Adam Ferguson quotes

Adam Ferguson was a Scottish philosopher and historian, often regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. His influential works explored the development of civil society and the nature of social progress. He contributed significantly to the Scottish Enlightenment and the study of human social behavior. Here are 13 of his quotes:

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.

Adam Ferguson

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

Adam Ferguson

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.

Adam Ferguson

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.

Adam Ferguson

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

Adam Ferguson

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

Adam Ferguson

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

Adam Ferguson

...if we intend to pursue the history of our species in its further attainments, we may soon enter on subjects which will confine our observation to more narrow limits. The genius of political wisdom and civil arts appears to have chosen his seats in particular tracts of the earth, and to have selected his favourites in particular races of men.

Adam Ferguson

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.

Adam Ferguson

Like the winds that we come we know not whence and blow whither soever they list, the forces of society are derived from an obscure and distant origin. They arise before the date of philosophy, from the instincts, not the speculations of men.

Adam Ferguson

The artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities.

Adam Ferguson