28 Quotes by Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte was a French philosopher known for his development of the positivist philosophy. He believed that the scientific method should be applied to the study of society in order to understand and improve it. Comte's work had a significant influence on the development of sociology as a discipline, and he is often considered one of the founders of modern sociology. He also played a key role in the development of the scientific method and his ideas continue to shape our understanding of science and society today. (Bio)
Auguste Comte Quotes
The word 'right' should be excluded from political language, as the word 'cause' from the language of philosophy. (Meaning)
Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation. (Meaning)
Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.
The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.
Know yourself to improve yourself.
To reorganize society without God or King, by the systematic culture of Humanity.
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.
Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.
Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.
Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.
Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.
The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.
The law is this: that each of our leading conceptions-each branch of our knowledge-passes successively through three different theoretical conditions: the Theological, or fictitious: the Metaphysical, or abstract; and the Scientific, or positive.
To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.
Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.
Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.
All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but which is based on observed facts.
Foreknowledge is power.
But now, I, August Comte, have discovered the truth. Therefore, there is no longer any need for freedom of thought or freedom of the press. I want to rule and to organize the whole country.
Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.
The dead govern the living.
Mathematical Analysis is... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.
The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind.
The heavens declare the glory of Kepler and Newton.
The word right should be excluded from political language, as the word cause from the language of philosophy.
Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.
After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.
Monotheism occupies so large a space in the view of modern minds, that it is scarcely possible to form a just estimate of the preceding phases of the theological philosophy.
― Auguste Comte Quotes
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