Skip to main content
8 months 3 days ago

To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries, this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, it the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

Wit is cultured insolence.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

The living force of his soul gained the day: on he passed far beyond the flaming walls of the world and traversed throughout in mind and spirit the immeasurable universe.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, lines 72-74 (tr. H. A. J. Munro); of Epicurus.
4 months 3 weeks ago

As free constitutions are the strongest supports of governments, social order is the best safeguard of freedom. Liberty has no enemies so pernicious as those misguided friends whose ardour in her cause leads them to outrage the moral sense of mankind, and to arm against her the interests and feelings which are her natural allies. Even the prejudices of nations should be respected.

0
0
Source
source
'Essay on the Life and Character of King William III' (1822), written for the Greaves Historical Prize at Cambridge, quoted in The Times Literary Supplement (1 May 1969), p. 469
7 months 1 week ago

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace.

0
0
Source
source
p. 274
4 months 2 weeks ago

Human rights are not just cultural or legal constructions, as fashionable western relativists are fond of claiming. They are universal values. To deny the benefits of the new regime of rights to other cultures is to patronise them in a way that is reminiscent of the colonial era. If the new regime on torture is good enough for the US, who can say that it is not good for everyone?

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

The demands of a free populace, too, are very seldom harmful to liberty, for they are due either to the populace being oppressed or to the suspicious that it is going to be oppressed... and, should these impressions be false, a remedy is provided in the public platform on which some man of standing can get up, appeal to the crowd, and show that it is mistaken. And though, as Tully remarks, the populace may be ignorant, it is capable of grasping the truth and readily yields when a man, worthy of confidence, lays the truth before it.

0
0
Source
source
Book 1, Ch. 4 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
3 months 2 weeks ago

Himmler approved the idea of recruiting divisions of the Waffen-SS with volunteers from all nations under the banner of the struggle against Communist Russia and in defence of Europe and its civilisation. This was the restoration of the function that the Order of Teutonic Knights had in the beginning as guardian of the East and, at the same time, of the spirit that had animated the Freikorps, the voluntary groups that, on their own initiative, had fought against the Bolsheviks in the eastern regions and the Baltic countries after the end of the First World War. In the end, more than seventeen nations were represented in the Waffen-SS, often with their own complete divisions: French, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, Spaniards, even Swiss, with a total of about 800,000 men, of whom only a part came from the Germanic area.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

It was the case of common soldiers deserting from their officers, to join a furious, licentious populace. It was a desertion to a cause, the real object of which was to level all those institutions, and to break all those connexions, natural and civil, that regulate and hold together the community by a chain of subordination; to raise soldiers against their officers; servants against their masters; tradesmen against their customers; artificers against their employers; tenants against their landlords; curates against their bishops; and children against their parents. That this cause of theirs was not an enemy to servitude, but to society.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1790), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 359
4 months 3 days ago

Art enlarges experience by admitting us to the inner life of others.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. IV: "The Golden Rule and After", p. 110.
7 months 1 week ago

In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is completely sufficient. It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property. History will com to it; and this movement, which in theory we already know to be a self-transcending movement, will constitute in actual fact a very severe and protracted process. But we must regard it as a real advance to have gained beforehand a consciousness of the limited character a well as of the goal of this historical movement - and a consciousness which reaches out beyond it.

0
0
Source
source
p. 99, The Marx-Engels Reader
6 months 3 days ago

There is no problem in all mathematics that cannot be solved by direct counting. But with the present implements of mathematics many operations can be performed in a few minutes which without mathematical methods would take a lifetime.

0
0
Source
source
p. 197; On mathematics and counting.
6 months 3 days ago

When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago
Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.
0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Mankind is born for mutual assistance, anger for mutual ruin: the former loves society, the latter estrangement.

0
0
7 months 6 days ago

The consciousness of being betrayed is to the collective consciousness of a sacred group what a certain form of schizophrenia is to the individual...it is a form of madness.

0
0
Source
source
p. 193
6 months 1 week ago

By means of the new education we want to mould the Germans into a corporate body, which shall be stimulated and animated in all its individual members by the same interest.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction p. 15
8 months 4 days ago

People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don't stop playing tennis just because they turn 40, they don't stop with sex just because they turn 40; they keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it, and learning will be the same thing.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to follow any idea, wise or mad that may present itself. ... My ideas are my harlots.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.

0
0
3 months 4 days ago

How easy it is to repel and to wipe away every impression which is troublesome or unsuitable, and immediately to be in all tranquility. To shrug it all off and wipe it clean--every annoyance and distraction--and reach utter stillness. Child's play.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) V, 2
5 months 3 weeks ago

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought", p. 28
7 months 1 week ago

My father impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?"

0
0
Source
source
(pp. 42-43)
6 months 3 weeks ago

Bear no improper envy, so that thy life may not become tasteless.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

The mad mob does not ask how it could be better, only that it be different. And when it then becomes worse, it must change again. Thus they get bees for flies, and at last hornets for bees. Whether Soldiers Can Also Be in a State of Grace

0
0
Source
source
1526
7 months 1 week ago

Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.

0
0
Source
source
The Civil War in France : "The Third Address", May 1871
1 month 3 weeks ago

Eh...Affinity's liquify tool...we'll get some cool stuff going. I know stuff like this makes things tough to read...we'll see...

0
0
5 months 4 weeks ago

If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify freedom with the outward movement since there is nothing else to identify it with. But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.

0
0
Source
source
The Sovereignty of Good (1970) p. 36.
7 months 1 day ago

In the darkest region of the political field the condemned man represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

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
7 months 1 week ago

The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, - men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority - demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice - comes graceful and beloved as a bride!

0
0
Source
source
p. 189
6 months 1 week ago

The Divine light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno : Philosopher, Martyr, Mystic 1548 - 1600 (1913) by Coulson Turnbull
6 months 3 days ago

To suppose universal laws of nature capable of being apprehended by the mind and yet having no reason for their special forms, but standing inexplicable and irrational, is hardly a justifiable position. Uniformities are precisely the sort of facts that need to be accounted for. That a pitched coin should sometimes turn up heads and sometimes tails calls for no particular explanation; but if it shows heads every time, we wish to know how this result has been brought about. Law is par excellence the thing that wants a reason.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Everyone has a religion, whether admitted or not, because it is impossible to be human without having some basic assumptions (or intuitions) about existence and the good life.

0
0
Source
source
p. 123
5 months ago

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
5 months 3 days ago

Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

In a block universe, dust and shadow is forever....

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us.

0
0
Source
source
Section 40
5 months 2 weeks ago

The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

0
0
Source
source
p. 108
3 months 3 days ago

Nor is anything empty: For what is empty is nothing. What is nothing cannot be.Nor does it move; for it has nowhere to betake itself to, but is full. For if there were aught empty, it would betake itself to the empty. But, since there is naught empty, it has nowhere to betake itself to.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The world is so possessed by the power of what is and the efforts of adjustment to it, that the adolescent's rebellion, which once fought the father because his practices contradicted his own ideology, can no longer crop up. ... Psychologically, the father is ... replaced by the world of things.

0
0
Source
source
p. 41-42.
4 months 2 weeks ago

A city that outdistances Man's walking powers is a trap for Man. It threatens to become a prison from which he cannot escape unless he has mechanical means of transport, the thoroughfares for carrying these, and the purchasing power for commanding the use of artificial means of communication.

0
0
Source
source
"Has Man's Metropolitan Environment Any Precedents?", Ekistics, vol. 22, no. 133 (December 1966) pp. 385-7
6 months 3 days ago

How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

0
0
Source
source
Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
7 months 1 week ago

I am against a League war in present circumstances, because the anti-League powers are strong. The analogy is not King v. Barons, but the War of the Roses. If the League were strong enough I should favour sanctions, because the effect would suffice, or the war would be short and small. The whole question is quantitative.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Kingsley Martin shortly before the Italo-Abyssinian War (7 August 1935), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207
8 months 1 week ago

Thus every action must be due to one or other of seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reasoning, anger, or appetite.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia