Skip to main content
7 months 2 weeks ago

The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Philipp Van Patten
8 months 3 weeks ago

It is the duty of every man, so far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.

0
0
Source
source
The Theophilanthropist: Containing Critical, Moral, Theological and Literary Essays, in Monthly Numbers, p. 387
6 months 2 weeks ago

The artist is the person who invents the means to bridge biological inheritance and the environments created by technological innovation.

0
0
Source
source
p. 98
4 months 2 weeks ago

Every person is an end in themselves. That's universal. To respect that leads to flourishing. Not respecting it in extremes leads to unnecessary death.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble with prepared minds, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward, which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upwards to the light.

0
0
Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 61
8 months 3 weeks ago

To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of "normality" hatched in a Viennese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors have succeeded or I have grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success-who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment"

0
0
Source
source
1949
7 months 3 weeks ago

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XV.
8 months 3 weeks ago

Our moral virtues benefit mainly other people; intellectual virtues, on the other hand, benefit primarily ourselves; therefore the former make us universally popular, the latter unpopular.

0
0
9 months ago

What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Marin Mersenne (1637) as quoted by D. E. Smith & M. L. Latham Tr. The Geometry of René Descartes
4 months 3 weeks ago

The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Nikos Kazantzakis (1968) by Helen Kazantzakis, p. 507
4 months 1 week ago

Without disarmament there can be no lasting peace. On the contrary, the continuation of military armaments in their present extent will with certainty lead to new catastrophies...For the creation of this public opinion in favor of disarmament every person living shares the responsibility, through ever deed and every word.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Well, what does "good" mean anyway...? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good," like "game," has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation."

0
0
Source
source
P. 152.
7 months 1 week ago

The pathfinders of modern thought did not derive what is good from the law. ... Their role in history was not that of adapting their words and actions to the text of old documents or generally accepted doctrines: they themselves created the documents and brought about the acceptance of their doctrines.

0
0
Source
source
p. 33.
7 months 2 weeks ago

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Classical political economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however,consciously formulating it. This it cannot so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 19, pg. 594.
9 months ago

The Mass is the greatest blasphemy of God, and the highest idolatry upon earth, an abomination the like of which has never been in Christendom since the time of the Apostles.

0
0
Source
source
171

Observe, observe perpetually.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

"New friends, however, will not be the same." No, nor will you yourself remain the same; you change with every day and every hour.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable...is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments...This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2
8 months 1 week ago

For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

0
0
Source
source
Frag. B 3, quoted by Plotinus, Enneads V, i.8
7 months 3 weeks ago

I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.

0
0
6 months 2 days ago

Language steps in where the angels of experience fear to tread.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 1, The Faces of Silence, p. 5
8 months 3 weeks ago

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all - why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end?

0
0
Source
source
Dover 2005, p. 163
7 months 1 week ago

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
6 months 3 weeks ago

All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian: the oath of allegiance, taxes, law proceedings and military service.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter VII, Significance of Compulsory Service
6 months 2 weeks ago

It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 7. Family planning
8 months 3 weeks ago

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "Hand Book : Caution and Counsels" in The Common School Journal Vol. 5, No. 24 (15 December 1843) by Horace Mann, p. 371
4 months 2 weeks ago

A geometrician has learned to perform the most difficult demonstrations and calculations, as a monkey has learned to take his little hat off and on...

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.

0
0
Source
source
The Quest for Certainty (1929), Ch. XI
8 months 3 weeks ago

The pursuit of philosophy is founded on the belief that knowledge is good, even if what is known is painful. A man imbued with the philosophic spirit, whether a professional philosopher or not, will wish his beliefs to be as true as he can make them, and will, in equal measure, love to know and hate to be in error. This principle has a wider scope than may be apparent at first sight.

0
0
7 months 4 weeks ago

There is the world for you. Beauty, true beauty, is intangible. It is in the eye of the beholder. Something that we can lose at any moment, and the more you examine it, the more illusive it becomes. True happiness is virtue, and virtue is predicated on knowledge and righteous conduct.

0
0
Source
source
The Alchemy of Happiness
8 months 3 weeks ago

Of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiously guarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me, with extreme vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being led to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. From his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humble opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up to me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to do. He completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences he so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments were anything unusual at my age.

0
0
Source
source
(pp. 32-33)
8 months 3 weeks ago

There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.

0
0
Source
source
In Kenneth Harris Talking To: Bertrand Russell, 1971
1 month 2 weeks ago

"Perfection" is implied every time you fall short on a goal, but, it's imaginary and unattainable. Even if you met your goal, "perfection" haunts you...even though it is NOT....

0
0
9 months 2 weeks ago

An observer studying the Solar system dispassionately, and finding himself capable of bringing the four giant planets to his notice, could reasonably say that the Solar system consisted of one star, four planets, and some traces of debris.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

0
0
9 months 2 days ago

The Idols of the Cave are the idols of the individual man. For everyone (besides the errors common to human nature in general) has a cave or den of his own, which refracts and discolors the light of nature, owing either to his own proper and peculiar nature; or to his education and conversation with others; or to the reading of books, and the authority of those whom he esteems and admires; or to the differences of impressions, accordingly as they take place in a mind preoccupied and predisposed or in a mind indifferent and settled; or the like. So that the spirit of man (according as it is meted out to different individuals) is in fact a thing variable and full of perturbation, and governed as it were by chance. Whence it was well observed by Heraclitus that men look for sciences in their own lesser worlds, and not in the greater or common world.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 42
7 months 3 weeks ago

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

0
0
9 months 3 weeks ago

It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, ch. 18, 18.
6 months 2 weeks ago

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted by Granville Hicks in The Living Novel: A Symposium (Macmillan, 1957; digitized version in 2006), p. ix
8 months 3 weeks ago

It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Part IV, Conclusion, p. 881.
7 months 3 weeks ago

I decline the election. - It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

0
0
Source
source
Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 170
8 months 3 weeks ago

All mortals are equal; it is not their birth, But virtue itself that makes the difference.

0
0
Source
source
Ériphyle Act II, scene I (1732); these lines were also later used in Voltaire's Mahomet, Act I, scene IV (1741)
7 months 3 weeks ago

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.

0
0
Source
source
§ 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1
7 months 3 weeks ago

A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction On Taste

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia