Quotes from Claude Adrien Helvetius

There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem, inspire with the same love for justice and virtue which men in general have for riches and honors... But the number of these men is so small that I only mention them in honor of humanity.

Genius is nothing but continued attention.

By annihilating the desires, you annihilate the mind. Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers, which are always repulsed by the anvil.

Truth is a torch which gleams in the fog but does not dispel it.

Truth is the torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.

Pleasure and pain are the only springs of action in man, and always will be.

The man who believes he can do it is probably right.

What makes men happy is liking what they have to do. This is a principle on which society is not founded

All men have an equal disposition for understanding.

Every man without passions has within him no principle of action, nor motive to act.

There is but one man who can believe himself free from envy; and it is he who has never examined his own heart.

Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.

Remorse is nothing more than a foresight of the bodily pain to which some crime has exposed us.

Truth is a torch that gleams through the fog without dispelling it.

We don't call a man mad who believes that he eats God, but we do the one who says he is Jesus Christ.

What makes men happy is liking what they have to do. This is a principle on which society is not founded.

Genius is nothing but continued attention.

There are men whom a happy disposition, a strong desire of glory and esteem, inspire with the same love for justice and virtue which men in general have for riches and honors....But the number of these men is so small that I only mention them in honor of humanity.

To limit the press is to insult a nation to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves.

Education made us what we are.