Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Free Books
  • Contact
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 3 weeks ago
I have written a good number...

I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
B 29
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 2 weeks ago
And as to you, Sir, treacherous...

And as to you, Sir, treacherous in private friendship (for so you have been to me, and that in the day of danger) and a hypocrite in public life, the world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an impostor; whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you ever had any. 

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to George Washington, 30 July 1796
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
There's a Bible on that shelf...

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
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our whole civilization, our entire culture...

Our whole civilization, our entire culture is concentrated in the mad demand for the most perfected weapons of slaughter. Ammunition! Ammunition! O, Lord, thou who rulest heaven and earth, thou God of love, of mercy and of justice, provide us with enough ammunition to destroy our enemy. Such is the prayer which is ascending daily to the Christian heaven.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
Make your educational laws strict and...

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
1 month 1 week ago
It seems not absurd to conceive,...

It seems not absurd to conceive, that at first production of mixt bodies, the universal matter, whereof they among other parts of the universe consisted, was actually divided, into little particles, of several sizes and shapes, variously moved.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Proposition I
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 4 days ago
Fame and wealth without wisdom are...

Fame and wealth without wisdom are unsafe possessions.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 4 days ago
The really good music, whether...

The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Interview with Rabindranath Tagore (14 April 1930), published in The Religion of Man (1930) by Rabindranath Tagore, p. 222, and in The Tagore Reader (1971) edited by Amiya Chakravarty
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 4 weeks ago
Error is the price we pay...

Error is the price we pay for progress.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 months 1 week ago
When the general population no longer...

When the general population no longer constitutes the armed forces, when the army is no longer the people in arms, then empires fall. Today all armies are again tending to become mercenary armies.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
49
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
If there were in the world...

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Think, Vol. 27 (1961), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
Everything is in a state of...

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.
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 1 week ago
Do not listen to the reasoners;...

Do not listen to the reasoners; there has been too much reasoning in France, and reasoning has banished reason. Put aside your fears and reservations, and trust the infallible instinct of your conscience. Do you want to redeem yourselves in your own eyes? Do you want to acquire the right of self-esteem? Do you want to accomplish a sovereign act? . . . Recall your sovereign.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter VIII, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 2 weeks ago
The problem posed by indirect speech...

The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Expression and Meaning, p. 31, Cambridge University Press (1979).
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months ago
I too have sworn heedlessly and...

I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I'm telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God, and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
180:10:1
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 weeks ago
Reason not with him, that will...

Reason not with him, that will deny the principal truths!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 1 week ago
The bourgeoisie is charitable out of...

The bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen."

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 weeks ago
Unbelievably, there is still here [in...

Unbelievably, there is still here [in Los Angeles] one of my most favorite places-the home of Henry and Ruth Denison at the very top of the hill, at the end of a road going nowhere, hanging above a reservoir-lake surrounded with pines. They have a sundeck under a eucalyptus tree where I have slept some memorably deep sleeps, and awakened very early in the morning, before sunrise, with stars still showing through the branches. In this house I have made some of my greatest friendships, so much so that I cannot think of it without that curious pleasure-pain which the Japanese call aware-the sense of echoes in the courtyards of the mind after the sun has left and the people have gone their ways forever.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 1 week ago
For the first time in the...

For the first time in the revolutionary movement of 1848, for the first time since 1793, a nation surrounded by superior counter-revolutionary forces dares to counter the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury by revolutionary passion, the terreur blanche by the terreur rouge. For the first time after a long period we meet with a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person - Lajos Kossuth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 3 weeks ago
Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to...

Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone".

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
No. 193
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months ago
The light will not shame you,...

The light will not shame you, if it shows you your own ugliness, and that ugliness so offends you that you perceive the beauty of the light.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 262
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
As for life, it is a...

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
II, 17
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
The measure of a master...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 1 week ago
Darwin made it possible to be...

Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 1 "Explaining the Very Improbable" (p. 6)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 weeks ago
Paradise on earth…

Paradise on earth is where I am.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Le Mondain, 1736
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 1 week ago
That higher and "complete" man is...

That higher and "complete" man is begotten by the "unknown" father and born from Wisdom, and it is he who, in the figure of the puer aeternus-"vultu mutabilis albus et ater"-represents our totality, which transcends consciousness. It was this boy into whom Faust had to change, abandoning his inflated onesidedness which saw the devil only outside. Christ's "Except ye become as little children" is a prefiguration of this, for in them the opposites lie close together; but what is meant is the boy who is born from the maturity of the adult man, and not the unconscious child we would like to remain.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Answer to Job, R. Hull, trans. (1984), pp. 157-158
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 3 weeks ago
What I liked was Thatcherism's Bolshevik...

What I liked was Thatcherism's Bolshevik aspect, which was to shake up the whole of Britain quite fundamentally, and if you read what I wrote in those years I think you might agree that in taking the view that I did then - that this was necessary and desirable - I never subscribed to the main delusion of the Thatcherites, which was that you could change everything and everything would remain the same. If what you wanted was a very anarchic, globalised, polyglot, mixed-up society in which most of the structures which had somehow been renewed from the Edwardian period to the Sixties were destroyed, then Thatcherism was what would do the job.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Quoted in Will Self, "John Gray: Forget everything you know," The Independent
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 4 days ago
To no one but the Son...

To no one but the Son of Heaven does it belong to order ceremonies, to fix the measures, and to determine the written characters.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 3 weeks ago
Emptiness empties the one seeing into...

Emptiness empties the one seeing into what is seen.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 weeks ago
A false science makes atheists, a...

A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The critical review, or annals of literature, Volume XXVI, by A Society of Gentlemen (1768) p. 450
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
The mind understands something only insofar...

The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 5 days ago
Human beings are social animals. We...

Human beings are social animals. We were social before we were human.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 2 weeks ago
A mind that has confronted ruin...

A mind that has confronted ruin for years Is half or more a ruined mind.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 2 weeks ago
When God chooses to let himself...

When God chooses to let himself be born in lowliness, when he who holds all possibilities in his hand takes upon himself the form of a lowly servant, when he goes about defenseless and lets people do with him what they will, he surely must know well enough what he is doing and why he wills it; but for all that it is he who has people in his power and not they who have power over him-so history ought not play Mr. Malapert by this wanting to make manifest who he was.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 3 weeks ago
Hayek's blind spot with regard to...

Hayek's blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
5 months 3 weeks ago
A prudent man…

A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Prince (1513), Ch. 6; translated by Luigi Ricci
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 2 weeks ago
The science which has to do...

The science which has to do with nature clearly concerns itself for the most part with bodies and magnitudes and their properties and movements, but also with the principles of this sort of substance, as many as they may be.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 1 week ago
It was an important moment. The...

It was an important moment. The old partners of the spectacle of punishment, the body and the blood, gave way. A new character came of the scene, masked. It was the end of a certain kind of tragedy; comedy began, with shadow play, faceless voices, impalpable entities. The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into this bodiless reality.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 1 week ago
If we demonstrate this moving principle,...

If we demonstrate this moving principle, if we show that matter, far from being as indifferent as it is supposed to be, to movement and to rest, ought to be regarded as an active, as well as a passive substance, what resource can be left to those who have made its essence consist in extension?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
..Whenever it ceases to be true...

..Whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, as a rule, prefer themselves to others, and those nearest to them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not only practicable, but the only defensible form of society...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily...

The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily it is the innermost fact of their existence, and determines all the rest,-at public hustings, in private drawing-rooms, in church, in market, and wherever else. Have true reverence, and what indeed is inseparable therefrom, reverence the right man, all is well; have sham-reverence, and what also follows, greet with it the wrong man, then all is ill, and there is nothing.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
Blood doubly unites us, for we...

Blood doubly unites us, for we share the same blood and we have spilled blood.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Orestes to Electra, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 3 weeks ago
Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of...

Envy, jealousy, ambition, any kind of greed are passions; love is an action, the practice of human power, which can be practiced only in freedom and never as a result of compulsion. Love is an activity, not a passive affect; it is a "standing in," not a "falling for." In the most general way, the active character of love can be described by stating that love is primarily giving, not receiving.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 2 weeks ago
The conception of Rights involves that...

The conception of Rights involves that when men are to live in a community, each must so restrict his freedom as to permit the coexistence of the freedom of all others. But it does not involve that this particular person, A, is to restrict his freedom by the freedom of those particular persons, B, C, and D. That it has happened so that I, A, must conform myself particularly to the freedom of these, B, C, and D, of all other men, is purely the result of my living together with them; and I so live with them, simply by my free-will, not because there is an obligation for me to do so.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 23-24
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago
Considering the optimistic turn taken by...

Considering the optimistic turn taken by world trade AT THIS MOMENT...it is some consolation at least that the revolution has begun in Russia, for I regard the convocation of 'notables' to Petersburg as such a beginning. ... On the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Friedrich Engels (8 October 1858), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), pp. 346-347
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 4 days ago
I do not think that...

I do not think that religion is the most important element. We are held together rather by a body of tradition, handed down from father to son, which the child imbibes with his mother's milk. The atmosphere of our infancy predetermines our idiosyncrasies and predilections.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
Consider what you have in the...

Consider what you have in the smallest chosen library. A company of the wisest and wittiest men that could be picked out of all civil countries, in a thousand years, have set in best order the results of their learning and wisdom. The men themselves were hid and inaccessible, solitary, impatient of interruption, fenced by etiquette; but the thought which they did not uncover to their bosom friend is here written out in transparent words to us, the strangers of another age.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
For what avail the plough or...

For what avail the plough or sail, Or land or life, if freedom fail?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Boston
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 1 day ago
Warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we...

Warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we are dying of cold and not of darkness. It is not the night that kills, but the frost.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Where are we going? Do not...

Where are we going? Do not ask! Ascend, descend. There is no beginning and no end. Only this present moment exists, full of bitterness, full of sweetness, and I rejoice in it all.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Users

☰ ˟
  • All users
  • Historical Figures

Who's new

  • Enzo Soltani
  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed

Who's online

There are currently 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia