| Term | Definition |
|---|
| Machiavelli-Prince | "One cannot honorably give the elite what they want, and one cannot do it without harming others; but this is not true with the populace, for the objectives of the populace are less immoral than those of the elite, for the latter want to oppress, and the former not to be oppressed." |
| Machiavelli-Discourses | "I maintain those who criticize the clashes between the nobility and the populace attack what was, I would argue, the primary factor making for Rome's continuing freedom. They pay more attention to the shouts and cries that rise from such conflicts than to the good effects that derive from them." |
| Machiavelli-Prince | "Because there cannot be good laws where there are not good arms, and where there are good arms there must be good laws, I shall leave out the reasoning on laws and shall speak on arms." |
| Machiavelli-Prince | "My hope is to write a book that will be useful, at least to those who read it intelligently, and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world." |
| Machiavelli-Discourses | "One person alone may be best at drawing up plans, but the institutions he has designed will not survive long if they continue to depend on the decisions of one man. They will do better if many share the responsibilities and if many are concerned to preserve them." |
| Hobbes-Leviathan | But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he, for his part, calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so. |
| Hobbes-Leviathan | The value, or worth of a man, is as of all other things, his price; that is to say, so much as would be given for the use of his power: and therefore is not absolute; but a thing dependant on the need and judgment of another. The public worth of man, which is the value set on him by the commonwealth, is that which men commonly call dignity. |
| Machavelli-Prince | My hope is to write a book that will be useful, at least to those who read it intelligently, and so I thought it sensible to go straight to a discussion of how things are in real life and not waste time with a discussion of an imaginary world. |
| Hobbes-Leviathan | The felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor Summum Bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old moral philosophers. Nor can a man any more live, whose desires are at an end, than he whose senses and imaginations are at a stand. Felicity is a continual progress of the desire, from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. |
| Hobbes-Leviathan | The question 'who is the better man?' has not place in the condition of mere nature, where all men are equal.... If nature therefore have made men equal, then equality is to be acknowledged; or if nature have made men unequal, yet because men that think themselves equal will not enter into conditions of peace but upon equal terms, such equality must be admitted. |
| Hobbes-Leviathan | I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death. And the cause of this, is not always that a man hopes for a more intensive delight, than he has already attained to; or that he cannot be content with a moderate power: but because he cannot assure the power and means to live well, which he hath present, without the acquisition of more. |
| Machavelli-Discources | Indeed, there has not been a single founder of an exceptional constitution for a nation who has not had recourse to divine authority, for otherwise it would have been impossible for him to win acceptance for his proposals. For there are many fine principles that a wise man will acknowledge but that are not sufficiently self-evident to be accepted by ordinary people. So intelligent men who want to overcome this problem turn to God. |
| Rousseau-Discources | "The philosophers who have examined the foundations of society have all felt the necessity of going back to the state of nature, but none of them has reached it." |
| Rousseau-Discources | "The first person who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared by someone who, uprooting the stakes or filling in the ditch, had shouted to his fellow-men: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and the earth to no one." |
| Locke-Two Treaties of Government | "To understand political power right, and derive from it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature; without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man." |
| Rousseau-Discources | "The mother nursed her children at first for her own need; then, habit having endeared them to her, she nourished them afterward for their need. As soon as they had the strength to seek their food, they did not delay in leaving the mother herself; and, as there was practically no other way to find one another gain than not to lose sight of one another, they were soon at a point of not even recognizing one another." |
| Hobbes-Leviathan | "Continual success in obtaining those things which a man from time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquility of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense." |
| Locke-Second treaties of Government | "But the chief matter of property being now not the fruits of the earth, and the beasts that subsist on it, but the earth itself; as that which takes in and carries with it all the rest; I think it is plain, that property in that too is acquired as the former. As much land as a man tills, plants, improves, cultivates, and can use the product of, so much is his property. He by his labour does, as it were, inclose it from the common." |
| Rousseau-Social Contract | "If I considered only force, and the effect that follows form it, I would say; as long as a People is compelled to obey and does obey, it does well; as soon as it can shake off the yoke and does shake it off, it does even better... But the social order is a sacred right, which provides the basis for all the others." |
| Rousseau-Social Contract | "The general will is always upright and always tends to the public utility: but it does not follow from it that the people's deliberations are always equally upright. One always wants one's good, but one does not always see it: one can never corrupt the people, but one can often cause it to be mistaken, and only when it is, does it appear to want what is bad." |
| Mill-On Liberty | "However unwillingly a person who has strong opinion may admit the possibility that his opinion may be false, frequently, and fearlessly discussed, it will be held as a dead dogma, not a living truth." |
| Rousseau-Discources | "Love of oneself is a natural sentiment which inclines every animal to watch over its own preservation, and which, directed in man by reson and modified by pity, produces humanity and virtue. Vanity is only a relative sentiment, artificial and born in society, which inclines each individual to have a greater esteem for himself than for anyone else, inspires in men all the harm they do to one another, and is the true source of honor." |
| Locke-Second treaties of Government | "God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best of life, and convenience. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being." |
| Mill-On Liberty | "That principle is that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others" |
| Rousseau-Social Contract | "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. One believes himself the others' master, and yet is more a slave than they." |
| Mill-On Liberty | He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself employs all his faculties. He mush use observation to see, reasoning and judgement to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision." |
| Mill-On Liberty | "Person of genius, it istrue, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom...I insist thus emphatically on the importance of genius and the necessity of allowing it to unfold itself freely both in thought and in practice, being well aware that no one will deny the position in theory, but knowing also that almost everyone, in reality, is totally indifferent to it." |
| Mill-On Liberty | "It is individuality that we war against: we should think we had done wonders if we had made ourselves all alike, forgetting that the unlikeness of one person to another is generally the first thing which draws the attention of either to the imperfection of his own type and the superiority of another, or the possibility, by combining the advantages of both, of producing something better than either." |
| Rorty-Democracy and Philosophy | We anti-foundationalists, however, regard Enlightenment rationalism as an unfortunate attempt to beat religion at religion's own game – the game of pretending that there is something above and beyond human history that can sit in judgment on that history. |
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