Julien Offray de La Mettrie quotes

Man's preeminent advantage is his organism. ...Only through nature do we have any good qualities; to her we owe all that we are. (Julien Offray de La Mettrie)

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

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[T]he, diverse states of the soul are always correlative with those of the body.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[B]efore Descartes, some of the ancients made the essence of matter consist in solid extension. But this opinion, of which all the Cartesians have made much, has at all times been victoriously combated...

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[E]verything is the work of imagination, and... all the faculties of the soul can be correctly reduced to pure imagination...

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

The Christian Scholastics... might have shown that God Himself said that He had "imprinted an active principle in the elements of matter.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

A good prescription is still more profitable than an absolution.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

If one's organism is... the preeminent advantage, and the source of all others, education is the second. The best made brain would be a total loss without it...

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[H]e who has the most imagination should be regarded as having the most intelligence or genius, for all these words are synonymous... (Julien Offray de La Mettrie)

[M]an... whatever the origin of his soul, if it is pure, noble, and lofty, it is a beautiful soul which dignifies the man endowed with it.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[A] brilliant man is his own best company, unless he can find other company of the same sort.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[T]he sciences that are expressed by numbers or by other small signs, are easily learned; and... this facility rather than its demonstrability is what has made the fortune of algebra.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Whatever the virtue may be, from whatever source it may come, it is worthy of esteem... Mind, beauty, wealth, nobility, although the children of chance, all have their own value, as skill, learning and virtue have theirs.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[E]ither everything is illusion, nature as well as revelation, or experience alone can explain faith.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

[I]magination is the soul, since it plays all the roles of the soul. (Julien Offray de La Mettrie)

The ancients, persuaded that there is no body without a moving force, regarded the substance of bodies as composed of two primitive attributes.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Let us... 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.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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?

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

But this opinion is but an hypothesis which he tried to adjust to the light of faith.

Julien Offray de La Mettrie

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Julien Offray de La Mettrie

Julien Offray de La Mettrie - Image

Occupation: Physician
Born: December 12, 1709
Died: November 11, 1751
Quotes count: 42

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