The imagination is perhaps excusable if it sometimes raves [...] But that the understanding, which ought to think, should rave, on the contrary, is something that can never be forgiven.
1783
Collective thought is incapable of rising above the domain of facts. It is an animal-like way of thinking.
1940
If you live according to nature, you will never be poor; if according to opinion, never rich.
63-64 AD
If we are so little instructed about the Powers & Operations of Bodies, [...] we are in greater darkness with regard to Spirits.
1689
The Mass of Saint Basil
1746
The bond of social solidarity [...] is that which, when broken, constitutes a crime; we call by this name any act which [...] provokes against its author that characteristic reaction known as punishment.
1893
Why so much presumption? Learn then what you are: [...] you who promise to die for me? You will deny three times the one who is your life.
1263-1264
Clarity is the good faith of philosophers.
1746
By natural right [...] we understand nothing other than the laws of the nature of each individual, according to which we conceive that each of them is naturally determined to exist and to act in a determined manner.
1670
The Three Graces
1807
One wants not only to be understood when one writes, but certainly also not to be understood. Every distinguished mind [...] thus chooses its audience.
1882
The day of glory almost never shines except upon the tomb of great men.
1772
If the traveler is shaken, it is because the material points of his body do not maintain invariable positions [...]. They do not, therefore, form a single system.
1922
So many men, so many boroughs, so many cities, so many nations sometimes endure a single tyrant, who has no power other than that which they give him.
c. 1552-1553
Virgin and Child Enthroned
ca. 1345–50
Would we demand that of two runners, the more virtuous should arrive first, and not the swifter?
c. 108 AD
The severe word of Kant is a manifesto in which Morality announces that it is free and independent of any kind of revelation, of any kind of God above or below [...].
1841
The value and mass of commodities to be circulated and [...] the amount of monetary transactions to be settled, varies every day.
1865
Thus, there remains only my hypothesis, that is to say, the way of harmony.
1696
Wall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase
last decade of the 1st century BCE
If I advance in age, I know that I must necessarily pay my tribute to old age; my sight will weaken, I will hear less well, my intelligence will decline [...].
4th century BC
Duration and movement are measured with the utmost precision, thanks to extension.
1817
The statics of solids, hydrostatics, and the statics of gases are integral parts of one and the same science, which is capable of taking the form of a rational deduction.
1663
The feeling of justice may be a particular instinct, and yet require, like all our other instincts, the supervision and enlightenment of a higher reason.
1861
Rock crystal bead with striations
ca. 2200–1450 BCE
A hasty prosperity followed by rapid successes is usually suspect and threatens a prompt change.
1636
I do nothing without gaiety: and too firm a continuation and contention dazzles my judgment, saddens it, and wearies it.
1580
The greatest difference that exists between a friend and a mercenary is that the lure of the latter is interest, while the attraction of the former is moral honesty and wisdom in discourse.
100-120 AD
To speak of a rational being apart from man is like speaking of heavy beings apart from bodies.
1840
Limestone statuette of a female votary
3900 BCE - 100 CE
Many popular religions, judging by the conceptions of common men, are truly a kind of demonism.
1757
It is not enough for the soul to be lodged in the human body, like a pilot in his ship, [...] but it must be more closely joined and united with it, to [...] compose a true man.
1637
Education has the consequence of arousing envy, which is an evil; but to be learned is also a good.
329-323 BC
There can be no ignominy in not observing promises imposed by force.
1513-1519
Terracotta head of a woman wearing a high headdress
late 5th century BCE
One needs discernment in philosophical research, and judgment in the conduct of life.
1746
Thus the difference of minds originates from the difference of passions and the different ends to which appetite leads them.
1772
Our judgments would lose their authority [...] if, instead of ruling after having heard the case, we came with our minds already made up.
66 BC
Order reigns in the universe because all things proceed from a single principle and conspire to a single end.
c. 253-270 AD
Heroic Landscape with Rainbow
1824
[...] there is a gentler, surer, more glorious art: to subjugate without carnage and to conquer without harm [...].
1741-1784
Stop trying to forcibly introduce your artificial virtues that are contrary to nature.
4th century BC
Today a traveler [...] needs an interpreter as if he were in China. This is one of the greatest scourges of life.
1764
We are always curious about the youth of great men, but upon examining this period of their lives closely, we are also almost always disappointed.
1926
Marble portrait, probably of Matidia, niece of the emperor Trajan and mother of Sabina, wife of the emperor Hadrian
117–138 CE
The majority has no need to constrain him; it convinces him.
1835-1840
Were souls all created together at the origin of the world? [...] Questions, as one can see, no less useful than easy to solve.
1623
If the prince's religion becomes the religion of his subjects, the prince's reason will also become the reason of his subjects; and thus the prince's sentiments will always be in fashion.
1674-1675
this epithet must be removed from the title, [...] because it was so in an edition made during the author's lifetime.
1750
Marble statue of a member of the imperial family
27 BCE–68 CE