Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 1 week ago
Oh, can I really believe the...

Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. ... it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
All the time that this horrid...

All the time that this horrid scene was acting or avenging, as well as for some time before, and ever since, the wicked instigators of this unhappy multitude, guilty, with every aggravation, of all their crimes, and screened in a cowardly darkness from their punishment, continued without interruption, pity, or remorse, to blow up the blind rage of the populace, with a continued blast of pestilential libels, which infected and poisoned the very air we breathed in.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election, referring to the Gordon Riots (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), pp. 158-159
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 week ago
Those who have taken the planets...

Those who have taken the planets to be inanimate bodies without function, limited to traveling geometric paths, resemble idiots who would believe that the brain is inanimate because it has no visible function, or that the stomach is idle because it does no visible work as do our limbs. Civilizees have always been reproached for believing nature to be limited to known effects. If the planets were not animate creatures endowed with functions, God would then appear to be an advocate of laziness. He would have created universes furnished with large inert bodies spending eternity in purposeless meandering as do the idlers in our society.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
L'attraction passioneé
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 week ago
The possession and the exercise of...

The possession and the exercise of political, and among others of electoral, rights, is one of the chief instruments both of moral and of intellectual training for the popular mind; and all governments must be regarded as extremely imperfect, until every one who is required to obey the laws, has a voice, or the prospect of a voice, in their enactment and administration.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 3 weeks ago
My Lord St. Albans said that...

My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
No. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
On the other hand, the cheapest...

On the other hand, the cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs. In this he finds compensation and is now ready and thankful to defend, ... all the faults and follies peculiar to it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
From 'Parerga and Paralipomena', Vol. 1, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, 'What A Man Represents', pp. 360
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 months 1 week ago
Demonstrating is therefore only the means...

Demonstrating is therefore only the means through which I strip my thought of the form of "mine-ness" so that the other person may recognize it as his own.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
If you die, I will lie...

If you die, I will lie down beside you and I will stay there until the end, without eating or drinking, you will rot in my arms and I will love you as carcass: for you love nothing if you do not love everything.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act 10, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 4 days ago
What is exalted among men is...

What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
16:15 ESV
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
Those who promise us paradise on...

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in In Passing: Condolences and Complaints on Death, Dying, and Related Disappointments (2005) by Jon Winokur, p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month ago
Our liberty is neither Greek nor...

Our liberty is neither Greek nor Roman; but essentially English. It has a character of its own,-a character which has taken a tinge from the sentiments of the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of our manners and of our insular situation. It has a language, too, of its own, and a language singularly idiomatic, full of meaning to ourselves, scarcely intelligible to strangers.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
History', The Edinburgh Review (May 1828), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), pp. 252-253
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
Idleness is only fatal to the...

Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 week ago
Never let your sense of morals...

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 4 days ago
Being is continuous becoming. P. 136

Being is continuous becoming.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 136
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
6 days ago
It is the simple…

It is the simple hypotheses of which one must be most wary; because these are the ones that have the most chances of passing unnoticed.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Thermodynamique: Leçons professées pendant le premier semestre 1888-1889 (1892), Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
2 months 3 days ago
If, as I believe, the ends...

If, as I believe, the ends of men are many, and not all of them are in principle compatible with each other, then the possibility of conflict - and of tragedy - can never wholly be eliminated from human life, either personal or social. The necessity of choosing between absolute claims is then an inescapable characteristic of the human condition. This gives its value to freedom as Acton conceived of it - as an end in itself, and not as a temporary need, arising out of our confused notions and irrational and disordered lives, a predicament which a panacea could one day put right.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 2 weeks ago
Where there have been powerful governments,...
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
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
There was once a millionaire who...

There was once a millionaire who bought an infinite number of pairs of shoes and, whenever he bought a pair of shoes, he also bought a pair of socks. We can make a selection choosing one out of each pair of shoes, because we can choose always the right shoe or always the left shoe. Thus, so far as the shoes are concerned, selections exist. But, as regards the socks, where there is no distinction of right and left, we cannot use this rule of selection.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 93-93
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 days ago
Sobriety is the strength...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 3 weeks ago
The fact of the religious vision,...

The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", p. 268
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
3 months 2 days ago
To resist him that is set...

To resist him that is set in authority is evil. .

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim no. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks ago
The world is but a perpetual...

The world is but a perpetual see-saw.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 2 weeks ago
The foremost, or indeed the sole...

The foremost, or indeed the sole condition which is required in order to succeed in centralizing the supreme power in a democratic community, is to love equality, or to get men to believe you love it. Thus the science of despotism, which was once so complex, is simplified, and reduced as it were to a single principle.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book Four, Chapter IV.
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 1 week ago
Anarchy, in its own nature, is...

Anarchy, in its own nature, is an evil of short duration. The more horrible are the mischiefs it inflicts, the more does it hasten to a close.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book 7, Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
An intellectual is a person who...

An intellectual is a person who has discovered something more interesting than sex.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted without citation in Discovering Evolutionary Ecology: Bringing Together Ecology And Evolution (2006) by Peter J. Mayhew, p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 3 weeks ago
States as great engines move slowly....

States as great engines move slowly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 6 days ago
A text is not a text...

A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Plato's Pharmacy, intro
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
One must look into hell before...

One must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Colette O'Niel, October 23, 1916; published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970, p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 days ago
Shall we say, for example, that...

Shall we say, for example, that Science and Art are indebted principally to the founders of Schools and Universities? Did not Science originate rather, and gain advancement, in the obscure closets of the Roger Bacons, Keplers, Newtons; in the workshops of the Fausts and the Watts; wherever, and in what guise soever Nature, from the first times downwards, had sent a gifted spirit upon the earth? Again, were Homer and Shakspeare members of any beneficed guild, or made Poets by means of it? Were Painting and Sculpture created by forethought, brought into the world by institutions for that end? No; Science and Art have, from first to last, been the free gift of Nature; an unsolicited, unexpected gift; often even a fatal one.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
A public can only arrive at...

A public can only arrive at enlightenment slowly. Through revolution, the abandonment of personal despotism may be engendered and the end of profit-seeking and domineering oppression may occur, but never a true reform of the state of mind. Instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones, will serve as the guiding reins of the great, unthinking mass. All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom, namely, the freedom for man to make public use of his reason in all matters. But I hear people clamor on all sides: Don't argue! The officer says: Don't argue, drill! The tax collector: Don't argue, pay! The pastor: Don't argue, believe!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 day ago
When you have faults, do not...

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 week ago
Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a...

Humanity unceasingly strives forward from a lower, more partial and obscure understanding of life to one more general and more lucid. And in this, as in every movement, there are leaders - those who have understood the meaning of life more clearly than others - and of those advanced men there is always one who has in his words and life, manifested this meaning more clearly, accessibly, and strongly than others. This man's expression ... with those superstitions, traditions, and ceremonies which usually form around the memory of such a man, is what is called a religion. Religions are the exponents of the highest comprehension of life ... within a given age in a given society ... a basis for evaluating human sentiments. If feelings bring people nearer to the religion's ideal ... they are good, if these estrange them from it, and oppose it, they are bad.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
The more we learn about the...

The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance - the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite. Variant translation: The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, clear, and well-defined will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. The main source of our ignorance lies in the fact that our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 4 days ago
And the Science of them, is...

And the Science of them, is the true and onely Moral Philosophy. For Moral Philosophy is nothing else but the Science of what is Good, and Evill, in the conversation, and Society of mankind. Good, and Evill, are names that signify our Appetites, and Aversions; which in different tempers, customes, and doctrines of men, are different.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is almost everywhere the case...

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
K 37
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 3 weeks ago
People do not go into the...

People do not go into the company of their fellow-creatures for what would seem a very sufficient reason, namely, that they have something to say to them, or something that they want to hear from them; but in the vague hope that they may find something to say.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
There is only this swarm of...

There is only this swarm of dying creatures stricken with longevity, all the more hateful in that they are so good at organizing their agony. p. 120, first American edition

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1970
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
What does the future, that half...

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 week ago
Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation...

Nothing contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in a people, than the large and free character of their habitations.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 55)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 2 weeks ago
The act of navigation is not...

The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. ... As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 1 week ago
There is no sin, and there...

There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, ch. 3 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to a devout widow afraid of death
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
The Calculus required continuity, and continuity...

The Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 4 days ago
Go thy way; and as thou...

Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
8:13 (KJV) Said to the officer.
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 weeks 4 days ago
To affirm that humans thrive in...

To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Two Faces of Liberalism (New Press, 2000, ISBN 0-745-62259-3. 168 pages), ch. 1: Liberal Toleration (p. 21)
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nonviolence is an ideal that cannot...

Nonviolence is an ideal that cannot always be fully honored in the practice. To the degree that those who practice nonviolent resistance put their body in the way of an external power, they make physical contact, presenting a force against force in the process. Nonviolence does not imply the absence of force or of aggression. It is, as it were, an ethical stylization of embodiment, replete with gestures and modes of non-action, ways of becoming an obstacle, of using the solidity of the body and its proprioceptive object field to block or derail a further exercise of violence.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
1 month 2 days ago
French schoolchildren can be proud to...

French schoolchildren can be proud to become citizens of the country that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man; need they be told that it was disregarded a few years after it inspired the revolution in Haiti, whose leader, Toussaint Louverture, was consigned to death in a French prison?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 week ago
There are a thousand hacking at...

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root, and it may be that he who bestows the largest amount of time and money on the needy is doing the most by his mode of life to produce that misery which he strives in vain to relieve.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 3 weeks ago
The essence of the good is...

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, ch. 29, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Protagoras
Protagoras
2 months 3 weeks ago
Man is the measure of all...

Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Theaetetus by Plato section 152a
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
The poor maidservant who used to...

The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.

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 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia