African Spir Quotes

The social organization of work is the most complicated and difficult problem that humanity has ever had to solve. It being possible to realize this organization neither by violence, nor by merely external or legal measures, it requires the free participation of all to the common work, and, consequently, to a regeneration of men that brings them to overcome their selfishness and to understand their duty towards themselves and towards the community.

In the actual state of social relationships, the forms of politeness are necessary as a subsitute for benevolence.

En s'adonnant trop exclusivement à la recherche d'un bonheur matériel, de biens éphémères, on méconnaît les vraies réalités dela vie et on laisse s'étioler et se dessécher l'esprit.

La réalisation de la justice est, dans l’état actuel des choses, une question de vie ou de mort pour la société et pour la civilisation elle-même.

To reform society, and with it humanity, there is only one means; to transform the mentality of men, to direct them in a new spirit.

Man is in pursuit of two goals: he is looking for happinesse and, being by essence empty, he is trying to fill his life; the latter reason plays a more considerable role than we ordinarily think. What we take for vainglory, ambition, love of power and riches, is often, indeed, a need to mask this emptiness.

The doctrine expounded by me is the true one, but I am not its author. I have only been, so to speak, the soil in which it has germinated and has developed itself with an extreme slowness in the course of long years. Also there has never been such a disproportion between the man and his work than in my case, and what is the saddest, is that one has to suffer because of the incapacity and the weakness of the other. A man more capable than me, possessing this doctrine, would already have stirred the world.

Si dans un banquet quelqu’un s’avisait d’arracher aux convives les morceaux de la bouche, on serait unanime à trouver le procédé inique et brutal, mais quand par ailleurs la chose se pratique sous une forme moins apparente, on ne s’en montre guère offusqué.

If pity was always equally alive and acting in all individuals and in all circumstances, we could do away with morality. Unfortunately, it is not compassion, but rather it's opposite - selfishness - that acts most strongly in us.

Men generally are too inclined to let themselves be overawed by what is quantitatively great. It is thus that even thoughtful minds let themselves be impressed by the strength of Napoleon, so much so that they see in his person something august or majestic, when in fact he only had selfish ambitions. Half the earth was put to fire and sword to obtain for a man the pleasant sensation of his own absolute power.

Grâce à la connaissance des lois physiques, l’homme a pu au dehors asservir la nature, mais, intérieurement, il en est resté l’esclave.

L’homme poursuit deux buts : il recherche le bonheur et, étant vide par essence, il cherche à remplir sa vie ; ce dernier motif joue un rôle plus considérable qu’on ne le pense d’ordinaire. Ce que l’on prend pour vanité, ambition, amour du pouvoir et des richesses, est souvent, en réalité, le besoin de masquer ce vide.

Nothing that rests on contradictions shall succeed or last in the long run; all that involves a contradiction is fatally destined, sooner or later, to disintegrate and disappear.

If the present civilisation does not acquire some stable moral fondations, its existence will hardly be more assured than that of the civilisations that have preceeded it, and which have fallen.

Men who have sacrificed their well-being, and even their lives, for the cause of truth or the public good, are, from an empirical point of view (which scorns virtue and altruism) regarded as insane or as fools; but, from a moral standpoint, they are heroes who honour humanity.