General well-being favors the stability of all governments, but particularly of democratic government, which rests on the dispositions of the greatest number [...].
1835-1840
At a first glance, everyone will be convinced that all Theological truths are linked.
1768
Potency is defined by its acts [...], and acts are defined by their objects [...].
c. 1270
I am very sorry to have only recently learned of these opinions [...]; if I had seen them sooner [...], they would have saved me much trouble and hesitation.
1805
George IV (1762–1830), When Prince of Wales
1773
Is there a single part of our body that does not often refuse its duty and that does not also often act against our will?
1580
The division of labor presupposes that the worker, far from remaining bent over his task, does not lose sight of his immediate collaborators [...]. He feels that he is of some use.
1893
The interest involved is that of security, the most vital of all interests [...]. Nothing would have any value to us [...] if we could be deprived of a good an instant after having possessed it.
1861
Knowledge is nothing but the perception of the connexion and agreement, or opposition and disagreement, that is found between any of our Ideas.
1689
Limestone inscribed block
3900 BCE - 100 CE
A hero never appears greater than in circumstances capable of obscuring the glory of anyone other than himself.
1636
Christ did not say: 'I am orthodoxy.' He said: 'I am the truth.'
1957
Nothing lasts but the truth.
1746
A proletarian mass, powerful in numbers, but without leaders, without any political education, subject to panic as well as to fits of fury almost without cause, an easy prey to every false rumor that was spread.
1851-1852
Landscape with the Flight into Egypt
ca. 1650
A death is considered [...] the easiest, one that inconveniences friends the least and causes them the most regret for the deceased.
4th century BC
The contradiction of faith and love.
1841
If war does not give the victor the right to massacre the vanquished peoples, this right he does not have cannot found the right to enslave them.
1762
What [animals] do better than us does not prove that they have a mind [...]; but rather that they have none, and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs.
1637
Terracotta head from a statue
ca. 525–500 BCE
The Prince, translated into every language, was even translated into Turkish by order of a sultan, to be used for his instruction and that of his son.
1855
Men [...] rise above beasts, in that they see the connections of truths; connections [...] which themselves constitute necessary and universal truths.
1704
The Conversation [...] is one of the most precious pearls in Diderot's philosophical casket.
1773-1774
God has an infinity of attributes and [...] the order and connection of the modifications of these attributes are the same in each of them.
1661-1676
Still Life with Jar, Cup, and Apples
ca. 1877
To boast is to close the way to fortune; if one already has merits and renown, it is to attract dispossession. To efface oneself, to hide in the crowd, that is security.
4th century BC
It is only through a just measure that one preserves both strength and health.
4th century BC
The fewer obstacles prejudices find when they spread, the more one finds when one wants to destroy them.
1768
You will easily admit that nature, not in its whole, but in its parts, suffers violence by the movement of some overcoming the resistance of others; this is what God uses for the ornament and variety of the world.
1653-1662
Fantastic Landscape
ca. 1765
It is not a flaw in a limited mind to not know certain things; it is only a flaw to judge them. Ignorance is a necessary evil, but one can and must avoid error.
1674-1675
Our historians blame his ambition and his stubbornness; it was also necessary to do justice to his courage and his grand designs.
1756
[The disciples] reaped more benefit from Socrates's character than from his speeches.
63-64 AD
— I will cut off your head. — When did I ever tell you that I was the only one whose head could not be cut off?
c. 108 AD
Woman Sewing
1909
It is therefore the people themselves who allow themselves to be, or rather cause themselves to be, dominated, since by ceasing to serve they would be free; it is the people who enslave themselves, who cut their own throats.
c. 1552-1553
The facts, consulted without bias, neither confirm nor even suggest the hypothesis of parallelism [between the cerebral and the mental].
1919
Men [...] are all susceptible to the same degree of passion; their unequal strength is always [...] the effect of the different situations in which chance places them.
1772
The more one writes, the more the need to write intensifies. It becomes a disease...
1926
Portrait of a Woman
1778
It is a matter [...] of establishing degrees of certainty, of supporting the senses [...], but rejecting almost all the product of the first operations of the mind that immediately follow sensations.
1620
He who lives according to God must [...] not hate the man for the vice, nor [...] love the vice for the man, but [...] hate the vice and love the man.
c. 253-270 AD
To reduce life to laws and methods is to take on a difficult task, and most often a frivolous one.
1742
If your opponent proposes an alteration, you will call it an 'innovation' because this term is pejorative.
1830-1831
Terracotta head with wreath
ca. 600–480 BCE
Rashness is never allied with wisdom, and chance is not admitted to the counsels of prudence.
46 BC
That external power which wrests from men the freedom to communicate their thoughts publicly, also takes from them the freedom to think.
1786
Has it been noticed that music sets the mind free? That it gives wings to thought? That one becomes more of a philosopher the more one is a musician?
1888
He who so nobly endured poverty [...] filled his country with riches and greedy passions.
100-120 AD
Edward Smith Stanley (1752–1834), Twelfth Earl of Derby, Elizabeth, Countess of Derby (Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, 1753–1797), and Their Son (Edward Smith Stanley, 1775–1851)
ca. 1776