“The ends justify the means.”
Machiavelli
The ruler must imitate the lion and the fox “ for the lion can not protect himself from the traps and the fox can not defend himself from the wolves.”
Machiavelli
“human life is solitary,poor, nasty and short” … and the only recourse is for man to agree to absolutely submit to the Leviathan.
Hobbes
Men are “by nature all free and equal and independent and submit to government because they find it convenient to do so.”
Locke
“Nature has placed no boundaries on the perfecting of the human faculties.”
Condorcet
“The riches which men need for their livelihood do not consist of money; they are rather the goods produced by the land.”
Quesnay
“Life is the trade I would teach him; when he leaves me… he will be a man.”
Rousseau
“The aim of this work is to assemble knowledge in order that… our descendents by being better informed, will at the same time become happier and more virtuous.”
Diderot
“When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, there can be no liberty. Again, there is no liberty if the judicial power be not separated from the executive and legislative.”
Montesquieu
“The highest expressions of… reason is the moral law within– the conscience implanted in Man by God.”
Kant
“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, …
Rousseau
“And… we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.”
Rousseau
“Man is born free, yet everywhere he is in chains!”
Rousseau
“Men who are freely competing to seek their own wealth would enrich their society, as if they were being guided by an invisible hand.”
Smith
The “two foundations of knowledge” are “environment and reason, not heredity and faith.”
Locke
“The laws of justice are not unalterable but vary with circumstances and in an emergency might yield entirely to stronger motives of necessity and self-preservation.”
Hume
The idea that Man is really “tabula rasa” and all thought comes from experience.
Locke
“I think… therefore I am!!”
Descartes
In economic terms, government should be laissez faire, or hands off. “Government should act as a silent policeman.”
Smith
“I see a watch.. I conclude that an intelligent being arranged the springs…
Voltaire
This work… will change the general way of thinking
Diderot