Skip to main content
3 months 1 week ago

It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: "How did I get into this condition?"

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

Perception and knowledge could never be the same.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

0
0
Source
source
1841
5 months 1 week ago

Underlying even the so-called problem of knowledge there is simply this human feeling, just as underlying the inquiry into the "why," the cause, there is simply the search for the "wherefore," the end. All the rest is either to deceive oneself or to wish to deceive others; and to wish to deceive others in order to deceive oneself.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world.

0
0
Source
source
The Responsibility of the Poet
6 months 3 weeks ago

Rascals are always sociable - more's the pity! and the chief sign that a man has any nobility in his character is the little pleasure he takes in others' company.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 1, Ch. 5, § 9
5 months 2 weeks ago

All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

0
0
Source
source
Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271
6 months 1 week ago

When it comes to consideration of how to do well in running the city, which must proceed entirely through justice and soundness of mind.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Protagoras by Plato
5 months 3 weeks ago

A common mortal periodically selected by his fellow-citizens to watch over their own interests, can never be supposed to possess this stupendous virtue.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Chapter 9
6 months 3 weeks ago

Although usury is itself a form of credit in its bourgeoisified form, the form adapted to capital, in its pre-bourgeois form it is rather the expression of the lack of credit.

0
0
Source
source
Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 455.
5 months 1 week ago

The prestige which constitutes three-fourths of might is first of all made up of that superb indifference which the powerful have for the weak, an indifference so contagious that it is communicated even to those who are its object.

0
0
Source
source
in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 168
6 months 4 weeks ago

The mind intent upon resolving as well as compounding the concept of a composite demands and presumes boundaries in which it may acquiesce in the former as well as in the latter direction.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

I do not believe that science per se is an adequate source of happiness, nor do I think that my own scientific outlook has contributed very greatly to my own happiness, which I attribute to defecating twice a day with unfailing regularity.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to W. W. Norton (publisher), 27 January, 1931
7 months 3 weeks ago
Because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people the ancient Greeks, for instance more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker.
0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.

0
0
Source
source
National Post (3 March 2001).
5 months 3 weeks ago

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

0
0
Source
source
No. 1
7 months 1 week ago

Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. Thou mayest say, "I love only God, God the Father." Wrong! If Thou lovest Him, thou dost not love Him alone; but if thou lovest the Father, thou lovest also the Son. Or thou mayest say, "I love the Father and I love the Son, but these alone; God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; only these do I love." Wrong again! If thou lovest the Head, thou lovest also the members; if thou lovest not the members, neither dost thou love the Head.

0
0
Source
source
p 438
5 months 3 weeks ago

Simplify the social system, in the manner which every motive, but those of usurpation and ambition, powerfully recommends; render the plain dictates of justice level to every capacity; remove the necessity of implicit faith; and we may expect the whole species to become reasonable and virtuous.

0
0
Source
source
Portable Enlightenment Reader, p. 477
4 months 3 weeks ago

When you move into a new area, a new territory and learn a new language, the language is not a new subject, it is an environment, it is total.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 105)
7 months 2 weeks ago

Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license. Thus his words have respect to his actions, and his actions have respect to his words; is it not just an entire sincerity which marks the superior man?

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

A father would do well, as his son grows up, and is capable of it, to talk familiarly with him; nay, ask his advice, and consult with him about those things wherein he has any knowledge or understanding. By this, the father will gain two things, both of great moment. The sooner you treat him as a man, the sooner he will begin to be one; and if you admit him into serious discourses sometimes with you, you will insensibly raise his mind above the usual amusements of youth, and those trifling occupations which it is commonly wasted in. For it is easy to observe, that many young men continue longer in thought and conversation of school-boys than otherwise they would, because their parents keep them at that distance, and in that low rank, by all their carriage to them.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 95
4 months 4 weeks ago

Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.

0
0
Source
source
Of Idolatry
6 months 2 weeks ago

Everyday we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 69
4 months 3 weeks ago

Every one excels in something in which another fails.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 17
4 months 3 weeks ago

I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder - there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. I, ch. 2
5 months 4 weeks ago

In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing. He brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops. He embraces a profession and gives it up. He settles in a place which he soon afterward leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics and if at the end of a year of unremitting labour he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XXIX.
7 months 1 week ago

What is love's perfection? To love our enemies, and to love them to the end that they may be our brothers.

0
0
Source
source
First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 266
4 months 3 weeks ago

The wheel may be one of those cases where the engineering solution can be seen in plain view, yet be unattainable in evolution because it lies on the other side of a deep valley, cutting unbridgeably across the massif of Mount Improbable.

0
0
Source
source
Dawkins, Richard (24 November 1996). "Why don't animals have wheels?". The Sunday Times. Retrieved on 29 October 2008.
3 months 1 week ago

A sword by itself does not slay; it is merely the weapon used by the slayer.

0
0
Source
source
Line 30 Seneca is here describing arguments used by 'certain men,' not stating his own opinion.
2 months 3 weeks ago

That which I am now entering upon being the Consideration of the things themselves whereinto Spagyrists resolve mixt Bodies by the Fire, If I can shew that these are not of an Elementary Nature, it will be no great matter what names these or those Chymists have been pleased to give them. And I question not that to a Wise man, and consequently to Eleutherius, it will be lesse considerable to know, what Men Have thought of Things, then what they Should have thought.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....

0
0
Source
source
Bk. XIV, ch. 12
4 months 3 weeks ago

What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. The child watching TV loves these people, you know -- they're in color, and they're talking to the child. Why wouldn't a child relate to these people? And you know, if you can't sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning, you can turn on a switch, and there are your friends and relatives, and they obviously like you. And they're charming. Who wouldn't want Peter Jennings for a relative? This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house.

0
0
Source
source
Interviewed by Frank Houston, "The Salon Interview: Kurt Vonnegut", Salon
3 months 2 weeks ago

All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

My conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supreme desire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds of the ultimate and irremediable uncertainty of the truth of what I hope for, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue, therefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is not faith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is no security or repose - so far as security and repose are obtainable in this life, so essentially insecure and unreposeful - save in conduct that is passionately good.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand. .. and not understand ... so much. I'm not afraid for you now.

0
0
Source
source
Part 4, Chapter ?
6 months 3 weeks ago

How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicly; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land?

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

We may suppose that everyone has in himself the whole form of a moral conception.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 50
2 months 3 weeks ago

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

He wins every hand who mingles profit with pleasure, by delighting and instructing the reader at the same time.

0
0
Source
source
Line 343
6 months 3 weeks ago

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness. . . . I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory. . . . Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

I assert(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth [i.e., verification] of a scientific hypothesis...(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', in the sense of the probability calculus.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think ... and I can't prevent myself from thinking.

0
0
Source
source
Lundi ("Monday")
6 months 3 weeks ago

When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.

0
0
Source
source
Letter XIV

A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Beginning of the End (2004) by Peter Hershey, p. 109 Also, as quoted in "The Relentless Rise of Science as Fun", by Jeremy Burgess, in New Scientist, Volume 143, Issues 1932-1945, originally published 1994.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia