Skip to main content
7 months 1 week ago

Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, iv, 10
5 months 2 weeks ago

But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.

0
0
Source
source
The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 43.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.

0
0
Source
source
Act 10, sc. 4
6 months 4 weeks ago

The plan we are advocating amounts essentially to this: that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income, as much larger as might be warranted by the total amount of commodities produced, should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. IV: Work and Pay, discussing Universal Basic Income (UBI)
6 months 4 weeks ago

A nation never falls but by suicide.

0
0
Source
source
1861
7 months 2 days ago

For in every country of the world, I believe, the avarice and injustice of princes and sovereign states, abusing the confidence of their subjects, have by degrees diminished the real quantity of metal, which had been originally contained in their coins.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IV, p. 34.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Proceeding from ourselves, from our own human consciousness, the only consciousness which we feel from within and in which feeling is identical with being, we attribute some sort of consciousness, more or less dim, to all living things, and even to the stones themselves, for they also live. And the evolution of organic beings is simply the struggle to realize fullness of consciousness through suffering, a continual aspiration to be others without ceasing to be themselves, to break and yet to preserve their proper limits.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

0
0
Source
source
O World, Thou Choosest Not
5 months 2 weeks ago

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.

0
0
Source
source
p. 125
2 months 4 weeks ago

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

The Superior Man has nothing to compete for. But if he must compete, he does it in an archery match, wherein he ascends to his position, bowing in deference. Descending, he drinks (or has [the winner] drink) the ritual cup. Note: Bowing is a courtesy for the host who invites him as well drinking a cup.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Conduct, practice, is the proof of doctrine, theory. "If any man will do His will - the will of Him that sent me," said Jesus, "he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself" (John vii. 17); and there is a well known saying of Pascal: "Begin by taking holy water and you will end by becoming a believer." And pursuing a similar train of thought, Johann Jakob Moser, the pietist, was of the opinion that no atheist or naturalist had the right to regard the Christian religion as void of truth so long as he had not put it to the proof by keeping its precepts and commandments.

0
0
Source
source
(Ritschl, Geschichte des Pietismus, book viii., 43)
6 months 4 weeks ago

The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.

0
0
Source
source
Circles
6 months 3 days ago

In the final, positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after Abolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the cause of phenomenon, and applies itself to the tudy of their laws, - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of the facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.

0
0
Source
source
Vol I
2 months 4 weeks ago

The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.

0
0
Source
source
Imagination in Place
4 months 3 weeks ago

It is hard to believe that this simple truth is not understood by those leaders who forbid their followers to use effective contraceptive methods. They express a preference for 'natural' methods of population limitation, and a natural method is exactly what they are going to get. It is called starvation.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 7. Family planning
7 months 3 weeks ago

By 1204, the only place where the entire body of Greek learning existed, still intact, was Constantinople. As a result of the crusaders' conquest, however, Constantinople was ruthlessly pillaged and destroyed and almost all the great treasures of ancient Greek learning were lost forever. It is because of that sack, for instance, that we have only seven plays left out of the better than one hundred written by Sophocles. The tragedy of 1204 can never be undone and for all of time, only bits and pieces of the marvelous Greek world can be known to us.

0
0
7 months 6 days ago

I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
5 months 4 weeks ago

Just as when a man commits suicide ne negates the body, this rational limit of subjectivity, so when he lapses into fantastic and trascendental practice he associates himself with embodied divine and ghostly appearances, namely, he negates in practise the difference between imagination and perception.

0
0
Source
source
Part III, Section 29
6 months 4 weeks ago

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 1 (p. 14)
1 week 3 days ago

Because their truth is truth to a lesser degree....they don't know there are more complex, more accurate, higher degrees of truth.....

0
0
6 months 4 weeks ago

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

0
0
Source
source
"Is Life Worth Living?"
5 months 3 weeks ago

The third category of which I come now to speak is precisely that whose reality is denied by nominalism. For although nominalism is not credited with any extraordinarily lofty appreciation of the powers of the human soul, yet it attributes to it a power of originating a kind of ideas the like of which Omnipotence has failed to create as real objects, and those general conceptions which men will never cease to consider the glory of the human intellect must, according to any consistent nominalism, be entirely wanting in the mind of Deity.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.62
6 months 3 weeks ago

The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Section 22, pg. 126
6 months 4 weeks ago

There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it..

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, Chapter VI, §3, p. 516
5 months 2 weeks ago

Implication is thus the very texture of our web of belief, and logic is the theory that traces it.

0
0
Source
source
S. 41
7 months 3 weeks ago

Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through great connections and race; for in the end thy trust is on thine own deeds.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 60)
7 months 3 weeks ago

It would be better for me that multitudes of men should disagree with me rather than that I, being one, should be out of harmony with myself.

0
0
7 months ago

To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.

0
0
Source
source
Notebooks, c.1735-c.1750
3 months 2 weeks ago

History a distillation of Rumour.

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

When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, but has to understand that although he has out-grown what before used to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without any reasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidated it must be guided by it. And in the same way a similar time must come in the growth and development of humanity.

0
0
Source
source
VI
5 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

This poor amphibious Pope too gives loaves to the Poor; has in him more good latent than he is himself aware of. His poor Jesuits, in the late Italian Cholera, were, with a few German Doctors, the only creatures whom dastard terror had not driven mad: they descended fearless into all gulfs and bedlams; watched over the pillow of the dying, with help, with counsel and hope; shone as luminous fixed stars, when all else had gone out in chaotic night: honour to them!

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes and the Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel's system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV 'to destroy the dragon seed' of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophical spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840.

0
0
Source
source
P. 326
5 months 2 weeks ago

If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.

0
0
Source
source
p. 63
7 months 4 weeks ago

To understand oneself in existence is the Christian principle, except that this self has received much richer and much more profound qualifications that are even more difficult to understand together with existing. The believer is a subjective thinker, and the difference, is only between the simple person and the simple wise person. Here again the oneself is not humanity in general, subjectivity in general, and other such things, whereas everything becomes easy inasmuch as the difficulty is removed and the whole matter is shifted over into the shadow play of abstraction.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.

0
0
Source
source
Statement during an early stage of the War of 1812, in a letter to William Duane
5 months 1 week ago

The Diary of Vaslav Nijinjsky reaches a limit of sincerity beyond any of the documents that we have referred to on this study. There are other modern works that express the same sense that civilized life is a form of living death; notably the poetry of T. S. Eliot and the novels of Franz Kafka; but there is an element of prophetic denunciation in both, the attitude of healthy men rebuking their sick neighbors. We possess no other record of the Outsider's problems that was written by a man about to be defeated and permanently smashed by those problems.

0
0
Source
source
p. 115
2 months 2 weeks ago

Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means.

0
0
4 months 5 days ago

Much in the study of the paranormal was what we would now call pseudo-science. But the line between science and pseudo-science is smudged and shifting; where it lies seems clear only in retrospect. There is no pristine science untouched by the vagaries of faith.

0
0
Source
source
Foreword: Two Attempts to Cheat Death (p. 5)
6 months 4 weeks ago

For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation: Second Aspect
7 months 6 days ago

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

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

The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,-that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.

0
0
7 months ago

Stop Traveller! Near this place lieth John Locke. If you ask what kind of a man he was, he answers that he lived content with his own small fortune. Bred a scholar he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. This thou will learn from his writings, which will show thee everything else concerning him, with greater truth, than the suspect praises of an epitaph. His virtues, indeed, if he had any, were too little for him to propose as matter of praise to himself, or as an example to thee. Let his vices be buried together. As to an example of manners, if you seek that, you have it in the Gospels; of vices, to wish you have one nowhere; if mortality, certainly, (and may it profit thee), thou hast one here and everywhere.

0
0
Source
source
Epitaph, as translated from the Latin.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia