Deficiency in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom… - Immanuel Kant

The history of nature . . . begins with good, for it is God's work; the history of freedom begins with badness, for it is man's work.

A man abandoned by himself on a desert island would adorn neither his hut nor his person; nor would he seek for flowers, still less would he plant them, in order to adorn himself therewith. It is only in society that it occurs to him to be not merely a man, but a refined man after his kind (the beginning of civilization). For such do we judge him to be who is both inclined and apt to communicate his pleasure to others, and who is not contented with an object if he cannot feel satisfaction in it in common with others. Again, every one expects and requires from every one else this reference to universal communication of pleasure, as it were from an original compact dictated by humanity itself.

Contra esa negligencia o banal modo de pensar que rebusca el principio entre motivaciones y leyes empíricas tampoco cabe promulgar con excesiva frecuencia demasiadas advertencias, porque, para no extenuarse, a la razón humana le gusta reposar sobre tal almohada y, al soñar con simulaciones más melifluas (que sin embargo le hacen estrechar entre sus brazos una nube en vez de abrazar a Juno), suplanta a la moralidad por un híbrido cuyo bastardo parentesco es de muy distinto linaje y que se parece a cuanto uno quiera ver en él, si bien jamás le confundirá con la virtud aquel que haya contemplado una sola vez su verdadero semblante.