Charles Fourier Quotes
Francois Marie Charles Fourier was a French utopian socialist and an extraordinarily original critic of early industrial civilization. Working as a clerk and salesman, he composed a vast body of writing in which the existing social order, which he called Civilization, is denounced as the systematic repression of the human passions, and is replaced by the Phalanx, a community of about sixteen hundred people organized so that the natural variety of human characters can find harmonious expression. The quotes below are attributed to Charles Fourier, organized by topic.
Browse Charles Fourier by topic
Charles Fourier on Death
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“To speak frankly, the family bond in the civilizee regime' causes fathers to desire the death of their children and children to desire the death of their fathers.”
Wikiquote
Charles Fourier on Freedom
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Attributed to Charles Fourier:
“The free expression of the passions is the foundation of harmony.”
Charles Fourier on Happiness
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“If children are a joy for the well-to-do, they are a torment for seven-eights of all civlizees, who cannot afford to maintain and educate them.”
Wikiquote
Charles Fourier on Justice
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“It is certain that nature inclines us toward the amorous orgy, just as much as toward the gastronomic orgy, and that while both are blameworthy in the excess, they would become praiseworthy in an order in which they could be equilibrated.”
New Amorous World | Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World , J. Beecher (1986), p. 310
Charles Fourier on Knowledge
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“The Theory of Social Organization”
Nowhere is there more constancy and more unanimity than among the French to subordinate that sex which they pretend to honor so highly. -
“Le nouveau monde amoureux”
All repressed passion produces its counter-passion which is as malevolent as the natural passion would be beneficial. -
“Oeuvres completetes de Charles Fourier”
The familial union presents as well a mixture of inconvenient ages and characters that inhibit conversation. Morality engenders a frigid atmosphere, as in all places where it reigns. -
“There is no idea more novel, more surprising, than that of associating three hundred families of different degrees of fortune, knowledge and capacity.”
The Theory of Social Organization(1876) | The Theory of Social Organization . Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier , p. 5.
Charles Fourier on Nature
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Attributed to Charles Fourier:
“Nothing is more easily destroyed than the work of nature.”
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“Ignorant as regards the unity of man with himself, the world is still more ignorant in respect to the two other unities - unity of man with God and the universe.”
Wikiquote -
“All repressed passion produces its counter-passion which is as malevolent as the natural passion would be beneficial.”
Le nouveau monde amoureux -
“IF the passions and characters of man were not subject, like the material kingdoms, to distribution in series of groups, man would be out of unity with the universe; there would be duplicity of system in creation, and incoherence between the material and the passional worlds. If man would attain to social uniy, he should seek for the means in the serial order, to which God has subject all nature.”
Le nouveau monde amoureux -
“Woman is degraded and made to believe that nature destined her exclusively to menial domestic labors, which in the combined order will be so abridged as to be performed without oppression to either sex.”
The Theory of Social Organization(1876) | The Theory of Social Organization
Charles Fourier on Politics
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Attributed to Charles Fourier:
“Civilization is incoherent because the passions are repressed.”
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Attributed to Charles Fourier:
“The extension of women's privileges is the general principle of all social progress.”
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Attributed to Charles Fourier:
“The Phalanx is the proper unit of human community.”
Charles Fourier on Time
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“The seeds of heavenly bodies are deposited and cared for in the Milky Way, from which they emanate in swarms of comets that travel a ;long time and ordinarily gravitate towards various suns before becoming fixed in orbit.”
L'attraction passioneé
Charles Fourier on Virtue
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“Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of commerce.”
The Theory of the Four Movements (1808), G. Jones, ed. (1966), p. 269 -
“Nowhere is there more constancy and more unanimity than among the French to subordinate that sex which they pretend to honor so highly.”
The Theory of Social Organization -
“The familial union presents as well a mixture of inconvenient ages and characters that inhibit conversation. Morality engenders a frigid atmosphere, as in all places where it reigns.”
Oeuvres completetes de Charles Fourier