Gabriel Tarde > Quotes

“To exist is to differ; difference is, in a sense, the truly substantial side of things; it is at once their ownmost possession and that which they hold most in common. This must be our starting point, and we must refrain from further explaining this principle, since all things come back to it—including identity, which is more usually, but mistakenly, taken as the point of departure.”
― Gabriel Tarde, Monadology and Sociology

“Forgetfulness is the beginning of happiness as fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
― Gabriel de Tarde, Underground Man (Classics of Science Fiction)

“The pursuit of the impossible through the useless.”
― Gabriel Tarde

“Is it necessary to recall that the earth is not infinite, and that our civilization is close to having invaded all of it?

The end of the world, this great terror of the Middle Ages, is destined to become a source of anguish again in another sense. It is no longer in time but in space that this terrestrial globe reveals itself as inextensible; and the deluge of civilized humanity already hurls itself at its limits, at its new Pillars of Hercules, these ones insurmountable. What are we going to do when soon we will no longer be able to count on external markets, Asian, African, to serve as a palliative or derivative for our discords, as outlets for our merchandise, for our instincts of cruelty, of pillage and of prey, for our criminality as well as for our overflowing birthrate? How will we manage to reestablish among ourselves a relative peace which has had as its condition for so long our conquering projection outside ourselves, far from ourselves?"

-1902”
― Gabriel Tarde, Psychologie Économique, Vol. 1 (Classic Reprint)

“A Universidade que temos perdeu a noção da confluência e da atenção de antigamente, nos seus anfiteatros hoje vazios a mais de metade. A maior parte dos que há algum tempo teriam acorrido avidamente ao discurso de um orador diz agora: 'Depois leio-o no jornal...'. É assim que, a pouco e pouco, os públicos crescem, ao passo que as multidões diminuem e que diminui também a sua importância.”
― Gabriel Tarde, A Opinião e as Massas

“A paixão pela atualidade progride com a sociabilidade”
― Gabriel Tarde, A Opinião e as Massas

“Instead of explaining everything by the supposed supremacy of a law of evolution, which compels collective phenomena to reproduce and repeat themselves indefinitely in a certain order,—instead of thus explaining lesser facts by greater, and the part by the whole,—I explain collective resemblances of the whole by the massing together of minute elementary acts—the greater by the lesser and the whole by the part.”
― G. Tarde, Social Laws - An Outline of Sociology

“The ideal end towards which humanity moves, without yet having a precise awareness of it, is, on the one hand, to compose, using the best of all of the planet’s flora and fauna, a harmonious concert of living beings, working together, within a common system of ends, towards the very same ends as those of man, freely pursued; and, in addition, to capture all the forces, all the inorganic substances, to subjugate them, together, as simple means, to the now converging and consonant ends of life. It is from the viewpoint of this distant outcome that one must stand to understand the extent to which the fundamental conceptions of political economy need to be revised.”
― Gabriel Tarde

“Não é 'atual' o que é recente se atualmente ignorado pela atenção pública concentrada noutros assuntos.”
― Gabriel Tarde, A Opinião e as Massas