woman
1838
Man is the only creature that is susceptible to education.
1797-1798
It is therefore evident that in a finite portion of matter or in a finite mind, one cannot find enough reality to see the infinite.
1707
The food that would satisfy a dwarf [...] would only whet the appetite of a giant.
1636
No one should, for the love of life, resolve to live in servitude.
c. 387 BC
Statuette of a boy
4th–3rd century BCE
By this means [man] no more increases his knowledge than he increases his riches who, taking a bag of counters [...] names one a Crown, another a Pound [...] without however being richer by a mite.
1689
How could a man live free? By despising death.
1580
There is scarcely any absurdity or mischief which may not be made to act on the human mind with all the authority of conscience.
1861
Alternately, the idea gives birth to the sign, and the sign gives birth to the idea.
1801
Handle attachment
900 BCE - 100 BCE
Man, renounce everything [...] to be happy, to be free, to have a great soul. Hold your head high; you are delivered from servitude.
c. 108 AD
All science is composed of two kinds of knowledge: one is inspired by divinity; the other derives its origin from the senses.
1623
The more terrible the god, the more docile and submissive we are to his ministers.
1757
Gifts and loans, that is the financial science of the lumpenproletariat, high and low.
1851/1852
Limestone statuette of a male votary
probably mid-6th century BCE
There would be no need for miracles if one spoke to them with reason. Thus, it is unbelievable things that serve as proof for other unbelievable things.
1766
One enjoys oneself fully and securely when one awaits the morrow without anxiety.
63-64 AD
If one must be just to others, one must be true to oneself; it is a homage that the honest man owes to his own dignity.
1776-1778
This study [...] does not occupy me enough to cause me sorrow.
1643-1649
Marble funerary statues of a maiden and a little girl
ca. 320 BCE