“Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.”

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.

Who knows what true loneliness is – not the conventional word but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion.

Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

Sometimes love is nothing more than a sticky web; illusions spun, from clever minds and bitter hearts.

Perhaps its familiarity rendered it temporarily invisible to you.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.

Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false Self. We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves.