The revolution of 1789 had no other goal than absolute access to the writing of legal statutes and the systematic destruction of customary institutions. It resulted in a state of permanent revolution because the mobility...

relative eternity.” Only then does the legislator’s self-limitation and the independence of the law-bound judge find an anchor. The experiences of the French Revolution showed how an unleashed pouvoir législatif could generate a legislative orgy.

Auguste Comte, in particular, whose social system, as unfolded in his Systeme de Politique Positive, aims at establishing (though by moral more than by legal appliances) a despotism of society over the individual, surpassing anything...

From the study of the development of human intelligence, in all directions, and through all times, the discovery arises of a great fundamental law, to which it is necessarily subject, and which has a solid...

The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.

Both [Quine and Feyerabend] want to revise a version of positivism. Quine started with the Vienna Circle, and Feyerabend with the Copenhagen school of quantum mechanics. Both the Circle and the school have been called...

It is man’s unique privilege, among all other organisms. By pursuing falsehood you will arrive at the truth!

Joy, not sorrow.Laughter, not tears.Life, not death.Love, not blame.

Worshiping the Devil is no more insane than worshiping God…It is precisely at the moment when positivism is at its high-water mark that mysticism stirs into life and the follies of occultism begin.

If you are searching for sacred knowledge and not just a palliative for your fears, then you will train yourself to be a good skeptic.

Positivist man is a curious creature who dwells in the tiny island of light composed of what he finds scientifically “meaningful,” while the whole surrounding area in which ordinary men live from day to day...

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...

But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn’t believe in it?