Skip to main content
Image removed.

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 1 week ago
There is in fact a manly...

There is in fact a manly and legitimate passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter III, Part I
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
Conduct, practice, is the proof of...

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)
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 4 days ago
There is no duty we so...

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
An Apology for Idlers.
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 4 days ago
In the history of bourgeois society,...

In the history of bourgeois society, legislative reform served to strengthen progressively the rising class till the latter was sufficiently strong to seize political power, to suppress the existing juridical system and to construct itself a new one.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch.8
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 1 week ago
I have in this treatise followed...

I have in this treatise followed the mathematical method, if not with all strictness, at least imitatively, not in order, by a display of profundity, to procure a better reception for it, but because I believe such a system to be quite capable of it, and that perfection may in time be obtained by a cleverer hand, if stimulated by this sketch, mathematical investigators of nature should find it not unimportant to treat the metaphysical portion, which anyway cannot be got rid of, as a special fundamental department of general physics, and to bring it into unison with the mathematical doctrine of motion.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface, Tr. Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 5 days ago
The nature of the universe is...

The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IX, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 6 days ago
We can hope that the ways...

We can hope that the ways of peace will attract the Arabic nations, for their territory and opportunities are broad enough for immeasurable advance, if the energies vented in spleen, are turned instead to a modernisation of the technology, a restoration of the soil, and a renovation of the economic, social, and political structure of those great and venerable lands.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 1 day ago
Whenever a nation is converted to...

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

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
The circulation of capital realizes value,...

The circulation of capital realizes value, while living labour creates value.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 463.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 weeks ago
Wise command, wise obedience: the capability...

Wise command, wise obedience: the capability of these two is the net measure of culture, and human virtue, in every man; all good lies in the possession of these two capabilities; all evil, wretchedness and ill-success in the want of these.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 1 week ago
Disturbances in society are never more...

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 1 week ago
They showed me their trees, and...

They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked at all Nature like that - at the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told me something about them which I could not understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 4 weeks ago
A host is like….

A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, satire viii, lines 73-74
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 1 week ago
The chief reason warfare is still...

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"On Violence"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 3 days ago
Sometimes, because my position has not...

Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent attitude. Prudent in my analysis, in the moral and theoretical postulates I use: I try to figure out what's at stake. But to question the relations of power in the most scrupulous and attentive manner possible, looking into all the domains of its exercise, that's not the same thing as constructing a mythology of power as the beast of the apocalypse.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual", interview in History of the Present 4
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 1 week ago
The reasons for legal intervention in...

The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book V, Chapter 11, Section 9
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 5 days ago
Do what nature now requires. Set...

Do what nature now requires. Set thyself in motion, if it is in thy power, and do not look about thee to see if any one will observe it; nor yet expect Plato's Republic: but be content if the smallest thing goes on well, and consider such an event to be no small matter. Forward, as occasion offers. Never look round to see whether any shall note it.... Be satisfied with success in even the smallest matter, and think that even such a result is no trifle.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IX, 29
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 4 days ago
If someone asked us 'but...

If someone asked us 'but is that true?' we might say "yes" to him; and if he demanded grounds we might say "I can't give you any grounds, but if you learn more you too will think the same."

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 3 days ago
Without some redistribution of wealth and...

Without some redistribution of wealth and power, downward mobility and debilitating poverty will continue to drive people into desperate channels. And without principled opposition to xenophobias from above and below, these desperate channels will produce a cold-hearted and mean-spirited America no longer worth fighting for or living in.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p79)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
Our plans miscarry…

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Line 2 Alternate translation: If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable. (translator unknown).
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 1 week ago
Can it really...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
If you say that this is...

If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"What Makes a Life Significant?"
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 6 days ago
Familiarity breeds contempt.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 6 days ago
Neither perception nor true opinion, nor...

Neither perception nor true opinion, nor reason or explanation combined with true opinion could be knowledge. Then our art of midwifery declare to us that all the offspring that have been born are mere wind-eggs and not worth rearing and if you remain barren, you will be less harsh and gentler to your associates, for you will have the wisdom not to think you know that which you do not know.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 3 weeks ago
Will is to grace as the...

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 3 days ago
The blues is relevant today because...

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p20)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 weeks ago
Every noble crown is, and on...

Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Bk. III, ch. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 2 weeks ago
Through all of history and pre-history...

Through all of history and pre-history it has been accepted that there is something wrong with the human animal. Health may be the natural condition of other species, but in humans it is sickness that is normal. To be chronically unwell is part of what it means to be human. It is no accident that every culture has its own versions of therapy. Tribal shamans and modern psychotherapists answer the same needs and practise the same trade.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Beyond the Last Thought: Freud's cigars and the long way round to Nirvana (p. 84)
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 6 days ago
We must admit, with the same...

We must admit, with the same frankness, that we are ignorant whether matter has in itself the faculty of feeling, or only the power of acquiring it by those modifications or forms to which matter is susceptible; for it is true that this faculty of feeling appears only in organic bodies.This is then another new faculty which might exist only potentially in matter, like all the others which have been mentioned; and this was the hypothesis of the ancients, whose philosophy, full of insight and penetration, deserves to be raised above the ruins of the philosophy of the moderns.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 3 weeks ago
An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition...

An appeal to men's self-sacrificing disposition and self-renouncing love ought at least to have lost its seductive plausibility when, after an activity of thousands of years, it has left nothing behind but the - misery of today. Why then still fruitlessly expect self-sacrifice to bring us better times? Why not rather hope for them from usurpation? Salvation comes no longer from the giver, the bestower, the loving one, but from the taker, the appropriator (usurper), the owner. Communism, and, consciously, egoism-reviling humanism, still count on love.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no sorrow in the...

There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
4 months 4 weeks ago
He who upholds Truth with all...

He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power, He who upholds Truth the utmost in his word and deed,He, indeed, is Thy most valued helper, O Mazda Ahura!

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 31, 22.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 5 days ago
Even before the bomb, one did...

Even before the bomb, one did not breathe too easily in this tortured world. Now we are given a new source of anguish; it has all the promise of being our greatest anguish ever. There can be no doubt that humanity is being offered its last chance. Perhaps this is an occasion for the newspapers to print a special edition. More likely, it should be cause for a certain amount of reflection and a great deal of silence.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 1 week ago
Who is to blame but her...

Who is to blame but her and the third factor, from whence no one knows, which moved me with its stimulus and transformed me? After all, what I have done is praised in others.-Or is becoming a poet my compensation? I reject all compensation, I demand my rights-that is, my honor. I did not ask to become one, I will not buy it at this price. – Or if I am guilty, then I certainly should be able to repent of my guilt and make it good again. Tell me how. On top of that, must I perhaps repent that the world plays with me as a child plays with a beetle?-Or is it perhaps best to forget the whole thing? Forget-indeed, I shall have ceased to be if I forget it. Or what kind of life would it be if along with my beloved I have lost honor and pride and lost them in such a way that no one knows how it happened, for which reason I can never retrieve them again? Shall I allow myself to be shoved out in this manner? Why, then, was I shoved in?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 5 days ago
The feeling of being ten thousand...

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 6 days ago
I consider one of the most...

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

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
1 month 6 days ago
Once we recognize that all historical...

Once we recognize that all historical knowledge is relational knowledge, and can only be formulated with reference to the position of the observer, we are faced, once more, with the task of discriminating between what is true and what is false in such knowledge.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 1 week ago
The centuries are thick, dark waves...

The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss. Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. ... But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 2 weeks ago
Human rights are not just cultural...

Human rights are not just cultural or legal constructions, as fashionable western relativists are fond of claiming. They are universal values. To deny the benefits of the new regime of rights to other cultures is to patronise them in a way that is reminiscent of the colonial era. If the new regime on torture is good enough for the US, who can say that it is not good for everyone?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 week ago
"No, no no," she said. "You...

"No, no no," she said. "You don't understand. Not that kind of longing. It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine ... where you couldn't see Glome or the palace. Do you remember? The colour and the smell, and looking at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, Psyche come! But I couldn't (not yet) come and I didn't know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Psyche
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 6 days ago
Either everything is illusion, nature as...

Either everything is illusion, nature as well as revelation, or experience alone can explain faith.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 4 days ago
Aim at being loved without being...

Aim at being loved without being admired.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 38e
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
Of all the animals kept by...

Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocale, was,thenceforth, the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 4(e), pg. 742.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 1 week ago
Life is writing. The sole purpose...

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"On Philosophy: To Dorothea," in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 420
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 3 weeks ago
For creation is not a change,...

For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not existing before and afterwards existing.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
II, 18, 2 (see also Summa Theologica I, q. 45, art. 3 ad 2)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 1 week ago
One that confounds good and evil...

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 3 weeks ago
The vitality of the ordinary members...

The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 6 days ago
A good prescription is still more...

A good prescription is still more profitable than an absolution.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted by Friedrich Albert Lange, History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance Tr. Ernest Chester Thomas (1882) 2nd edition, Vol. 2, p. 55.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 3 weeks ago
At the bottom of the heart...

At the bottom of the heart of every human being, from earliest infancy until the tomb, there is something that goes on indomitably expecting, in the teeth of all experience of crimes committed, suffered, and witnessed, that good and not evil will be done to him. It is this above all that is sacred in every human being.The good is the only source of the sacred. There is nothing sacred except the good and what pertains to it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
Social progress means a checking of...

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Users

☰ ˟
  • All users
  • Historical Figures

Who's new

  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed
  • Slavoj Žižek

Who's online

There are currently 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia