Auguste Comte Sayings

#1. The dead govern the living.

Auguste Comte

#2. If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?

Auguste Comte

#3. In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.

Auguste Comte

#4. Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation.

Auguste Comte

#5. Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.

Auguste Comte

#6. Mathematical Analysis is ... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.

Auguste Comte

#7. Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them.

Auguste Comte

#8. Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.

Auguste Comte

#9. Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.

Auguste Comte

#10. The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions-each branch of our knowledge-passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious: the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.

Auguste Comte

#11. The heavens declare the glory of Kepler and Newton.

Auguste Comte

#12. Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.

Auguste Comte

#13. To reorganize society without God or King, by the systematic culture of Humanity.

Auguste Comte

#14. Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.

Auguste Comte

#15. After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.

Auguste Comte

#16. Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

Auguste Comte

#17. The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind.

Auguste Comte

#18. Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.

Auguste Comte

#19. Demography is destiny.

Auguste Comte

#20. To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.

Auguste Comte

#21. Know yourself to improve yourself.

Auguste Comte

#22. The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.

Auguste Comte

#23. History has now been for the first time systematically considered, and has been found, like other phenomena, subject to invariable laws.

Auguste Comte

#24. Foreknowledge is power.

Auguste Comte

#25. The word 'right' should be excluded from political language, as the word 'cause' from the language of philosophy.

Auguste Comte

#26. But now, I, August Comte, have discovered the truth. Therefore, there is no longer any need for freedom of thought or freedom of the press. I want to rule and to organize the whole country.

Auguste Comte

#27. Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.

Auguste Comte

#28. Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.

Auguste Comte

#29. Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.

Auguste Comte

#30. The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.

Auguste Comte

#31. A stars rich in europium; of distant galaxies analyzed through the collective light of a hundred billion constituent stars. Astronomical spectroscopy is an almost magical technique. It amazes me still. Auguste Comte picked a particularly unfortunate example.

Carl Sagan

#32. Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

Auguste Comte

#33. Monotheism occupies so large a space in the view of modern minds, that it is scarcely possible to form a just estimate of the preceding phases of the theological philosophy.

Auguste Comte