35 Quotes by Claude Adrien Helvetius

The degree of genius necessary to please us is pretty nearly the same proportion that we ourselves have.

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

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

The men of sense, the idols of the shallow, are very inferior to the men of passions. It is the strong passions which, rescuing us from sloth, impart to us that continuous and earnest attention necessary to great intellectual efforts.

Genius is nothing but continued attention.

Discipline is, in a manner, nothing else but the art of inspiring the soldiers with greater fear of their officers than of the enemy. This fear has often the effect of courage: but it cannot prevail against the fierce and obstinate valor of people animated by fanaticism, or warm love of their country.

Education made us what we are.

Must we, under the happy hope of a false tranquility, sacrifice to the people in power the public welfare, and under vain pretence of preserving the peace, abandon the empire to robbers who would plunder it

To be loved, we should merit but little esteem; all superiority attracts awe and aversion.