Skip to main content
4 months 3 weeks ago

What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
3 months 1 week ago

Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth.

0
0
Source
source
The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 153
1 month 1 week ago

A mystic bond of brotherhood makes all men one.

0
0
Source
source
Essays, Goethe's Works.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.

0
0
Source
source
A 51, B 75
1 month 3 weeks ago

For a consistent naturalist science can only be a refinement of animal exploration, a practice humans have devised for finding their way in the bit of the universe in which they have so far survived. Instead of thinking of science as a law-seeking activity, we can think of it as a tool humans use to cope with a world they will never understand.

0
0
Source
source
Sweet Morality (p. 224)
5 months 2 weeks ago

The true discovery of America by mankind came when those first hunting bands crossed over from Siberia 25,000 years ago. This, however, never seems to count. When people speak of the "discovery of America" they invariably mean its discovery by Europeans.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

0
0
Source
source
The Jefferson Lectures (1977), p. 139
4 months 2 weeks ago

Our chief want in life, is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

0
0
Source
source
Considerations by the Way

Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.

0
0
Source
source
VII, 21
4 months 2 weeks ago

Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 229)
5 months 1 week ago

Much learning does not teach understanding.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The moral things I wish to say to future generations is very simple. I should say love is wise hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other. We have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don't like. We can only live together in that way, and if we are to live together and not die together we must learn the kind of charity and kind of tolerance which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Violence as a tool is already operating in the world before anyone takes it up: that fact alone neither justifies nor discounts the use of the tool. What seems most important, however, is that the tool is already part of a practice, presupposing a world conducive to its use; that the use of the tool builds or rebuilds a specific kind of world, activating a sedimented legacy of use. When any of us commit acts of violence, we are, in and through those acts, building a more violent world.

0
0
Source
source
p. 19
3 months ago

Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

0
0
2 weeks 3 days ago

What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to John Adams (11 January 1817) This statement has been referred to as "Jefferson's Axiom"
1 month 2 days ago

Live always in the best company when you read.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 370

Do not think that what is hard for you to master is humanly impossible; but if a thing is humanly possible, consider it to be within your reach.

0
0
Source
source
VI, 19
3 months ago

The Outsider is always unhappy, but he is an agent that ensures the happiness for millions of 'Insiders'.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
2 months 2 weeks ago

Mutation may be random, but selection definitely is not.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 3, "The Message from the Mountain" (p. 82)
5 months 2 weeks ago

I consider one of the most important duties of any scientist the teaching of science to students and to the general public.

0
0

I am fascinated by Spinoza's pantheism, but I admire even more his contribution to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and body as one, and not two separate things.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

One may dream of a culture where everyone bursts into laughter when someone says: this is true, this is real.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Fourth, this supreme law, which is celestial and living harmony, does not so much as demand that the special ideas shall surrender their peculiar arbitrariness and caprice entirely; for that would be self-destructive. It only requires that they influence and be influenced by one another.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

His master was angry, and delivered him to the torturers until he should pay all that was due to him. "So My heavenly Father also will do to you if each of you, from his heart, does not forgive his brother his trespasses."

0
0
Source
source
18:34-35
2 weeks 3 days ago

The issue here really is not whether international trade shall be free but whether or not it makes any sense for a country - or, for that matter, a region - to destroy its own capacity to produce its own food. How can a government, entrusted with the safety and health of its people, conscientiously barter away in the name of an economic idea that people's ability to feed itself? And if people lose their ability to feed themselves, how can they be said to be free?

0
0
Source
source
"A Bad Big Idea"
4 months 3 weeks ago

If the whole of natural theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind; if this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs, and believe that the arguments on which it is established exceed the objections which lie against it?

0
0
Source
source
Philo to Cleanthes, Part XII
4 months 3 weeks ago

... no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.

0
0
Source
source
Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1

Of the twenty-two civilizations that appear in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. All nations have progressed through this sequence:From bondage to spiritual faithFrom spiritual faith to great courageFrom courage to libertyFrom liberty to abundanceFrom abundance to selfishnessFrom selfishness to complacencyFrom complacency to apathyFrom apathy to dependencyFrom dependency back again into bondage.

0
0
Source
source
In Joe D. Batten and Gail Batten, The Confidence Chasm (New York: American Management Association, 1972) p. 118
4 months 2 weeks ago

If you want good laws, burn those you have and make new ones.

0
0
Source
source
"Laws", 1765
3 months 1 week ago

It is the most advanced industrial society which feels most directly threatened by the rebellion, because it is here that the social necessity of repression and alienation, of servitude and heteronomy is most transparently unnecessary, and unproductive in terms of human progress. Therefore the cruelty and violence mobilized in the struggle against the threat, therefore the monotonous regularity with which the people are made familiar with, and accustomed to inhuman attitudes and behavior-to wholesale killing as patriotic act.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

0
0
Source
source
Disobedience as a Psychological and Moral Problem in On Disobedience and Other Essays
2 months 2 weeks ago

Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes?

0
0
Source
source
(p. 28)
1 month 1 week ago

It was a rude gross error, that of counting the Great Man a god. Yet let us say that it is at all times difficult to know what he is, or how to account of him and receive him!

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

0
0
Source
source
B 52
4 months 2 weeks ago

The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 437.
2 months 2 weeks ago

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, Ch. 11
4 months 1 week ago

We do not "have" a body; rather, we "are" bodily.

0
0
Source
source
p. 99
4 months 2 weeks ago

Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 2, pg. 49.
2 weeks 1 day ago

In order to be transmuted into knowledge, every perception is and must be ordered and organized into categories. The extent, however, to which we can organize and express our experience in such conceptual forms is, in turn, dependent upon the frames of reference which happen to be available at a given historical moment. The concepts which we have and the universe of discourse in which we move, together with the directions in which they tend to elaborate themselves, are dependent largely upon the historical-social situation of the intellectually active and responsible members of the group.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

In Kleist's essay humans are caught between the graceful automatism of the puppet and the conscious freedom of a god. The jerky, stuttering quality of their actions comes from their feeling that they must determine the course of their lives. Other animals live without having to choose their path through life. Whatever uncertainty they may feel sniffing their way through the world is not a permanent condition; once they reach a place of safety, they are at rest. In contrast, human life is spent anxiously deciding how to live.

0
0
Source
source
The Faith of Puppets: Leopardi and the Souls of Machines (p.25-6)
1 month 3 weeks ago

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

0
0
Source
source
On the autobiographical nature of his films, in The Atlantic
1 month 1 week ago

The superior man has three things in which he delights, and to be ruler over the kingdom is not one of them. That his father and mother are both alive, and that the condition of his brothers affords no cause for anxiety;-this is one delight. That, when looking up, he has no occasion for shame before Heaven, and, below, he has no occasion to blush before men;-this is a second delight. That he can get from the whole kingdom the most talented individuals, and teach and nourish them;-this is the third delight.

0
0
Source
source
7A:20, as translated by James Legge in The Chinese Classics, Vol. II (1861), p. 335
4 months 2 weeks ago

I am writing to you to tell you of my decision to return to your Government the Carl von Ossietzsky medal for peace. I do so reluctantly and after two years of private approaches on behalf of Heinz Brandt, whose continued imprisonment is a barrier to coexistence, relaxation of tension and understanding between East and West... I regret not to have heard from you on this subject. I hope that you will yet find it possible to release Brandt through an amnesty which would be a boon to the cause of peace and to your country.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Walter Ulbricht, January 7, 1964.
3 months 2 weeks ago

The most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labours. In a state of artificial society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labour most enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labour not at all have the greatest number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Creationists make it sound as though a "theory" is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces. But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force.

0
0
Source
source
The Principles of Biology, Vol. I (1864), Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 7: Indirect Equilibration
4 months 2 weeks ago

Sphere Music - Some sounds seem to reverberate along the plain, and then settle to earth again like dust; such are Noise, Discord, Jargon. But such only as spring heavenward, and I may catch from steeples and hilltops in their upward course, which are the more refined parts of the former, are the true sphere music - pure, unmixed music - in which no wail mingles.

0
0
Source
source
August 5, 1838

Remember this, then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 25
3 months 2 weeks ago

There is philosophy, which is about conceptual analysis - about the meaning of what we say - and there is all of this ... all of life.

0
0
Source
source
Emphasizing his views on philosophy as something abstract and separate from normal life to Isaiah Berlin, in the early 1930s, as quoted in A.J. Ayer: A Life (1999) by Ben Rogers, p. 2.
1 month 1 week ago

His Religion is not an easy one: with rigorous fasts, lavations, strict complex formulas, prayers five times a day, and abstinence from wine, it did not "succeed by being an easy religion." As if indeed any religion, or cause holding of religion, could succeed by that! It is a calumny on men to say that they are roused to heroic action by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense, - sugar-plums of any kind, in this world or the next! In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia