Top 100 Comte-sponville Quotes
#1. According to the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville: The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.
Matthieu Ricard
#2. He has to perfection, M. le Comte, the art of living his private life with as much public attention as possible.
Dorothy Dunnett
#3. Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.
Auguste Comte
#4. The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind.
Auguste Comte
#6. Although according to certain philosophers it is quite difficult to distinguish the jester from the melancholic, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy.
Comte De Lautreamont
#10. O Ocean, you remind me somewhat of the bluish marks one sees on the battered backs of cabin boys.
Comte De Lautreamont
#12. The 'law of wills and causes,' formulated by Comte, ... is that when men do not know the natural causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the place of science, and this theory forms a basis for theology.
Andrew Dickson White
#14. I do not accept evil. Man is perfect. The soul does not fall. Progress exists ... Up till now, misfortune has been described in order to inspire terror and pity. I will describe happiness in order to inspire their contraries ... As long as my friends do not die, I will not speak of death.
Comte De Lautreamont
#15. POSITIVISM- A philosophy that denies our knowledge of the Real and affirms our ignorance of the Apparent. Its longest exponent is Comte, its broadest Mill and its thickest Spencer.
Ambrose Bierce
#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. Oh incomprehensible pederasts, I shall not heap insults upon your great degradation; I shall not be the one to pour scorn on your infundibuliform anus. It is enough that the shameful and almost incurable maladies which besiege you should bring with them their unfailing punishments.
Comte De Lautreamont
#18. Neither I nor the four flippers of the sea-bear of the Boreal ocean have been able to solve the riddle of life.
Comte De Lautreamont
#19. The great universal family of men is a utopia worthy of the most mediocre logic.
Comte De Lautreamont
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. I was saying to him only yesterday: 'You are imprudent, M. le Comte; for when you go to Auteuil and take your servants the house is left unprotected.' 'Well,' said he, 'what next?' 'Well, next, someday you will be robbed."
"What did he say?"
"He quietly said: 'What do I care if I am?
Alexandre Dumas
#25. Atheism is a way of humility. It's to think oneself to be an animal, as we are actually and to allow oneself to become human.
Andre Comte-Sponville
#26. To reorganize society without God or King, by the systematic culture of Humanity.
Auguste Comte
#29. As beautiful as the chance encounter of a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table.
Comte De Lautreamont
#30. History has now been for the first time systematically considered, and has been found, like other phenomena, subject to invariable laws.
Auguste Comte
#32. The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.
Auguste Comte
#34. ( ... ) it is grand to contemplate the ruins of cities; but it is grander still to contemplate the ruins of human beings!
Comte De Lautreamont
#38. To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.
Auguste Comte
#39. We say sound things when we do not strive to say to say extraordinary ones.
Comte De Lautreamont
#40. I would not exchange my leisure hours for all the wealth in the world. -Comte De Mirabeau
Michelle Moran
#42. Sleep is a reward for some, a punishment for others. For all, it is a sanction.
Comte De Lautreamont
#43. Necessary, since every moment in our lives is marked by death, like a shadow from another realm, it appear to us like a vanishing point for everything. How can one meditate on live without meditating too on its brevity, its precariousness, its fragility?
Andre Comte-Sponville
#44. Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt ... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.
Comte De Lautreamont
#45. ... the association of two, or more, apparently alien elements on a plane alien to both is the most potent ignition of poetry.
Comte De Lautreamont
#46. Arithmetic! Algebra! Geometry! Grandiose trinity! Luminous triangle! Whoever has not known you is without sense!
Comte De Lautreamont
#47. He who is about to sing the fourth song is either a man or a stone or a tree.
Comte De Lautreamont
#50. Freedom of thought is the only good that is perhaps more precious than peace, for the simple reason that, without it, peace would merely be another name of servitude.
Andre Comte-Sponville
#53. No, what worries me, I readily admit, is everything (that is to say, anything and everything) - everything, that is, except the All, which I find soothing.
Andre Comte-Sponville
#54. 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
#55. 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
#57. If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?
Auguste Comte
#58. In Ireland, there are the same fossils, the same shells and the same sea bodies, as appear in America, and some of them are found in no other part of Europe.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#59. He [man] abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#61. Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#64. All the work of the crystallographers serves only to demonstrate that there is only variety everywhere where they suppose uniformity ... that in nature there is nothing absolute, nothing perfectly regular.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#65. The human mind cannot create anything. It produces nothing until having been fertilized by experience and meditation; its acquisitions are the germs of its production.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#66. Although the works of the Creator may be in themselves all equally perfect, the animal is, as I see it, the most complete work of nature, and man is her masterpiece.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#67. Who is he, the ill-disposed gentleman in pink?" inquire the Comte, when they were out of earshot.
"A creature of no importance," shrugged Philip.
"So I see. Yet he contrives to arouse your anger.?"
"Yes," admitted Philip. "I do not like the color of his coat.
Georgette Heyer
#68. Naturally I drew register a little exaggerated, in order to create something new in the sense of a sublime literature that sings of despair only in order to oppress the reader, and make him desire the good as the remedy.
Comte De Lautreamont
#69. Truly, Buffon was the father of all thought in natural history in the second half of the 18th century.
Ernst W. Mayr
#71. Let us suppose, that the Old and New worlds were formerly but one continent, and that, by a violent earthquake, the ancient Atalantis [sic] of Plato was sunk ... The sea would necessarily rush in from all quarters, and form what is now called the Atlantic ocean.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#72. Laugh, but weep at the same time. If you cannot weep with your eyes, weep with your mouth. If this is still impossible, urinate.
Comte De Lautreamont
#73. She wanders on like a poplar leaf borne upon a whirlwind of unconscious associations, she, her youth, her illusions and her former happiness remembered now through the mists of a ruined mind.
Comte De Lautreamont
#75. Only those works which are well-written will pass to posterity: the amount of knowledge, the uniqueness of the facts, even the novelty of the discoveries are no guarantees of immortality ... These things are exterior to a man but style is the man himself.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#76. Throughout the centuries, man has considered himself beautiful. I rather suppose that man only believes in his own beauty out of pride; that he is not really beautiful and he suspects this himself; for why does he look on the face of his fellow-man with such scorn?
Comte De Lautreamont
#77. Let us investigate more closely this property common to animal and plant, this power of producing its likeness, this chain of successive existences of individuals, which constitutes the real existence of the species.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#78. You'll dine with us, Comte? And you, Anthony?"
"I trespass on your hospitality!" Armand protested.
"Devil a bit, man!" said Rupert. "It's Avon's hospitality you trespass on, and our patience.
Georgette Heyer
#82. The heavens declare the glory of Kepler and Newton.
Auguste Comte
#83. The trouble with you, M. le comte de Sevigny, is that you're too god-damned autocratic. From now on, you will kindly remember that a good military tactician requires the support of a team. We are your team.
Dorothy Dunnett
#85. 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
#86. Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.
Auguste Comte
#87. Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.
Auguste Comte
#92. When I write down my thoughts, they do not escape me. This action makes me remember my strength which I forget at all times. I educate myself proportionately to my captured thought. I aim only to distinguish the contradiction between my mind and nothingness.
Comte De Lautreamont
#93. 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
#94. I set my genius to portray the pleasures of cruelty! These are no fickle, artificial delights, they began with man and with him they will die.
Comte De Lautreamont
#95. It is better to be too honest to be polite than to be too polite to be honest!
Andre Comte-Sponville
#97. Mathematical Analysis is ... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.
Auguste Comte
#99. Ignorance produced genera, and science produced, and will continue to produce, proper names; nor of these shall we be afraid to increase the number, whenever we shall have occasion to denote different species.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte De Buffon
#100. Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.
Auguste Comte
