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Quotes from An Essay on the History of Civil Society — Adam Ferguson

1723–1816 Scotland

← All quotes by Adam Ferguson

9 quotes

Man, in his animal capacity, is qualified to subsist in every climate.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

The history of mankind is confined within a limited period, and from every quarter brings an intimation that human affairs have had a beginning.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

Men are to be estimated, not from what they know, but from what they are able to perform.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed or quarrelled, in troops and companies.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of a few must depress the many.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

Love is an affection which carries the attention of the mind beyond itself, and is the sense of a relation to some fellow creature as to its object.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

We are fond of distinctions; we place ourselves in opposition, and quarrel under the denominations of faction and party, without any material subject of controversy.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

The attainments of the parent do not descend in the blood of his children, nor is the progress of man to be considered as a physical mutation of the species.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.

An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Adam Ferguson (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.