During the French Revolution, on 10 November 1793, a Goddess of Reason (most likely representing Sophia (wisdom)) was proclaimed by the French Convention at the suggestion of Chaumette. As personification for the goddess, Sophie Momoro, wife of the printer Antoine-François Momoro, was chosen. The goddess was celebrated in Notre Dame de Paris (she was put on the high altar in the Cathedral).
Famous quotes containing the words goddess of, goddess and/or reason:
“Well, if it isn’t Aurora Ratchett, goddess of the dawn, a sight for sore eyes.... I always think of Ebenezer Pritchett, the day he led that last charge at Shiloh. There was a gallant trooper, your father. You know, there went a man of quality. There went the flower of the South.”
—Laurence Stallings (1894–1968)
“God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back.”
—Gloria Steinem (b. 1934)
“Since the Greeks, Western man has believed that Being, all Being, is intelligible, that there is a reason for everything ... and that the cosmos is, finally, intelligible. The Oriental, on the other hand, has accepted his existence within a universe that would appear to be meaningless, to the rational Western mind, and has lived with this meaninglessness. Hence the artistic form that seems natural to the Oriental is one that is just as formless or formal, as irrational, as life itself.”
—William Barrett (b. 1913)