Giambattista Vico quotes

Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher, historian, and rhetorician, renowned for his work in the philosophy of history. His masterpiece, "The New Science," introduced innovative ideas about the cyclical nature of societies and the importance of culture and language. He is considered one of the founders of modern philosophy of history and a precursor to cultural anthropology. Here are 14 of his quotes:

The nature of peoples is first crude, then severe, then benign, then delicate, finally dissolute.

Giambattista Vico

The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.

Giambattista Vico

Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad and waste their substance.

Giambattista Vico

Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire nation, or the entire human race.

Giambattista Vico

The straight line cannot proceed through the torturous twists of life.

Giambattista Vico

Imagination is more robust in proportion as reasoning power is weak.

Giambattista Vico

People first feel things without noticing them, then notice them with inner distress and disturbance, and finally reflect on them with a clear mind.

Giambattista Vico

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

Giambattista Vico

Governments must conform to the nature of the men governed.

Giambattista Vico

Understanding arises through making.

Giambattista Vico

Political Science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and that he who is not pious cannot be truly wise.

Giambattista Vico

The truth itself is made.

Giambattista Vico