Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters
Les Oeuvres De Mr. De Maupertuis (1752) vol. iv p. 22; as quoted by Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain, The Principle of Least Action (1913) p. 6.
"A Free Inquiry into the Vulgar Notion of Nature," Sect.1 in The Philosophical Works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (1725) Vol.2 http://books.google.com/books?id=Y-YJAAAAMAAJ
Pierre Louis Maupertuis (1698–1759) French mathematician, philosopher and man of letters
Les Oeuvres De Mr. De Maupertuis (1752) vol. iv p. 22; as quoted by Philip Edward Bertrand Jourdain, The Principle of Least Action (1913) p. 6.
Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America
1770s, A Summary View of the Rights of British America (1774)
“God can only set in motion:
He cannot control the things he has made.”
Tao Yuanming (365–427) Chinese poet
Substance, Shadow, and Spirit, "Spirit expounds"
Translated by Arthur Waley
Thomas Paine book Rights of Man
Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)
Context: There never did, there never will, and there never can, exist a Parliament, or any description of men, or any generation of men, in any country, possessed of the right or the power of binding and controlling posterity to the "end of time," or of commanding for ever how the world shall be governed, or who shall govern it; and therefore all such clauses, acts or declarations by which the makers of them attempt to do what they have neither the right nor the power to do, nor the power to execute, are in themselves null and void. Every age and generation must be as free to act for itself in all cases as the age and generations which preceded it. The vanity and presumption of governing beyond the grave is the most ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. Man has no property in man; neither has any generation a property in the generations which are to follow.
Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher
C’est une grande question parmi eux s’ils [les africains] sont descendus des singes ou si les singes sont venus d’eux. Nos sages ont dit que l’homme est l’image de Dieu: voilà une plaisante image de l’Être éternel qu’un nez noir épaté, avec peu ou point d’intelligence! Un temps viendra, sans doute, où ces animaux sauront bien cultiver la terre, l’embellir par des maisons et par des jardins, et connaître la route des astres il faut du temps pour tout. <br class="br">Les Lettres d'Amabed (1769): Septième Lettre d'Amabed http://www.voltaire-integral.com/Html/21/10AMABED.html <br class="br">Citas
Michael Swanwick book Stations of the Tide
Source: Stations of the Tide (1991), Chapter 6, “Lost in the Mushroom Rain” (p. 105)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (2010), p. 78
Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice
Memoirs of J. Casanova de Seingalt (1894)