Great Throughts Treasury

"Let us never endure the loss of the greatest of all human blessings, liberty, the beginning and fountain of all happiness!"

"The concepts of morality too are subject to fashion; and he who cannot incline to the ideas in vogue in his century, is misunderstood and decried by his contemporaries."

"A God is thinkable, therefore a God is also actually present."

"We would be able neither to remember nor to reflect nor to compare nor to think, indeed, we would not even be the person who we were a moment ago, if our concepts were divided among many and were not to be encountered somewhere together in their most exact combination"

"Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence."

"Reward and punish no doctrine; hold out no allurement or bribe for the adoption of theological opinions… Suffer no one to be a searcher of hearts and a judge of opinions… to assume the right which the Omniscient has reserved to Himself."

"The laws of wisdom and goodness can't contradict each other."

"The system of our duties rests on a twofold principle: the relation between man and nature, and the relation between creature and Creator. The former is moral philosophy, the latter religion."

"My reluctance to enter into religious controversies has never been the result of fear or weakness, however. I may say that I did not start examining my religion only yesterday. Indeed, early on, I recognized it as a duty to examine my opinions and acts, and if, since my youth, I have dedicated my leisure hours to worldly wisdom and the humanities, it was solely with the intention of preparing myself for this necessary [self-] examination. I could have had no other motives for this. In my situation I could not expect the slightest temporal advantage from such studies. I knew well that I could not prosper in worldly affairs in this way. And as for pleasure? Therefore, as you see, had I lacked a sincere belief in my own religion, the result of my inquiries would have made itself visible in a public act. But because [those inquiries] strengthened me in my fathers' [religion], I was able to continue quietly on my way without having to account for my convictions to the world."

"Whoever helps to bring into existence a being capable of happiness is obliged by the laws of nature to promote its happiness as long as it can't yet provide for its own advancement. This is the natural duty of education."

"The rock-bottom truth is that man will never partake of eternity; for him, eternalness is merely unending temporality."

"Here's one who wants to settle doctrinal differences without recognising a supreme judge. Here's another who goes on talking about an 'independent church', without knowing where it is to be found. Here's yet another who defends 'power' and 'rights' but can't say who should exercise them."

"Only the savage, like an animal, clings to the enjoyment of the •present moment."

"I am, therefore there is a God."

"Revealed religion is one thing, revealed legislation, another."

"Consciousness of myself, combined with complete ignorance of everything that does not fall within my sphere of thinking, is the most telling proof of my substantiality outside God, of my original existence. "

"The state has physical power and uses it when necessary; the power of religion is love and beneficence."

"Both state and church have as their object actions as well as convictions, the former insofar as they are based on the relations between man and nature, the latter insofar as they are based on the relations between nature and God."

"Instead, it appears to be a particular mark of beauty that it is considered with tranquil satisfaction; that it pleases if we also do not possess it and we are still far removed from demanding to possess it."

"Judaism boasts of no exclusive revelation of eternal truths that are indispensable to salvation, of no revealed religion in the sense in which that term is usually understood."

"My religion recognizes no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths."

"The principal axiom in their theory was: Everything can be proved, and everything can be disproved; and in the process, one must profit as much from the folly of others, and from his own superiority, as he can."

"A union of faiths, if it were ever to come about, could have only the most disastrous consequences for reason and freedom of conscience? If the goal of this universal delusion were to be realized, I am afraid man?s barely liberated mind would once again be confined behind bars?Brothers, if you care for true godliness, let us not pretend that conformity exists where diversity is obviously the plan and goal of Providence. Not one among us thinks and feels exactly like his fellowman. Why, then, should we deceive each other with lies? It is sad enough that we are doing this in our daily relations, in conversations that are of no particular importance. But why also in matters which concern our temporal and eternal welfare, our very destiny? Why should we use masks to make ourselves unrecognizable to each other in the most important concerns of life, when God has given each of us his own distinctive face for some good reason?"

"According to the principles of my religion, I should not attempt to convert anyone not born under our law. Some would like to attribute the origin of this spirit of conversion to the Jewish religion, but it is [actually] diametrically opposed to it. All our rabbis are in agreement in teaching that the written and oral laws that make up our revealed religion are binding only on our nation. Upon us, Moses bestowed the law, the inheritance of the tribes of Jacob."

"And yet from time immemorial men have acted in opposition to these self-evident principles, and will probably go on doing so for centuries to come."

"But as soon as freedom dares to move any of the pieces in this systematic structure, ruin immediately threatens on all sides; and it's no longer clear what is going to survive all this."

"But not all prejudices are equally harmful, and therefore all the prejudices which we think we perceive among our fellow men ought not to be treated in the same way. A few of them are directly contrary to the happiness of the human race."

"But under all circumstances and conditions the infallible measure of the quality of a form of government is the degree to which it achieves its purposes by Sitten and ways of thinking?i.e. the extent to which it governs by educating. In other words, in the extent to which the citizen is enabled to take in?úto 'get the picture'ú?"

"But you won't be surprised that to me the difference of name doesn't matter. 'Church' is my name for any public institution for the shaping men in their relations with God; and 'state' is my name for any public institution for the shaping men in their relations with one another. By the 'shaping' of men I mean the effort to steer both ?actions and ?thoughts in such a way that they make for human happiness?the effort to ?govern men and to ?educate them."

"Finally, we are to inform him honestly about the misery, oppression, and contempt in which the nation currently lives, in order to dissuade him from taking a hasty step that he might later regret."

"However, I hope you will free me from this unpleasant step and rather let me return to my natural peaceful situation. Were you to put yourself in my place and see the circumstances from my point of view rather than your own, you would grant the justice of my inclination. I would not willingly be tempted to overstep the limits that I have imposed upon myself with all due deliberation."

"I am not merely what I distinctly know of myself or, what amounts to the same, there is more to my existence than I might consciously observe of myself; and even what I know of myself is in and for itself capable of far greater development, greater distinctness, and greater completeness than I am able to give it."

"I fear that, in the end, the famous debate among materialists, idealists, and dualists amounts to a merely verbal dispute that is more a matter for the linguist than for the speculative philosopher."

"If in the state of nature I have decided to whom, when, and how much I want to give up of what belongs to me; if I have sufficiently declared this free decision of mine, and my neighbour for whose benefit this declaration was made has received the property; the property stops being ?mine and becomes ?his."

"I will not deny that I have perceived in my religion human additions and abuses which, unfortunately, do too much to dim its luster. What friend of truth can boast that his religion is free from all damaging human embellishments? All of us who seek Truth recognize the lethal breath of hypocrisy and superstition and wish we could expunge it without doing harm to the true and the good."

"In a good many textbooks of so-called ecclesiastical law there are solemn inquiries relating to Jews, outrightly defiant heretics and ?úmerely muddledú wrong-believers, the question being. . ."

"In his current [unconverted] state he need only observe the Noahide laws to achieve eternal bliss, but as soon as he accepts the religion of the Israelites, he would voluntarily submit to all the strict laws of the faith and have to obey them or expect the punishments that the lawgiver proscribed for their violation."

"In the state of nature, before any contract had been enacted among men, there was common ownership of goods produced by nature; but only of ones produced solely by nature without any input from man's efforts and care; so the common ownership did not extend to the three classes of natural property that I have listed."

"It's true that even in the state of nature parents are externally obliged to do certain things for their children; and you might see this as a positive duty that can be enforced under the eternal laws of wisdom and goodness, without any contract coming into it."

"Locke, who lived during the same period of deep confusion, tried to protect the freedom of conscience in a different way. In his Letter on Toleration he works from the basic definition: A state is a society of men who unite for the purpose of collectively promoting their temporal [see Glossary] welfare. From this it naturally follows that the state shouldn't concern itself at all with the citizens' beliefs regarding their eternal happiness, and should tolerate everyone who conducts himself well as a citizen?i.e. doesn't interfere with the temporal happiness of his fellow-citizens."

"Not so fast! I hope an emperor who is as just as he is wise will also listen to the counterarguments, and not permit the system of freedom to be misused to inflict oppression and violence."

"Now since both partners still professed the Jewish religion, at least outwardly, when they entered into the contract, it's obvious that they intended to manage their household according to Jewish rules of life and to bring up their children according to Jewish principles. . . ."

"On the other hand, it is , in the strictest sense, neither in keeping with the truth nor advantageous to man's welfare to mark the temporal off so sharply from the eternal. The rock-bottom truth is that man will never partake of eternity; for him, eternalness is merely unending temporality."

"Our rabbis are so far removed from all desire to convert others that they even enjoin us to offer serious counter-arguments to dissuade anyone who presents himself [for conversion] on his own accord. We are supposed to give him pause because the step, though voluntary, entails a very arduous burden."

"Our welfare in this life is ? one and the same as [our] eternal felicity in the future."

"Power, genius, virtue have their unextended immensity that likewise arouses a spine-tingling sentiment but has the advantage of not ending, through tedious uniformity, in satiation and even disgust, as generally happens in the case of the extended immensity."

"Sir, think this work sufficient to convert someone who, according to his principles, must take an opposite position. You cannot possibly have put yourself in the position of a person who does not bring his convictions with him but is supposed rather to seek to form them from this book. But if you have, indeed, done this and still believe, as you have given me to understand, that Socrates himself would have to find Mr. Bonnet's arguments irrefutable, then one of us is certainly a remarkable example of the power that prejudices and education can exert over even those who seek the Truth with upright hearts."

"So the state can compel actions beneficial to the public; it can reward and punish, distribute offices and honors, disgrace and banishment, in order to get men to act in ways whose intrinsic value doesn't have a strong enough effect on their minds. That is why the social contract could and had to grant to the state the most perfect right to do this as well as the ability to do it. So the state is a moral person [see Glossary] that has its own goods and prerogatives, which it can dispose of as it pleases."

"Socrates didn't care to visit the theater, as a rule, except when the plays of Euripides (which some think, he himself had helped to compose), were performed."

"Socrates' fame spread all over Greece, and the most respected and educated men from all around came to him, in order to enjoy his friendly company and instruction."