“No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment.”

—  Claude Adrien Helvétius

Source: De l'esprit or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties (1758), p. 21

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "No nation has reason to regard itself superior to others by virtue of its innate endowment." by Claude Adrien Helvétius?
Claude Adrien Helvétius photo
Claude Adrien Helvétius 8
French philosopher 1715–1771

Related quotes

Karl Marx photo

“Hegel once observed that comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning. Although Lincoln does not possess the grandiloquence of historical action, as an average man of the people he has its humour.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Comments on the North American Events (1862)

Goldwin Smith photo

“The Jew alone regard his race as superior to humanity, and looks forward not to its ultimate union with other races, but to its triumph over them all and to its final ascendancy under the leadership of a tribal Messiah.”

Goldwin Smith (1823–1910) British historian and journalist

Source: October 1881. See The Nineteenth Century — A monthly review, Volume 10 https://books.google.com.br/books?id=QYEPAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA813, edited by James Knowles, London, 1881.

“A nation shows that it is dying when it ceases to believe in its Mission and its superiority.”

Francis Parker Yockey (1917–1960) American writer

The Enemy of Europe (1953)

“[Even the mechanism can be endowed with an image. Thus] the thermostat has an image of the outside world in the shape of information regarding its temperature. It has also a value system in the sense of the ideal temperature at which it is set. Its behavior is directed towards the receipt of information which will bring its image and its value systems together”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society, 1956, p. 22 as cited in: Robert A. Solo (1994) " Kenneth Ewart Boulding: 1910-1993. An Appreciation http://www.jstor.org/stable/4226892". In: Journal of Economic Issues. Vol. 28, No. 4 (Dec., 1994), pp. 1187-1200

Jane Roberts photo

“Value fulfillment itself is most difficult to describe, for it combines the nature of a loving presence - a presence with the innate knowledge of its own divine complexity - with a creative ability of infinite proportions that seeks to bring to fulfillment even the slightest, most distant portion of its own inverted complexity. Translated into simpler terms, each portion of energy is endowed with an inbuilt reach of creativity that seeks to fulfill its own potentials in all possible variations - and in such a way that such a development also furthers the creative potentials of each other portion of reality.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 884, Page 138
Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One (1986)

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel photo

“Virtue is reason which has become energy.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

Tugend ist zur Energie gewordne Vernunft.
“Selected Ideas (1799-1800)”, Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #23

Ayn Rand photo

“When the common good of a society is regarded as something apart from and superior to the individual good of its members, it means that the good of some men takes precedence over the good of others, with those others consigned to the status of sacrificial animals.”

Ayn Rand book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966)

Lydia Canaan photo

“Art is non-divisive, all inclusive, and universally accessible. It is the primal and sacred heart of the mind, the DNA-deep instinct to express the human soul and to appreciate and delight in the expressions of others. It is the innate Divine Creative Power with which humanity is endowed.”

Lydia Canaan Lebanese singer-songwriter

From Diplomacy and Art http://diplomatartist.com/diplomacy-art/, a contributer article for Diplomat Artist, October 10, 2015

Arthur Schopenhauer photo

“Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received. Of itself it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book The World as Will and Representation

Vol. I, Ch. 10, as translated by R. B. Haldane
Variant translations:
Reason is feminine in nature; it can give only after it has received. Of itself alone, it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation.
As translated by Eric F. J. Payne (1958) Vol. II, p. 50
Reason is feminine in nature: it will give only after it has received.
The World as Will and Representation (1819; 1844; 1859)
Context: Reason is feminine in nature; it can only give after it has received. Of itself it has nothing but the empty forms of its operation. There is no absolutely pure rational knowledge except the four principles to which I have attributed metalogical truth; the principles of identity, contradiction, excluded middle, and sufficient reason of knowledge. For even the rest of logic is not absolutely pure rational knowledge. It presupposes the relations and the combinations of the spheres of concepts. But concepts in general only exist after experience of ideas of perception, and as their whole nature consists in their relation to these, it is clear that they presuppose them.

“Superior people are only those who let it be discovered by others; the need to make it evident forfeits the very virtue they aspire to.”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

Pieces of Eight (1982)

Related topics