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Antoine Louis Claude Destutt, comte de Tracy (20 July 1754 – 9 March 1836) was a French Enlightenment philosopher who coined the term 'ideology'.
Since all discourse is the manifestation of our ideas, it is the perfect knowledge of these ideas that alone can lead us to discover the true organization of discourse, and completely unveil the secret mechanism of its composition.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
To feel and to judge, that is our entire intelligence: [...] that is our whole being, all that we are. It is our entire existence.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
It is to [the faculty of judgment], above all, that the artifice of discourse relates; and it is to manifest its results that it is principally, if not uniquely, destined.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
To judge, therefore, is to feel that one idea contains another.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
To judge is not [...] the faculty of sensing relationships in general: but [...] it is solely the special faculty of sensing between one idea and another, the relationship of the container to the contained.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
[...] when I have a perception, an idea, I feel: and every time I discern a circumstance in that perception, I judge. This is a capital point that must never be lost from sight.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
To express a judgment, one must state the two ideas, one of which contains the other, plus the act of the mind that perceives this relationship. [...] This is what constitutes a proposition.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
[...] all our knowledge consists only in our judgments.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
Without the faculty of judgment, we would not even have ideas to communicate, except our simple sensations; much less would we have either the plan or the means to do so.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
It is not by detail, but by masses that all our expressions begin, as does all our knowledge.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
The essence of discourse is therefore to be composed of propositions, of statements of judgments. These are its true immediate elements.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
[...] what are improperly called the elements, the parts of speech, are really the elements, the parts of the proposition.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
[The language of animals] is entirely composed of propositions, of statements of judgments, and it never contains simple names of ideas.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
It is [...] this capacity to isolate a partial idea, [...] to separate a subject from its attribute, in a word to abstract and to analyze [...], that animals lack, [...] and which constitutes the entire difference between them and us.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
It is therefore in the decomposition of the proposition into its elements that the separation between the brute and the intelligent species par excellence is marked.
1803
Source: Elements of Ideology/Second part
Until now, Logic has been nothing more than the art of drawing legitimate consequences from a proposition supposed to be true and admitted as such.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
If [the propositions of a syllogism] were perfectly equal, one would say nothing more than the other, and we would be no more advanced at the third than at the first.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We have contented ourselves with [...] dismissing [the skeptics] and overwhelming them with an affected contempt, which both hides and reveals the inability to defeat them; for it is easier to disdain than to answer.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Man necessarily felt before judging. [...] he made particular propositions before making general ones.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We exist only because we feel; we would not exist if we did not feel. Our existence consists in feeling it [...].
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Our sensibility, like any other object, manifests itself to us only through its effects. To trace back to its causes, we must first know it, and to know it, we must study its effects.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
This act of judging consists in seeing that the idea I have of one thing belongs to the idea I have of another.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Everything through our sensations and nothing without them, that is our history; and our constant way of elaborating them is to remember as a consequence of feeling, and to will as a consequence of judging.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
For us, to exist is to have perceptions; and to exist relative to us, is to cause us perceptions.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Our idea of a being is never anything but the collection of the perceptions it causes in us, of the qualities we know it to have.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[Our general ideas] have no other support in our mind than the word that represents them.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is [...] well-examined particular facts, and the just judgments we make of them, that are the principle of all truth [...].
1817
Source: Logical Principles
A judgment is therefore never false in itself; it can only be so in relation to others.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is almost impossible that each of us attaches precisely and completely the same meaning [to the same word].
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The cause of all our errors [...] is the perpetual and imperceptible variability of our ideas.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Logic can only consist in the study of our intelligence, since it is the processes of our intelligence that must be examined and judged.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The first concern [of Logic] must be to seek what is the first thing we are sure of, in order to move from that to all those that necessarily derive from it.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We exist only because we feel; we would not exist if we did not feel.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Our existence consists in feeling it in the different modifications it receives.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The first thing we know is our own existence, and we know it indubitably.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
To doubt, or merely to believe one doubts, is to feel, it is to think something; and to think or to feel is to exist.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[Descartes], the first among all men, found the true beginning of all Logic.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
But Descartes, immediately after such a beautiful beginning, went astray because he skipped the intermediate steps.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
I am sure that I feel, and my existence consists in feeling.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
I am more immediately assured of my existence than of that of any other thing whatsoever.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is solely a matter here of observing our sensibility, its acts, that is to say its different modes, which constitute our different ways of existing.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is by no means a question of discovering what being is endowed with this sensibility, nor what is its nature, its beginning, its end, or its ultimate destination.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Our sensibility, like any other object, manifests itself to us only through its effects.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
To trace back to its causes, one must first know it, and to know it, one must study its effects.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Having made thought and extension two substances, [Descartes] was obliged to say that thought, as soon as it is created, always thinks [...].
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is quite certain that we never know anything but our perceptions, and that we never see anything in this world but our own ideas [...].
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
This is the basis of all certainty: and it seems at first that [...] we should be immune to all error.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
All our knowledge consists only in the combinations we make of our first perceptions [...] and it is easy to see that no more is needed for truth to very often escape us.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Classes are only in our heads and not in nature.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
[Nomenclatures] are good as soon as they are able to help our mind in its research, and do not cause it to form false notions.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
There is no room for either doubt or error in simple ideas; and this is a very important thing to note.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The only thing that is uncertain is whether [our] ideas truly conform to the beings of which we believe them to be images [...].
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Everything we feel is always real and certain.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Certainly the memory of a pain is very different from the pain itself.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Properly speaking, we cannot have a real memory of a simple and pure sensation: nor can we truly make it known to another who has not experienced it.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
We should not be surprised by the difference in our reasoning when we are currently animated by a passion [...] and when we reflect on it calmly. In both cases, we are not really operating on the same perceptions.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
There is no other difference between [the mind and the heart] than that of a greater or lesser degree of energy and liveliness; but it is always feeling.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Our pure sensations or simple ideas are absolutely and completely real, certain, and immune to all error, because they consist solely in the infallible feeling we have of them.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Our ideas are subject to error only through the judgments that mix with them; and yet our judgments are in themselves as immune to error as all our other perceptions.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Our judgments are never false except through the imperfection of our memories.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Only individuals exist in nature.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
A relationship is but a view of the mind and not a thing existing in itself.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
It seems to me rigorously proven that many judgments had to be made before a single articulated sign was created.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Alternately, the idea gives birth to the sign, and the sign gives birth to the idea.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Knowledge and languages always advance together; [...] the balance is constantly re-established between the idea and the sign.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Grammar, ideology, and logic are but one and the same thing.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
To think is always to feel something; it is to feel. To think or to feel, for us, is the same thing as to exist.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
It is doubtless that we owe everything we are to the ability to communicate with our fellow beings.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
A ready-made idea is an absolutely non-transmissible thing; to be truly conscious of it, [...] one must necessarily [...] have experienced it.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Each person has only the ideas they have made for themselves, and no one can think for another.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
By the benefit of the communication of ideas, each person finds themselves acting, reflecting, and choosing for all; everything that is discovered becomes a common good, a source of new progress.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[Signs], if we owe them almost all the progress of our intelligence, I believe them also to be the cause of almost all its deviations.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Without realizing it, we each have a different language, which we all change at every moment, and it is with these ever-shifting languages that we think.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
We are almost entirely the products of the circumstances that surround us.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Ideology is a part of zoology.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
In what was believed [...] to be a simple idea, a single perception, there are many distinct parts; and [...] many different intellectual operations were necessary to assemble these parts.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Any given object does not produce a single, unique affection in us; it is a multitude of different impressions [...].
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
It is from the bringing together of all these impressions and the combinations we make of them [...] that the perception or individual idea of an object is formed for us.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Depending on whether [our] idea or perception is more or less detailed, [...] more or less in conformity with the reality of things, the subsequent judgments we make [...] will be very different.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
To carefully examine the subject one wishes to know before passing judgment on it; and to know precisely what one wants to say about it before speaking of it.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The primitive principle of all our knowledge is the consciousness of our own existence, produced by the feeling of our simplest perceptions [...].
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
He had said: I think, therefore I am: he should have said more exactly: I feel, therefore I am.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
If one were to undertake to explain all our knowledge, and to prove it all, one would render it all problematic.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The first truths [...] are propositions so clear that they can be neither proven nor refuted by propositions that are more so.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The noun [...] is always the subject of the proposition; the verb is its attribute; and the other elements [...] are but modifiers of these, which sheds great light on the act of judging.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
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
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
To feel is our entire existence, and to judge is but to discern a circumstance in a prior perception, that is, to feel distinctly a part of what was at first felt confusedly.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Truth is uncovered; all that remains is to grasp it.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Reasons convince, sentiment carries away, illusions daze; time alone and the frequent repetition of the same acts produce the state of calm and ease called habit.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
If any innovator has ever had prompt success, it is because he has only declared [...] opinions that were already simmering in every mind.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
A reasoning is a judgment whose motives are developed; it is, if one may express it so, a judgment in several parts.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
[...] our perceptions are everything to us, and [...] they alone are for us the true real things.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
We can never be mistaken about the perception we currently have; and as our perceptions are everything to us, it would seem [...] that we are completely inaccessible to error.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The cause of all our errors is the infidelity of our memories, just as the basis of all the certainty we are capable of is the invincible truth of our present feeling.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
A judgment is never false in itself and taken in isolation; [...] it is so only in relation to preceding judgments.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
There is nothing contingent: there can be nothing contingent in this world. All that is, is necessarily by virtue of some cause that produces it.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
We call contingent the effects of which we see the cause, without seeing the chain of causes of that cause.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Contingency begins for us [...] at the moment when the possibility of deducing fails us, and makes us feel the need to sense new perceptions.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
It is therefore always only a matter of receiving impressions and seeing what they contain.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
If to calculate is to reason, to reason is not to calculate. [...] Reasoning is the genus; calculation is only the species.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
A general proposition can never be the real cause of the truth of a particular proposition.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
This stone is not heavy because all bodies are, but because it manifests the phenomena of weight.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
To add or subtract is not to unite or separate two beings in general [...]. It is to unite or separate them solely and specifically in relation to quantity.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
We call habit the permanent disposition, the way of being, that arises from frequent repetition: this is the true meaning of the word habit.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The inaccuracy of expressions always arises from the confusion of ideas; this is why languages improve as knowledge becomes clearer.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The more we often repeat the same movement, whatever it may be, the more we execute it with ease and speed.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The easier and faster a movement is, the less it is felt, so that it often ends up [...] being completely unnoticed.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
As long as [our judgments] are difficult and slow, we have a detailed consciousness of them, and as soon as they have been repeated often enough [...], they occur almost without our noticing.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
A frequently experienced sensation becomes less vivid for us [...] the more often it is renewed, the less it draws our attention.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The more often we have had any given perception, the more easily we remember it; but also the less this memory strikes and moves us.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The more a memory is renewed, the more easily it awakens all collateral memories [...]. This is how the association of ideas is established.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The perfection of science would be to see all possible facts arise from a single cause.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
It is a general law of all our movements, that the more they are repeated, the easier and faster they become; and the easier and faster they are, the less perceptible they are.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Reason enlightens but does not lead: [add to this], when decisions contrary to it have become habitual.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[It is important to] make just judgments habitual. This is the whole of moral education, for men as well as for children.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
There is a conflict of judgments [within us], some perceived, others unnoticed, and it is always the most habitual that prevail, often wrongly.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
It is not the marvelous that should revolt us, but the absurd. [...] only what implies contradiction is demonstrably impossible.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
A prodigious number of movements, and [...] an incredible quantity of intellectual operations of which we are not even conscious, are continually taking place within us.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The important thing is not that punishments be very harsh, but that they be inevitable.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
The most useful principle of morality [...] is that every crime is a certain cause of suffering for the one who commits it.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
If [...] out of this fear one goes so far as to maintain that procedures must be so favorable to the accused that many guilty people can escape [...], I say that, out of humanity, one is laying down the cruelest of all principles.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
One cannot think enough about how dangerous uprooted people are.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
The idea of thine and mine inevitably derives from that of you and me; we cannot destroy it. Let us ensure that you and I are neither oppressors nor oppressed.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
Any useless law [...] does not remedy any evil, and creates a new one, by providing a new opportunity to fail [...] in the respect due to public authority.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
All laws that prohibit things innocent in themselves generate a new offense.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
The only way to make someone want something is to make them judge it to be preferable.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
Of all the sciences, morality is always the last to be perfected, always the least advanced, always the one on which opinions must be the most divided.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
Of all the truths we know, those we always know the least well are those that have been taught to us directly [...].
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
Legislators and rulers, these are the true preceptors of the mass of humankind, the only ones whose lessons are effective.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
An exact balance between the revenues and expenditures of the State. As long as it does not exist, no order is possible in society.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
The present time is always [...] the disciple of the preceding time, and [...] we are moved today by the habits [...] acquired under the old social order.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
Arrange favorable circumstances, and what you desire will happen without you seeming to be involved.
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
[...] the progress of the moral sciences never precedes and indeed only follows from afar that of the physical and mathematical sciences [...].
1797-1798
Source: What are the means of establishing morality in a people?
Our entire existence consists in feeling, and we exist only through our sensations, both internal and external.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Everything we feel and perceive is quite certain and very real for us; we are not even susceptible to any other certainty or reality.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
A judgment, therefore, is never false in itself; it can only be so in relation to others.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
For us, there exist only two kinds of evidence: that of feeling and that of deduction.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The rules prescribed for our reasoning guide us only when we have no need of them, and abandon us when needed.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is [...] the well-examined particular facts, and the just judgments we make of them, that are the principle of all truth.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
General maxims are not the true cause of any knowledge.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
As for ideas, [...] I know of no other necessary precaution to take than to form them with care, [and] to examine often whether we are not altering them, and whether they are always the same under the same sign.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The perpetual and imperceptible variability of our ideas is the sufficient cause of all our errors, and [...] there can be no other.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is [...] impossible for the word love, for example, to awaken exactly the same idea in the mind of a child or an old man, of a passionate or timid woman...
1817
Source: Logical Principles
In all sciences, certainty is equally complete when the reasoning is sound; but it is more difficult to make this reasoning sound in some than in others.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
I do not think that the study of Mathematics is more apt than any other to make the mind just.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The study of physical and natural sciences [...] seems to me to be the most suitable of all for forming a good mind.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The study of ourselves is the most important of all for us.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We must always start from the impressions we receive, that is to say, from the facts; examining them with attention so as to see in them nothing but what is there [...].
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The mechanism of all intelligence is quite simple [...]. A single primitive fact is inexplicable; all others are necessary consequences of it.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
If one sees in one's perception only what was contained within it, one is right. If one sees what was not there [...], one has changed perception without realizing it; and this is the cause of all our errors.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The first judgment, the source of all truth: I am sure of what I feel.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Each time one sees in an idea an element one had not yet seen in it, it becomes a new idea.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The actions of an animate being are the necessary signs of its ideas. Its fellows [...] judge what it feels by what it does.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
It is with words that we reason about ideas [...]. What we call reasoning is to make judgments that follow from the first ones.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
To reason well, it is only a matter of knowing the value of words [...] and knowing the ideas that these words represent.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Truth exists for us, and we are capable of reaching it with certainty. [We must know] the means that lead us to it, and the causes that lead us away from it.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
We have been too hasty in drawing up the rules of the art, and necessarily they have been vain or false, because the principles of the science [...] were not sufficiently known.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Every definition is always and only that of the idea one has in mind, and produces the effect of determining the meaning of the word [...] that expresses this idea.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
It is not true that definitions are principles, and that one cannot argue about definitions.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The truly perfect definition of an idea would be the complete description of all its elements [...]. Not only would this be endless, but it is strictly impossible.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
When discussing a question, the first thing to do is to properly understand the ideas being compared [...]. Not only is this the first thing to do, but it is the only one.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
To reason well, one ultimately needs only to consider attentively what one is talking about and to represent it correctly.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Metaphysicians [...] have only led minds astray; if they have used violence to support their decisions, they have been the oppressors and enemies of the human race.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The primary cause of all error is, ultimately, the imperfection of our memories.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
All our knowledge is but judgments made.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
None of our judgments, taken in itself and in isolation, is or can be false.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
To judge is still to feel: it is to feel the relationship between two ideas.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
When two men understand each other perfectly, they are always of the same opinion; and when they argue, it is because, believing they understand each other, they do not really understand each other completely.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
It is not possible to judge wrongly, just as it is not possible to feel wrongly.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
When [our judgments] are flawed, it is always because of their relationship with previous judgments.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The old logic claimed to lead us to truth through the power of the forms of reasoning. [...] The new logic [...] concerns itself only with the substance of reasoning, our ideas.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
If [propositions] are false, it is not in themselves and taken in isolation, but because of their lack of connection with previous true judgments.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
The falsity of our judgments is not due to their nature, but to that of our memories.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
Our judgments would necessarily be correct if our memories were accurate.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
We never see anything in this world but our own perceptions, and [...] all our knowledge consists only in the relationships we discover between them.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
We have no ideas of substances. We know beings only by the impressions they make on us: for us, they consist only in these impressions.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
[Sentient beings] can only differ in the extent of their knowledge by the number and perfection of their means of feeling.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
When [two people] argue, it is because, believing they understand each other, they do not really understand each other completely.
1805
Source: Elements of Ideology/Third part
To advance with certainty in any research, nothing is more useful than to cast a glance back from time to time on the path one has traveled.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The faculty of thinking [...] consists in feeling sensations, memories, relationships, and desires.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[Certain ideas] trouble men so little only because they do not take the trouble to know what they are doing when they think and reason.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Being certain of the formation of our ideas, all that we will say subsequently [...] will rest on a constant and invariable basis, being taken from the very nature of our being.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[Such] variations [in theories] already indicate that there is something arbitrary in these divisions, and that they are not manifestly commanded by the facts.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The truth is that it is better not to forcibly unite under fantastic titles things as different from each other as sensibility, memory, judgment, and will.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Attention is the state of a man who wants to overcome a difficulty; it is a way of being, produced by the energy of the will; it is an effect and not a cause.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Is it not to judge, to feel a relationship between two objects? And is it not to feel a relationship between them, to compare them? [...] Why then separate two inseparable things?
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Reflection being only a certain use we make of our intellectual faculties, it is not itself a particular faculty.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
I persist in thinking that man's thought consists only in feeling sensations, memories, judgments, and desires.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
To feel is a phenomenon of our organization [...] and to think is nothing but to feel.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
All our ideas, all our perceptions are things that we feel, that is, sensations, to which we give different names, according to their different effects.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Such is the consequence of presenting the same idea under one aspect or another, that [...] I firmly believed I had not learned it from Condillac.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
It is quite extraordinary that since the time men have been thinking [...], it should be a new discovery to know that to think is the same as to feel.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
There are only facts to be collected, and these facts take place within us; each one is for himself the richest field of observations [...]. In the end, it all comes down to knowing what one feels.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
I am sure of feeling, and I am certain that I can experience or know nothing except by virtue of this property I have of being susceptible to being affected.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[The will] consists in desiring to experience or to avoid any way of being.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
I cannot conceive in myself [...] a desire without a prior judgment, implicit or explicit, which declares that such an affection is good to seek or to avoid.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
When one judges that a thing is desirable, one does not yet desire it for that reason.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
One is affected differently in judging than in desiring; it is another act of our sensibility.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[...] our languages are poor and ill-suited for everything related to the operations of our mind.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
These operations, having always been poorly untangled, can only be poorly named.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
This act of judging consists in seeing that the idea I have of one thing belongs to the idea I have of another.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The perception called judgment [...] is always the perception that one idea contains another.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
For me to perceive that one idea contains another, I must first have perceived both ideas.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[...] every effect of our sensibility, every act of our thought, every mode of our existence always consists in feeling something.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We can distinguish four modifications [...] in this act of feeling: those of feeling simply, of remembering, of judging, and of willing.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[These distinctions are] so many new facts of which I am just as certain as of the first general fact, I feel; and I am certain of them in the same way; that is, because I feel them.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
When I imagine, I assemble differently ideas that I have already had; [...] but all this by virtue of my perceiving them and making judgments about them.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We therefore never do anything but perceive, judge, and will.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
I continue the examination of my own existence, because it is the only one of which I am directly and immediately certain.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[My own existence] consists in what I feel.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
All these perceptions or ideas that we merely feel, and as a consequence of which we then judge and desire, are very different from one another.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[Ideas] are at first individual and particular. We then extend them to all similar facts [...] they become general and abstract.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The more [ideas] extend to a great multitude, the fewer elements they contain specific to each individual.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
All this has not always [...] been seen very clearly, if the observers had not been preoccupied with prior prejudices.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[...] if we are not possessed by the incurable mania of substituting hypotheses and conjectures for observation [...].
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Fortunately, it is useless today to insist on such dreams, which have filled minds for so long.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
All our ideas are formed easily within us, by the sole operations of feeling and judging.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[Our ideas] are so many compounds [...] of a small number of primitive elements, our simple sensations.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
In the innumerable multitude of ideas, it is impossible for us to discover one that does not originate [...] in our sensations.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is [...] impossible for us to invent a single sensation or a single sense essentially different from those with which we are endowed.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Everything through our sensations and nothing without them, that is our story.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Our constant way [...] is to remember as a consequence of feeling, and to will as a consequence of judging.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
When we see ourselves clearly [...] we can also see clearly what our means of knowing are capable of teaching us.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The more often we have had any given perception, the more easily we recall its memory; but also the less this memory strikes and moves us.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[...] the more a memory is renewed, the more easily it awakens all collateral memories, although they become less striking. This is how the association of ideas is established [...].
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
It is clear that the more often we have made the same judgment, the more easily and quickly we make it, [and] the less it strikes us.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
By its frequency and duration, [a desire] brings into play other sensory organs, which increases the primitive need; or it makes the judgment that its fulfillment is necessary more frequent, which makes the suffering more energetic.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The perfection of science would be to see all possible facts arise from a single cause.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
It is a general law [...] that the more our movements are repeated, the more easy and rapid they become; and the more easy and rapid they are, the less perceptible they are.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Reason enlightens but does not lead: add, when decisions contrary to it have become habitual.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[...] there is a simultaneity and conflict of judgments, some perceived, others unperceived, and it is always the most habitual ones that prevail, often wrongly.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[...] that a thing is incomprehensible is no reason to refuse our assent to it when its existence is proven. We are only justified in denying what is demonstrably impossible [...].
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Beware of poets, and of philosophers who [...] reason from their imagination, and not from facts; they are charming enchanters, but very dangerous seducers.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The much-vaunted golden age is the time of suffering and destitution; and the state of nature is that of stupidity and absolute incapacity.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
We are entirely the works of art, that is to say, of our own labor; and we resemble the man of nature [...] as little today as an oak resembles an acorn.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
The practice of an art can be brought to a very high degree of perfection, although its theory is still completely unknown.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
[...] languages are as necessary for thinking as for speaking, for having ideas as for expressing them.
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
Languages are true instruments of analysis, and algebra is but a language that directs the mind with more certainty than others [...].
1801
Source: Elements of Ideology/First Part
If our will had never acted [...] upon any body, we would never have suspected the existence of bodies.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
That which resists is a real being. For to resist is to be resistant, it is to be, it is to exist.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[Certain] ideas are so general that they muddle all branches of our knowledge as long as they remain vague.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
A sentient being who knew only their own existence [...] could have the idea of duration; it would be sufficient for them to be endowed with memory.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
[A being] who only has the idea of duration would not have the idea of time, which is that of a measured duration.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Our perceptions being fleeting and transitory, their succession in our mind provides no means of dividing their duration [...] into distinct portions, separated in a fixed and precise manner.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We always measure duration by movement. A period of time is always manifested by a movement performed.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
I discover at the same time that this body has extension, and that my movement consists in traversing it; these two ideas are [...] absolutely correlative, and cannot exist one without the other.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Every movement performed is always exactly represented by the quantity of extension traversed, for it is the same fact considered in two ways.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The extension of bodies [...] has an inestimable advantage: it is extremely divisible and invariable. [...] This is what makes it eminently measurable.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
Duration and movement are measured with the utmost precision, thanks to extension.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
This [...] consideration shows us the cause of the different degrees of certainty in the various sciences.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
The more difficult and fleeting the precision of measurements, the easier it is to be mistaken about the values and nuances of the perceptions one seeks to assess.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
We do not immediately sense the forms and figures of bodies [...], but we discover them through successive experiences, or we judge them by analogies.
1817
Source: Logical Principles
It is only by means of signs [...] that we elaborate our primary ideas; without them, most [...] would never be formed, or would immediately vanish.
1817
Source: Logical Principles