“Not because Socrates said so,… I look upon all men as my compatriots.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Book III, Ch. 9
Essais (1595), Book III
“Not because Socrates said so,… I look upon all men as my compatriots.”
Michel De Montaigne book Essays
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist
Source: Simone Weil : An Anthology (1986), The Self (1947), p. 83
Jack London (1876–1916) American author, journalist, and social activist
What Life Means to Me (1905), in Revolution and Other Essays (Macmillan, 1909)
Montesquieu (1689–1755) French social commentator and political thinker
Si je savais une chose utile à ma nation qui fût ruineuse à une autre, je ne la proposerais pas à mon prince, parce que je suis homme avant d’être Français, parce que je suis nécessairement homme, et que je ne suis Français que par hasard
I.
Pensées et Fragments Inédits de Montesquieu (1899)
Simone de Beauvoir book The Ethics of Ambiguity
Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Context: In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting [C'est dans la connaissance des conditions authentiques de notre vie qu'il nous faut puiser la force de vivre et des raisons d'agir].
Mikhail Bakunin book God and the State
God and the State (1871; publ. 1882)
Context: I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give — such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.
Alexander McCall Smith book 44 Scotland Street
44 Scotland Street, chapter 1.
The 44 Scotland Street series