Adam Ferguson Quotes on Politics
Adam Ferguson's Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767) gave the Scottish Enlightenment its most republican voice in political philosophy — the long polemic against the corrupting effects of the specialization of labor and the politeness of commercial society on the civic virtue and martial spirit on which the freedom of the polity ultimately depends. The framework draws on classical sources, particularly the Roman historians, but reads them through the comparative ethnography then becoming available, with the consequent argument that civil society is the unintended product of the actions of many — "the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design" — and that its preservation requires the active cultivation of the civic capacities of the citizens themselves.
Quotes
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Attributed to Adam Ferguson:
“Mankind, in following the present sense of their minds, in striving to remove inconveniencies, or to gain apparent and contiguous advantages, arrive at ends which even their imagination could not anticipate.”
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Attributed to Adam Ferguson:
“Society is more than a mere convenience; it is the natural element in which our faculties most truly develop.”
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Attributed to Adam Ferguson:
“If nations actually borrow from their neighbours, they probably borrow only what they are nearly in a condition to have invented themselves.”
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Attributed to Adam Ferguson:
“The boasted refinements of polished ages are not divested of danger.”
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Attributed to Adam Ferguson:
“Without the rivalship of nations, and the practice of war, civil society itself could scarcely have found an object, or a form.”
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“…if we intend to pursue the history of our species in its further attainments, we may soon enter on subjects which will confine our observation to more narrow limits. The genius of political wisdom and civil arts appears to have chosen his seats in particular tracts of the earth, and to have selected his favourites in particular races of men.”
PART III, SECTION I.