Auguste Comte
To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.Collection: Science
Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.Collection: Science
Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them.Collection: Science
Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.Collection: Knowledge
Know yourself to improve yourself.
The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.
Demography is destiny.
Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?
The dead govern the living.
Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.
The word 'right' should be excluded from political language, as the word 'cause' from the language of philosophy.
Nothing is destroyed until it is replaced.Collection: Atheism
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.Collection: Knowledge
The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.Collection: Order
Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.Collection: Absolutes
Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.Collection: Women
Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.Collection: Childhood
Foreknowledge is power.Collection: Knowledge Is Power
To reorganize society without God or King, by the systematic culture of Humanity.Collection: Kings
To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.Collection: Knows
Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.Collection: Humanity
If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?Collection: Thinking
All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but that which is based on observed facts. This is incontestable, in our present advanced stage; but, if we look back to the primitive stage of human knowledge, we shall see that it must have been otherwise then. If it is true that every theory must be based upon observed facts; it is equally true that facts can not be observed without the guidance of some theory. Without such guidance, our facts would be desultory and fruitless; we could not retain them: for the most part we could not even perceive them.Collection: Real
Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.Collection: Science
The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind.Collection: Mind
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.Collection: Country
All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon's time, that there can be no real knowledge but which is based on observed facts.Collection: Real
The word right should be excluded from political language, as the word cause from the language of philosophy.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: Knowledge
The heavens declare the glory of Kepler and Newton.Collection: Heaven
C'este donc par l'étude des mathématiques, et seulement par elle, que l'on peut se faire une idée juste et approfondie de ce que c'est qu'une science.Collection: Math
In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.Collection: Mean
Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.Collection: Community
Mathematical Analysis is... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.Collection: Analysis
In the final, the positive, state, the mind has given over the vain search after absolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the causes of phenomena, and applies itself to the study of their laws - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts.Collection: Knowledge
Monotheism occupies so large a space in the view of modern minds, that it is scarcely possible to form a just estimate of the preceding phases of the theological philosophy.Collection: Philosophy
Every attempt to employ mathematical methods in the study of chemical questions must be considered profoundly irrational and contrary to the spirit of chemistry.... if mathematical analysis should ever hold a prominent place in chemistry -- an aberration which is happily almost impossible -- it would occasion a rapid and widespread degeneration of that science.Collection: Analysis
The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.Collection: Moving
nd now that man's history has been for the first time systematically considered as a whole, and has been found to be, like all other phenomena, subject to invariable laws, the preparatory labours of modern Science are ended.Collection: Law
After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.Collection: Views