Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 5 days ago
If reason (I mean abstract reason,...

If reason (I mean abstract reason, derived from inquiries a priori) be not alike mute with regard to all questions concerning cause and effect, this sentence at least it will venture to pronounce, That a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much, as does a material world, or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause. For what is there in this subject, which should occasion a different conclusion or inference? In an abstract view, they are entirely alike; and no difficulty attends the one supposition, which is not common to both of them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Philo to Cleanthes, Part IV
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 months 1 week ago
Instead of gambling on the eternal...

Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
from Dialogues with Claire Parnet, p. 147 [emphasis in original].
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 5 days ago
It appears, accordingly, from the experience...

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter VIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 days ago
In general, the art of government…

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Money", 1770
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months ago
Let us now consider whether justice...

Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 3 weeks ago
Spontaneous social action will be broken...

Spontaneous social action will be broken up over and over again by State intervention; no new seed will be able to fructify. Society will have to live for the State, man for the governmental machine. And as, after all, it is only a machine whose existence and maintenance depend on the vital supports around it, the State, after sucking out the very marrow of society, will be left bloodless, a skeleton, dead with that rusty death of machinery, more gruesome than the death of a living organism. Such was the lamentable fate of ancient civilisation. ... Already in the times of the Antonines (IInd Century), the State overbears society with its anti-vital supremacy. Society begins to be enslaved, to be unable to live except in the service of the State. The whole of life is bureaucratised. What results? The bureaucratisation of life brings about its absolute decay in all orders.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XIII: The Greatest Danger, The State
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 1 week ago
Throwing away the veils

In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence... the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 3 weeks ago
For we are social beings, who...

For we are social beings, who can exist and behave as autonomous agents only because we are supported in our ventures by that feeling of primal safety that the bond of society brings. We can envisage no project and no satisfaction on which the eyes of others do not shine. We are joined to those others, and even when they are strangers to us, they are also part of us. It is the indispensable need for membership that brings the national idea to our minds; and there is no rational argument that will expel it, once it is there. Without it, we are homeless; and even if our attitude to home is one of sour disaffection, home is no less necessary to our sense of who we are.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
'The First Person Plural', in Ronald Beiner (ed.), Theorizing Nationalism (1999), p. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 days ago
God huddles in a knot in...

God huddles in a knot in every cell of flesh. When I break a fruit open, this is how every seed is revealed to me. When I speak to men, this what I discern in their thick and muddy brains. God struggles in every thing, his hands flung upward toward the light. What light? Beyond and above every thing!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
Our subjective judgment of what seems...

Our subjective judgment of what seems like a good bet is irrelevant to what is actually a good bet.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 6 "Origins and Miracles" (p. 162)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 2 days ago
Our minds must have relaxation: rested,...

Our minds must have relaxation: rested, they will rise up better and keener. Just as we must not force fertile fields (for uninterrupted production will quickly exhaust them), so continual labor will break the power of our minds. They will recover their strength, however, after they have had a little freedom and relaxation.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 weeks ago
In Catch-22, the figure of the...

In Catch-22, the figure of the black market and the ground of war merge into a monster presided over by the syndicate. When war and market merge, all money transactions begin to drip blood.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 211)
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 3 weeks ago
To flee vice….

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, epistle i, line 41
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 day ago
Who does not see that we...

Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture I, "Religion and Neurology"
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 4 days ago
In the performance of an illocutionary...

In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 days ago
I take toleration to be a...

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 days ago
Let me give two cautions....

Let me give two cautions. 1) The one is, that you keep them to the practice of what you would have grow into a habit with them, by kind words, and gentle admonitions, rather as minding them of what they forget, than by harsh rebukes and chiding, as if they were wilfully guilty. 2) Another thing you are to take care of, is, not to endeavour to settle too many habits at once, lest by variety you confound them, and so perfect none. When constant custom has made any one thing easy and natural to 'em, and they practice it without reflection, you may then go on to another.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 2 weeks ago
What J.P. Morgan and John D....

What J.P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller were to the Age of Robber Barons, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett, as well as digital moguls like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are to the contemporary age of the rule of the 1%. Then as now, the super-rich used governments to write laws and rules to allow them to accumulate unlimited wealth; then as now, creating monopolies by enclosing the commons and killing competition is the strategy for becoming the 1%.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
Envy has been, is, and shall...

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 1 day ago
My father's education was altogether of...

My father's education was altogether of the worst and most limited. I believe he was never more than three months at any school. What he learned there showed what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting - these, with other limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive for more.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
I will follow the good side...

I will follow the good side right to the fire, but not into it if I can help it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 day ago
I look forward to a future...

I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples. All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
We only labor to stuff the...

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
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 days ago
Falsehood has a perennial spring.

Falsehood has a perennial spring.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 weeks ago
For tribal man, space was the...

For tribal man, space was the uncontrollable mystery. For technological man it is time that occupies the same role.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 85; "Magic that Changes Mood")
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2 months 3 weeks ago
The sensate body possesses an art...

The sensate body possesses an art of interrogating the sensible according to its own wishes, an inspired exegesis The Visible and the Invisible, trans.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
A. Lingis (Evanston: 1968), p. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 weeks ago
Every explanation is after all an...

Every explanation is after all an hypothesis.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months ago
I have always - at least,...

I have always - at least, ever since I can remember - had a kind of longing for death. Psyche

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
The Fathers of the Church can...

The Fathers of the Church can well afford to preach the gospel of Christ. It contains nothing dangerous to the regime of authority and wealth; it stands for self-denial and self-abnegation, for penance and regret, and is absolutely inert in the face of every indignity, every outrage imposed upon mankind.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
3 weeks 6 days ago
All of those who are "without"...

All of those who are "without" - without employment, without residence, without housing - are really excluded only in part.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
129
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 day ago
It is terrible when people do...

It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
O ye of little faith, why...

O ye of little faith, why reason ye among yourselves, because ye have brought no bread? Do ye not yet understand, neither remember the five loaves of the five thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? Neither the seven loaves of the four thousand, and how many baskets ye took up? How is it that ye do not understand that I spake it not to you concerning bread, that ye should beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
16:8-11 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 2 days ago
Whatever can happen at any time...

Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
What is so remarkable about Crowley...

What is so remarkable about Crowley the 'magician' is that he remains Crowley the scientist, and always applies the same probing intellectual curiosity to every field he surveys. This is ultimately the most impressive quality about his mind, and the one that might -- if he had concentrated on developing it to the full -- have brought him the fame that he craved. Crowley's tragedy was that he never concentrated long enough to develop anything to the full.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months ago
Karsky: I met your father last...

Karsky: I met your father last week. Are you still interested in hearing how he is doing?

Hugo: No. 

Karsky: It is very probable that you will be responsible for his death.

Hugo: It is virtually certain that he is responsible for my life. We are even.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act 4, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 2 days ago
Whether directly or indirectly all nations...

Whether directly or indirectly all nations are originally nothing but Indian colonies... the oriental antiquity could, if we consented to deepen it, bring us back more safely towards the divine....

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Friedrich Schlegel, Essay on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, quoted by Roger-Pol Droit in L'Oubli de I'Inde, Paris Presses Universitaires de France, 1989, p. 129.
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 2 weeks ago
Indeed much of the literature written...

Indeed much of the literature written about black folks in the post-civil rights era emphasized the need for jobs. Material advancement was deemed the pressing agenda. Mental health concerns were not a high priority.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 4 weeks ago
If there is a state, then...

If there is a state, then necessarily there is domination and consequently slavery. A state without slavery, open or camouflaged, is inconceivable - that is why we are enemies of the state.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 2 days ago
Accept in an unruffled spirit that...

Accept in an unruffled spirit that which is inevitable.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Turning your back...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 days ago
I am looking forward very much...

I am looking forward very much to getting back to Cambridge, and being able to say what I think and not to mean what I say: two things which at home are impossible. Cambridge is one of the few places where one can talk unlimited nonsense and generalities without anyone pulling one up or confronting one with them when one says just the opposite the next day.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1893); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884-1914), edited by Nicholas Griffin
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 3 days ago
Great minds are related to the...

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 20, § 242
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months ago
One of the ideas I had...

One of the ideas I had discussed in The Poverty of Historicism was the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted. I had called this the "Oedipus effect", because the oracle played a most important role in the sequence of events which led to the fulfilment of its prophecy. ... For a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences. But in biology, too-even in molecular biology-expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Page 29
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 4 days ago
My car and my adding machine...

My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Whosoever will come after me, let...

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
8:34b-36 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 week ago
"You err, not knowing the Scriptures...

"You err, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God" This canon is the mother of all canons against heresy; the causes of error are two; the ignorance of the will of God, and the ignorance or not sufficient consideration of his power.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Of Heresies
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months ago
Absurd, irreducible; nothing - not even...

Absurd, irreducible; nothing - not even a profound and secret delirium of nature - could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Reflections on a chestnut tree root.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 week 2 days ago
Although our case is different from...

Although our case is different from that of ascetics who remove themselves from the world, the situation of the latest technological civilization might offer the incentive for commitments of this kind. In a large city, in mass society, among the almost unreal swarming of faceless beings, an essential sense of isolation or of detachment often occurs naturally, perhaps even more than in the solitude of moors and mountains.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 121
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 weeks 4 days ago
But these labels can only be...

But these labels can only be finite in number. On that score, psychologic time should be discontinuous.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 4 weeks ago
There is no mystery in humans...

There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

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