Top 15 Quotes & Sayings by Charles Fourier

The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress.

...commerce, which is mistakenly classified among the productive forms of work, ought to be ranked first among the parasitical professions like those of monk, soldier, lawyer etc.

To confound the tyranny of man there should exist for a century a third sex, both male and female, and stronger than men. This new sex would prove with the lash that men as well as women are made for its pleasure; and then you would hear men protesting against the tyranny of the hermaphrodite sex and admitting that strength should not be the sole rule of right. Just why do they refuse to grant the women the independence which they would demand from the third sex?

We must, then, apply the principle of Doubt to Civilization; we must doubt its necessity, its excellence, and its permanence.

Civilization is a social plague on the planet, and vices are just as necessary to it as is a virus to disease.

Once upon a time people talked about the infallibility of the pope; today it is that of the merchant which they wish to establish.

The Civilized… murder their children by producing too many of them without being able to provide for their well-being. Morality or theories of false virtue stimulate them to manufacture cannon fodder, anthills of conscripts who are forced to sell themselves out of poverty. This improvident paternity is a false virtue, the selfishness of pleasure.

It is known that the best nations have always been those which concede the greatest amount of liberty to women.

Attractions are proportional to destinies.

Certainly in each social period, youth must be made to venerate the dominant absurdities.

One could judge the degree of civilization of a country by the social and political position of its women

Any civilized administration, however organized, prefers its own good to that of the people.

Despots prefer the friendship of the dog, who, unjustly mistreated and debased, still loves and serves the man who wronged him.

Who is wiser: the man who plants flowers along life's way or the man who makes it bristle with thorns?

Hosts of merchants encumber the cities, and the streets are cluttered with solicitors who swarm without limit or purpose.