Skip to main content
3 months 3 weeks ago

Truth is ... one approach to the attainment of the good, but in and of itself, it is neither the good nor the beautiful ... Socrates, Pascal, and others regarded knowledge of the truth with regard to purposeless objects as incongruous with the good ... by exposing deception, truth destroys illusion, which is the principle attribute of beauty.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Oatmeal indeed supplies the common people of Scotland with the greatest and best part of their food, which is in general much inferior to that of their neighbours of the same rank in England.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter VIII, p. 91 (Oatmeal in England makes for great horses, in Scotland Great Men).
5 months 3 weeks ago

The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Anyone wanting a new house picks one from among those built on speculation or still in process of construction. The builder no longer works for his customers but for the market.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. II, Ch. XII, p. 237.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

0
0
4 months 6 days ago

It is clearly absurd to say that if you go on adding atoms together until they have fused into a complex molecule, that molecule will become capable of self-reproduction. It is like saying that a skyscraper is more capable of reproduction than a bungalow. And suppose life did come into being through some accidental interaction of molecules, sun and cosmic rays; why should it not be content to rest passively? Why should it have been possessed of a desire to persist and evolve?

0
0
Source
source
p. 259
6 months 3 weeks ago

It is love that leniently and mercifully says: I forgive you everything-if you are forgiven only little, then it is because you love only little. Justice severely sets the boundary and says: No further! This is the limit. For you there is no forgiveness, and there is nothing more to be said.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind unmeaning prejudices-for man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons against William Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform (7 May 1782)
6 months 1 day ago

I know God only as he became human, so shall I have him in no other way.

0
0
Source
source
Das Marburger religionsgesprach 1529: Versuch einer Rekonstruction (Leipzig, 1929), p. 27; also LW 38, 3-90
4 months 2 weeks ago

The chief requirement of the good life... is to live without any image of oneself.

0
0
Source
source
The Bell (1958), ch. 9; 2001, p. 119.

The true is the whole.

0
0
Source
source
Preface
2 months 1 week ago

All art is but imitation of nature.

0
0
Source
source
Line 3.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Story of Philosophy (1933) by Will Durant, p. 176
4 months 3 weeks ago

Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer.

0
0
Source
source
p. 442
4 months 2 weeks ago

In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in.

0
0
Source
source
p. 188
1 month 2 weeks ago

Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

0
0
Source
source
Meditations. ix. 19.
5 months 3 weeks ago

There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation. That one thing is Man. We do not merely observe men, we are men. In this case we have, so to speak, inside information; we are in the know.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Chapter 4, "What Lies behind the Law"
4 months 3 weeks ago

This means that no state, howsoever democratic its forms, not even the reddest political republic - a people's republic only in the sense of the lie known as popular representation - is capable of giving the people what they need: the free organization of their own interests from below upward, without any interference, tutelage, or coercion from above. That is because no state, not even the most republican and democratic, not even the pseudo-popular state contemplated by Marx, in essence represents anything but government of the masses from above downward, by an educated and thereby privileged minority which supposedly understands the real interests of the people better than the people themselves.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Self-interest, or rather self-love, or egoism, has been more plausibly substituted as the basis of morality. But I consider our relations with others as constituting the boundaries of morality. With ourselves, we stand on the ground of identity, not of relation, which last, requiring two subjects, excludes self-love confined to a single one. To ourselves, in strict language, we can owe no duties, obligation requiring also two parties. Self-love, therefore, is no part of morality. Indeed, it is exactly its counterpart.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Thomas Law
5 months 3 weeks ago

An individual who finds that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Section 6, pg. 31
5 months 3 weeks ago

That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.

0
0
Source
source
§ 4.8
5 months 1 week ago

There are two forms of knowledge, one genuine, one obscure. To the obscure belong all of the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling. The other form is the genuine, and is quite distinct from this. [And then distinguishing the genuine from the obscure, he continues:] Whenever the obscure [way of knowing] has reached the minimum sensibile of hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and when the investigation must be carried farther into that which is still finer, then arises the genuine way of knowing, which has a finer organ of thought.

0
0
2 months 1 day ago

The creative imagination of the Hindus has conceived no loftier and holier character than Sita; the literature of the world has not produced a higher ideal of womanly love, womanly truth, and womanly devotion.

0
0
Source
source
The Wisdom Of China And India by ) Lin Yutang
3 months 3 weeks ago

In an age of multiple and massive innovations, obsolescence becomes the major obsession.

0
0
Source
source
"Innovation is obsolete", Evergreen review, Volume 15, Issues 86-94, Grove Press, 1971, p. 64
9 months 4 weeks ago

It is also crucial to bear in mind the interconnection between the Decalogue... and its modern obverse, the celebrated 'human Rights'. As the experience of our post-political liberal-permissive society amply demonstrates, human Rights are ultimately, at their core, simply Rights to violate the Ten Commandments. 'The right to privacy' — the right to adultery, in secret, where no one sees me or has the right to probe my life. 'The right to pursue happiness and to possess private property' -- the right to steal (to exploit others). 'Freedom of the press and of the expression of opinion' -- the right to lie. 'The right of free citizens to possess weapons' -- the right to kill. And, ultimately, 'freedom of religious belief' — the right to worship false gods.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward, written by Lenin, an outstanding member of the Iskra group, is a methodical exposition of the ideas of the ultra-centralist tendency in the Russian movement. The viewpoint presented with incomparable vigor and logic in this book, is that of pitiless centralism.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

He who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual; he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831 Selected Letters, ed. Roger Boesche, UofC Press 1985, p. 39.
6 months 1 day ago

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12
4 months 3 weeks ago

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

0
0
Source
source
p. 440
2 months 1 week ago

Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

0
0
Source
source
Part XV - General corollary
5 months 3 weeks ago

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

0
0
Source
source
Personality; or, What a Man Is
4 months 2 weeks ago

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

0
0
Source
source
A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
5 months 3 weeks ago

Our island is this earth; and the most striking object we behold is the sun. As soon as we pass beyond our immediate surroundings, one or both of these must meet our eye. Thus the philosophy of most savage races is mainly directed to imaginary divisions of the earth or to the divinity of the sun.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country's productive forces.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
6 months 1 week ago

Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart never resteth till it findeth rest in Thee.

0
0
Source
source
p. 515
6 months 1 week ago

Incomprehensible and immutable is the love wherewith God loves. He did not begin to love us only on the day we were reconciled to Him by the blood of His Son; He loved us before the world was made, that we too might become His sons together with His Only-begotten Son, long before we had any existence.

0
0
Source
source
p.435
3 months 1 week ago

The question of questions for mankind-the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other-is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.

0
0
Source
source
Ch.2, p. 71
4 months 3 weeks ago

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 6, The Formula of Justice
4 months 3 weeks ago

Men who undertake considerable things, even in a regular way, ought to give us ground to presume ability.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

If you are in a strait, a very good indication as to choice-perhaps the best you could get-is a book you have a great curiosity about. You are then in the readiest and best of all possible conditions to improve by that book.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Truths once obtained by legitimate Induction are Facts: these Facts may be again connected, so as to produce higher truths: and thus we advance to 'Successive Generalizations'.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia