Skip to main content
4 months 4 days ago

The same, without such opinion, DESPAIRE.

0
0
Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 25
3 months 3 weeks ago

Yet its essence was the certitude that his life was not totally at the mercy of chance. Somehow, it was more important than that. This sense of power inside his head - which he could intensify by pulling a face and wrinkling up the muscles of his forehead - aroused a glow of optimism, an expectation of exciting events. He knew that for him, fate held something special in store.

0
0
Source
source
p. 26
5 months 1 week ago

Yes, if you happen to be interested in philosophy and good at it, but not otherwise - but so does bricklaying. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness. When asked "Does philosophy contribute to happiness?"

0
0
Source
source
(SHM 76), as quoted in The quotable Bertrand Russell (1993), p. 149
1 month 2 days ago

I believe in intuition and inspiration. ... At times I feel certain I am right while not knowing the reason. When the eclipse of 1919 confirmed my intuition, I was not in the least surprised. In fact I would have been astonished had it turned out otherwise. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Explorers (1996) by Paolo Novaresio ISBN 1-55670-495-X
4 months 1 week ago

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 4
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

The media have substituted themselves for the older world. "Education, Language, and Media". Cycle 7, 1973, p. 232

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

How many women thus waste life away the prey of discontent, who might have practised as physicians, regulated a farm, managed a shop, and stood erect, supported by their own industry, instead of hanging their heads surcharged with the dew of sensibility, that consumes the beauty to which it at first gave lustre.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 9
4 months 1 week ago

Facing a landscape annihilated by the light, to remain serene supposes a temper I do not have. The sun is my purveyor of black thoughts; and summer the season when I have always reconsidered my relations with this world and with myself, to the greatest prejudice of both.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

When one says, for example, that superiority and inferiority is a formation to be found in every human association, though the proposition certainly involves very profound insight into the essence of human nature and human relationship, yet the assertion is so general that it affords little knowledge of particular societary formations. In order to reach such particular knowledge we must study separate types of superiority and inferiority, and we must master the special features of their formation, which in proportion to their definiteness of course lose generality of application.

0
0
Source
source
p. 169
5 months 1 week ago

The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. It's matrix-If you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being elliptical in order to come more quickly to my principle theme-is the determination of Being as presence in all sense of this word.

0
0
Source
source
Structure, Sign and Play
5 months 1 week ago

The Austrians are a highly civilised race, half-surrounded by Slavs in a relatively backward state of culture. ... Servia, a country so barbaric that a man can secure the throne by instigating the assassination of his predecessor, is engaged constantly in fermenting the racial discontent of men of the same race who are Austrian subjects.

0
0
Source
source
War: The Offspring of Fear (1914), quoted in Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 (1996), p. 373
2 months 1 week ago

It has always been the task of formal education to set up behavior which would prove useful or enjoyable later in a student's life.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Performance-based Assessment for Middle and High School Physical Education (2002) by Jacalyn Lea Lund and Mary Fortman Kirk, p. 165
5 months 2 days ago

I would rather discover one cause than gain the kingdom of Persia.

0
0
Source
source
Freeman (1948), p. 155
5 months 1 week ago

Science is not a system of certain, or well established, statements; nor is it a statement which steadily advances towards state of finality. Our science is not knowledge (epistēmē): it can newer claim to have attained truth, or even substitute for it, such as probability. . . . We do not know; we can only guess.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 10 "Corroboration, or How a Theory Stands up to Tests", section 85: The Path of Science, p. 278.
4 months 3 days ago

Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself.

0
0
Source
source
p. 57
5 months 1 week ago

The unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground has, as its necessary condition, self-abnegation and charity. Only by means of self-abnegation and charity can we clear away the evil, folly and ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and prevent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating the inner man.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others, and this is a gift interred only by the self.

0
0
Source
source
Behavior
4 months 1 week ago

Love's great (and sole) originality is to make happiness indistinct from misery.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in a letter written from J. Kalckar to John A. Wheeler dated June 10, 1977, which appears in Wheeler's "Law Without Law," pg 207.
1 month 3 weeks ago

Men's works also are naturally perishable and mutable and subject to every kind of alteration. But since God is eternal, it follows that of such sort are his ordinances also. And since they are such, they are either the natures of things or are accordant with the nature of things. For how could nature be at variance with the ordinance of God? How could it fall out of harmony therewith?

0
0
1 month 2 days ago

We Jews have been too adaptable. We have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies for the sake of social conformity. ... Even in modern civilization, the Jew is most happy if he remains a Jew.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

The modern man who has ceased to believe, without ceasing to be credulous, hangs, as it were, between heaven and earth, and is at rest nowhere.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. I: "The Problem of Unbelief", §2, p. 9.
3 months 1 week ago

The TV camera has no shutter. It does not deal with aspects or facets of objects in high resolution. It is a means of direct pick-up by the electrical groping over surfaces.

0
0
Source
source
Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 242
4 months 2 weeks ago

I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.

0
0
Source
source
Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 80
5 months 2 weeks ago

Let him sensibly perceive, that the kindness he shews to others, is no ill husbandry for himself; but that it brings a return in kindness both from those that receive it, and those who look on. Make this a contest among children, who shall out-do one another in this way: and by this means, by a constant practise, children having made it easy to themselves to part with what they have, good nature may be settled in them into a habit, and they may take pleasure, and pique themselves in being kind, liberal and civil, to others.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 110
5 months 2 weeks ago

There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. That it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

0
0
Source
source
Part 1, Section 1
1 month 1 week ago

To be sure, Protestant theology presents a different, supposedly unpolitical doctrine, conceiving of God as the "wholly other," just as in political liberalism the state and politics are conceived of as the "wholly other." We have come to recognize that the political is the total, and as a result we know that any decision about whether something is unpolitical is always a political decision, irrespective of who decides and what reasons are advanced. This also holds for the question whether a particular theology is a political or an unpolitical theology.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is not titles that make men illustrious, but men who make titles illustrious.

0
0
Source
source
Book 3, Ch. 38
3 months 4 weeks ago

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

0
0
Source
source
p. 23
5 months 2 weeks ago

For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2
5 months 3 weeks ago

Who then to frail mortality shall trust But limns the water, or but writes in dust.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

When... in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

0
0
Source
source
Part 1, Chapter 7
1 month 3 weeks ago

To ascend to the origin of things and speculate on the creation, is not the business of the natural philosopher. An humbler field is sufficient for him in the endeavor to discover, as far as our faculties will permit; what are these primary qualities impressed on matter, and to discover the spirit of the laws of nature

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

By involving all men in all men, by the electric extension of their own nervous systems, the new technology turns the figure of the primitive society into a universal ground that buries all previous figures.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 25)
2 months 1 week ago

We need a good alternative to Trumpism. There is a majority in favor of that, but... the other party is really not providing that alternative in a very clear way.

0
0
Source
source
46:46:00
3 months 3 weeks ago

Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The Theophilanthropists believe in the existence of God, and the immortality of the soul.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction
5 months 1 week ago

The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

0
0
Source
source
Principles of Mathematics (1903), Ch. I: Definition of Pure Mathematics, p. 5
4 months 1 week ago

The plea of anger or of drunkenness - as having placed the criminal for the moment beyond the control of his reason - relieves him from the charge of premeditated and malicious intent; but a rational legislation will rather provide more severe than milder punishment for such cases, particularly if such a state of mind is habitual with the accused; for a single unlawful act may well constitute an exception from an otherwise blameless life. But a person who pleads, "I habitually get so angry or so drunk as not to be any longer master of my senses!" confesses thereby that he changes himself into a beast on a fixed principle, and that he is, therefore, not fit to live among rational beings.

0
0
Source
source
P. 351
4 months 2 weeks ago

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

0
0
Source
source
as quoted in Diderot and the Encyclopædists (1897) by John Morley, p. 92.
5 months 3 weeks 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
4 months 4 days ago

And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.

0
0
Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 78
3 months 3 weeks ago

If things are deprived of memory, they become information or commodities. They are pushed into a time-free, ahistorical place.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

All the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
5 months 2 weeks ago

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Ch. 25
3 months 3 weeks ago

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

0
0
Source
source
A 14

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia