Auguste Comte

Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

— Auguste Comte

To understand a science, it is necessary to know its history.

— Auguste Comte

To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.

— Auguste Comte

The dead govern the living.

— Auguste Comte

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

— Auguste Comte

Foreknowledge is power.

— Auguste Comte

Reorganisation, irrespectively of God or king, by the worship of Humanity, systematically adopted. Man’s only right is to do his duty. The Intellect should always be the servant of the Heart, and should never be its slave.

— Auguste Comte

The object of all true Philosophy is to frame a system which shall comprehend human life under every aspect, social as well as individual. It embraces, therefore, the three kinds of phenomena of which our life consists, Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions.

— Auguste Comte

The first condition of unity is a subjective principle; and this principle in the Positive system is the subordination of the intellect to the heart: Without this the unity that we seek can never be placed on a permanent basis, whether individually or collectively. It is essential to have some influence sufficiently powerful to produce convergence amid the heterogeneous and often antagonistic tendencies of so complex an organism as ours.

— Auguste Comte

It lays down, as is generally known, that our speculations upon all subjects whatsoever, pass necessarily through three successive stages: a Theological stage, in which free play is given to spontaneous fictions admitting of no proof; the Metaphysical stage, characterized by the prevalence of personified abstractions or entities; lastly, the Positive stage, based upon an exact view of the real facts of the case.

— Auguste Comte

And now I have explained the series of social and intellectual conditions by which the discovery of sociological laws, and consequently the foundation of Positivism, was fixed for the precise date at which I began my philosophical career: that is to say, one generation after the progressive dictatorship of the Convention, and almost immediately after the fall of the retrograde tyranny of Bonaparte.

— Auguste Comte

It was under Catholic Feudalism that they were first united; a union for which their incorporation into the Roman empire had prepared them, and which was finally organized by the incomparable genius of Charlemagne.

— Auguste Comte

There are three successive states of morality answering to the three principal stages of human life; the personal, the domestic, and the social stage.

— Auguste Comte

The principal means of realizing it will be the formation of an alliance between philosophers and the working classes, for which both are alike prepared by the negative and positive progress of the last five centuries. The direct object of their combined action will be to set in motion the force of Public Opinion.

— Auguste Comte

Thus the social position of women is in this respect very similar to that of philosophers and of the working classes. And we now see why these three elements should be united. It is their combined action which constitutes the moral or modifying force of society.

— Auguste Comte

Mathematical Analysis is... the true rational basis of the whole system of our positive knowledge.

— Auguste Comte

Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena. . . . but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation....

— Auguste Comte

Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.

— Auguste Comte

After Montesquieu, the next great addition to Sociology (which is the term I may be allowed to invent to designate Social Physics) was made by Condorcet, proceeding on the views suggested by his illustrious friend Turgot.

— Auguste Comte

Each department of knowledge passes through three stages. The theoretic stage; the theological stage and the metaphysical or abstract stage.

— Auguste Comte