Skip to main content
4 months 3 weeks ago

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

0
0
Source
source
"The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949), p. 292 Similar statements were included in "A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946) (see above), published posthumously.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Out of the shadow of the abstract man, who thinks for the pleasure of thinking, emerges the organic man, who thinks because of a vital imbalance, and who is beyond science and art.

0
0
2 months 2 days ago

If you want to understand the beliefs that are shaping global politics, read the Book of Revelation.

0
0
Source
source
Review: Sacred Causes by Michael Burleigh
2 months 3 weeks ago

The sociologist permits himself to see only what is acceptable to his colleagues.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 370)
4 months 3 weeks ago

All that we call human history-money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery-the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
5 months ago

Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter V, p. 38.
3 weeks 1 day ago

When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what manner thou doest error thyself... For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration is also added, that the man is compelled; for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion.

0
0
Source
source
X, 30
5 months 3 days ago

If it were art to overcome heresy with fire, the executioners would be the most learned doctors on earth.

0
0
Source
source
To the Christian Nobility of the German States (1520), translated by Charles M. Jacobs, reported in rev. James Atkinson, The Christian in Society, I (Luther's Works, ed. James Atkinson, vol. 44), p. 207
4 months 3 weeks ago

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy.

0
0
4 months 1 day ago

That Vulcan gave arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities, according to Gentile Theology, may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon, in the work of the fourth day.

0
0
Source
source
Opening lines of Ch. 1
5 months 3 weeks ago

"In the light, the earth remains our first and our last love. Our brothers are breathing under the same sky as we; justice is a living thing. Now is born that strange joy which helps one live and die, and which we shall never again postpone to a later time."

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

0
0
5 months 5 days ago

Another argument of hope may be drawn from this - that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 109
5 months 1 week ago

Let us rejoice and give thanks. Not only are we become Christians, but we are become Christ. My brothers, do you understand the grace of God that is given us? Wonder, rejoice, for we are made Christ! If He is the Head, and we the members, then together He and we are the whole man.... This would be foolish pride on our part, were it not a gift of his bounty. But this is what He promised by the mouth of the Apostle: You are the body of Christ, and severally His members.

0
0
Source
source
(1 Cor. 12:27). p. 415
4 months 3 weeks ago

You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.

0
0
Source
source
Leaflet issued while Russell was in Brixton Prison, 1961
3 months 2 weeks ago

Is this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.

0
0
Source
source
Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
1 month 1 week ago

"It is nothing-a trifling matter at most; keep a stout heart and it will soon cease"; then in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion; ambition, luxury, greed, hark back to opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Literature, the strange entity so called,-that indeed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature.

0
0
5 months 5 days ago

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 3
2 months 1 week ago

We must relearn to be alone.

0
0
4 months 1 day ago

Art is the perfection of nature.

0
0
Source
source
Section 16
1 month 1 week ago

God, our Father, has given us the life and the art of healing to protect and maintain it.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional philosophical topics serves the same purposes as does the encouragement of light-mindedness about traditional theological topics. Like the rise of large market economies, the increase in literacy, the proliferation of artistic genres, and the insouciant pluralism of contemporary culture, such philosophical superficiality and light-mindedness helps along the disenchantment of the world. It helps make the world's inhabitants more pragmatic, more tolerant, more liberal, more receptive to the appeal of instrumental rationality.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.

0
0
4 months 1 day ago

They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.

0
0
Source
source
Section 4
1 month 3 weeks ago

The man who says that the world is a machine has really advanced no further than to say that he is so well satisfied with the analogy that he is through with searching any further.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VI: "The Drama of Destiny", §5, p. 130.
4 months 3 weeks ago

The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned, if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne's question "What if this present were the world's last night?" is equally relevant.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Fortunate those who, born before science, were privileged to die of their first disease!

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

The conscious side of woman corresponds to the emotional side of man, not to his "mind." Mind makes up the soul, or better, the "animus" of woman, and just as the anima of a man consists of inferior relatedness, full of affect, so the animus of woman consists of inferior judgments, or better, opinions.

0
0
Source
source
The Secret of the Golden Flower (1931) Commentary by C.G.Jung in CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P. 60
4 months 2 weeks ago

Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.

0
0
Source
source
Stobaeus, iii. 13. 44

It strikes everyone in beginning to form an acquaintance with the treasures of Indian literature, that a land so rich in intellectual products and those of the profoundest order of thought..."

0
0
Source
source
quoted in De Riencourt, Amaury The Soul of India Harper & Brothers Publishers New York 1960 p. 301
1 month 2 weeks ago

Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

The chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

"What," say you, "are you giving me advice? Indeed, have you already advised yourself, already corrected your own faults? Is this the reason why you have leisure to reform other men?" No, I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure my fellow-men when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.

0
0
Source
source
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 140
3 months 2 weeks ago

The assurance that we have no means of answering final questions is no valid excuse for callousness towards them. The more deeply should we feel, down to the roots of our being, their pressure and their sting. Whose hunger has ever been sated with the knowledge that he could not eat?

0
0
Source
source
p. 15
1 month 1 week ago

If one awakens in men the idea of freedom then the free men will incessantly go on to free themselves; if on the contrary, one only educates them, then they will at all times accommodate themselves to circumstance in the most highly educated and elegant manner and degenerate into subservient cringing souls.

0
0
Source
source
p. 23
1 month 2 weeks ago

In all human affairs, and especially in those that relate to war, ...leave always some room to fortune, and to accidents which cannot be foreseen.

0
0
Source
source
The General History, Book II, Ch. 4 (trans. by Hampton)
4 months 3 weeks ago

What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, Chapter 10, "Nice People or New Men"
4 months 2 weeks ago

What needs saying is worth saying twice.

0
0
Source
source
fr. 25
3 months 1 week ago

Today, tattoos lack symbolic power. All they do is point toward the uniqueness of the bearer. The body is neither a ritual stage nor a surface of projection; rather, it is an advertising space.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.

0
0
Source
source
E. Payne, trans., vol. 2, p. 230
9 months 1 day ago

They are trying as directly as possible to sell you experiences, i.e. what you are able to do with the car, not the car as a product itself. An extreme example of this is this existing economic marketing concept, which basically evaluates the value of you as a potential consumer of your own life. Like how much are you worth, in the sense of all you will spend to buy back your own life as a certain quality life. You will spend so much in doctors, so much in beauty, so much in transcendental meditation, so much for music, and so on. What you are buying is a certain image and practice of your life. So what is your market potential, as a buyer of your own life in this sense?

0
0
3 weeks 1 day ago

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

0
0
Source
source
VII, 8 (Penguin Classics edition of Meditations, translated by Maxwell Staniforth)
4 months 2 weeks ago

To a wise man, the whole earth is open; for the native land of a good soul is the whole earth.

0
0
Source
source
Freeman (1948), p. 166 \
3 months 3 weeks ago

The administrators of the executive power may be either elective or not; and in the former case all or only some of them may be elective. They are elective in a proper democracy, that is to say, in a democracy which recognizes representation. If all the public officials are directly elected by the whole people, the democracy is a pure democracy; if only some, it is a mixed democracy. The public officials may also fill vacancies themselves; this is the case in a pure aristocracy. But if only some of the magistrates are thus replaced by the public officers, and if the others are again directly elected by the people, then the form of government is that of a democratic aristocracy. A permanent president (monarch) may also be elected to exercise the executive power during his lifetime. In all these cases, either all citizens of the commonwealth, or only some of them, are eligible to office. Eligibility may, therefore, be limited or unlimited.

0
0
3 weeks 1 day ago

In a sense, people are our proper occupation. Our job is to do them good and put up with them. But when they obstruct our proper tasks, they become irrelevant to us--like sun, wind, and animals. Our actions may be impeded by them, but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions. Because we can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes the obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) V.20
3 weeks 1 day ago

To be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved and the raging of the sea falls still around it.

0
0
Source
source
IV, 49

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia