Claude Adrien Helvetius Quotes

• Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Virtue, Martyr, Preacher

  18 Copy quote

• To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Book, Reading, Liberty

  "A Treatise on Man: His Intellectual Faculties & His Education", Vol. I by Claude Adrien Helvetius, translated by W. Hooper, 1777.

  23 Copy quote

• Education made us what we are.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Made

  'De l'esprit' (1758) 'Discours 3' ch. 30

  22 Copy quote

• Genius is nothing but continued attention.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Motivational, Knowledge, Focus

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• Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Truth, Fog, Torches

  48 Copy quote

• The man who believes he can do it is probably right.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Believe, Men, Belief

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• Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Pain, Spring, Men

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• What makes men happy is liking what they have to do. This is a principle on which society is not founded

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Men, Principles

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• No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Virtue, Reason, Superiors

  "De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties" by Claude Adrien Helvetius, translated by William Mudford, (p. 21), 1807.

  23 Copy quote

• The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Degrees, Genius, Proportion

  Claude Adrien Helvétius (1807). “De l'esprit; or, Essays on the mind. Transl. To Which are now prefixed, a life of the author and prefatory strictures by W. Mudford”, p.24

  19 Copy quote

• By annihilating desires, you annihilate the mind.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Mind, Desire

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• There is but one man who can believe himself free from envy; and it is he who has never examined his own heart.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Believe, Heart, Men

  Claude Adrien Helvétius (1777). “A Treatise on Man, His Intellectual Faculties and His Education: A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius. Translated from the French, with Additional Notes, by W. Hooper, ...”, p.291

  9 Copy quote

• All men have an equal disposition for understanding.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Men, Understanding, Disposition

  "De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties". Book by Claude Adrien Helvétius, p. 286, 1758.

  11 Copy quote

• When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in other respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Hate, Men, Omission

  10 Copy quote

• A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; yet, a man who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Religious, Jesus, Believe

  16 Copy quote

• Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Passion, Men, Principles

  Claude Adrien Helvétius (1777). “A Treatise on Man, His Intellectual Faculties and His Education: A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius. Translated from the French, with Additional Notes, by W. Hooper, ...”, p.43

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• Discipline is, in a manner, nothing else but the art of inspiring the soldiers with greater fear of their officers than of the enemy. This fear has often the effect of courage: but it cannot prevail against the fierce and obstinate valor of people animated by fanaticism, or warm love of their country.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Country, Art, Discipline

  "De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties". Book by Claude Adrien Helvétius, 1758.

  15 Copy quote

• Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Criticism, Hammers, Anvils

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• Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Art, Military, Discipline

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• Envy honors the dead in order to insult the living.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Order, Envy, Honor

  6 Copy quote

• The men of sense, the idols of the shallow, are very inferior to the men of passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, impart to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to great intellectual efforts.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Strong, Passion, Men

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• Must we, under the happy hope of a false tranquility, sacrifice to the people in power the public welfare, and under vain pretence of preserving the peace, abandon the empire to robbers who would plunder it

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Sacrifice, People, Church

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• To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Aversion, Littles, Merit

  Claude Adrien Helvétius (1777). “A Treatise on Man, His Intellectual Faculties and His Education: A Posthumous Work of M. Helvetius. Translated from the French, with Additional Notes, by W. Hooper, ...”, p.366

  10 Copy quote

• Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Truth, Fog, Torches

  17 Copy quote

• Of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested; it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.

  Claude Adrien Helvetius

  Hate, Men, Vices

  6 Copy quote

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