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Dead Smart People

When you're tired of listening to living idiots.

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Of all that is born from our free will, nothing depends on it more exclusively than affection and friendship.

1580

May will boast of its coolness, its ripe fruits, and its fertile dew.

1546/1563

The intellect is not always true.

384–322 BC

Science frees the mind, expands the senses and the heart; theology compresses and crushes them.

1842-1845

Monogrammist FS (Franciszek Smiadecki?)

Portrait of a Man

Portrait of a Man

ca. 1650

[...] as long as the phenomena are connected, it does not matter whether we call them dreams or not, since experience shows that we are not mistaken in the measures we take based on phenomena [...].

1704

The ostensive syllogism draws a true conclusion from two true premises; whereas the syllogism ad impossibile [...] from a false premise draws an obviously false conclusion.

c. 1270

Although their assumptions are almost all false and uncertain, nevertheless... [astronomers] do not fail to draw from them several very true and very certain pieces of knowledge.

17th century

[Some] are not far from believing that they form a separate species of mankind.

1835-1840

Greek Artist

Bronze statuette of a bearded man

Bronze statuette of a bearded man

late 6th century BCE

The end of the world being near, I, for the remedy of my soul, [...] give such and such lands to such and such a convent.

1764

The course of time is but the distinction between the wanted and the possessed [...].

1890

A man who has never left his country usually imagines that the morals and customs of foreigners are contrary to reason because they are contrary to the custom of his own city [...].

1674-1675

The years that followed were spent by Marx founding the International Workingmen's Association and formulating the theories of historical-scientific socialism [...].

March 17, 1883

Greek Artist, South Italian, Tarentine

Limestone relief of a youth, from a funerary building

Limestone relief of a youth, from a funerary building

ca. 300 BCE

The idea of mediation is everywhere in Plato [...] always linked to the idea of imitation [...] and to the idea of suffering.

1953

To illustrate an idea is not to prove it.

1895

[Christian education] consists in making children contract from infancy the salutary habit of unreasoning, of believing everything they are told, [and] of hating all those who do not believe what they believe.

1768

There is no wicked man who could not be made good for something.

1762

Egyptian, Ptolemaic

Faience statuette of Aphrodite

Faience statuette of Aphrodite

334–30 BCE

Perhaps [...] it is out of benevolence that the god grants me [...] to end my life not only at the most suitable time, but in the least painful way.

4th century BC

To limit what God can do to what we can understand is to give an infinite scope to our comprehension, or to make God Himself finite.

1689

It is from this true and one world that the sensible world, which is not truly one, draws its existence: it is [...] multiple and divided into a plurality of parts that are separate from one another.

c. 253-270 AD

[I wanted] to show the uncertainty of all our judgments on the characters of men, and [...] that customs, fashion, and laws are what primarily determine matters of morality.

1751

Marco del Buono Giamberti

The Story of Esther

The Story of Esther

1422

A passionate lover of his country, he was of a singular gentleness, except for a violent hatred against tyranny and wicked men.

100-120 AD

The limits we raise to circumscribe each science intercept the light and necessarily cast shadows. Let us remove the limits, and at once the shadows dissipate.

1768

It is a curious contradiction [...] that books of piety, like books of poetry, become more numerous as the world loses interest in both piety and poetry.

1926

Can he be called honest [...] who would gladly indulge in vice if he did not fear future punishment [...]?

1766

Master of the Saint Godelieve Legend

The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve

The Life and Miracles of Saint Godelieve

1475

[He] remained [...] dazed like a fish out of water.

1513-1527

[A heroic heart] wanted no middle ground between All or Nothing.

1636

There is more advantage [...] in raising suspicion with veiled words than in putting forward something that could be contested.

86-82 BC

Superior knowledge [...] springs from his eyes and penetrates with his gaze; words could not express it.

4th century BC

El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos)

Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara (1541–1609)

Cardinal Fernando Niño de Guevara (1541–1609)

ca. 1600

The thefts, murders, and accidents that occur daily [...] for lack of sufficient light in the streets.

1662

Where will I find these connections, if not in the study of myself and the knowledge of men [...]?

1746

In the body politic, as in the human body, there must be a soul, a spirit, that enlivens it and sets it in motion.

1772

When I have hurt even a stranger, my pain begins when theirs ceases.

1765-1769

Sébastien Bourdon

Portrait of a Young Boy

Portrait of a Young Boy

1636

Each person has only the ideas they have made for themselves, and no one can think for another.

1801

Philosophers [...] follow virtue not because it is the law, but out of love and because it is in itself lovable.

1661-1676

That no use can be made of them is perhaps the very essence of greatness.

1888

If truly moral reasons against suicide exist, they must be sought at a depth that the probe of common morality cannot reach.

1840

Cypriot artist

Limestone statuette of a seated Zeus Ammon

Limestone statuette of a seated Zeus Ammon

4th century BCE

What person is more admirable than one who knows how to command themself, who is their own master?

1st century AD

There are those who everywhere mix in [...] the political reflections in which they delight, [...] interrupting the thread of the narrative at every turn.

1623

To philosophize is nothing other than to examine and strengthen these rules. And to apply those which are recognized is the task of the wise person.

c. 108 AD

The only school of true moral sentiment is a society between equals.

1869

Andreas Achenbach

Sunset after a Storm on the Coast of Sicily

Sunset after a Storm on the Coast of Sicily

1853