Sourced and curated.

The body politic, like the human body, begins to die from its birth, and bears in itself the cause of its destruction.

The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said, "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society.

The Social Contract · 1762

★ 6.4

Political literature

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

Discourse on Inequality · 1755

★ 6.1

Karl Barth

1957

★ 6.1

Personal journal

To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also-He above all-is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.

Henri-Frederic Amiel

1849

★ 6.0

Censorship is crucial for preserving morals but useless for restoring them.

The Social Contract · 1762

★ 5.5

The strongest is never strong enough to be always the master, unless he transforms his strength into right, and obedience into duty.

The Social Contract · 1762

★ 5.5

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

Confessions (Rousseau) · 1781

★ 5.5

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity.

Fanaticism is always a sign of repressed doubt.

Confessions (Rousseau) · 1781

★ 5.5

Lecture

In a burning building...I would save a cat before a Rembrandt.

1935

★ 5.3

Biography

Alberto Giacometti

★ 5.2

Novel

When you love someone you leave every possibility open to them, and in spite of all the memories of the past you are ready to be surprised, again and again-surprised, at how different they are, how various, not a finished image.

Max Frisch

I'm Not Stiller · 1954

★ 5.0

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

Money is the seed of money, and the first guinea is sometimes more difficult to acquire than the second million.

Confessions (Rousseau) · 1789

★ 4.7

Political literature

The public seldom forgive twice.

Discourse on Political Economy · 1755

★ 4.5

Johann Kaspar Lavater

1773

★ 4.5

In the strict sense of the term, a true democracy has never existed, and never will exist.

The Social Contract · 1762

★ 3.9

The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.

Should I live for centuries, the sweet period of my youth would not be reborn, nor effaced from my memory.

The Social Contract · 1762

★ 3.9

Novel · Epistolary novel

The man who has no inner life is a slave to his surroundings.

1761

★ 3.7

Personal journal

Henri-Frederic Amiel

1883

★ 3.6

You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.

1958

★ 3.6

Where love rules, there is no will to power, and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

The Psychology of the Unconscious · 1912

★ 3.5

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.

The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life's morning.

Psychological Types · 1921

★ 3.5

1931

★ 3.5

Every civilized human being, whatever his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche.

1933

★ 3.5

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

1933

★ 3.5

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.

Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, or morphine or idealism.

1944

★ 3.5

1962

★ 3.5

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so.

Technology is the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.

1952

★ 3.5

Novel

Max Frisch

Homo Faber · 1957

★ 3.5

Newspaper

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way - towards a busy street or terminal - before they run out of their burrows.

The Times of London · 1960

★ 3.5

Alain de Botton

2010

★ 3.5

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.

Emile; or, On Education · 1762

★ 2.9

Historical literature

Paul Klee

1920

★ 2.8

The discovery of truth, by slow progressive meditation, is wisdom.

Johann Kaspar Lavater

1787

★ 1.9

Essay

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

A hundred times I have thought: New York is a catastrophe, and fifty times: it is a beautiful catastrophe.

1916

★ 1.9

Historical literature

Le Corbusier

1937

★ 1.9

The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.

1944

★ 1.9

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.