Skip to main content
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is hard to see how the discarding of liberal values is going to lead to anything in the long term other than increasing social conflict and ultimately a return to violence as a means of resolving differences.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

To prove cannot mean anything other than to bring the other person to my own conviction. The truth lies only in the unification of "I" and "You." The Other of pure thought, however, is the sensuous intellect in general. In the field of philosophy, proof therefore consists only in the fact that the contradiction between sensuous intellect and pure thought is disposed, so that thought is true not only for itself but also for its opposite.

0
0
Source
source
Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 75
8 months 2 weeks ago

Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church, ... without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a zoon politicon,-so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, etc., without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman's delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them-lays hands on the sacred!

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 44
6 months 3 weeks ago

All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

It often happens that reforms merely have the effect of transferring the undesirable tendencies of individuals from one channel to another channel. An old outlet for some particular wickedness is closed; but a new outlet is opened. The wickedness is not abolished; it is merely provided with a different set of opportunities for self-expression.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 3, p. 20 [2012 reprint]
6 months 2 weeks ago

Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Footprints in Time : Fulfilling God's Destiny for Your Life (2007) by Jeff O'Leary, p. 223
5 months 4 weeks ago

Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.

0
0
Source
source
Of Idolatry
7 months 3 weeks ago

Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? - If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, - How sweet this crust is!

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Harrison Blake (20 May 1860); published in Familiar Letters, 1865
1 month ago

It's a context in the way that reality itself is context....

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

We must have kings, and we must have nobles. Nature provides such in every society, - only let us have the real instead of the titular. Let us have our leading and our inspiration from the best. In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise. Let the powers be well directed, directed by love, and they would everywhere be greeted with joy and honor.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

I heard what you were saying. You - you know nothing of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

0
0
Source
source
Cameo appearance as himself in Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall
7 months 3 weeks ago

This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

0
0
Source
source
Essai sur l'histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, Chapter 70, 1756
7 months 3 weeks ago

The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Section 23, pg. 135
6 months 1 week ago

However, the disappearance of domination does not entail freedom. Instead, it makes freedom and constraint coincide. Thus, the achievement-subject gives itself over to compulsive freedom--that is, to the free constraint of maximizing achievement. Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation.

0
0
Source
source
Source: Page 11
4 months 2 weeks ago

Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world!

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The destructive work of totalitarian machinery, whether or not this word is used, is usually supported by a special kind of primitive social philosophy. It proclaims not only that the common good of 'society' has priority over the interests of individuals, but that the very existence of individuals as persons is reducible to the existence of the social 'whole'; in other words, personal existence is, in a strange sense, unreal. This is a convenient foundation for any ideology of slavery.

0
0
Source
source
"Totalitarianism and the Virtue of the Lie", as quoted in Is God Happy? Selected Essays (2013), Basic Books, p. 57
5 months 3 weeks ago

All who have meant good work with their whole hearts, have done good work, although they may die before they have the time to sign it. Every heart that has beat strong and cheerfully has left a hopeful impulse behind it in the world, and bettered the tradition of mankind. And even if death catch people, like an open pitfall, and in mid-career, laying out vast projects, and planning monstrous foundations, flushed with hope, and their mouths full of boastful language, they should be at once tripped up and silenced: is there not something brave and spirited in such a termination? and does not life go down with a better grace, foaming in full body over a precipice, than miserably straggling to an end in sandy deltas?

0
0
Source
source
316
6 months 3 weeks ago

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.

0
0
Source
source
p. 140
7 months 4 weeks ago

This miracle of analysis, this marvel of the world of ideas, an almost amphibian object between Being and Non-being that we call the imaginary number.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in Singularités : individus et relations dans le système de Leibniz (2003) by Christiane Frémont
4 months 1 week ago

This spirit thrusts itself forward, confident of commendation and esteem. It is superior to all, monarch of all it surveys; hence it should be subservient to nothing, finding no task too heavy, and nothing strong enough to weigh down the shoulders of a man.

0
0
7 months 4 weeks ago

Psychologists have hitherto failed to realize that imagination is a necessary ingredient of perception itself.

0
0
Source
source
A 120
4 months 2 weeks ago

O poor mortals, how ye make this earth bitter for each other.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. I, Bk. V, ch. 5.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. IV, The Relativity of All Knowledge
7 months 3 weeks ago

If a thousand citizens were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

That's because believing in "God" or not doesn't determine goodness....universality does that...understanding each individual is an end in themselves.....

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

They pass peaceful lives who ignore mine and thine.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 790
7 months 3 weeks ago

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

0
0
Source
source
Loser Wins (Les Séquestrés d'Altona: A Play in Five Acts)
4 months 3 weeks ago

A questioner asks: If human nature is evil, then where do ritual and rightness come from? I reply: ritual and rightness are always created by the conscious activity of the sages.

0
0
Source
source
Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 180
5 months 3 weeks ago

The slaves of our times are not all those factory and workshop hands only who must sell themselves completely into the power of the factory and foundry-owners in order to exist, but nearly all the agricultural laborers are slaves, working, as they do, unceasingly to grow another's corn on another's field, and gathering it into another's barn; or tilling their own fields only in order to pay to bankers the interest on debts they cannot get rid of. And slaves also are all the innumerable footmen, cooks, porters, housemaids, coachmen, bathmen, waiters, etc., who all their life long perform duties most unnatural to a human being, and which they themselves dislike.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 8: Slavery Exists Among Us
7 months 2 weeks ago

It is ugly to be punishable, but there is no glory in punishing. Hence the double system of protection that justice has set up between itself and the punishment it imposes.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 10

The pursuit of wealth generally diverts men of great talents and strong passions from the pursuit of power; and it frequently happens that a man does not undertake to direct the fortunes of the state until he has shown himself incompetent to conduct his own.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XIII.
5 months 3 weeks ago

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 1
3 months 3 weeks ago

No government ought to be without censors; and where the press is free no one ever will.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to George Washington (9 September 1792) The word "censor" in this context means one who censures or an adverse critic not an official who decides what can be published.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Our studies of sexual life, originating in Vienna and in England, are matched or surpassed by Hindu teachings on this subject... Psychoanalysis itself and the lines of thought to which it gives rise-surely a distinctly Western development-are only a beginner's attempt compared to what is an immemorial art in the East.

0
0
Source
source
quoted in Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, and David Frawley. - In search of the cradle of civilization _ new light on ancient India-Quest Books
5 months 4 weeks ago

But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions: since the Comets range over all parts of the heavens, in very eccentric orbits. For by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbs of the Planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detain'd the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

There are no conventions, no tabus, no gods, no priests, princes, fathers, or revelations which they must accept. ... The prison door is wide open. They stagger out into trackless space under a blinding sun.

0
0
Source
source
Preface
7 months 3 weeks ago

If I could put my hand on the north star, would it be as beautiful? The sea is lovely, but when we bathe in it, the beauty forsakes all the near water. For the imagination and senses cannot be gratified at the same time.

0
0
Source
source
Beauty
5 months 3 weeks ago

The "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 8)
8 months 5 days ago

Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 44
6 months 1 week ago

Life is agid. Life is fulgid. Life is a burgeoning, a quickening of the dim primordial urge in the murky wastes of time. Life is what the least of us make most of us feel the least of us make the most of.

0
0
Source
source
Quine's response in 1988 when asked his philosophy of life. (He invented the word "agid".) It makes up the entire Chapter 54 in Quine in Dialogue (2008).
3 months 3 weeks ago

How many mistakes power has committed! And how often has it ignored the means to conserve itself! Man is insatiable for power; he is infinite in his desires, and, always discontented with what he has, he loves only what he has not. People complain about the despotism of princes; they should complain about that of man. We are all born despots, from the most absolute monarch of Asia to the child who smothers a bird with his hand for the pleasure of seeing something in the world weaker than himself. There is no man who does not abuse power, and experience proves that the most abominable despots, if they come to seize the sceptre, will be precisely those who rant against despotism.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia