Claude Adrien Helvetius
Claude Adrien Helvetius
Claude Adrien Helvétius– 26 December 1771) was a French philosopher, freemason and littérateur...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth26 February 1715
CountryFrance
hate men vices
Of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested; it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.
hate men omission
When a miser contents himself with giving nothing, and saving what he has got, and is in other respects guilty of no injustice, he is, perhaps, of all bad men the least injurious to society; the evil he does is properly nothing more than the omission of the good he might do. If, of all the vices, avarice is the most generally detested, it is the effect of an avidity common to all men; it is because men hate those from whom they can expect nothing. The greedy misers rail at sordid misers.
virtue martyr preacher
Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs.
passion motive principal
He who has no passion has no principal or motive to act.
criticism hammers anvils
Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers which are always repulsed by the anvil.
art military discipline
Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.
religious jesus believe
A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; yet, a man who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.
order envy honor
Envy honors the dead in order to insult the living.
passion men principles
Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.
believe men he-man
The man who believes he can do it is probably right.
truth fog gleam
Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.
degrees genius proportion
The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have.
pain spring men
Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be.
believe heart men
There is but one man who can believe himself free from envy; and it is he who has never examined his own heart.