Quotes by Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury

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Of one thing we can be more than convinced - if we have our minds and have not lost our desires and senses - all possible fancies and caprices will work at full capacity, and whether we are in society or alone with ourselves, they they will not disappear or cease to operate. In any situation, they will have a field of action.

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The absence of freedom is responsible for the absence of true morals.

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Pedantry and Pharisaism are millstones able to destroy any book that comes in contact with their weight. The spirit of the pedant does not react, to the demands of the age - the world wants to be instructed, but does not want to be nursed.

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It is hard to imagine that war, the wildest thing imaginable, is the passion of the most heroic souls.

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Whoever proves to be a true friend is also a true man, who does not remain indebted to society.

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He who believes in life after death need not worry too much about the fate of virtue in this world.

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The artist, if he is not without genius, understands the truth and unity of a conception, understands that he will cease to be genuine if he sticks too close to nature and copies it all the time.

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The man who is generous by nature, like true morality, needs no help from religion. In the man who has become moral under the influence of religion there is no more truth, genuine piety, or holiness, than we find kindness and gentleness in a typhus patient kept in chains.

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The stronger the pressure, the sharper the satire. The heavier the bondage, the more imperceptible it is.

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No thoughts will prove correct unless they have been used for a proper orientation of themselves, unless they have acquired a definite form before they are expressed. The hardest thing in the world is to be a valuable thinker and an experienced interlocutor in conversations with yourself without having to criticize yourself harshly every time.

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There is nothing more foolish and misleading than half-measured skepticism. For as long as doubt clings to one side only, so much more does confidence grow on the other side. One side of the stupidity looks sleazy, and the other swells ever higher and deceives all the more.

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Suspicious selfishness and baseness are the eternal companions of fear.

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Everyone, no doubt, seeks happiness, but the question is: do we find it by following the path of nature and yielding to its habitual inclinations, or by suppressing these inclinations and holding it passionately to personal gain, narrow selfishness, or even only to the aspect of protecting life.

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Everything is wonderful, everything deserves to be loved, everything fills with joy and gladness, except man and his existential condition, which seems to be far from perfect.

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Heroism and humanity are almost one and the same. But it is enough for this feeling to go astray, and the hero who loves humanity turns into a fierce disbeliever: the liberator and the guardian turns into the oppressor and destroyer.

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There is no excuse for a bad choice.

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For reason, the only hell is passion. For a false judgment is quickly transformed under the influence of passion.

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If virtue is neither valuable nor respectable in itself, then I do not see what can be respectable in submitting to it merely for the sake of an advantageous business. If the pleasure of doing good is not itself a good and true inclination, then I do not know whether goodness or virtue is generally possible.

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If people can stand talking about their vices, it's already a sign that they're on the way to getting better. The only way to save the sanity of mankind and to maintain the rationality of the world is to give freedom to the sharp mind. Although, a sharp mind will never be free where mockery is forbidden.

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He who deals with characters is not allowed not to know his own - otherwise he cannot know anything. And whoever wants to amuse mankind with something useful like this, must first be sure himself that he has first benefited from it. For in this respect it is quite right to say that wisdom and clemency must begin with ourselves.

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For some - an absurdity, for others - proof.