Skip to main content
5 months 1 week ago

When there were gathered together an innumerable multitude of people, insomuch that they trode one upon another, he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops. And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

0
0
Source
source
12:1-5
2 months 2 weeks ago

If a due participation of office is a matter of right, how are vacancies to be obtained? Those by death are few; by resignation, none.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Elias Shipman and others of New Haven (12 July 1801). Often misquoted as, "few die and none resign".
6 months 3 weeks ago

It seldom happens, however, that a great proprietor is a great improver.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IV, p. 420.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and ... each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

0
0
Source
source
p. 340
6 months 2 weeks ago

There is little in common between the organised parading of madness in the eighteenth century and the freedom with which madness came to the fore during the Renaissance. The earlier age had found it everywhere, an integral element of each experience, both in images and in real life dangers. During the classical period, it was also on public view, but behind bars. When it manifested itself it was at a carefully controlled distance, under the watchful eye of a reason that denied all kinship with it, and felt quite unthreatened by any hint of resemblance. Madness had become a thing to be observed, no longer the monster within, but an animal moved by strange mechanisms, more beast than man, where all humanity had long since disappeared.

0
0
Source
source
Part One: 5. The Insane
4 months 2 weeks ago

A real mother, who knows the will of God by experience, will prepare her children also to fulfil it. Such a mother will suffer if she sees her child overfed, effeminate, and dressed-up, for she knows that these things will make it difficult for it to fulfil the will of God which she recognizes.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

0
0
Source
source
Article on Political Authority, Vol. 1
4 months 3 weeks ago

Simulation is no longer that of a territory, a referential being or substance. It is a generation by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal.

0
0
Source
source
"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 1
3 months 2 weeks ago

We aspire not to equality but to domination. Countries inhabited by foreign races must become again countries of serfs, farm laborers, and factory workers. The goal is not to suppress inequities, but, rather, to amplify them and to make of them a matter of course.

0
0
Source
source
as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), p. 147
7 months 1 week ago

It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

The empiricist thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

0
0
Source
source
"Objections to Belief in Substance", p. 201
6 months 2 days ago

Wisdom thoroughly learned, will never be forgotten. Science is got by diligence; but Discretion and Wisdom cometh of GOD.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

I heard the bells from the future churches, the children playing and laughing in the schoolyards ... and here was an almond tree in bloom before me: I must reach out and cut a flowering branch. For, by believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired, whatever we have not irrigated with our blood to such a degree that it becomes strong enough to stride across the somber threshold of nonexistence.

0
0
Source
source
p. 434; in a few publications since 2008 part of this has been misattributed to Franz Kafka: "By believing passionately in something which still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired."
6 months 2 weeks ago

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

0
0
Source
source
Letter (19 April 1951); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 230
6 months 4 weeks ago

Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.

0
0
Source
source
Act III, scene xi
2 months 2 weeks ago

Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life.

0
0
Source
source
VI, 30
3 months 1 week ago

A real man is he whose goodness is a part of himself.

0
0
Source
source
"Discipline and Character", no. 45
6 months 2 days ago

Cut not fire with a sword. Symbol 9 Variant translation: Poke not the fire with a sword.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes‎ (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 455
4 months 1 week ago

There is no doubt in my mind that, from the third-person point of view, monarchy is the most reasonable form of government. By embodying the state in a fragile human person, it captures the arbitrariness and the givenness of political allegiance, and so transforms allegiance into affection.

0
0
Source
source
The Meaning of Conservatism: Third Edition (2001), p. 193
6 months 2 weeks ago

...wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. in other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Chapter 2, "The Invasion"
5 months 1 week ago

Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding some its assertions, that the forms of knowledge and consequently the relations of man to nature and to other men never change. According to rationalism, too, all subjective and objective potentialities are rooted in insights which the individual already possesses, but rationality uses existing objects as well as the active inner striving and ideas of man to construct standards for the future. In this regard, it is not so closely associated with the present order as is empiricism.

0
0
Source
source
p. 148.
5 months 6 days ago

The thought of being under absolute compulsion, the plaything of another, is unendurable for a human being. Hence, if every way of escape from the constraint is taken from him, there is nothing left for him to do but to persuade himself that he does the things he is forced to do willingly, that is to say, to substitute devotion for obedience. ... It is by this twist that slavery debases the soul: this devotion is in fact based on a lie, since the reasons for it cannot bear investigation. ... Moreover, the master is deceived too by the fallacy of devotion.

0
0
Source
source
p. 142
2 months 1 week ago

What the inventive genius of mankind has bestowed upon us in the last hundred years could have made human life care free and happy if the development of the organizing power of man had been able to keep step with his technical advances. As it is, the hardly bought achievements of the machine age in the hands of our generation are as dangerous as a razor in the hands of a three-year-old child. The possession of wonderful means of production has not brought freedom-only care and hunger.

0
0
Source
source
writing for the 1932 Disarmament Conference, included in The Nation 1865-1990: Selections From the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture (1990)
6 months 2 days ago

Hear gladly!

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations. Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Quote Junkie : Political Edition (2008) by Hagopian Institute
7 months 3 weeks ago
Knowledge more than a Means. Also without this passion I refer to the passion for knowledge, science would be furthered: science has hitherto increased and grown up without it. The good faith in science, the prejudice in its favour, by which States are at present dominated (it was even the Church formerly), rests fundamentally on the fact that the absolute inclination and impulse has so rarely revealed itself in it, and that science is regarded not as a passion, but as a condition and an "ethos." Indeed, amour-plaisir of knowledge (curiosity) often enough suffices, amour-vanity suffices, and habituation to it, with the afterthought of obtaining honour and bread; it even suffices for many that they do not know what to do with a surplus of leisure, except to continue reading, collecting, arranging, observing and narrating; their "scientific impulse" is their ennui.
0
0
6 months 1 week ago

And what he fears he cannot make attractive with his touch he abandons.

0
0
Source
source
Line 149 (tr. H. R. Fairclough)
3 months 2 weeks ago

Indeed, I think we may concede to our Academician, without flattery, his claim that in the principle [principio, i. e., accelerated motion] laid down in this treatise he has established a new science dealing with a very old subject. Observing with what ease and clearness he deduces from a single principle the proofs of so many theorems, I wonder not a little how such a question escaped the attention of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and so many other mathematicians and illustrious philosophers, especially since so many ponderous tomes have been devoted to the subject of motion.

0
0
Source
source
(Galileo referred to himself as the/our Academician in his dialogue) Sagredo, Third Day P. 242
7 months 3 weeks ago
Without art we would be nothing but foreground and live entirely in the spell of that perspective which makes what is closest at hand and most vulgar appear as if it were vast, and reality itself.
0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed,her mouth gaped open, bleating, then her jaws hung looseand retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood.

0
0
Source
source
Death of Phida, Book VIII, line 410
6 months 2 days ago

If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review by ? Vol. IV, No. 8 (1847) by Dallas Theological Seminary, p. 107
6 months 2 weeks ago

Explore, and explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatise yourself, nor accept another's dogmatism. Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? Truth also has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread, and if not store of it, yet such as shall not take away your property in all men's possessions, in all men's affections, in art, in nature, and in hope.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life, what is seen as good and evil. Good and evil are defined by religions.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
6 months 3 weeks ago

We do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hard-ware of England for the wines of France;and yet hard-ware is a very durable commodity, and were it not for this continual exportation, might too be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country. But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them;that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there;and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it, apart of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workman whose business it was to make them.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 471.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Our philosophy... reduceth to a single origin and relateth to a single end, and maketh contraries to coincide so that there is one primal foundation both of origin and of end. From this coincidence of contraries, we deduce that ultimately it is divinely true that contraries are within contraries; wherefore it is not difficult to compass the knowledge that each thing is within every other.

0
0
Source
source
As translated by Dorothea Waley Singer

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

0
0
Source
source
C 54 Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Pornography and obscenity...work by specialism and fragmentation. They deal with a figure without a ground -- situations in which the human factor is suppressed in favor of sensations and kicks.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Clare Westcott, November 26 1975. Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 514
5 months 3 weeks ago

For nature is not merely present, but is implanted within things, distant from none; naught is distant from her except the false, and that which existed never and nowhere-nullity. And while the outer face of things changeth so greatly, there flourisheth the origin of being more intimately within all things than they themselves. The fount of all kinds, Mind, God, Being, One, Truth, Destiny, Reason, Order.

0
0
Source
source
VIII 10 as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer
2 months 2 weeks ago

You say that I have been dished up to you as an antifederalist, and ask me if it be just. My opinion was never worthy enough of notice to merit citing; but since you ask it I will tell it you. I am not a Federalist, because I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all. Therefore I protest to you I am not of the party of federalists. But I am much farther from that than of the Antifederalists.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Francis Hopkinson
2 months 2 weeks ago

Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) XI, 18
3 months 1 day ago

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

0
0
Source
source
The Gulag Archipelago
7 months 1 week ago

He that in his studies wholly applies himself to labour and exercise, and neglects meditation, loses his time, and he that only applies himself to meditation, and neglects labour and exercise, only wanders and loses himself.

0
0
6 months 4 weeks ago

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2. Of Sorrow, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
6 months 3 weeks ago

Every thing in the world is purchased by labour.

0
0
Source
source
Part II, Essay 1: Of Commerce
3 months 6 days ago

A word of honour, an oath, is one only for him whom I entitle to receive it; he who forces me to it obtains only a forced, a hostile word, the word of a foe, whom one has no right to trust; for the foe does not give us the right.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 269

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia