Skip to main content
1 week 5 days ago

For the time being, the ominous peril of the communist parties in the West lies in their stand on foreign affairs. The distinctive mark of all present-day communist parties is their devotion to the aggressive foreign policy of the Soviets. Whenever they must choose between Russia and their own country, they do not hesitate to prefer Russia. Their principle is: Right or wrong, my Russia. They strictly obey all orders issued from Moscow. When Russia was an ally of Hitler, the French communists sabotaged their own country's war effort and the American communists passionately opposed President Roosevelt's plans to aid England and France in their struggle against the Nazis.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Sunshine cannot bleach the snow, Nor time unmake what poets know.

0
0
Source
source
"The Test", as quoted in Emerson As A Poet (1883) by Joel Benton, p. 40

May the men who hold the destiny of peoples in their hands, studiously avoid anything that might cause the present situation to deteriorate and become even more dangerous. May they take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." These words are valid not only for individuals, but for nations as well. May these nations, in their efforts to maintain peace, do their utmost to give the spirit time to grow and to act.

0
0
1 week 4 days ago

Friendship is always helpful, but love sometimes even does harm

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909) by James Huneker, p. 367
1 week 4 days ago

No one ever saw Cato change, no matter how often the state changed: he kept himself the same in all circumstances-in the praetorship, in defeat, under accusation, in his province, on the platform, in the army, in death.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

I must before I die, find some way to say the essential thing that is in me, that I have never said yet - a thing that is not love or hate or pity or scorn, but the very breath of life, fierce and coming from far away, bringing into human life the vastness and fearful passionless force of non-human things...

0
0
Source
source
p. 261
1 month 1 week ago

I really have no claim to rank myself among fatalistic, materialistic, or atheistic philosophers. Not among fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to have a logical, and not a physical foundation; not among materialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence; not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

A life of action, if it is to be useful, must be a life of compromise. But speculation admits of no compromise. A public-man is often under the necessity of consenting to measures which he dislikes, lest he should endanger the success of measures which he thinks of vital importance.

0
0
Source
source
War of the Succession in Spain', The Edinburgh Review (January 1833), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 91
2 months 1 week ago

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

0
0
Source
source
"The responsibility of writers," p. 169
2 months 2 weeks ago

Every plant, which my heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.

0
0
Source
source
15:13-14 (KJV)
2 months 3 weeks ago

We know as little of a supreme being as of Matter. But there is as little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality, and experiential fact. We only don't understand it.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Morton Kelsey (1958) as quoted by Morton Kelsey, Myth, History & Faith: The Mysteries of Christian Myth & Imagination (1974) Ch.VIII
1 month 1 week ago

A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

If things emerged from a spaceship which we could not be sure were machines or conscious beings, what we were wondering about would have an answer even if the things were so different from anything we were familiar with that we could never discover it. It would depend on whether there was something it was like to be them, not on whether behavioral similarities warranted our saying so. ... [W]e need ... to ask whether experience is present in [the] alien thing[s], ... whether there is something it is like to be them, and ... the answer to that question is what determines whether they are conscious.

0
0
Source
source
"Panpsychism" (1979), pp. 191-193.
4 months 3 weeks ago

How will one part of the infinite be above, and another below? Or how will it have extremes or a middle? Further still, every sensible body is in place; but the species and differences of place are upward and downward, before and behind, to the right hand and to the left: and these things not only thus subsist with relation to us, and by position, but have a definite subsistence in the universe itself. But it is impossible that these things should be in the infinite: and... that there should be an infinite place. But every body is in place; and therefore it is also impossible that there should be an infinite body. ...Therefore ...there is not an infinite body in energy.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

The discourse of truth is quite simply impossible. It eludes itself. Everything eludes itself, everything scoffs at its own truth, seduction renders everything elusive. The fury to unveil the truth, to get at the naked truth, the one which haunts all discourses of interpretation, the obscene rage to uncover the secret, is proportionate to the impossibility of ever achieving this. ...But this rage, this fury, only bears witness to the eternity of seduction and to the impossibility of mastering it.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 73)
2 months 2 weeks ago

Freedom of thought and of expression are not mere rights to be claimed. They have their roots deep in the existence of individuals as developing careers in time. Their denial and abrogation is an abdication of individuality and a virtual rejection of time as opportunity.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

Seduction is the world's elementary dynamic... All this has changed significantly for us, at least in appearance. For what has happened to good and evil? Seduction hurls them against one another, and unites them beyond meaning, in a paroxysm [sudden outbreak of emotion] of intensity and charm.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 59)
2 months 1 week ago

The salvation of reality is its obstinate, irreducible, matter-of-fact entities, which are limited to be no other than themselves. Neither science, nor art, nor creative action can tear itself away from obstinate, irreducible, limited facts.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 132
4 months ago

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Part II, p. 530.
2 months 1 week ago

But now we come to the real paradox: that something as explosive as sexual excitement can nevertheless become a matter of habit, But then that applies to all our pleasures. We discover some new product in the supermarket, and become addicted to it. Then our tastebuds become accustomed to its flavour, and or interest fades. In the same way a honeymoon couple may find an excuse to hurry off to the bedroom half a dozen times a day; but after a month or so sex has taken its place among the many routines of their lives. They still enjoy it, but it no longer has quite the same power to excite the imagination. Sex, like every other pleasure, can become mechanical.

0
0
Source
source
p. 14
2 months 1 week ago

I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before. And I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took an excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men. When a disaster happens, I act and they make excuses.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter, 1861. As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410
3 months 3 weeks ago

The human body is the best picture of the human soul.

0
0
Source
source
Pt II, p. 178
4 months 4 days ago

Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures or by clear reason (for I do not trust either in the pope or in councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted and my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and will not recant anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. May God help me. Amen.

0
0
Source
source
Statement in defense of his writings at the Diet of Worms (19 April 1521), as translated in The Nature of Protestantism (1963) by Karl Heim, p. 78
3 months 2 weeks ago

Strength and beauty are the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

0
0
Source
source
Fragment quoted in H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. II (1952), no. 294

One of the problems... both on the left and the right is that the... individual autonomy protected by liberalism tends to take more and more extreme versions... and... becomes self-undermining.

0
0
Source
source
13:24
4 months 3 weeks ago

So when the universe was quickened with soul, God was well pleased; and he bethought him to make it yet more like its type. And whereas the type is eternal and nought that is created can be eternal, he devised for it a moving image of abiding eternity, which we call time. And he made days and months and years, which are portions of time; and past and future are forms of time, though we wrongly attribute them also to eternity. For of eternal Being we ought not to say 'it was', 'it shall be', but 'it is' alone: and in like manner we are wrong in saying 'it is' of sensible things which become and perish; for these are ever fleeting and changing, having their existence in time.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Whenever a nation is converted to Christianity, its Christianity, in practice, must be largely converted to paganism.

0
0
Source
source
p. 35
2 months 3 weeks ago

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries," the "rebels"-we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité notes tue, legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction (1895) to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50), p. 27
4 months 4 weeks ago
Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart.
0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
3 months 3 weeks ago

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

0
0
Source
source
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 281
2 weeks 4 days ago

We shall either learn to know a Hero, a true Governor and Captain, somewhat better, when we see him; or else go on to be forever governed by the Unheroic;-had we ballot-boxes clattering at every street-corner, there were no remedy in these.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction
2 months 3 weeks ago

Nor is there any embarrassment in the fact that we're ridiculous, isn't it true? For it's actually so, we are ridiculous, light-minded, with bad habits, we're bored, we don't know how to look, how to understand, we're all like that, all, you, and I, and they! Now, you're not offended when I tell you to your face that you're ridiculous? And if so, aren't you material? You know, in my opinion it's sometimes even good to be ridiculous, if not better: we can the sooner forgive each other, the sooner humble ourselves; we can't understand everything at once, we can't start right out with perfection! To achieve perfection, one must first begin by not understanding many things! And if we understand too quickly, we may not understand well. This I tell you, you, who have already been able to understand. .. and not understand ... so much. I'm not afraid for you now.

0
0
Source
source
Part 4, Chapter ?
2 months 3 weeks ago

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

0
0
Source
source
From the Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery in Ireland (c. 1766), not published during Burke's lifetime.
4 months 4 days ago

There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
2 months 1 week ago

Advancing bourgeois society liquidates memory, time, recollection as irrational leftovers of the past.

0
0
Source
source
"Was bedeutet Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit"
3 months 3 weeks ago

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. (5.6) Variant translations: The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world. The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.

0
0
Source
source
Original German: Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt.
2 months 1 week ago

There is something between the gross specialised values of the mere practical man, and the thin specialised values of the mere scholar. Both types have missed something; and if you add together the two sets of values, you do not obtain the missing elements.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 279
3 months 3 days ago

Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old. Can Love be controlled by Advice?

0
0
Source
source
reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
4 months 1 week ago

In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

What I know wreaks havoc upon what I want.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

I ... understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has primarily to do with distractions ... Women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life or saintly life.

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

All styles are good except the boring kind.

0
0
Source
source
L'Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface
3 months 3 weeks ago

Skepticism is slow suicide.

0
0
Source
source
p. 240
3 months 3 weeks ago

It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Rachel Gleason Brooks, May 5, 1930

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia