Julien Offray de La Mettrie Quotes

1709–1751 France

Julien Offray de La Mettrie (November 23, 1709 – November 11, 1751) was a French physician and philosopher, and one of the earliest of the French materialists of the Enlightenment. He is best known for his work L'homme machine (Man a Machine).

France
Academics
Philosophers
Physicians

Random Julien Offray de La Mettrie quote

36 quotes

A good prescription is still more profitable than an absolution.

Write as if thou wert alone in the universe and hadst nothing to fear from the jealousies and prejudices of the people. Otherwise thou wilt miss thy purpose.

Let us not limit the resources of nature; they are infinite, especially when reinforced by great art.

Man a Machine (1747)

The soul follows the progress of the body, as it does the progress of education.

Man a Machine (1747)

If there is a revelation, it can not then contradict nature.

Man a Machine (1747)

It is not enough for a wise man to study nature and truth; he should dare state truth for the benefit of the few who are willing and able to think.

Man a Machine (1747)

In general, the form and the structure of the brains of quadrupeds are almost the same as those of the brain of man...

Man a Machine (1747)

One needs only eyes to see the necessary influence of old age on reason.

Man a Machine (1747)

A geometrician has learned to perform the most difficult demonstrations and calculations, as a monkey has learned to take his little hat off and on...

Man a Machine (1747)

We know in bodies only matter, and we observe the faculty of feeling only in bodies: on what foundation then can we erect an ideal being, disowned by all our knowledge?

The Natural History of the Soul (1745)

I reduce to two the systems of philosophy which deal with man's soul. The first and older system is materialism; the second is spiritualism.

Man a Machine (1747)

The human body is a machine which winds its own springs.

Man a Machine (1747)

There comes up another difficulty which more nearly concerns our vanity: namely, the impossibility of our conceiving this property [the faculty of feeling] as a dependence or attribute of matter.

The Natural History of the Soul (1745)

The mind, like the body, has its contagious diseases and its scurvy. ...[W]e catch everything from those with whom we come in contact; their gestures, their accent, etc.

Man a Machine (1747)

As a violin string or a harpsichord key vibrates and gives forth sound, so the cerebral fibres, struck by waves of sound, are stimulated to render or repeat the words that strike them.

Man a Machine (1747)

Man has been trained in the same way as animals. He has become an author, as they became beasts of burden.

Man a Machine (1747)

What was man before the invention of words and the knowledge of language? An animal..

Man a Machine (1747)

Man's preeminent advantage is his organism. ...Only through nature do we have any good qualities; to her we owe all that we are.

Man a Machine (1747)

Let us then take in our hands the staff of experience... To be blind and to think that one can do without this staff is the worst kind of blindness.

Man a Machine (1747)

The soul is... but an empty word, of which no one has any idea, and which an enlightened man should use only to signify the part in us that thinks...

Man a Machine (1747)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.