Top 15 African Spir Quotes

As humanity began with flint tools, and has arrived little by little to the powerful and perfected machines of today, so man, by shaping himself generation after generation, will arrive to a degree of perfection which, up to now, the example was given to us only by rare individuals.

De même que l'humanité a commencé par des outils en silex, et est arrivé peu à peu aux machines si puissantes et perfectionnées d'aujourd'hui, de même l'homme, en se façonnant de génération en génération, arrivera à un degré de perfection dont l'exemple ne nous a été donné, jusqu'à présent, que par de rares individus.

We can, following the example of Kant, consider the moral development and improvement of men, as the supreme goal of human evolution.

To sacrifice the moral to the physical, as is done in these days, is to sacrifice reality for a shadow.

As long as men will not be freed from their errors and delusions, humanity will not be able to progress towards the accomplishment of its true destiny.

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.

Only a moral education based on free inner discipline can bring to bear a salutary action and lead to a true morality.

Morality, to be effective, has to be well-reasoned. To want to repress evil only by coercion, and to obtain morality by a kind of education using constraint, without motivating it from within, is to make an artificial thing, devoid of lasting value.

Up to now, in general, we have mainly stuffed the brains of young people with an indigestible multitude of various notions, without thinking enough about the prime necessity to form their character.

Education has a tremendous power on man. Can't we see to which the astonishing discipline the people of Sparta have submitted for centuries? And this with a view to very petty purposes: purely outer greatness, the military predominace of Sparta. This example proves that men can do most anything they want; therefore it would only be a question of making them will the good.

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.

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.

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.

There is only one thing in the world that is really valuable, it is to do good.

It is from our lack of proper content, from our inner emptiness, that we need occupations and distractions. Otherwise we experience boredom, which is nothing else than the feeling of unease that takes hold of us when our spirit is not asorbed in the mirages of life.