“In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.”

Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.

The dead govern the living.

Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.

The word right should be excluded from political language, as the word cause from the language of philosophy.

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind.

Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.

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.

Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.

Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.

Know yourself to improve yourself.

Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.

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.

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.

Foreknowledge is power.