Kindle Notes & Highlights
Here, if anywhere, the problem faces us: what is the role of genius in history, of man versus the mass and the state?
All autobiography, of course, is vanity,
this book is the fountainhead of the Mississippi of introspective self-revelations that watered the literature of the nineteenth century.
If I am not better, at least I am different.
We never feel so great a degree of repugnance in divulging what is really criminal, as what is merely ridiculous.
half the nature poetry since Rousseau is part of his lineage.
There was a God, yes, and life would be meaningless and unbearable without him; but he was not the external, vengeful deity conceived by cruel and fearful men, he was the soul of Nature, and Nature was fundamentally beautiful, and human nature was basically good.
I thought you just, and you are only noble
but nature, which sows the seed of good and evil, has given them a pitiful posterity.
With what simplicity I should have demonstrated that man is by nature good, and that only our institutions have made him bad!
learning without virtue is a snare;
Rousseau had expressed a problem that appears in every advanced society. Are the fruits of technology worth the haste, strains, sights, noises, and smells of an industrialized life? Does enlightenment undermine morality? Is it wise to follow science to mutual destruction, and philosophy to disillusionment with every fortifying hope?
Cheryl liked this
“when men are corrupt it is better for them to be learned than ignorant.”
If it was a mask it was so well and persistently worn that it became part of the man, and changed the face of history.
The constituents of an opera are the poem, the music, and the decoration: the poetry speaks to the spirit, the music to the ear, the painting to the eye. … Greek dramas could be called operas.”
men soon learn to despise laws which they see daily altered; and states, by accustoming themselves to neglect their ancient customs under the pretext of improvement, often introduce greater evils than those they endeavor to remove.
we are tempted to believe that in following the history of civil society we shall be telling that of human sickness.
That accident was the establishment of individual property, from which came economic, political, and social inequality, and most of the evils of modern life.
“the privileged few gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving multitude lack the bare necessaries of life.”
Revolution may be justified, for force may justly overthrow what force has set up and maintained;123 but revolution is not now advisable.
The great crimes were committed by celebrated but ignorant men. That which has made, and will always make, this world a vale of tears is the insatiable cupidity and indomitable pride of men.
“The world,” he said, “is made up of nothing but abuses which none but a madman would try to reform.”
The reply was not beyond cavil, but it was beyond praise.
The basic economic development in eighteenth-century France was the passage of pre-eminent wealth from those who owned land to those who controlled industry, commerce, or finance.
“London is good for the English,” said Garrick, “but Paris is good for everybody.”
So, said these “physiocrats,” let nature (in Greek, physis) rule (kratein); let men invent, manufacture, and trade according to their natural instincts; or, as Gournay is said to have said, laissez faire—“let him do” as he himself thinks best. The famous phrase was already old, for about 1664, when Colbert asked businessman Legendre, “What should we [the government] do to help you?” he answered, “Nous laisser faire—let us do it, let us alone.”
every man knows better than the government what procedure best favors his work; when each is free to follow his interest more goods will be produced, wealth will grow.
He divided society into three classes: a classe productive, of farmers, miners, and fishermen; a classe disponible— persons available for military or administrative offices; and a classe stérile— artisans who work up the products of the earth into useful objects, and tradesmen who bring the products to the consumer.
Adam Smith visited Quesnay in 1765, was attracted by his “modesty and simplicity,” and was confirmed in his own predilection for economic liberty. He judged “the capital error of this system … to lie in its representing the class of artificers, manufacturers, and merchants as altogether barren and unproductive,” but he concluded that “this system, with all its imperfections, is perhaps the nearest approximation to the truth that has yet been published on the subject of political economy.”
Jefferson’s affection for a government that governed least was in part an echo of physiocratic principles.
“I cannot condemn myself to wear a mask throughout my life.”
it would help if a few kings should be killed.
everything evil resolves itself into this subtle and pernicious element, the desire to possess.”
In Morelly’s Code occurs the famous principle that came down to inspire and plague the Russian Revolution: “chacun selon ses facultés, á chacun selon ses besoins”— from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Like Voltaire and Morelly he was a theist without Christianity, but he believed that morality cannot be maintained without a religion of supernatural punishments and rewards, for most persons “are condemned to the permanent infancy of their reason.”
Of what good is political liberty if economic slavery persists?
Real freedom is possessed only by those who are not anxious to be rich.
a book published soon after the Revolution listed Helvétius, Mably, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Franklin, in that order, as the principal inspirers of that event, and the true saints of the new dispensation.”
“les choses, comme elles sont, dureront autant que moi” (things as they are will last through my time).
“if subjects owe obedience to kings, these on their side owe obedience to the laws”;
there is nothing so often condemned, and so deeply loved, as the past.
Louis XV, like Louis XIV, lacked the art of dying in due time.
It is hard to define morality, for each age makes its own definition to suit its temper and sins.
“One is bound to one’s wife, attached to one’s mistress.”2 “Fifteen out of twenty of the noble lords about
better to plumb the depths of unity than be forever scratching the surface of variety.
Economic morality was then as now;
wit without courtesy is crudity;
“without” (said one of them) “the knowledge of bigots and small minds.”
she perceived that the emptiest vessels were the most resonant.
unless a work of art speaks to us it is not art.
