Auguste Comte Quotes

27 quotes in 394 categories

• In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and…
• 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…
• All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is…
• In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.
• 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.…
• 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…
• To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.
• The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.
• If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?
• Know yourself to improve yourself.
• Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry.... if…
• Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
• Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.
• C'este donc par l'étude des mathématiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on peut se faire une idée juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une…
• 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…
• Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.
• The dead govern the living.
• Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.
• Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.
• The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.

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