Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Free Books
  • Contact
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 days ago
Hadst thou not Greek enough to...

Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end of man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Bk. II, ch. 5 The words Carlyle put in italics are a quotation from Book 1 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 months 1 week ago
Poetry can be written only because...

Poetry can be written only because it has been written.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Responsibility of the Poet"
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 week ago
When you read God's Word, in...

When you read God's Word, in everything you read, continually to say to yourself: It is I to whom it is speaking - this is earnestness, precisely this is earnestness. Not a single one of those to whom the cause of Christianity in the higher sense has been entrusted forgot to urge this again and again as most crucial, as unconditionally the condition if you are to come to see yourself in the mirror.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 1 week ago
The creed which accepts as the...

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
2 months 1 week ago
We cannot think with precision unless...

We cannot think with precision unless in our own minds we use words with precision.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
General Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
7 months 1 week ago
I was assailed by memories of...

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
2 months 3 weeks ago
The highest activities are always essentially...

The highest activities are always essentially lonely and private, and these men had a robust sense of their independence and the ultimate self-sufficiency of the mind. In this they were just like Socrates. The only change they operated was to bring philosophy out of the closet into the open, instead of seeking protection behind a little wall like men in a storm. Of course, in so doing they made philosophy, on the one hand, more vulnerable to the public if the hopes of controlling the public are not fulfilled, and, on the other, put at risk that inner intransigence which is the necessary condition of the quest for truth. Not only the rewards but the new responsibilities might prove irresistible temptations to compromise.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Commerce and Culture," p. 290.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 months 1 week ago
When things fall out opportunely for...

When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Sire de Maletroit's Door.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 1 week ago
This is the Supreme Duty of...

This is the Supreme Duty of the man who struggles - to set out for the lofty peak which Christ, the first-born sone of salvation, attained. How can we begin? If we are to follow him we must have a profound knowledge of his conflict, we must relive his anguish: his victory over the blossoming snares of the earth, his sacrifice of the great and small joys of men and his ascent from sacrifice to sacrifice, exploit to exploit, to martyrdom's summit, the Cross.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 1 week ago
People understand the meaning of eating...

People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
5 months 5 days ago
Man is a creation of desire,...

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Psychoanalysis of Fire, ch. 2, "Fire and Reverie"
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
4 months 2 weeks ago
Materialism ends up denying the existence...

Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Consciousness and Language (2002) p. 47.
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
7 months 1 week ago
And the true order of going,...

And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 months 4 days ago
People who live...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
6 months 2 weeks ago
An honest man nearly always thinks...

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 277.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 1 week ago
If you say that this is...

If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"What Makes a Life Significant?"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 week ago
Unlimited exploitation of cheap labour-power is...

Unlimited exploitation of cheap labour-power is the sole foundation of their power to compete.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 8, pg. 520.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 months 1 week ago
There are some remedies worse than...

There are some remedies worse than the disease.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim 301
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 1 week ago
The unconscious is not just evil...

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 week ago
For as only one thing is...

For as only one thing is necessary, and as the theme of the talk is the willing of only one thing: hence the consciousness before God of one's eternal responsibility to be an individual is that one thing necessary.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
3 months 5 days ago
There is no idea so obscure...

There is no idea so obscure that someone could not come to regard it as self-evident.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter Seven, Pragmatism and Positivism, p. 156
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 1 week ago
Your reason is now mature enough...

Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object religion. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Scan of the original page at The Library of Congress.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 week ago
A circuit performed by a capital...

A circuit performed by a capital and meant to be a periodical process, not an individual act, is called its turnover. The duration of this turnover is determined by the sum of its time of production and its time of circulation.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Volume II, Ch. VII, p. 158.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 months 2 days ago
Everything should be made simple...

Everything should be made simple as possible but no simpler.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 1 week ago
We are told that Christ was...

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He has disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, Chapter 4, "The Perfect Penitent"
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 1 week ago
The real discovery is the one...

The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
§ 133
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 1 week ago
As for 'taking sides' - the...

As for 'taking sides' - the choice, it seems to me, is no longer between two users of violence, two systems of dictatorship. Violence and dictatorship cannot produce peace and liberty; they can only produce the results of violence and dictatorship, results with which history has made us only too sickeningly familiar. The choice now is between militarism and pacifism. To me, the necessity of pacifism seems absolutely clear.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (1937) edited by Nancy Cunard and published by the Left Review
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
6 months 1 week ago
Truly to escape Hegel involves an...

Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Discourse on Language, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France, 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 1 week ago
And striving to be man, the...

And striving to be man, the worm Mounts through all the spires of form.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
May-Day
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 1 week ago
Society should treat all equally well...

Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 months 3 days ago
I often asked myself the following...

I often asked myself the following question. There is no doubt that at all times for many men one of the greatest tortures of their lives has been the contact, the collision with the folly of their neighbours. And yet how is it that there has never been attempted - I think this is so - a study on this matter, an Essay on Folly? For the pages of Erasmus do not treat of this aspect of the matter.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months 3 weeks ago
Step not beyond the beam of...

Step not beyond the beam of the balance.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Symbol 14
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
6 months 2 weeks ago
Beings who are so uniquely constituted...

Beings who are so uniquely constituted must necessarily express themselves in other ways than ordinary men. It is impossible that with souls so differently modified, they should not carry over into the expression of their feelings and ideas the stamp of those modifications.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 week ago
England, it is true, in causing...

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1853.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 4 weeks ago
Is there not therefore rational necessity,...

Is there not therefore rational necessity, but vital anguish that impels us to believe in God. And to believe in God - I must reiterate it yet again - is, before all and above all, to feel a hunger for God, a hunger for divinity, to be sensible to his lack and absence, to wish that God may exist. And it is the wish to save the human finality of the Universe. For one might even come to resign oneself to being absorbed by God, if it be that our consciousness is based upon Consciousness, if consciousness is the end of the Universe.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 3 weeks ago
Parents will strip themselves of everything,...

Parents will strip themselves of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical well-being of their child, will wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some physical ailment of their beloved one; but will remain cold and indifferent, without the slightest understanding before the soul cravings and the yearnings of their child, neither hearing nor wishing to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition. On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring, of a new life of beauty and splendor of love; they will put the long lean finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to the silvery song of the individual growth, of the beauty of character, of the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worth living.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Xunzi
Xunzi
3 months 1 week ago
A person who is transformed by...

A person who is transformed by the instructions of a teacher, devotes himself to study, and abides by ritual and rightness may become a noble person, while one who follows his nature and emotions, is content to give free play to his passions, and abandons ritual and rightness is a lesser person.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 180
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 1 week ago
Don't get involved in partial problems,...

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months 2 weeks ago
The problem of establishing a perfect...

The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Seventh Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 months 3 weeks ago
The ethic of Reverence for Life...

The ethic of Reverence for Life prompts us to keep each other alert to what troubles us and to speak and act dauntlessly together in discharging the responsibility that we feel. It keeps us watching together for opportunities to bring some sort of help to animals in recompense for the great misery that men inflict upon them, and thus for a moment we escape from the incomprehensible horror of existence.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 4 weeks ago
Not without reason did he who...

Not without reason did he who had the right to do so speak of the foolishness of the cross. Foolishness, without a doubt, foolishness. And the American humorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was not altogether wide of the mark in making one of the characters in his ingenious conversations say that he thought better of those who were confined in a lunatic asylum on account of religious mania than of those who, while professing the same religious principles, kept their wits and appeared to enjoy life very well outside the asylums. But those who are at large, are they not really, thanks to God, mad too? Are there not mild madnesses, which not only permit us to mix with our neighbors without danger to society, but which rather enable us to do so, for by means of them we are able to attribute a meaning and finality to life and society?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 3 weeks ago
In fact, the real problem with...

In fact, the real problem with the thesis of A Genealogy of Morals is that the noble and the aristocrat are just as likely to be stupid as the plebeian. I had noted in my teens that major writers are usually those who have had to struggle against the odds -- to "pull their cart out of the mud," as I put it -- while writers who have had an easy start in life are usually second rate -- or at least, not quite first-rate. Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Shaw, H. G. Wells, are examples of the first kind; in the twentieth century, John Galsworthy, Graham Greene, Evelyn Waugh, and Samuel Beckett are examples of the second kind. They are far from being mediocre writers; yet they tend to be tinged with a certain pessimism that arises from never having achieved a certain resistance against problems.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 3 weeks ago
Life itself is always pulling you...

Life itself is always pulling you away from the understanding of life.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
6 months 2 days ago
An evil and foolish and intemperate...

An evil and foolish and intemperate and irreligious life should not be called a bad life, but rather, dying long drawn out.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 months 3 days ago
In this initial illimitableness of possibilities...

In this initial illimitableness of possibilities that characterizes one who has no nature there stands out only one fixed, pre-established, and given line by which he may chart his course, only one limit: the past.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 days ago
But the thing a man does...

But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it even to himself, much less to others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest. That is his religion; or, it may be, his mere scepticism and no-religion: the manner it is in which he feels himself to be spiritually related to the Unseen World or No-World; and I say, if you tell me what that is, you tell me to a very great extent what the man is, what the kind of things he will do is.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
4 months 1 day ago
Your Constitution is all sail and...

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to H.S. Randall, author of a Life of Thomas Jefferson
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 1 week ago
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the...

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 1 week ago
To begin an affair of that...

To begin an affair of that kind now, and carry it on so long a time in form, is by no means a proper plan ... whatever assurances I may give her in private of my esteem for her, or whatever assurances I may ask in return from her, depend on it - they must be kept in private. Necessity will oblige me to proceed in a method which is not generally thought fair; that of treating with a ward before obtaining the approbation of her guardian. I say necessity will oblige me to it, because I never can bear to remain in suspense so long a time. If I am to succeed, the sooner I know it, the less uneasiness I shall have to go through. If I am to meet with a disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off: and if I do meet with one, I hope in God, and verily believe; it will be the last.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to John Page (15 July 1763); published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
6 months 2 days ago
He was going into a theatre,...

He was going into a theatre, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, "This," he said, "is what I practise doing all my life."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 64
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 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia