Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher and writer. He was a major figure in the Age of Enlightenment and best known as co-founder and contributor to the Encyclopédie, an encyclopedia of the arts and sciences.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Denis Diderot.

“We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.”

“All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone’s feelings.”

“Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.”

“A thing is not proved just because no one has ever questioned it. What has never been gone into impartially has never been properly gone into. Hence skepticism is the first step toward truth. It must be applied generally, because it is the touchstone.”

“There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge… observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.”

“Distance is a great promoter of admiration.”

“You risk just as much in being credulous as in being suspicious.”

“When we know to read our own hearts, we acquire wisdom of the hearts of others.”

“Instinct guides the animal better than the man. In the animal it is pure, in man it is led astray by his reason and intelligence.”

“There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.”

“Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.”

“Genius is present in every age, but the men carrying it within them remain benumbed unless extraordinary events occur to heat up and melt the mass so that it flows forth.”

“It is said that desire is a product of the will, but the converse is in fact true: will is a product of desire.”

“To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.”

“The philosopher forms his principles on an infinity of particular observations. He does not confuse truth with plausibility, he takes for truth what is true, for false what is false, for doubtful what is doubtful, and probable what is probable. The philosophical spirit is thus a spirit of observation and accuracy.”

“In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.”

“Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.”

“As long as the centuries continue to unfold, the number of books will grow continually, and one can predict that a time will come when it will be almost as difficult to learn anything from books as from the direct study of the whole universe. It will be almost as convenient to search for some bit of truth concealed in nature as it will be to find it hidden away in an immense multitude of bound volumes.”

“People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.”

“There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature’s wish.”

“Does not vanity itself cease to be blamable, is it not even ennobled, when it is directed to laudable objects, when it confines itself to prompting us to great and generous actions?”

“Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.”

“All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.”

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Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (October 28th, 1466 – July 12th 1536) was a Dutch Christian humanist, Catholic theologian, educationalist, satirist, and philosopher. He is regarded as one of the most influential thinkers of the Northern Renaissance and a major figure of Dutch and Western culture.

Besides pioneering new Latin and Greek scholarly editions of the New Testament and of the Church Fathers, he also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, The Complaint of Peace, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style and many other titles.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Desiderius Erasmus

“Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know.”

“When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.”

“Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself.”

“The main hope of a nation lies in the proper education of its youth”

“No Man is wise at all Times, or is without his blind Side.”

“Man’s mind is so formed that it is far more susceptible to falsehood than to truth.”

“The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.”

“He who allows oppression shares the crime.”

“Now what else is the whole life of mortals, but a sort of comedy in which the various actors, disguised by various costumes and masks, walk on and play each ones part until the manager walks them off the stage?”

“Your library is your paradise.”

“Prevention is better than cure.”

“Sacred scripture is of course the basic authority for everything; yet I sometimes run across ancient sayings or pagan writings – even the poets – so purely and reverently and admirably expressed that I can’t help believing the author’s hearts were moved by some divine power.  And perhaps the spirit of Christ is more widespread than we understand, and the company of the saints includes many not on our calendar.”

“Many times what cannot be refuted by arguments can be parried by laughter.”

“At last concluded that no creature was more miserable than man, for that all other creatures are content with those bounds that nature set them, only man endeavors to exceed them.”

“The majority of the common people loathe war and pray for peace; only a handful of individuals, whose evil joys depend on general misery, desire war.”

“Before you sleep, read something that is exquisite, and worth remembering.”

“I put up with this church, in the hope that one day it will become better, just as it is constrained to put up with me in the hope that I will become better.”

“You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.”

“There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.”

“I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.”

“There are some whose only reason for inciting war is to use it as a means to exercise their tyranny over their subjects more easily. For in times of peace the authority of the assembly, the dignity of the magistrates, the force of the laws stand in the way to some extent of the ruler doing what he likes. But once war is declared then the whole business of state is subject to the will of a few … They demand as much money as they like. Why say more?”

“What passes out of one’s mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.”

“In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

“There is no joy in possession without sharing.”

“A nail is driven out by another nail. Habit is overcome by habit.”

“Picture the prince, such as most of them are today: a man ignorant of the law, well-nigh an enemy to his people’s advantage, while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom and truth, without a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires.”

“Our determination to imitate Christ should be such that we have no time for other matters.”

“Now I believe I can hear the philosophers protesting that it can only be misery to live in folly, illusion, deception and ignorance, but it isn’t-it’s human.”

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, June 28, 1712 – July 2 1778, was a Swiss-born writer, philosopher, and composer. His philosophy greatly influenced the Age of Enlightenment and French Revolution.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

“There are always four sides to a story: your side, their side, the truth and what really happened.”

“The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.”

“By doing good we become good.”

“What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness?”

“It is hard to prevent oneself from believing what one so keenly desires.”

“Why should we build our happiness on the opinons of others, when we can find it in our own hearts?”

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

“Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like.”

“Trust your heart rather than your head.”

“No one is happy unless he respects himself.”

“Plants are shaped by cultivation and men by education. We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education.”

“Socrates dies with honor, surrounded by his disciples listening to the most tender words -the easiest death that one could wish to die. Jesus dies in pain, dishonor, mockery, the object of universal cursing – the most horrible death that one could fear. At the receipt of the cup of poison, Socrates blesses him who could not give it to him without tears; Jesus, while suffering the sharpest pains, prays for His most bitter enemies. If Socrates lived and died like a philosopher, Jesus lived and died like a god.”

“Do not base your life on the judgments of others; first, because they are as likely to be mistaken as you are, and further, because you cannot know that they are telling you their true thoughts.”

“The only moral lesson which is suited for a child–the most important lesson for every time of life–is this: ‘Never hurt anybody.’”

“All kinds of frankness and honesty are terrible crimes in the eyes of society.”

“Social man lives constantly outside himself.”

“Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity.”

“Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.”

“Do not judge, and you will never be mistaken.”

“Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.”

“Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body; which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.”

“Your first duty is to be humane. Love childhood. Look with friendly eyes on its games, its pleasures, its amiable dispositions. Which of you does not sometimes look back regretfully on the age when laughter was ever on the lips and the heart free of care? Why steal from the little innocents the enjoyment of a time that passes all too quickly?”

“The one thing we do not know is the limit of the knowable.”

“I perceive God everywhere in His works. I sense Him in me; I see Him all around me.”

“The visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence.”

“Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after death.”

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Adam Smith (June 5, 1723 – July 17, 1790) was a Scottish philosopher and economist who is widely considered to be one of the fathers of capitalism and economics. He was also a key figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Adam Smith.

“The first thing you have to know is yourself. A man who knows himself can step outside himself and watch his own reactions like an observer.”

“On the road from the City of Skepticism, I had to pass through the Valley of Ambiguity.”

“Nothing is more graceful than habitual cheerfulness.”

“Never complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.”

“Individual Ambition Serves the Common Good.”

“Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”

“Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.”

“What can be added to the happiness of the man who is in health, who is out of debt, and has a clear conscience?”

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages. Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.”

“Men of the most robust make, observe that in looking upon sore eyes they often feel a very sensible soreness in their own, which proceeds from the same reason; that organ being in the strongest man more delicate, than any other part of the body is in the weakest.”

“To feel much for others and little for ourselves, that to restrain our selfish, and to indulge our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.”

“In ease of body, peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level and the beggar who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.”

“The man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought to be… The natural disposition is always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough.”

“The discipline of colleges and universities is in general contrived, not for the benefit of the students, but for the interest, or more properly speaking, for the ease of the masters. Its object is, in all cases, to maintain the authority of the master, and whether he neglects or performs his duty, to oblige the students in all cases to behave toward him as if he performed it with the greatest diligence and ability.”

“We 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.”

“Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers. They never did and never can carry us beyond our own persons, and it is by the imagination only that we form any conception of what are his sensations…His agonies, when they are thus brought home to ourselves, when we have this adopted and made them our own, begin at last to affect us, and we then tremble and shudder at the thought of what he feels.”

“Resentment seems to have been given us by nature for a defense, and for a defense only! It is the safeguard of justice and the security of innocence.”

“Problems worthy of attacks, prove their worth by hitting back.”

“This is one of those cases in which the imagination is baffled by the facts.”

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Soren Kierkegaard (May 5th, 1813 – November 11th, 1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, social critic, poet, and religious author who many consider to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical works on organized religion, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion.

Below we list some words of wisdom by Soren Kierkegaard.

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

“It is better to try something and fail than to try nothing and succeed. The result may be the same, but you won’t be. We always grow more through defeats than victories.”

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

“People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness.”

“I found I had less and less to say, until finally, I became silent, and began to listen. I discovered in the silence, the voice of God”

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.”

“In a theatre it happened that a fire started off stage. The clown came out to tell the audience. They thought it was a joke and applauded. He told them again, and they became still more hilarious. This is the way, I suppose, that the world will be destroyed-amid the universal hilarity of wits and wags who think it is all a joke.”

“Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air.”

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”

“It’s better to get lost in the passion than to lose the passion”

“Take a chance and you may lose. Take not a chance and you have lost already.”

“Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd (even though he addressed himself to all). He did not want to form a party, an interest group, a mass movement, but wanted to be what he was, the truth, which is related to the single individual. Therefore everyone who will genuinely serve the truth is by that very fact a martyr. To win a crowd is no art; for that only untruth is needed, nonsense, and a little knowledge of human passions. But no witness to the truth dares to get involved with the crowd.”

“It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand.”

“If I could prescribe only one remedy for all the ills of the modern world, I would prescribe silence.”

“The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have.”

“The unhappy person is never present to themself because they always live in the past or the future.”

“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Everyday, I walk myself into a state of well-being & walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. But by sitting still, & the more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Thus if one just keeps on walking, everything will be all right.”

“The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly.”

“Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted?”

“The door to happiness opens outward.”

“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”

“Wherever there is a crowd there is untruth.”

“The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived.”

“The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

“In order to help another effectively, I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, my greater understanding will be of no help to him… instruction begins when you put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it.”

“And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost. He who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look around for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce.”

“It is not the path which is the difficulty; rather, it is the difficulty which is the path.”

“The greatest danger to Christianity is, I contend, not heresies, not heterodoxies, not atheists, not profane secularism – no, but the kind of orthodoxy which is cordial drivel, mediocrity served up sweet. There is nothing that so insidiously displaces the majestic as cordiality.”

“The minority is always stronger than the majority, because the minority is generally formed by those who really have an opinion.”

“People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

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Charles Babbage (December 26, 1791 – October 18 1871) was an English philosopher, inventor, mechanical engineer, and mathematician. He is known for inventing the first mechanical computer and is considered the “father of the computer.”

Below we list some words of wisdom from Charles Babbage.

“If we define a miracle as an effect of which the cause is unknown to us, then we make our ignorance the source of miracles! And the universe itself would be a standing miracle. A miracle might be perhaps defined more exactly as an effect which is not the consequence or effect of any known laws of nature.”

“Miracles may be, for anything we know to the contrary, phenomena of a higher order of God’s laws, superior to, and, under certain conditions, controlling the inferior order known to us as the ordinary laws of nature.”

“There are few circumstances which so strongly distinguish the philosopher, as the calmness with which he can reply to criticisms he may think undeservedly severe.”

“Scientific knowledge scarcely exists amongst the higher classes of society. The discussion in the Houses of Lords or of Commons, which arise on the occurrence of any subjects connected with science, sufficiently prove this fact.”

“Remember that accumulated knowledge, like accumulated capital, increases at compound interest: but it differs from the accumulation of capital in this; that the increase of knowledge produces a more rapid rate of progress, whilst the accumulation of capital leads to a lower rate of interest. Capital thus checks it own accumulation: knowledge thus accelerates its own advance. Each generation, therefore, to deserve comparison with its predecessor, is bound to add much more largely to the common stock than that which it immediately succeeds.”

“The true value of the Christian religion rests, not upon speculative views of the Creator, which must necessarily be different in each individual, according to the extent of the knowledge of the finite being, who employs his own feeble powers in contemplating the infinite: but it rests upon those doctrines of kindness and benevolence which that religion claims and enforces, not merely in favour of man himself but of every creature susceptible of pain or of happiness.”

“The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war.”

“Unless there exist peculiar institutions for the support of such inquirers, or unless the Government directly interfere, the contriver of a thaumatrope may derive profit from his ingenuity, whilst he who unravels the laws of light and vision, on which multitudes of phenomena depend, shall descend unrewarded to the tomb.”

“In mathematical science, more than in all others, it happens that truths which are at one period the most abstract, and apparently the most remote from all useful application, become in the next age the bases of profound physical inquiries, and in the succeeding one, perhaps, by proper simplification and reduction to tables, furnish their ready and daily aid to the artist and the sailor.”

“The first steps in the path of discovery, and the first approximate measures, are those which add most to the existing knowledge of mankind.”

“Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.”

“Whenever a man can get hold of numbers, they are invaluable: if correct, they assist in informing his own mind, but they are still more useful in deluding the minds of others. Numbers are the masters of the weak, but the slaves of the strong.”

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George Berkeley (March 12, 1685 – January 14, 1753) was known as Bishop Berkeley (Bishop of Cloyne of the Anglican Church of Ireland) and was an Anglo-Irish philosopher. His primary achievement was the advancement of a theory he called “immaterialism”, which says material substances are ideas perceived by the mind and cannot exist without being perceived.

Berkeley published his first major work in 1709 called An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision, which says objects of sight are not material objects, but light and color.

Berkeley argued against Isaac Newton’s doctrine of absolute space, time and motion in De Motu (On Motion), which led to the views of Ernst Mach and Albert Einstein. His book The Analyst, a critique of the foundations of calculus, which was influential in the development of mathematics.

Below we list words of wisdom from George Berkeley.

“The same principles which at first view lead to skepticism, pursued to a certain point, bring men back to common sense.”

“Whatever is immediately perceived is an idea: and can any idea exist out of the mind?”

“To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi).” Or, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

“Truth is the cry of all, but the game of few.”

“Few men think, yet all will have opinions.”

“What is mind? No matter. What is matter? Never mind.”

“It is impossible that a man who is false to his friends and neighbours should be true to the public.”

“All the choir of heaven and furniture of earth – in a word, all those bodies which compose the frame of the world – have not any subsistence without a mind.”

“To be is to be perceived”

“We have first raised a dust and then complain we cannot see.”

“A ray of imagination or of wisdom may enlighten the universe, and glow into remotest centuries.”

“The most ingenious men are now agreed, that [universities] are only nurseries of prejudice, corruption, barbarism, and pedantry.”

“Of all men living [priests] are our greatest enemies. If it were possible, they would extinguish the very light of nature, turn the world into a dungeon, and keep mankind for ever in chains and darkness.”

“This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul, or myself. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consists in being perceived.”

“Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old.”

“The world is like a board with holes in it, and the square men have got into the round holes, and the round into the square.”

“Others indeed may talk, and write, and fight about liberty, and make an outward pretense to it but the free-thinker alone is truly free.”

“God is a being of transcendent and unlimited perfections: his nature therefore is incomprehensible to finite spirits.”

“A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, if it produce nothing useful to the world, seldom fails of entertainment to itself.”

“He who says there is no such thing as an honest man, you may be sure is himself a knave.”

“Where the people are well educated, the art of piloting a state is best learned from the writings of Plato.”

“Casting an eye on the education of children, from whence I can make a judgment of my own, I observe they are instructed in religious matters before they can reason about them, and consequently that all such instruction is nothing else but filling the tender mind of a child with prejudices.”

“A man needs no arguments to make him discern and approve what is beautiful: it strikes at first sight, and attracts without a reason. And as this beauty is found in the shape and form of corporeal things, so also is there analogous to it a beauty of another kind, an order, a symmetry, and comeliness in the moral world. And as the eye perceive the one, so the mind doth by a certain interior sense perceive the other, which sense, talent, or faculty, is ever quickest and purest in the noblest minds.”

“That the discovery of this great truth, which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light.”

“That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such or such ends, such or such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connection between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertainty and confusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage himself in the affairs of life than an infant just born.”

“So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken.”

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Herbert Spencer (April 27, 1820 – December 8, 1903) was an English philosopher, biologist, and anthropologist. He coined the phrase “survival of the fittest,” yet his concept of evolution included ethical human progression. In the late 1800s he was one of the most influential European intellectuals and is one of the only philosophers to sell over a million copies of his works during his own lifetime.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Herbert Spencer.

“The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.”

“The defects of the children mirror the defects of the parents.”

“We all decry prejudice, yet are all prejudiced.”

“That feelings of love and hate make rational judgments impossible in public affairs, as in private affairs, we can clearly enough see in others, though not so clearly in ourselves.”

‘The white light of truth, in traversing the many-sided transparent soul of the poet, is refracted into iris-hued poetry.”

“Regarding language as an apparatus of symbols for the conveyance of thought, we may say that, as in a mechanical apparatus, the more simple and the better arranged its parts, the greater will be the effect produced.”

“Love is life’s end, but never ending. Love is life’s wealth, never spent, but ever spending. Love’s life’s reward, rewarded in rewarding.”

“Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.”

“The great aim of education is not knowledge but action.”

“Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.”

“Science is organized knowledge.”

“Only when Genius is married to Science can the highest results be produced.”

“Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.”

“The most important attribute of man as a moral being is the faculty of self-control.”

“No place, no company, no age, no person is temptation-free; let no man boast that he was never tempted, let him not be high-minded, but fear, for he may be surprised in that very instant wherein he boasteth that he was never tempted at all.”

“Marriage: A word which should be pronounced ‘mirage’.”

“Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.”

“What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man — to protect person and property — to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak — in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more.”

“All socialism involves slavery.”

“Feudalism, serfdom, slavery — all tyrannical institutions, are merely the most vigorous kinds of rule, springing out of, and necessary to, a bad state of man. The progress from these is in all cases the same — less government.”

“Reading is seeing by proxy.”

“As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.”

“Mother, when your children are irritable, do not make them more so by scolding and fault-finding, but correct their irritability by good nature and mirthfulness. Irritability comes from errors in food, bad air, too little sleep, a necessity for change of scene and surroundings; from confinement in close rooms, and lack of sunshine.”

“Mental power cannot be got from ill-fed brains.”

“Of all the knowledge, that most worth having is knowledge about health! The first requisite of a good life is to be a healthy person.”

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Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (May 3, 1469 – June 21, 1527) lived during the Renaissance and was a Florentine diplomat, philosopher, historian, and author. He served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic for many years. He is most known for his political treatise The Prince (Il Principe) and he also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry.

Below we list some words of wisdom from Niccolo Machiavelli.

“It is better to act and repent than not to act and regret.”

“The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.”

“I desire to go to Hell and not to Heaven. In the former I shall enjoy the company of popes, kings and princes, while in the latter are only beggars, monks and apostles.”

“Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.”

“A sign of intelligence is an awareness of one’s own ignorance.”

“Always assume incompetence before looking for conspiracy.”

“The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.”

“Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul.”

“Men are of three different capacities: one understands intuitively; another understands so far as it is explained; and a third understands neither of himself nor by explanation. The first is excellent, the second, commendable, and the third, altogether useless.”

“The vulgar crowd always is taken by appearances, and the world consists chiefly of the vulgar.”

“There is no other way to guard yourself against flattery than by making men understand that telling you the truth will not offend you.”

“The lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves.”

“One should never fall in the belief that you can find someone to pick you up.”

“Everyone who wants to know what will happen ought to examine what has happened: everything in this world in any epoch has their replicas in antiquity.”

“Ability and perseverance are the weapons of weakness.”

“Men are so stupid and concerned with their present needs, they will always let themselves be deceived.”

“All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.”

“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”

“Whoever wishes to foresee the future must consult the past; for human events ever resemble those of preceding times. This arises from the fact that they are produced by men who ever have been, and ever shall be, animated by the same passions, and thus they necessarily have the same results.”

“Never was anything great achieved without danger.”

“There is no surer sign of decay in a country than to see the rites of religion held in contempt.”

“Men in general judge more from appearances than from reality. All men have eyes, but few have the gift of penetration.”

“Appear as you may wish to be.”

“There is nothing as likely to succeed as what the enemy believes you cannot attempt.”

“A government which does not trust its citizens to be armed is not itself to be trusted.”

“The end justifies the means.”

Our FREE Spiritual Detox Script can help you get rid of toxic energy and help you make the most of your life. http://spiritualgrowthnow.com/script/

Learn more about spiritual myths, meditation and how to use it to your advantage, and much more with our Direct Your Destiny e-Package: http://spiritualgrowthnow.com/directyourdestiny/

Copyright © 2024 Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo