Benjamin Constant

Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (October 25, 1767 – December 8, 1830) was a Swiss-born thinker, writer and French politician.

Quotes

• Je ne suis pas la rose, mais j’ai vécu avec elle.
  • Translation: I am not the rose, but I have lived near it.
  • A. Hayward, Autobiography and Letters of Mrs. Piozzi, Introduction.

• Diversity is life; uniformity is death.
  • Quoted in Robert Tombs, France 1814–1914, 62.

• The aim of the ancients was the sharing of social power among the citizens of the same fatherland: this is what they called liberty. The aim of the moderns is the enjoyment of liberty in private pleasures, and they call “liberty” the guarantees accorded by institutions to these pleasures.
  • "The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of Moderns" (1819)

External links

Wikipedia has an article about:

Benjamin Constant

• Find-A-Grave profile for Benjamin Constant
• Institut Benjamin Constant homepage
• Rebecq liberal
• Works by Benjamin Constant at Project Gutenberg
• Intellectual portrait of B. C. by Emile Faguet (in French)
• The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns (1819)
• Principles of Politics Applicable to All Governments

Social and political philosophers
Classic	Aristotle • Marcus Aurelius • Chanakya • Cicero • Confucius • Mozi • Laozi • Mencius • Mozi • Plato • Plutarch • Polybius • Seneca the Younger • Socrates • Sun Tzu • Thucydides • Xenophon • Xun Zi
Conservative	de Benoist • Bolingbroke • Bonald • Burke • Burnham • Carlyle • Coleridge • Comte • Cortés • Durkheim • Dávila • Evola • Fichte • Filmer • Galton • Gentile • Hegel • Heidegger • Herder • Hobbes • Hoppe • Hume • de Jouvenel • Jünger • Kirk • von Kuehnelt-Leddihn • Land • de Maistre • Mansfield • Mosca • Oakeshott • Ortega • Pareto • Peterson • Santayana • Schmitt • Scruton • Sowell • Spengler • Strauss • Taine • Tocqueville • Vico • Voegelin • Weaver • Yarvin
Liberal	Acton • Arendt • Aron • Bastiat • Beccaria • Bentham • Berlin • Boétie • Camus • Condorcet • Constant • Dworkin • Emerson • Erasmus • Franklin • Fukuyama • Hayek • Jefferson • Kant • Locke • Machiavelli • Madison • Mill • Milton • Mencken • Mises • Montaigne • Montesquieu • Nietzsche • Nozick • Ortega • Popper • Rand • Rawls • Rothbard • Sade • Schiller • Simmel • Smith • Spencer • Spinoza • de Staël • Stirner • Thoreau • Tocqueville • Tucker • Voltaire • Weber • Wollstonecraft
Religious	al-Ghazali • Ambedkar • Augustine of Hippo • Aquinas • Augustine • Aurobindo • Calvin • Chesterton • Dante • Dayananda • Dostoyevsky • Eliade • Gandhi • Girard • Gregory • Guénon • Jesus • John of Salisbury • Jung • Kierkegaard • Kołakowski • Lewis • Luther • Maimonides • Malebranche • Maritain • More • Muhammad • Müntzer • Niebuhr • Ockham • Origen • Philo • Pizan • Qutb • Radhakrishnan • Shariati • Solzhenitsyn • Taylor • Teilhard de Chardin • Tertullian • Tolstoy • Vivekananda • Weil
Socialist	Adorno • Aflaq • Agamben • Badiou • Bakunin • Baudrillard • Bauman • Bernstein • Butler • Chomsky • de Beauvoir • Debord • Deleuze • Dewey • Du Bois • Engels • Fanon • Foucault • Fourier • Fromm • Godwin • Goldman • Gramsci • Habermas • Kropotkin • Lenin • London • Luxemburg • Mao • Marcuse • Marx • Mazzini • Negri • Owen • Paine Rorty • Rousseau • Russell • Saint-Simon • Sartre • Skinner • Sorel • Trotsky • Walzer • Deng • Žižek