Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 4 days ago
That life is worth living is...

That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
To pray to God….

To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Notebooks, c.1735-c.1750
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Certain forms of sex which do...

Certain forms of sex which do not lead to children are at present punished by the criminal law: this is purely superstitious, since the matter is one which affects no one except the parties directly concerned... The peculiar importance attached, at present, to adultery is quite irrational... Moral rules ought not to be such as to make instinctive happiness impossible.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
2 weeks 5 days ago
Those who regard the Crusades, with...

Those who regard the Crusades, with indignation, as among the most extravagant episodes of the 'dark' Middle Ages, have not even the slightest suspicion that what they call 'religious fanaticism' was the visible sign of the presence and effectiveness of a sensitivity and decisiveness, the absence of which is more characteristic of true barbarism. The one who fights according to the sense of 'sacred war' is spontaneously beyond every particularism and exists in a spiritual climate which, at any given moment, may very well give rise and life to a supra-national unity of action. This is precisely what occurred in the Crusades when Princes and Dukes of every land gathered in the heroic and sacred enterprise, regardless of their particular utilitarian interests or political divisions, bringing about for the first time a great European unity, true to the common civilisation and to the very principle of the Sacred Roman Empire.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 40-41
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 1 day ago
Constantly and, if it be possible,...

Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VIII, 13
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 1 day ago
Being asked where in Greece he...

Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, "Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 4 weeks ago
Yes, I know well that others...

Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and express; that many others feel it today, although they keep silence about it. ...And I do not keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must not be spoken, the abomination of abominations - infandum - and I believe that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must not be spoken. ...Even if it should lead only to irritating the devotees of progress, those who believe that truth is consolation, it would lead to not a little. To irritating them and making them say: "Poor fellow! if he would only use his intelligence to better purpose!... Someone perhaps will add that I do not know what I say, to which I shall reply that perhaps he may be right - and being right is such a little thing! - but that I feel what I say and I know what I feel and that suffices me. And that it is better to be lacking in reason than to have too much of it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
3 months 1 week ago
In reality, the law always contains...

In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Economical Nature of Physical Inquiry," in Popular Scientific Lectures (1898), p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
1 week 3 days ago
The Roman came into the Promised...

The Roman came into the Promised Land that had become less and less as promised. The rich got along quite well with the foreign occupation; it provided protection from desperate peasants and patriotic resistance fighters. It provided protection from prophets who could be labeled "agitators" now, without any qualms.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 121
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
I have been merely oppressed by...

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Gilbert Murray, March 21, 1903
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
The beauty or uncomeliness of many...

The beauty or uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding, will be better learnt, and make deeper impressions on them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or instructions can be given about them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 82
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
Ten years on the moon could...

Ten years on the moon could tell us more about the universe than a thousand years on the earth might be able to.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
The next simplest feature that is...

The next simplest feature that is common to all that comes before the mind, and consequently, the second category, is the element of Struggle.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.45
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 1 week ago
Beginning in the 1970s, however, the...

Beginning in the 1970s, however, the techniques and organizational form of industrial production shifted toward smaller and more mobile labor units and more flexible structures of production, a shift often labeled as a move from Fordist to post-Fordist production.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
82
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 5 days ago
But, one will say, if raw...

But, one will say, if raw experience can not legitimatize reasoning by recurrence, is it so of experiment aided by induction? We see successively that a theorem is true of the number 1, of the number 2, of the number 3 and so on; the law is evident, we say, and it has the same warranty as every physical law based on observations, whose number is very great but limited. But there is an essential difference. Induction applied to the physical sciences is always uncertain, because it rests on the belief in a general order of the universe, an order outside of us. Mathematical induction, that is, demonstration by recurrence, on the contrary, imposes itself necessarily, because it is only the affirmation of a property of the mind itself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. I. (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Man, being the servant and interpreter...

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Aphorism 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
If there is anyone who owes...

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 weeks 6 days ago
The Phoenicians who from their sagacity...

The Phoenicians who from their sagacity and learning possess great insight into things divine, hold the doctrine that this universally diffused radiance is a part of the "Soul of the Stars." This opinion is consistent with sound reason: if we consider the light that is without body, we shall perceive that of such light the source cannot be a body, but rather the simple action of a mind, which spreads itself by means of illumination as far as its proper seat; to which the middle region of the heavens is contiguous, from which place it shines forth with all its vigour and fills the heavenly orbs, illuminating at the same time the whole universe with its divine and pure radiance.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 day ago
There is no body but eats...

There is no body but eats and drinks. But they are few who can distinguish flavors.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
5 months ago
The Law teaches that the universe...

The Law teaches that the universe was invented and created by God, and that it did not come into being by chance or by itself.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 1 week ago
I have always taken as the...

I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface to Second Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 3 weeks ago
What is it that distinguishes man...

What is it that distinguishes man from animals? It is not his upright posture. That was present in the apes long before the brain began to develop. Nor is it the use of tools. It is something altogether new, a previously unknown quality: self-awareness. Animals, too, have awareness. They are aware of objects; they know this is one thing and that another. But when the human being as such was born he had a new and different consciousness, a consciousness of himself; he knew that he existed and that he was something different, something apart from nature, apart from other people, too. He experienced himself. He was aware that he thought and felt. As far as we know, there is nothing analogous to this anywhere in the animal kingdom. That is the specific quality that makes human beings human.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Affluence and Ennui in Our Society in For the Love of Life (1986) translated by Robert and Rita Kimber
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
We begin again to structure the...

We begin again to structure the primordial feelings...from which 3000 years of literacy divorced us. We begin again to live a myth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 17)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Self-expression is impossible in relation with...

Self-expression is impossible in relation with other men; their self-expression interferes with it. The greatest heights of self-expression in poetry, music, painting - are achieved by men who are supremely alone.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter Eight, The Outsider as a Visionary
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 weeks 1 day ago
At about the age of eleven,...

At about the age of eleven, I was reading the thrillers of Sax Rohmer and Edgar Wallace concerning Dr. Fu Manchu and other sophisticated Chinese villains, nurturing a secret admiration for these gentlemen because of their opposition to the suet-pudding heroism of our own culture, and because of their refined and mysterious style of life. While other boys dreamed of becoming generals, cowboys, mountain climbers, explorers, and engineers, I wanted to be a Chinese villain. I wanted servants carrying knives in their sleeves, appearing or vanishing without the slightest sound. I wanted a house with secret doors and passages, with Coromandel screens, with ancient scrolls, with ivory and lacquer boxes of exotic poisons, with exquisite brands of tea, with delicate blue porcelain, with jade idols and joss-sticks, and with sonorous gongs.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 63-64
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 week 1 day ago
Descartes, a genius made to blaze...

Descartes, a genius made to blaze new paths and to go astray in them, supposed with some other philosophers that God is the only efficient cause of motion, and that every instant He communicates motion to all bodies. But this opinion is but an hypothesis which he tried to adjust to the light of faith; and in so doing he was no longer attempting to speak as a philosopher or to philosophers. Above all he was not addressing those who can be convinced only by the force of evidence.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
All-powerful god, who am I but...

All-powerful god, who am I but the fear that I inspire in others?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
King Aegistheus to Jupiter, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 4 days ago
By MANNERS, I mean not here...

By MANNERS, I mean not here Decency of behaviour; as how one man should salute another, or how a man should wash his mouth, or pick his teeth before company, and such other points of the Small Morals; But those qualities of mankind that concern their living together in Peace and Unity. To which end we are to consider that the Felicity of this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. For there is no such Finis ultimus (utmost aim) nor Summum Bonum (greatest good) as is spoken of in the books of the old Moral Philosophers. Nor can a man any more live whose desires are at an end than he whose Senses and Imaginations are at a stand.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
...what was done in France was...

...what was done in France was a wild attempt to methodize anarchy; to perpetuate and fix disorder. That it was a foul, impious, monstrous thing, wholly out of the course of moral nature. He undertook to prove, that it was generated in treachery, fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, and unprovoked murder. ... That by the terror of assassination they had driven away a very great number of the members, so as to produce a false appearance of a majority.-That this fictitious majority had fabricated a constitution, which as now it stands, is a tyranny far beyond any example that can be found in the civilized European world of our age.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 376
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is no method of reasoning...

There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical debates to endeavour to refute any hypothesis by a pretext of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part 3, Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 week ago
The working class will acquire the...

The working class will acquire the sense of the new discipline, the freely assumed self-discipline of the Social Democracy, not as a result of the discipline imposed on it by the capitalist state, but by extirpating, to the last root, its old habits of obedience and servility.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
The work of each individual contributes...

The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives - past and present and to come - forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
Philosophy, in one of its functions,...

Philosophy, in one of its functions, is the critic of cosmologies. It is its function to harmonise, refashion, and justify divergent intuitions as to the nature of things. It has to insist on the scrutiny of the ultimate ideas, and on the retention of the whole of the evidence in shaping our cosmological scheme. Its business is to render explicit, and - so far as may be - efficient, a process which otherwise is unconsciously performed without rational tests.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface, pp. ix-x
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
"Where do you get those superior...

"Where do you get those superior airs of yours?" "I've managed to survive, you see, all those nights when I wondered: am I going to kill myself at dawn?"

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
A new word....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
Let me give two cautions....

Let me give two cautions. 1) The one is, that you keep them to the practice of what you would have grow into a habit with them, by kind words, and gentle admonitions, rather as minding them of what they forget, than by harsh rebukes and chiding, as if they were wilfully guilty. 2) Another thing you are to take care of, is, not to endeavour to settle too many habits at once, lest by variety you confound them, and so perfect none. When constant custom has made any one thing easy and natural to 'em, and they practice it without reflection, you may then go on to another.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 3 weeks ago
The principles of pleasure are not...

The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from another than from himself at different times.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
The role of the artist is...

The role of the artist is to create an Anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 31)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 6 days ago
The chief function of the disciplinary...

The chief function of the disciplinary power is to 'train', rather than to select and to levy; or, no doubt, to train in order to levy and select all the more. It does not link forces together in order to reduce them; it seeks to bind them together in such a way as to multiply and use them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part Three, The Means of Correct Training
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
1 week ago
Being Gentlemen and very far from...

Being Gentlemen and very far from the litigious humour of loving to wrangle about words or terms or notions as empty; they had before his coming in, readily agreed promiscuously to use when they pleased Elements and Principles as terms equivalent: and to understand both by the one and the other, those primitive and simple bodies of which the mixt ones are said to be composed, and into which they are ultimately resolved.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 5 days ago
The essence of our God is...

The essence of our God is obscure. It ripens continuously; perhaps victory is strenghened with our every valorous deed, but perhaps even all these agonizing struggles toward deliverance and victory are inferior to the nature of divinity. Whatever it might be, we fight on without certainty, and our virtue, uncertain of any rewards, acquires a profound nobility.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
The necessaries of life occasion the...

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter II, Part II, Article I, p. 911.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 4 days ago
And when all the world is...

And when all the world is overcharged with Inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is Warre, which provideth for every man, by Victory or Death.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Second Part, Chapter 30, p. 181
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 4 days ago
And Jesus answered and said unto...

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
10:41-42 (King James Version| KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
Because people have no thoughts to...

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 5 days ago
The advantage of pure, and the...

The advantage of pure, and the disadvantage of impure air are experienced each time we breathe, and all who understand the causes of disease know that an impure atmosphere is most unfavourable to the enjoyment of health, and an efficient cause to shorten human existence within the natural life of man. It is therefore most desirable that decisive measures should be devised and generally adopted to ensure to all a pure atmosphere, in which to live during their lives.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
3rd Part
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
For his purposes (and mine), scientific...

For his purposes (and mine), scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine. Conversely, if a technique devised by the President of the Royal College of Physicians consistently fails in double-blind trials, it will cease to be a part of 'orthodox' medicine. Whether it will then become 'alternative' will depend upon whether it is adopted by a sufficiently ambitious quack (there are always sufficiently gullible patients).

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Foreword to Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations by John Diamond, Vintage, 2001.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
Human reason has this peculiar fate...

Human reason has this peculiar fate that in one species of its knowledge it is burdened by questions which, as prescribed by the very nature of reason itself, it is not able to ignore, but which, as transcending all its powers, it is also not able to answer.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface, A vii
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
An act has no ethical quality...

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
Be gentle with them, Timothy. They...

Be gentle with them, Timothy. They want to be free, but they don't know how. Teach them. Reassure them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Reported to be Huxley's last words to Timothy Leary, which Huxley whispered from his deathbed. Quoted in Leary, Timothy (1990) . "Life on a Grounded Space Colony".
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Who's new

  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed
  • Slavoj Žižek

Who's online

There are currently 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia