Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Free Books
  • Contact
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 months ago
Death,-a stopping of impressions through the...

Death,-a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VI, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
6 months 3 weeks ago
Let's put a limit to the...

Let's put a limit to the scramble for money. ... Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that struggle to an end.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, satire i, lines 92-94, as translated by N. Rudd
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
6 months 3 weeks ago
We do not have to make...

We do not have to make self- sacrifice a necessary element of altruism. We can regard people as altruists because of the kind of interests they have rather than because they are sacrificing their interests.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 9: Altruism and Happiness (p. 103)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is a greatness not of...

It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That this world is after all but a show,-a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that,-the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher,-the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 months 4 weeks ago
It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic...

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, "mad cow" disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Is Science a Religion?, The Humanist
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 3 days ago
A nation never falls but by...

A nation never falls but by suicide.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1861
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
3 months 2 weeks ago
A good education would be devoted...

A good education would be devoted to encouraging and refining the love of the beautiful, but a pathologically misguided moralism instead turns such longing into a sin against the high goal of making everyone feel good, of overcoming nature in the name of equality. ... Love of the beautiful may be the last and finest sacrifice to radical egalitarianism.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 15.
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
5 months 2 weeks ago
Jazz is the false liquidation of...

Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Perennial fashion - Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
7 months 4 days ago
In the Catholic Church, especially, they...

In the Catholic Church, especially, they go into chancery, make a clean confession, give up all, and think to start again. Thus men will lie on their backs, talking about the fall of man, and never make an effort to get up.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 487
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 months 3 days ago
The poem is important, but not...

The poem is important, but not more than the people whose survival it serves...

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
In A Motel Parking Lot, Thinking Of Dr. Williams
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is sad not to be...

It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
To a Young Writer
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months 1 day ago
Language does for intelligence what the...

Language does for intelligence what the wheel does for the feet and the body. It enables them to move from thing to thing with greater ease and speed and ever less involvement.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 113)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 3 days ago
Science is meaningless because it gives...

Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Quoted by Max Weber in his lecture "Science as a Vocation"; in Lynda Walsh (2013)
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
6 months 3 weeks ago
Now, that we do not really...

Now, that we do not really know of what sort each thing is, or is not, has often been shown.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 3 weeks ago
The precarious ontological link between Logos...

The precarious ontological link between Logos and Eros is broken, and scientific rationality emerges as essentially neutral.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 147
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
7 months 1 week ago
Wherever you encounter truth, look upon...

Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Erasmus of Rotterdam‎ (1934) by Stefan Zweig, Eden Paul, and Cedar Paul, p. 91; reprinted in Erasmus - The Right to Heresy (2008) by Stefan Zweig, p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
3 months 3 weeks ago
The scientific enterprise as a whole...

The scientific enterprise as a whole does from time to time prove useful, open up new territory, display order, and test long-accepted belief. Nevertheless, the individual engaged on a normal research problem is almost never doing any one of these things. Once engaged, his motivation is of a rather different sort. What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 38.
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
5 months 2 weeks ago
Human history began with an act...

Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem in On Disobedience and Other Essays
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 weeks ago
By awakening the Heroic that slumbers...

By awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
7 months 2 days ago
...and if you are common, you...

...and if you are common, you can dress up as a woman, show you behind or write poems: there's nothing offensive about a naked behind if it's everybody's; each person will be mirrored in it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 463
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months 1 day ago
The mosaic form of the TV...

The mosaic form of the TV image demands participation and involvement in depth, of the whole being, as does the sense of touch.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 334)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
7 months 1 week ago
No matter that we…

No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
7 months 1 week ago
I think these things firearms were...

I think these things firearms were invented by Satan himself, for they can't be defended against with (ordinary) weapons and fists. All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what's coming.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
3552
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 months 2 weeks ago
The intellectual world is divided into...

The intellectual world is divided into two classes - dilettantes, on the one hand, and pedants, on the other.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
7 months 2 days ago
By 'arguing...' I mean... criticizing... inviting......

By 'arguing...' I mean... criticizing... inviting... criticism; and trying to learn from it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
7 months 4 days ago
Whatever my own practice may be,...

Whatever my own practice may be, I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 245
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
In place of the bourgeois society,...

In place of the bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, shall we have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section 2, paragraph 72 (last paragraph).
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
5 months 2 weeks ago
Maslow explained that, some time in...

Maslow explained that, some time in the late thirties, he had been struck by the thought that modern psychology is based on the study of sick people. But since there are more healthy people around than sick people, how can this psychology give a fair idea of the workings of the human mind? It struck him that it might be worthwhile to devote some time to the study of healthy people.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
5 months 3 weeks ago
The remembrance of forbidden fruit is...

The remembrance of forbidden fruit is the earliest thing in the memory of each of us, as it is in that of mankind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I: Moral Obligation
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 weeks ago
I long to be free -...

I long to be free - desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 months 3 weeks ago
I am I and….

I am I and my circumstance, and if I don't save it I don't save myself.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 5 days ago
In skating over thin ice....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
6 months 3 days ago
Limiting the liberty of each by...

Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 4
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 months 2 weeks ago
There is nothing wrong with meditating...

There is nothing wrong with meditating just to meditate, in the same way that you listen to music just for the music. If you go to concerts to "get culture" or to improve your mind, you will sit there as deaf as a doorpost.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 90
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
6 months 3 weeks ago
All of us, I believe, are...

All of us, I believe, are fortunate to have been born.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Death" (1970), p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
7 months 4 days ago
Our inventions are wont to be...

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 60-61
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 3 days ago
I know, indeed, that some honest...

I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
7 months 2 days ago
Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such...

Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such hope. It does not even foretell, (which would be more tolerable to our habits of thought) a gradual decay. It foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without; an extinguisher popped onto the candle, a brick flung at the gramophone, a curtain rung down on the play - "Halt!"

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 3 days ago
When a person inflates his own...

When a person inflates his own importance, he does not see his own sins; and his sins get bigger right along with him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
7 months 4 days ago
Thus mathematics may be defined as...

Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 months 3 weeks ago
Everyone is sure….

Everyone is sure of this [that errors are normally distributed], Mr. Lippman told me one day, since the experimentalists believe that it is a mathematical theorem, and the mathematicians that it is an experimentally determined fact.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Calcul des probabilités (2nd ed., 1912), p. 171
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
5 months 1 week ago
He who says he hates every...

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
K 41
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
5 months ago
No tears are shed, when an...

No tears are shed, when an enemy dies.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim 376
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
7 months 1 week ago
I perfectly agree with your Lordship...

I perfectly agree with your Lordship too, that to crush the Industry of so great and so fine a province of the empire, in order to favour the monopoly of some particular towns in Scotland or England, is equally unjust and impolitic. The general opulence and improvement of Ireland might certainly, under proper management, afford much greater resources to the Government, than can ever be drawn from a few mercantile or manufacturing towns.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Henry Dundas (1 November 1779), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), p. 241
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
5 months 2 weeks ago
If one only wished to be...

If one only wished to be Sad, this could be horrible for the rest of civilisation; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 3 days ago
We have the wolf by the...

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, self-preservation in the other.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On slavery, in a letter to John Holmes
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months 1 day ago
Media are means of extending and...

Media are means of extending and enlarging our organic sense lives into our environment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Care and Feeding of Communication Innovation", Dinner Address to Conference on 8 mm Sound Film and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, 8 November 1961
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 months 2 weeks ago
If you get the message, hang...

If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 26 (This statement was redacted from later editions.)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
7 months 3 days ago
The total possible consciousness may be...

The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
6 months 2 weeks ago
It is not proper either to...

It is not proper either to have a blunt sword or to use freedom of speech ineffectually. Neither is the sun to be taken from the world, nor freedom of speech from erudition.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in the translation of Thomas Taylor
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