• Art and Culture

  A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.

  5.0 · 60 votes · 36 reads

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• Government and Politics

  Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

  4.4 · 63 votes · 130 reads

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• Art and Culture

  As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

  4.4 · 8 votes · 21 reads

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• Science and Technology

  Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

  3.9 · 15 votes · 37 reads

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• Thought and Reason

  Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.

  4.6 · 19 votes · 129 reads

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• Art and Culture

  Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

  3.6 · 50 votes · 11 reads

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• Various

  Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

  4.5 · 37 votes · 58 reads

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• Various

  Every man has his moral backside which he refrains from showing unless he has to and keeps covered as long as possible with the trousers of decorum.

  4.8 · 63 votes · 150 reads

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• Virtues

  Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together.

  4.8 · 13 votes · 188 reads

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• Thought and Reason

  First we have to believe, and then we believe.

  3.5 · 8 votes · 158 reads

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• Nature

  Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for

  3.1 · 59 votes · 173 reads

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• Various

  Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out the laws of taste.

  4.8 · 20 votes · 11 reads

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• Virtues

  He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

  4.7 · 57 votes · 66 reads

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• Virtues

  He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

  3.7 · 9 votes · 197 reads

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• Time

  He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

  3.9 · 50 votes · 167 reads

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• Defects

  He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

  4.3 · 18 votes · 168 reads

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• Various

  He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

  3.8 · 28 votes · 24 reads

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• Thought and Reason

  I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up...

  4.7 · 6 votes · 90 reads

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• Thought and Reason

  Ideas too are a life and a world.

  4.9 · 20 votes · 82 reads

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• Virtues

  If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

  4.6 · 45 votes · 174 reads

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• Defects

  If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.

  3.6 · 30 votes · 113 reads

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• Society

  If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

  3.3 · 20 votes · 151 reads

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• Defects

  If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

  3.2 · 29 votes · 30 reads

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• Nature

  If there were only turnips and potatoes in the world, someone would complain that plants grow the wrong way.

  3.4 · 13 votes · 116 reads

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• Thought and Reason

  If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

  4.1 · 17 votes · 112 reads

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• Thought and Reason

  If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

  5.0 · 40 votes · 56 reads

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• Various

  In each of us there is a little of all of us.

  3.6 · 47 votes · 56 reads

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• Art and Culture

  It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

  4.7 · 8 votes · 36 reads

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• Virtues

  It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth into a liar - that I call an achievement.

  4.7 · 34 votes · 1 reads

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• Defects

  Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

  3.6 · 12 votes · 48 reads

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• Various

  Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

  4.0 · 31 votes · 129 reads

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• Thought and Reason

  Man is a gregarious animal and much more so in his mind than in his body. A golden rule; judge men not by their opinions but by what their opinions have made of them.

  4.7 · 5 votes · 104 reads

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• Society

  Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

  3.9 · 11 votes · 173 reads

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• Feelings

  Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

  3.8 · 34 votes · 80 reads

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• Nature

  Many things about our bodies would not seem to us so filthy and obscene if we did not have the idea of nobility in our heads.

  4.8 · 19 votes · 156 reads

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• Art and Culture

  Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.

  4.0 · 35 votes · 137 reads

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• Nature

  Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

  3.8 · 62 votes · 42 reads

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• Art and Culture

  Nowadays three witty turns of phrase and a lie make a writer.

  3.4 · 16 votes · 189 reads

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• Society

  Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

  3.8 · 32 votes · 81 reads

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• Time

  One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, a

  4.9 · 57 votes · 42 reads

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Page 1 of 2 · 72 quotes

What they wrote about

• Literature6 of their quotes
• Education3 of their quotes
• Belief3 of their quotes
• Opinions3 of their quotes
• Religion3 of their quotes
• Philosophy3 of their quotes