Giambattista Vico Quotes
Giambattista Vico was an Italian philosopher of history, rhetorician, and jurist working in obscurity at Naples. Against the Cartesian privileging of mathematical natural science, he argued in his New Science that human beings can know the human world precisely because they have made it. The quotes below are attributed to Giambattista Vico, organized by topic.
Giambattista Vico on Knowledge
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“Common sense is judgment without reflection, shared by an entire class, an entire people, an entire nation, or the entire human race.”
Giambattista Vico on Nature
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“Men first feel necessity, then look for utility, next attend to comfort, still later amuse themselves with pleasure, thence grow dissolute in luxury, and finally go mad squandering their estates.”
Giambattista Vico on Politics
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“Governments must conform to the nature of the men governed.”
Giambattista Vico on Truth
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“The true and the made are convertible.”
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Attributed to Giambattista Vico:
“The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”