38 quotes
The realization of justice is, in the actual state of things, a matter of life or death for society and for civilisation itself.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
There is only one thing in the world that is really valuable, it is to do good.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
We can, following the example of Kant, consider the moral development and improvement of men, as the supreme goal of human evolution.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
To spend for destruction ten times more than for instruction, such is the fashion in our time; and men seriously regard themselves as rational beings!
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
It is not on the ruins of liberty that we may in the future build justice.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
To reform society, and with it humanity, there is only one means; to transform the mentality of men, to direct them in a new spirit.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
To sacrifice the moral to the physical, as is done in these days, is to sacrifice reality for a shadow.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
In the actual state of social relationships, the forms of politeness are necessary as a substitute for benevolence.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
Only a moral education based on free inner discipline can bring to bear a salutary action and lead to a true morality.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
The most sacred duty, the supreme and urgent work, is to deliver humanity from the malediction of Cain - fratricidal war.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
The well understood equity as well as interest of society demand that we work much more to prevent crimes and offenses than to punish them.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
Nothing depicts better the poverty of human nature than to see men, placed as the leaders of nations, be preoccupied only with their own prestige and their own personal interest.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
The intellectual development of man, far from having gotten men away from war, has rather, on the contrary, brought them to a more perfected refinement in the art of killing.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
As long as men will not be freed from their errors and delusions, humanity will not be able to progress towards the accomplishment of its true destiny.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
Nothing that rests on contradictions shall succeed or last in the long run; all that involves a contradiction is fatally destined, sooner or later, to disintegrate and disappear.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
Up to now, in general, we have mainly stuffed the brains of young people with an indigestible multitude of various notions, without thinking enough about the prime necessity to form their character.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
Place a spider on top of a mountain and it will only try to catch flies; alas, they are many who, in the figurative meaning, have spider's eyes.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
If the present civilisation does not acquire some stable moral fondations, its existence will hardly be more assured than that of the civilisations that have preceeded it, and which have fallen.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
In reality, there is no contradiction between science and religion, whose domains are distinct, and which, far from fighting and persecuting each other, must, on the contrary, complement each other.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)
Thanks to the knowledge of physical laws, man has been able to enslave nature on the outside, but on the inside, he has remained its slave.
Words of a Sage: Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937)