Skip to main content
Image removed.

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
4 weeks ago
Or... they observe an astronomic phenomenon......

Or... they observe an astronomic phenomenon... an eclipse of the moon, and... suppose... this... is perceived simultaneously from all points of the earth. That is not altogether true, since the propagation of light is not instantaneous; if absolute exactitude were desired, there would be a correction... according to a complicated rule.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 days ago
The second office of the government...

The second office of the government is honorable and easy, the first is but a splendid misery.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Elbridge Gerry
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
3 weeks 6 days ago
Communism was not the crazy fantasy...

Communism was not the crazy fantasy of a few fanatics, nor the result of human stupidity and baseness; it was a real, very real part of the history of the twentieth century, and we cannot understand this history of ours without understanding communism. We cannot get rid of this specter by saying it was just "human stupidity," or "human corruptibility." The specter is stronger than the spells we cast on it. It might come back to life.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction to My Correct Views on Everything
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 4 days ago
Pass in, pass in, the angels...

Pass in, pass in, the angels say, In to the upper doors; Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Merlin, I, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 day ago
The whole contains nothing which is...

The whole contains nothing which is not or its advantage; and all natures indeed have this common principle, but the nature of the universe has this principle besides, that it cannot be compelled even by any external cause to generate anything harmful to itself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
X, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
Rejoice not in another man's misfortune!

Rejoice not in another man's misfortune!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months ago
I know that my birth is...

I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
The greatest problem for the human...

The greatest problem for the human race, to the solution of which Nature drives man, is the achievement of a universal civic society which administers law among men.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Fifth Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 4 days 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
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 week 6 days ago
Who then is the Mother of...

Who then is the Mother of the Gods? She is the Source of the Intelligible and Creative Powers, which direct the visible ones; she that gave birth to and copulated with the mighty Jupiter: she that exists as a great goddess next to the Great One, and in union with the Great Creator; she that is dispenser of all life; cause of all birth; most easily accomplishing all that is made; generating without passion; creating all that exists in concert with the Father; herself a virgin, without mother, sharing the throne of Jupiter, the mother in very truth of all the gods; for by receiving within herself the causes of all the intelligible deities that be above the world, she became the source to things the objects of intellect.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 2 weeks ago
Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers...

Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 day ago
The rest of the story, to...

The rest of the story, to Grand's thinking, was very simple. The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the inescapable flux, there is...

In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 4 days ago
The Quakers sent me books, from...

The Quakers sent me books, from which I learnt how they had, years ago, established beyond doubt the duty for a Christian of fulfilling the command of non-resistance to evil by force, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching in allowing war and capital punishment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I, The Doctrine of Non-resistance to Evil by Force has been Professed by a Minority of Men from the Very Foundation of Christianity
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 week 6 days ago
I think he who knows himself...

I think he who knows himself will know accurately, not the opinion of others about him, but what he is in reality... he ought to discover within himself what is right for him to do and not learn it from without...

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Oration to the Cynic Heracleios
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 3 weeks ago
Spinoza, for example, thought that insight...

Spinoza, for example, thought that insight into the essence of reality, into the harmonious structure of the eternal universe, necessarily awakens love for this universe. For him, ethical conduct is entirely determined by such insight into nature, just as our devotion to a person may be determined by insight into his greatness or genius. Fears and petty passions, alien to the great love of the universe, which is logos itself, will vanish, according to Spinoza, once our understanding of reality is deep enough.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 14.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 4 days ago
A thing is important if anyone...

A thing is important if anyone think it important.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 28, Note 35
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 5 days ago
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set...

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Volume iii, p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 4 days ago
We do not count a man's...

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Old Age
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 days ago
Jupiter: I committed the first crime...

Jupiter: I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers?

Aegisteus: Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 day ago
The sciences that are expressed by...

The sciences that are expressed by numbers or by other small signs, are easily learned; and... this facility rather than its demonstrability is what has made the fortune of algebra.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
The aim of science is to...

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 4 days ago
I veil my face before thee,...

I veil my face before thee, and lay my finger on my lips. What thou art in thyself, or how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know. After living through a thousand lives, I shall comprehend Thee as little as I do now in this mansion of clay. What I can comprehend, becomes finite by my mere comprehension, and this can never, by perpetual ascent, be transformed into the infinite, for it does not differ from it in degree merely, but in kind. By that ascent we may find a greater and greater man, but never a God, who is capable of no measurement.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.115
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 4 days ago
We cannot overstate our debt to...

We cannot overstate our debt to the Past, but the moment has the supreme claim. The Past is for us; but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the Present. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor. We must not tamper with the organic motion of the soul.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 5 days ago
A people who are still, as...

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month ago
Fleeing from a life of constant...

Fleeing from a life of constant insecurity and forced mobility is good preparation for dealing with and resisting the typical forms of exploitation of immaterial labor.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
133
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 weeks ago
Cartan developed a general scheme of...

Cartan developed a general scheme of infinitesimal geometry in which Klein's notions were applied to the tangent plane and not to the n-dimensional manifold M itself. On the foundations of general infinitesimal geometry.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. 35 (1929) 716-725 doi:10.1090/S0002-9904-1929-04812-2 (quote on p. 716)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 days ago
Nothing is yet in its true...

Nothing is yet in its true form.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 5 days ago
Thus they are deceived by the...

Thus they are deceived by the likeness of blows, and are appeased by the pretended tears of those who deprecate their wrath, and thus an unreal grief is healed by an unreal revenge.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
2 months 3 weeks ago
Reverie is not a mind vacuum....

Reverie is not a mind vacuum. It is rather the gift of an hour which knows the plenitude of the soul.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 2, sect. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
Poor David Hume is dying very...

Poor David Hume is dying very fast, but with great cheerfulness and good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things then any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Alexander Wedderburn 14 August 1776. The Correspondence of Adam Smith edited by E.C. Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press 1986. The Future Hope in Adam Smith's System, Paul Oslington
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 days ago
A young man who wishes to...

A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere... God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 191
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 4 weeks ago
Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot...

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms, The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 5 days ago
The conception of the necessary unit...

The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 5 days ago
Perseus wore a magic cap that...

Perseus wore a magic cap that the monsters he hunted down might not see him.We draw the magic cap down over eyes and ears as a make-believe that there are no monsters.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Author's prefaces to the First Edition.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 1 week ago
The world you perceive is drastically...

The world you perceive is drastically simplified model of the real world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. xxvi.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 days ago
The reader is the content of...

The reader is the content of any poem or of the language he employs, and in order to use any of these forms, he must put them on.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Roles, Masks, and Performances", New Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 3, Performances in Drama, the Arts, and Society (Spring, 1971), p. 520
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 2 days ago
The peoples' revolution .... will arrange...

The peoples' revolution .... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months ago
Every change in the social order,...

Every change in the social order, every revolution in property relations, is the necessary consequence of the creation of new forces of production which no longer fit into the old property relations. Private property has not always existed. When, towards the end of the Middle Ages, there arose a new mode of production which could not be carried on under the then existing feudal and guild forms of property, this manufacture, which had outgrown the old property relations, created a new property form, private property. And for manufacture and the earliest stage of development of big industry, private property was the only possible property form; the social order based on it was the only possible social order.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months ago
Those in the crossing must in...

Those in the crossing must in the end know what is mistaken by all urging for intelligibility: that every thinking of being, all philosophy, can never be confirmed by "facts," ie, by beings. Making itself intelligible is suicide for philosophy. Those who idolize "facts" never notice that their idols only shine in a borrowed light. They are also meant not to notice this; for thereupon they would have to be at a loss and therefore useless. But idolizers and idols are used wherever gods are in flight and so announce their nearness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) [Beitrage Zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis)], notes of 1936-1938, as translated by Parvis Emad and Kenneth Maly
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 week ago
Not one of these nobly equipped...
Not one of these nobly equipped young men has escaped the restless, exhausting, confusing, debilitating crisis of education. ... He feels that he cannot guide himself, cannot help himself, and then he dives hopelessly into the world of everyday life and daily routine, he is immersed in the most trivial activity possible, and his limbs grow weak and weary.
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 days ago
Not to be loved....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
All things were together, infinite both...

All things were together, infinite both in number and in smallness; for the small too was infinite.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Frag. B 1, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 5 days ago
The theory of Communism may be...

The theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section 2, paragraph 13.
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 day ago
Everything is the work of imagination,...

Everything is the work of imagination, and... all the faculties of the soul can be correctly reduced to pure imagination...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 2 weeks ago
Instead of wishing to see more...

Instead of wishing to see more doctors made by women joining what there are, I wish to see as few doctors, either male or female, as possible. For, mark you, the women have made no improvement - they have only tried to be men and they have only succeeded in being third-rate men.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to John Stuart Mill (12 September 1860), published in Florence Nightingale on Society and Politics, Philosophy, Science, Education (2003) edited by Lynn McDonald
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
4 months 3 weeks ago
The texts about the future life...

The texts about the future life fall into, since demonstrative scholars do not agree whether to take them in their apparent meaning or interpret them allegorically. Either is permissible. But it is inexcusable to deny the fact of a future life altogether.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 week 6 days ago
Zeal to do all that is...

Zeal to do all that is in one's power is, in truth, a proof of piety.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Fragment of a Letter to a Priest
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 5 days ago
In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms,...

In the welter of conflicting fanaticisms, one of the few unifying forces is scientific truthfulness, by which I mean the habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XXXI "The Philosophy of Logical Analysis"
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 days 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
  • 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