The image reflected by several mirrors [...], weakens more and more with each reflection [...]. It is the same with knowledge produced by a long series of proofs.
1704
None of our judgments, taken in itself and in isolation, is or can be false.
1805
I will come to find you, if you see no danger for me.
1513-1527
The privilege of knowledge is that it is communicable; feeling is not.
1819
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1790
Man can only become man through education. He is only what it makes of him.
1797-1798
It is a question [...] of nothing less than to annihilate forever [...] all public will, all agreement of good men against the fury and audacity of the wicked.
63 BC
The art [...] that no one can mark the limits of your capacity will remain [...] fruitless if you do not add to it the art of hiding the affections of your heart.
1636
lust being like a furnace, which blazes up [...] if any outlet is left for the flames; and whose fire is extinguished absolutely, as soon as it is enclosed.
1627
A Man Seated and Asleep
ca. 1865
[Friendship], I depict it as the most unbearable of tyrannies, as the torment of life.
1759-1774
It is important [...] that there should be no partial society within the State and that each citizen should think only for himself.
1762
In such a government, affairs are conducted much more poorly, because the election [...] depends on the completely free will of a few individuals [...] exempt from all law.
1677
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
Limestone funerary stele of a boy
3900 BCE - 100 CE
The only [power] that has been given to you is that of convincing yourself.
c. 108 AD
Greek philosophy, our venerable ancestor, was born, by a happy combination of circumstances, six centuries before our era [...]. [It is] one of the most considerable events in the annals of the human spirit.
c. 350 B.C.E.
No societies have yet been seen where conditions were so equal that there were no rich or poor; and, consequently, no masters and servants.
1835-1840
This makes me confess, without shame, to have found in myself all the causes of error that you point out.
1643-1649
Statuette of a bird
900 BCE - 100 BCE
Life, [...] is warfare.
63-64 AD
The true affirmation replaces the false idea by virtue of its intrinsic strength and proves to be [...] the best of refutations.
1919
Wherever the idea that a word signifies is not distinctly known [...] our thoughts are solely attached to sounds, and contain neither real truth nor falsehood.
1689
What compelled me to this thought was the weak foundation I saw for the widely accepted maxim that Nature abhors a vacuum, which is supported only by experiments, most of which are very false [...].
1647
Limestone foot (left) with suspension hole
670 BCE - 330 CE
If there is a supreme intelligence [...] let us be assured that it takes pleasure in seeing us fulfill the purpose of our existence, by enjoying all the pleasures for which we were created.
1742
There is a difference between apposition, mixtion, temperation, and confusion.
c. 253-270 AD
It is a fact that humans multiply whenever fathers are assured of their children's subsistence.
1776
All this gives a just pride to an English merchant, and makes him dare to compare himself, not without some reason, to a Roman citizen.
1733
Portrait of a Young Man
1470s
The fatal tendency of the human race to set aside a thing as soon as it is no longer questioned has caused half of its errors.
1859
There are habits of mind at odds with what masters expect from a disciple.
1926
What makes the tragedy of my current destiny is that my boldest undertakings must serve to make me a living.
1896
The writer wrote in an age of decadence; and he suffered, as much as and more than anyone, the fatal influence of his time.
100-120 AD
Bronze phiale (libation bowl) with four swinging handles
ca. 550 BCE
Old fool [...] who eats without ploughing and dresses without spinning. You who claim that merely opening your lips [...] is enough to establish the distinction between good and evil.
4th century BC
Despair [...] is the greatest of our errors.
1746
A bad example is the most pernicious doctrine [...] for the indiscreet populace, who thinks that whatever evil is done and suffered is permissible.
c. 1552-1553
Whereas the pride of national greatness is by nature exclusive, non-transferable, compassion is by nature universal.
1943
Portrait of a Member of the de Thou Family
1540
It is the property of action to produce passion from itself.
c. 1270
Anger and hatred are beyond the duty of justice, and are passions that serve only those who do not hold fast enough to their duty by reason alone.
1580
If repressive law loses ground, restitutive law, which did not exist at all at the origin, is only growing.
1893
Is opinion always true, or sometimes true and sometimes false?
c. 360 BC
Terracotta head of a youth
2nd century BCE (?)
[...] when they [minds] have once acquiesced to false opinions [...], it is just as impossible to speak to them intelligibly as to write legibly on a paper already scribbled over with writing.
1772
Nature is not abstract: the levers and wheels of mechanics are not mathematical lines and circles.
1674-1675
It is by mocking a fool that one indirectly boasts of one's own wit.
1758
What, in the end, are man's truths? — They are his irrefutable errors.
1882
The Missionary's Adventures
ca. 1883