Everyone may seek his own happiness in the way that
seems good to himself, provided that he infringe not such freedom
of others to strive after a similar end as is consistent with
the freedom of all according to a possible general law. |
The function of the true state is to impose the minimum restrictions and safeguard the maximum liberties of the people, and it never regards the person as a thing. |
The bad thing of war is, that it makes more evil people than it can take away. |
The human heart refuses to believe in a universe without purpose. |
Freedom is independence of the compulsory will of another, and in so far as it tends to exist with the freedom of all according to a universal law, it is the one sole original inborn right belonging to every man in virtue of his humanity. |
Freedom is alone the unoriginated birthright of man; it belongs to him by force of his humanity, and is in dependence on the will and coaction of every other, in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom. |
It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably. |
The enjoyment of power inevitably corrupts the judgment of reason, and perverts its liberty. |
The greatest problem for the human species, the solution of which nature compels him to seek, is that of attaining a civil society which can administer justice universally. |
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. |
War itself requires no special motive but appears to be engrafted on human nature; it passes even for something noble, to which the love of glory impels men quite apart from any selfish urges. Thus among the American savages, just as much as among those of Europe during the age of chivalry, military valor is held to be of great worth in itself, not only during war (which is natural) but in order that there should be war. Often war is waged only in order to show valor; thus an inner dignity is ascribed to war itself, and even some philosophers have praised it as an ennoblement of humanity, forgetting the pronouncement of the Greek who said, "War is an evil inasmuch as it produces more wicked men than it takes away." So much for the measures nature takes to lead the human race, considered as a class of animals, to her own end. |
