Marquis De Condorcet Quotes

I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D’Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God. [Letter to Thomas Law, 13 June 1814]

Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.

The truth belongs to those who seek it, not to those who claim to own it.

There does not exist any religious system, or supernatural extravagance, which is not founded on an ignorance of the laws of nature.

[All phenomena] are equally susceptible of being calculated, and all that is necessary, to reduce the whole of nature to laws similar to those which Newton discovered with the aid of the calculus, is to have a sufficient number of observations and a mathematics that is complex enough.

A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet—apparently he had a spare—in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care.

سوف يأتى اليوم الذى تُشرق فيه الشمس على الرجال الأحرار فقط، أولئك الذين لا سيد لهم سوى عقلهم.

It has never yet been supposed, that all the facts of nature, and all the means of acquiring precision in the computation and analysis of those facts, and all the connections of objects with each other, and all the possible combinations of ideas, can be exhausted by the human mind.

In his eulogy, the Marquis de Condorcet observed that whosoever pursues mathematics in the future will be "guided and sustained by the genius of Euler" and asserted , with much justification, that "all mathematicians...are his disciples.

The perfectability of humanity is indefinite.

War tends to make us all students of diplomacy, does it not? There is a story that Napoléon once told the widow of the Marquis de Condorcet that he detested women who meddled in politics. Do you know her reply?’ Sebastian shook his head. ‘She said, “You are right, of course, General. But in a country where one cuts off women’s heads, it is natural that they should wish to know the reason why.

A hundred years after his death, a statue of Lavoisier was erected in Paris and much admired until someone pointed out that it looked nothing like him. Under questioning the sculptor admitted that he had used the head of the mathematician and philosopher the Marquis de Condorcet—apparently he had a spare—in the hope that no one would notice or, having noticed, would care. In the second regard he was correct. The statue of Lavoisier-cum- Condorcet was allowed to remain in place for another half century until the Second World War when, one morning, it was taken away and melted down for scrap.

Has not printing freed the education of the people from all political and religious shackles? It would be vain for any despotism to invade all the schools....The instruction that every man is free to receive from books in silence and solitude can never be completely corrupted. It is enough for there to exist one corner of free earth from which the press can scatter its leaves. How with the multitude of different books, with the innumerable copies of each book, of reprints that can be made available at a moment's notice, how could it be possible to bolt every door, to seal every crevice through which truth aspires to enter?

But if it be true, as every prospect assures us, that the human race shall not again relapse into its ancient barbarity; if every thing ought to assure us against that pusillanimous and corrupt system which condemns man to eternal oscillations between truth and falsehood, liberty and servitude, we must, at the same time, perceive that the light of information is spread over a small part only of our globe; and the number of those who possess real instruction, seems to vanish in the comparison with the mass of men consigned over to ignorance and prejudice. We behold vast countries groaning under slavery, and presenting nations in one place, degraded by the vices of civilization, so corrupt as to impede the progress of man; and in others, still vegetating in the infancy of its early age. We perceive that the exertions of these last ages have done much for the progress of the human mind, but little for the perfection of the human species; much for the glory of man, somewhat for his liberty, but scarcely any thing yet for his happiness. In a few directions, our eyes are struck with a dazzling light; but thick darkness still covers an immense horison.

no matter how you look at the issue, prevention is a fundamentally preferable and more cost-effective way to promote health and longevity. Most people agree that we invest insufficiently in prevention, but they would also surmise that it is difficult to get young, healthy people to avoid behaviors that increase their risk of future illness. Consider smoking, which causes more preventable deaths than any major risk factor (the other big ones being physical inactivity, poor diet, and alcohol abuse). After prolonged legal battles, public health efforts to discourage smoking have managed to halve the percentage of Americans who smoke since the 1950s.19 Yet 20 percent of Americans still smoke, causing 443,000 premature deaths in 2011 at a direct cost of $96 billion per year. Likewise, most Americans know they should be physically active and eat a healthy diet, yet only 20 percent of Americans meet the government’s recommendations for physical activity, and fewer than 20 percent meet government dietary guidelines.20 There are many, diverse reasons we are bad at persuading, nudging, or otherwise encouraging people to use their bodies more as they evolved to be used (more on this later), but one contributing factor could be that we are still following in the footsteps of the marquis de Condorcet, waiting for the next promised breakthrough. Scared of death and hopeful about science, we spend billions of dollars trying to figure out how to regrow diseased organs, hunting for new drugs, and designing artifical body parts to replace the ones we wear out. I am in no way suggesting that we cease investing in these and other areas. Quite the contrary: let’s spend more! But let’s not do so in a way that promotes the pernicious feedback loop of just treating mismatch diseases rather than preventing them. In practical

THE FOUNDING PROPHET of modern antihumanism was Thomas Malthus (1766–1834). For three decades a professor at the British East India Company’s East India College, Malthus was a political economist who famously argued that human reproduction always outruns available resources. This doctrine served to rationalize the starvation of millions caused by his employer’s policy of brutal oppression of the peasants of the Indian subcontinent. The British Empire’s colonial helots, however, were not Malthus’s only targets. Rather, his Essay on the Principle of Population (first published in 1798 and later expanded in numerous further editions) was initially penned as a direct attack on such Enlightenment revolutionaries as William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, who advanced the notion that human liberty, expanding knowledge, and technological progress could ultimately make possible a decent life for all mankind. Malthus prescribed specific policies to keep population down by raising the death rate:

[T]his progress of the physical sciences, which the passions and interest do not interfere to disturb; wherein it is not thought that birth, profession, or appointment have given a right to judge what the individual is not in a situation to understand; this more certain progress cannot be observed, unless enlightened men shall search in the other sciences to bring them continually together. This progress at every step exhibits the model they ought to follow; according to which they may form a judgment of their own efforts, ascertain the false steps they may have taken, preserve themselves from pyrrhonism as well as credulity, and from a blind mistrust or too extensive submission to the authorities even of men of reputation and knowledge.

«ثم يأتي زمان لا تشرق الشمس فيه إلا على الأمم الحرة وحدها، تلك التي لا تعترف بسيد آخر خلاف عقلها، ولن يوجد فيها طغاة أو عبيد، ولا كهنة وتوابعهم الأغبياء المنافون، اللهم إلا في صفحة التاريخ وعلى خشبة المسرح»

Indeed, the thought that we might restrict public policy considerations to a mere economic calculus was already a source of concern two centuries ago. The Marquis de Condorcet, one of the most perceptive writers on commercial capitalism in its early years, anticipated with distaste the prospect that “liberty will be no more, in the eyes of an avid nation, than the necessary condition for the security of financial operations.” The revolutions of the age risked fostering confusion between the freedom to make money . . . and freedom itself.

War tends to make us all students of diplomacy, does it not? There is a story that Napoléon once told the widow of the Marquis de Condorcet that he detested women who meddled in politics. Do you know her reply?’ Sebastian shook his head. ‘She said, “You are right, of course, General. But in a country where one cuts off women’s heads, it is natural that they should wish to know the reason why.

Marie Jean Antoine Nicolas Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794), who thought that the French Revolution was the dividing line between the past and a ‘glorious future’, believed there were three outstanding issues in history – the destruction of inequality between nations, the progress of equality within one and the same nation, and the perfecting of mankind.

Enjoy your own life, without comparing it to that of another.