Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to humankind is that of science grounded in observation.
The sacred formula of positivism: love as a principle, the order as a foundation, and progress as a goal.
All good intellects have repeated, since Bacon’s time, that there can be no real knowledge but which is based on observed facts.
Woman is the most moral element in all humanity.
But now, I, August Comte, have discovered the truth. Therefore, there is no longer any need for freedom of thought or freedom of the press. I want to rule and to organize the whole country.
Induction for deduction, with a view to construction.
If we do not allow free thinking in chemistry or biology, why should we allow it in morals or politics?
Religion is an illusion of childhood, outgrown under proper education.
The dead govern the living.
Everything is relative; and only that is absolute.
Humanity is always made up of more dead than living.
Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.
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.
To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.
The only real life is the collective life of the race; individual life has no existence except as an abstraction.
Monotheism occupies so large a space in the view of modern minds, that it is scarcely possible to form a just estimate of the preceding phases of the theological philosophy.
History has now been for the first time systematically considered, and has been found, like other phenomena, subject to invariable laws.
In mathematics we find the primitive source of rationality; and to mathematics must the biologists resort for means to carry out their researches.
The heavens declare the glory of Kepler and Newton.
The universe displays no proof of an all-directing mind.
The word right should be excluded from political language, as the word cause from the language of philosophy.