Julien Offray de La Mettrie Quotes

[I]f we demonstrate this moving principle, if we show that matter, far from being as indifferent as it is supposed to be, to movement and to rest, ought to be regarded as an active, as well as a passive substance, what resource can be left to those who have made its essence consist in extension?

A mere nothing, a tiny fibre, something that could never be found by the most delicate anatomy, would have made of Erasmus and Fontenelle two idiots, and Fontenelle himself speaks of this very fact in one of his best dialogues.

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

It is not enough for a wise man to study nature and truth; he should dare state truth for the benefit of the few who are willing and able to think.

In general, the form and the structure of the brains of quadrupeds are almost the same as those of the brain of man...

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.

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

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.

I reduce to two the systems of philosophy which deal with man's soul. The first and older system is materialism; the second is spiritualism.

[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.

Man's preeminent advantage is his organism. ...Only through nature do we have any good qualities; to her we owe all that we are.

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

Let us not limit the resources of nature; they are infinite, especially when reinforced by great art.

The soul is... but an empty word, of which no one has any idea, and which an enlightened man should use only to signify the part in us that thinks...

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...