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Alexander Pope33 quotes
Hope springs eternal in the human breast;
Man never is, but always to be blessed. — Alexander Pope · 1733Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. — Alexander Pope · 1711To err is human, to forgive divine. — Alexander Pope · 1711Woman's at best a contradiction still. — Alexander Pope · 1735A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again. — Alexander Pope · 1711The hungry judges soon the sentence sign,
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine. — Alexander Pope · 1714All 33 quotes →Edmund Burke25 quotes
A state without some means of change is without the means of its own conservation. — Edmund Burke · 1790Make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions. — Edmund Burke · 1790The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion. — Edmund Burke · 1784By hating vices too much, they come to love men too little. — Edmund Burke · 1790Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist. — Edmund Burke · 1777Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. — Edmund Burke · 1796All 25 quotes →Samuel Johnson20 quotes
Every man has a lurking wish to appear considerable in his native place. — Samuel Johnson · 1771I will be conquered; I will not capitulate. — Samuel Johnson · 1784Most schemes of political improvement are very laughable things. — Samuel Johnson · 1769All censure of a man's self is oblique praise. It is in order to shew how much he can spare. — Samuel Johnson · 1778Depend upon it, Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. — Samuel Johnson · 1777So it is in travelling; a man must carry knowledge with him, if he would bring home knowledge. — Samuel Johnson · 1776All 20 quotes →David Hume16 quotes
Of all the animals, with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercis'd more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities, with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means, which she affords to the relieving these necessities. — David Hume · 1739Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. — David Hume · 1748In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty. — David Hume · 1741The heart of man is made to reconcile contradictions. — David Hume · 1741Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. — David Hume · 1739The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. — David Hume · 1776All 16 quotes →John Locke11 quotes
Where-ever Law ends, Tyranny begins. — John Locke · 1690Nature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses. — John Locke · 1690Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. — John Locke · 1690The only way whereby any one divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community. — John Locke · 1690Man being...by nature all free, equal, and independent, no one can be put out of this estate and subjected to the political power of another without his own consent. — John Locke · 1690The great and chief end, therefore, of men's uniting into commonwealths and putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property. — John Locke · 1690All 11 quotes →Adam Smith10 quotes
Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. — Adam Smith · 1759Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. — Adam Smith · 1759Science is the great antidote to the poison of enthusiasm and superstition. — Adam Smith · 1776Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself. — Adam Smith · 1759People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. — Adam Smith · 1776We are delighted to find a person who values us as we value ourselves, and distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, with an attention not unlike that with which we distinguish ourselves. — Adam Smith · 1759All 10 quotes →Blaise Pascal9 quotes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Men blaspheme what they do not know. — Blaise Pascal · 1662All human misfortune comes from this one thing: man's being unable to sit still in a room. — Blaise Pascal · 1662It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Do you wish people to think well of you? Don't say anything. — Blaise Pascal · 1662All 9 quotes →Edward Gibbon9 quotes
Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery. — Edward Gibbon · 1781All that is human must retrograde if it do not advance. — Edward Gibbon · 1789Whenever the offence inspires less horror than the punishment, the rigour of penal law is obliged to give way to the common feelings of mankind. — Edward Gibbon · 1776The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common, quality of human nature. — Edward Gibbon · 1776The abbreviation of time, and the failure of hope, will always tinge with a browner shade the evening of life. — Edward Gibbon · 1794There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations in opposition to their inclination and interest. — Edward Gibbon · 1781All 9 quotes →Robert Burns9 quotes
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men,
Gang aft a-gley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief and pain,
For promis'd joy. — Robert Burns · 1785Nae man can tether time or tide. — Robert Burns · 1791Beauty's of a fading nature,
Has a season, and is gone! — Robert Burns · 1764O Life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I! — Robert Burns · 1786O Life! how pleasant in thy morning,
Young Fancy's rays the hills adorning!
Cold-pausing Caution's lesson scorning,
We frisk away,
Like school-boys at th' expected warning,
To joy and play. — Robert Burns · 1786But to see her, was to love her;
Love but her, and love for ever. — Robert Burns · 1791All 9 quotes →Voltaire8 quotes
If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others? — Voltaire · 1759I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away? — Voltaire · 1759Work keeps at bay three great evils: boredom, vice, and need. — Voltaire · 1759She blushed and so did he. She greeted him in a faltering voice, and he spoke to her without knowing what he was saying. — Voltaire · 1759All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; for, after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunégonde, if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn’t traveled across America on foot, if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios. — Voltaire · 1759Do you believe that men have always massacred each other as they do to-day, that they have always been liars, cheats, traitors, ingrates, brigands, idiots, thieves, scoundrels, gluttons, drunkards, misers, envious, ambitious, bloody-minded, calumniators, debauchees, fanatics, hypocrites, and fools? — Voltaire · 1759All 8 quotes →Oliver Goldsmith7 quotes
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure! — Oliver Goldsmith · 1765Laws grind the poor, and rich men rule the law. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1764Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails,
And honour sinks where commerce long prevails. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1764Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made:
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed, can never be supplied. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1770Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals; love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1768Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam,
His first, best country ever is at home. — Oliver Goldsmith · 1764All 7 quotes →Thomas Hobbes7 quotes
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651Riches, knowledge and honour are but several sorts of power. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651All 7 quotes →Jonathan Swift5 quotes
There’s none so blind as they that won’t see. — Jonathan Swift · 1738Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old. — Jonathan Swift · 1727When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign; that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. — Jonathan Swift · 1711Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own. — Jonathan Swift · 1704The Stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes. — Jonathan Swift · 1711Isaac Newton4 quotes
Moreover, in a system of two bodies mutually acting upon each other, since the differences between their centres and the common centre of gravity of both are reciprocally as the bodies, the relative motions of those bodies, whether of approaching to or of receding from that centre, will be equal junong themselves. Therefore since the changes which happen to motions are equal and directed to contrary parts. — Isaac Newton · 1687This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being... This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont, to be called Lord God παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler. — Isaac Newton · 1713Errors are not in the art, but in the artificers. — Isaac Newton · 1687Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things. — Isaac Newton · 1680Rene Descartes4 quotes
I think, therefore I am. — Rene Descartes · 1637The reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries-in fact like a prepared conversation, in which they reveal only the best of their thoughts. — Rene Descartes · 1637I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea. — Rene Descartes · 1641It is contrary to reason to say that there is a vacuum or space in which there is absolutely nothing. — Rene Descartes · 1644Thomas Gray4 quotes
Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way. — Thomas Gray · 1751Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth
A youth to fortune and to fame unknown.
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own. — Thomas Gray · 1751What female heart can gold despise?
What cat's averse to fish? — Thomas Gray · 1748Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise. — Thomas Gray · 1747William Blackstone4 quotes
All presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously; for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer. — William Blackstone · 1769That the king can do no wrong, is a necessary and fundamental principle of the English constitution. — William Blackstone · 1765The offense of riding or going armed, with dangerous or unusual weapons, is a crime against the public peace, by terrifying the good people of the land. — William Blackstone · 1769In all tyrannical governments, the supreme magistracy, or the right both of making and of enforcing the laws, is vested in one and the same man, or one and the same body of men; and wherever these two powers are united together, there can be no public liberty. — William Blackstone · 1769George Savile, Lord Halifax3 quotes
Men are not hanged for stealing horses, but that horses may not be stolen. — George Savile, Lord Halifax · 1750A known liar should be outlawed in a well-ordered government. — George Savile, Lord Halifax · 1750Wherever a knave is not punished, an honest man is laughed at. — George Savile, Lord Halifax · 1750Immanuel Kant3 quotes
Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. — Immanuel Kant · 1784Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason! This is the motto of the Enlightenment. — Immanuel Kant · 1784Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me. — Immanuel Kant · 1788Denis Diderot2 quotes
And with the guts of the last priest
Let's wring the neck of the last king. — Denis Diderot · 1772There are two sorts of laws, those of absolute equity and universality, and the bizarre ones which owe their autonomy only to blindness or to the force of circumstance. The latter merely cover the man who is breaking them with a passing disgrace, which time then transfers to the judges and the nations, on whom it remains forever. — Denis Diderot · 1805Francis Bacon2 quotes
For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. — Francis Bacon · 1620Why should man be in love with his fetters, though of gold? — Francis Bacon · 1626Jeremy Bentham2 quotes
All punishment is mischief: all punishment in itself is evil. — Jeremy Bentham · 1789I do really take it for an indisputable truth, and a truth that is one of the corner stones of political science—the more strictly we are watched, the better we behave. — Jeremy Bentham · 1797Pierre Beaumarchais2 quotes
With love, you see, even too much is not enough. — Pierre Beaumarchais · 1784Drinking when we are not thirsty and making love all year round madam; that is all there is to distinguish us from other animals. — Pierre Beaumarchais · 1784Baruch Spinoza1 quote
If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677Benjamin Franklin1 quote
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755Claude Adrien Helvetius1 quote
Education makes us what we are. — Claude Adrien Helvetius · 1758David Hartley (the Younger)1 quote
The slave trade is contrary to the laws of God and to the rights of men. — David Hartley (the Younger) · 1776Frances Burney1 quote
O, we all acknowledge our faults, now; 'its the mode of the day: but the acknowledgement passes for current payment; and therefore we never amend them. — Frances Burney · 1796