We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service.
~ Auguste Comte

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Ideas govern the world, or throw it into chaos.
~ Auguste Comte

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The certainty of science, and our precision in the knowledge of it, are two very different things, which have been too often confounded.
~ Auguste Comte

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Psychologists, by dint of reading the precepts of Bacon and the discourses of Descartes, have mistaken their own dreams for science.
~ Auguste Comte

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It is only through Mathematics that we can thoroughly understand what true science is.
~ Auguste Comte

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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.
~ Auguste Comte

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Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge.
~ Auguste Comte

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The dead govern the living.
~ Auguste Comte

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In the primitive state of human knowledge there is no regular division of intellectual labour. Every student cultivates all the sciences. As knowledge accrues, the sciences part off; and students devote themselves each to some one branch.
~ Auguste Comte

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There is no inquiry which is not finally reducible to a question of numbers.
~ Auguste Comte

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