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6 months 1 week ago

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. 

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To his young son from the Yosemite Valley on
4 months 4 weeks ago

Even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install themselves in absolute knowledge. They taught not this knowledge, but its becoming in us, not the absolute but, at most, our absolute relation to it, as Kierkegaard said. What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement.

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p. 5
2 months 4 weeks ago

With what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering.

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6 months 2 days ago

At the point at which the concept of différance, and the chain attached to it, intervenes, all the conceptual oppositions of metaphysics (signifier/signified; sensible/intelligible; writing/speech; passivity/activity; etc.)- to the extent that they ultimately refer to the presence of something present (for example, in the form of the identity of the subject who is present for all his operations, present beneath every accident or event, self-present in its "living speech," in its enunciations, in the present objects and acts of its language, etc.)- become non pertinent. They all amount, at one moment or another, to a subordination of the movement of différance in favor of the presence of a value or a meaning supposedly antecedent to différance, more original than it, exceeding and governing it in the last analysis. This is still the presence of what we called above the "transcendental signified.

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p. 29
4 months 3 weeks ago

Ritual society is a society of rules. It is based not on virtues but on a passion for rules.

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3 months 4 days ago

The man who says that the world is a machine has really advanced no further than to say that he is so well satisfied with the analogy that he is through with searching any further.

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Ch. VI: "The Drama of Destiny", §5, p. 130.
4 months 5 days ago

People in new environments always produce the new preceptual modality without any difficulty or awareness of change. It is later that the psychic and social realignments baffle societies.

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ARTnews annual, Volume 31, Art Foundation, 1966, p. 56
5 months ago

Whoever shall find the interpretation of these words shall not taste of death. (1) I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

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(John 8:49-51)
4 months 5 days ago

No one knows what he can do till he tries.

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Maxim 786
3 months 3 weeks ago

Each such answer to the great question, invariably asserted by the followers of its propounder, if not by himself, to be complete and final, remains in high authority and esteem, it may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have been a mere approximation to the truth-tolerable chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable when tested by the larger knowledge of their successors.

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Ch.2, p. 72
5 months ago

Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

For what else are you busied with except improving yourself every day, laying aside some error, and coming to understand that the faults which you attribute to circumstances are in yourself?

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5 months 1 week ago

Blessed be the hour in which I was first led to inquire into my own spiritual nature and destination! All my doubts are removed; I know what I can know, and have no fears for what I cannot know. I am satisfied; perfect clearness and harmony reign in my soul, and a new and more glorious existence begins for me. My entire destiny I cannot comprehend; what I am to become, exceeds my present power of conception. A part, which is concealed from me, is visible to the father of spirits. I know only that it is secure, everlasting and glorious. That part of it which is confided to me I know, for it is the root of all my other knowledge.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.120
6 months 3 days ago

Technology is in its essence something that human beings cannot master of their own accord.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different.

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Two Faces of Liberalism (New Press, 2000, ISBN 0-745-62259-3. 168 pages), ch. 1: Liberal Toleration (p. 21)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness.

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6 months 1 week ago

When communist workmen associate with one another, theory, propaganda, etc., is their first end. But at the same time, as a result of this association, they acquire a new need - the need for society - and what appears as a means becomes an end. You can observe this practical processing its most splendid results whenever you see French socialist workers together. Such things as smoking, drinking, eating, etc., are no longer means of contact or means that bring together. Company, association, and conversation, which again has society as its end, are enough for them; the brotherhood of man is on mere phase with them, but a fact of life, and the nobility of man shines upon us from their work-hardened bodies.

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"The Meaning of Human Requirements" p.99-100,The Marx-Engels Reader

There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.

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The Genteel Tradition at Bay
6 months 1 week ago

If good music has charms to soothe the savage breast, bad music has no less powerful spells for filling the mildest breast with rage, the happiest with horror and disgust. Oh, those mammy songs, those love longings, those loud hilarities! How was it possible that human emotions intrinsically decent could be so ignobly parodied.

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"Silence is Golden," p. 59
6 months 1 week ago

Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and one sister, should they let the human race die out? I do not know the answer, but I do not think it can be in the affirmative merely on the ground that incest is wicked.

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p. 47
4 months 3 weeks ago

In a sense, all explanation must end in an ultimate arbitrariness.

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Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 130
5 months 1 week ago

All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.

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Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1
5 months 1 week ago

Each citizen of a state promises, in the original compact, that he will promote, as far as lies in his power, all the conditions of the possibility of the state ; hence, also, the condition just mentioned. This he can best do by educating children who may grow up to realize various ends of reason. The state has the right to make this education of children a condition of the state-compact, and thus education becomes an external, legal obligation, which the parents owe to the state.

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P. 459
5 months 1 week ago

An infirmity which affects the whole race, is no proper object for the scorn of an individual who belongs to that race, and who, before he could expose it, must himself have been its slave.

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p. 12
6 months 1 week ago

"And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class."

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As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.
5 months ago

But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.

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The First Part, Chapter 5, p. 21
5 months 4 days ago

Maybe suffering has no more justification than life.

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6 months 1 week ago

Death is the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing.

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Eyeless in Gaza, 1936
7 months 4 days ago

It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

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5 months 1 week ago

There is surely a piece of Divinity within us, something that was before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun.

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Section 11
5 months ago

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.

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Jesus on usury from the Sermon on the Mount, Luke 6:34-35
7 months 1 week ago
These people who have fled inward for their freedom also have to live outwardly, become visible, let themselves be seen; they are united with mankind through countless ties of blood, residence, education, fatherland, chance, the importunity of others; they are likewise presupposed to harbour countless opinions simply because these are the ruling opinions of the time; every gesture which is not clearly a denial counts as agreement.
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2 months 3 weeks ago

Men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light.

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The Humble Petition of the Rev. Sydney Smith to the House of Congress at Washington (May 18, 1843), in Letters on American Debts (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1843), p. 9
6 months 6 days ago

Catherine: Why commit Evil? Goetz: Because Good has already been done. Catherine: Who has done it? Goetz: God the Father. I, on the other hand, am improvising.

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Act 3, sc. 4
3 months 3 days ago

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word "admire" then means "marvel at."

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Beyond Freedom and Dignity
2 months 1 week ago

Congress itself can punish Alexandria, by repealing the law which made it a town, by discontinuing it as a port of entry or clearance, and perhaps by suppressing it's banks. But I expect all will go off with impunity. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only.

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Letter to John Wayles Eppes (9 September 1814). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 11, pp. 425-426
4 months 5 days ago

No one should be judge in his own cause.

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Maxim 545
6 months 1 week ago

China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

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Chapter XI, Part III, (First Period) p. 221.
4 months 2 weeks ago

The behaviour of individuals is the tool with which the organisation achieves its targets.

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p. 108.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Temperament refers to the mode of reaction and is constitutional and not changeable; character is essentially formed by a person's experiences, especially of those in early life, and changeable, to some extent, by insights and new kinds of experiences. If a person has a choleric temperament, for instance, his mode of reaction is "quick and strong." But what he is quick or strong about depends on his kind of relatedness, his character. If he is a productive, just, loving person he will react quickly and strongly when he loves, when he is enraged by injustice, and when he is impressed by a new idea. If he is a destructive or sadistic character, he will be quick and strong in his destructiveness or in his cruelty. The confusion between temperament and character has had serious consequences for ethical theory. Preferences with regard to differences in temperament are mere matters of subjective taste. But differences in character are ethically of the most fundamental importance.

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Ch. 3
2 months 2 weeks ago

The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.

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p. 7
3 months 2 days ago

We do not have and cannot have any means of discovering whether or not we are carried along in a uniform motion of translation.

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L'état actuel et l'avenir de la physique mathematique
2 months 2 weeks ago

The wise man who has charge of governing the empire should know the cause of disorder before he can put it in order. Unless he knows its cause, he cannot regulate it.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
2 months 4 days ago

In the morning, when thou art sluggish at rousing thee, let this thought be present; "I am rising to a man's work."

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Meditations. v. 1.
5 months 1 week ago

We have busied ourselves and contented ourselves long enough with speaking and writing; now at last we demand that the word become flesh, the spirit matter; we are as sick of political as we are of philosophical idealism; we are determined to become political materialists.

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Lecture I, Occasion and Context
4 months 1 week ago

Violence as a tool is already operating in the world before anyone takes it up: that fact alone neither justifies nor discounts the use of the tool. What seems most important, however, is that the tool is already part of a practice, presupposing a world conducive to its use; that the use of the tool builds or rebuilds a specific kind of world, activating a sedimented legacy of use. When any of us commit acts of violence, we are, in and through those acts, building a more violent world.

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p. 19
2 months 3 weeks ago

Mucius put his hand into the fire. It is painful to be burned; but how much more painful to inflict such suffering upon oneself!

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