Skip to main content
4 months 1 week ago

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.

0
0
Source
source
Intellect
1 week 2 days ago

People try to get away from it all-to the country, to the beach, to the mountains. You always wish that you could too. Which is idiotic: you can get away from it anytime you like. By going within. Nowhere you can go is more peaceful-more free of interruptions-than your own soul.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) IV, 4
4 months 3 weeks ago

O pitiable minds of men, O blind intelligences! In what gloom of life, in how great perils is passed all your poor span of time! not to see that all nature barks for is this, that pain be removed away out of the body, and that the mind, kept away from care and fear, enjoy a feeling of delight!

0
0
Source
source
Book II, lines 14-19 (tr. Rouse)
3 months 4 days ago

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated. 

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Communications and History : Theories of Knowledge, Media and Civilization (1988) by Paul Heyer, p. 125
3 months 3 weeks ago

A good Soul hath neither too great joy, nor too great sorrow: for it rejoiceth in goodness; and it sorroweth in wickedness. By the means whereof, when it beholdeth all things, and seeth the good and bad so mingled together, it can neither rejoice greatly; nor be grieved with over much sorrow.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

One should be wary of assuming that we're the folk who can properly look after ourselves, whereas our descendants, if they become genetically pre-programmed ecstatics, will get trapped in robot-serviced states of infantile dependence. For it shouldn't be forgotten that exuberantly happy people also have a fierce will to survive. They love life dearly. They take on daunting challenges against seemingly impossible odds. One of the hallmarks of many endogenous depressive states, on the other hand, is so-called behavioural despair. If one learns that apparently no amount of effort can rescue one from an aversive stimulus, then one tends to sink into a lethargic stupor. This syndrome of "learned helplessness" may persist even when the opportunity to escape from the nasty stimulus subsequently arises.

0
0
Source
source
4. Objections, 4.2
3 months 1 week ago

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.

0
0
Source
source
Part I Section I
4 months 1 week ago

In philosophy the race is to the one who can run slowest-the one who crosses the finish line last.

0
0
Source
source
p. 40e
1 week 5 days ago

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to John Sinclair
4 months 1 week ago

One who believes, as I do, that the free intellect is the chief engine of human progress, cannot but be fundamentally opposed to Bolshevism, as much as to the Church of Rome.

0
0
Source
source
Part I, Ch. 9: International Policy
4 months 2 weeks ago

As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

0
0
Source
source
H 10 Variant translation: He who is in love with himself has at least this advantage - he won't encounter many rivals.
2 months 3 weeks ago

The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Love works magic. It is the final purpose Of the world story, The Amen of the universe.

0
0
3 weeks 6 days ago

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. II, letter to Lord Murray (29 September 1843), p. 501
3 months 1 week ago

Ministers and favorites are a sort of people who have a state prisoner in their custody, the whole management of whose understanding and actions they can easily engross.

0
0
Source
source
Book V, Ch. 5
3 months 4 days ago

The artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does violence not only to the artist but to the living source of a new and better future.

0
0
3 months 4 days ago

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in The Observer September 13, 1987.

One never goes so far as when one doesn't know where one is going.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter
4 months 3 weeks ago

We must learn how to imitate Cicero from Cicero himself. Let us imitate him as he imitated others.

0
0
Source
source
in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Aurea Carmina (8) by Hierocles of Alexandria, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 356
4 months 1 week ago

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

0
0
Source
source
June 21, 1852
3 months 1 week ago

Show me what thou truly lovest, what thou seekest and strivest for with thy whole heart when thou hopest to attain to true en joyment of thyself-and thou hast thereby shown me thy Life. What thou lovest, in that thou livest. This very Love is thy Life, the root, the seat, the central point of thy being. All other emotions within thee have life only in so far as they are governed by this one central emotion.

0
0
Source
source
P. 3
4 months ago

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

There has been a general trend in recent times toward a Unitarian mythology and the worship of one God. This is the tendency which it is customary to regard as spiritual progress. On what grounds? Chiefly, so far as one can see, because we in the Twentieth Century West are officially the worshippers of a single divinity. A movement whose consummation is Us must be progressive. Quod erat demonstrandum.

0
0
Source
source
"One and Many," p. 16
3 months 1 week ago

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

0
0
3 weeks 6 days ago

Who, then, can be more ignorant of nature than he who classes this cruel and hurtful vice as belonging to her best and most polished work?

0
0
3 weeks 6 days ago

"You will have less money." Yes, and less trouble. "Less influence." Yes, and less envy.

0
0
5 months 2 days ago

The superior man governs men, according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene.

0
0
Source
source
Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
3 months 1 week ago

Accordingly, time logically supposes a continuous range of intensity of feeling. It follows then, from the definition of continuity, that when any particular kind of feeling is present, an infinitesimal continuum of all feelings differing infinitesimally from that, is present.

0
0
3 weeks 6 days ago

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he gives and receives praise.

0
0
Source
source
Line 12.
1 month 2 weeks ago

Ridden with conflicts and lacking the industrial base of communism and nazism, Islamism is nowhere near a danger of the magnitude of those that were faced down in the 20th century.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

0
0
Source
source
Christianity Among the Religions of the World (New York: Scribner's, 1957) p. 7
1 month 5 days ago

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

0
0
Source
source
Metaphysical Horror
4 months 2 days ago

It is better to fight with a few good men against all the wicked, than with many wicked men against a few good men.

0
0
Source
source
§ 5
1 month 3 weeks ago

Given our anthropocentric bias, thinking of non-human vertebrates not just as equivalent in moral status to toddlers or infants, but as though they were toddlers or infants, is a useful exercise. Such reconceptualisation helps correct our lack of empathy for sentient beings whose physical appearance is different from "us". Ethically, the practice of intelligent "anthropomorphism" shouldn't be shunned as unscientific, but embraced insofar as it augments our stunted capacity for empathy. Such anthropomorphism can be a valuable corrective to our cognitive and moral limitations. This is not a plea to be sentimental, simply for impartial benevolence.

0
0
Source
source
Reprogramming Predators, BLTC Research, 2009
3 months 1 week ago

Labour is the source of all wealth, the political economists assert. And it really is the source -- next to nature, which supplies it with the material that it converts into wealth. But it is even infinitely more than this. It is the prime basic condition for all human existence, and this to such an extent that, in a sense, we have to say that labour created man himself.

0
0
Source
source
The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man
3 months 1 week ago

Nothing is indefensible - from the absurdest proposition to the most monstrous crime.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination (tr. Donald M. Frame)
3 weeks ago

The Chinese do not draw any distinction between food and medicine.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. IX : The Enjoyment of Living, p. 249, as quoted in Fred R Shapiro (2006). The Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press. p. 467. ISBN 0-300-10798-6.
2 months 3 weeks ago

When we resist impermanence, the self intensifies.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.

0
0
Source
source
Last Essay: "1967"
3 months 2 weeks ago

The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This: That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy consoling faith never, never abandon me!

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "Diderot" in The Great Infidels (1881) by Robert Green Ingersoll; The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Vol. III (1900), p. 367
2 months 3 weeks ago

Decision making processes are aimed at finding courses of action that are feasible or satisfactory in the light of multiple goals and constraints.

0
0
Source
source
p. 274.
4 months 1 week ago

Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

0
0
Source
source
January 26, 1840
4 months 1 week ago

Enthusiasm is supernatural serenity.

0
0
Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 74

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia