Skip to main content
3 months 2 weeks ago

A philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing: and even then it is something he has tried to say, rather than actually said. And he has said only one thing because he has seen only one point: and at that it was not so much a vision as a contact...

0
0
Source
source
"L'intuition philosophique (Philosophical Intuition)" (10 April 1911); translated by Mabelle L. Andison in: Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, Courier Dover Publications, 2012, p. 91
3 months 4 weeks ago

The pit of a theatre is the one place where the tears of virtuous and wicked men alike are mingled.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

0
0
Source
source
§ 261
5 months 2 weeks ago

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Can there be a more horrible object in existence than an eloquent man not speaking the truth?

0
0
Source
source
Address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, (1866), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
4 months 3 weeks ago

Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. Thus no Body has any Right to but himself.

0
0
Source
source
Second Treatise of Government, Ch. V, sec. 27
3 months 1 week ago

Feeling does not succeed in converting consolation into truth, nor does reason succeed in converting truth into consolation.

0
0
4 months 5 days ago

Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be; custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tyron Edwards, p. 101
2 months 2 weeks ago

In 1970s Britain, conservative philosophy was the preoccupation of a few half-mad recluses.

0
0
Source
source
"Why I became a conservative," The New Criterion
4 months 1 week ago

He once begged alms of a statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, "To get practice in being refused."

0
0
Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
3 weeks 2 days ago

I have the consolation to reflect that during the period of my administration not a drop of the blood of a single fellow citizen was shed by the sword of war or of the law.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to papal nuncio Count Dugnani
1 month 4 days ago

I realized that the difference that I saw between things was the same thing as their unity, because differences (borders, lines, surfaces, boundaries) don't really divide things from each other at all, they join them together, because all boundaries are held in common.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The job of science will never be done, it will just sink deeper and deeper into never-ending complexity.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Live always in the best company when you read.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 370

Getting along with women, Knocking around with men, Having more credit than money, Thus one goes through the world.

0
0
Source
source
Claudine von Villa Bella
2 months 1 week ago

I shall not be satisfied unless I produce something which shall for a few days supersede the last fashionable novel on the tables of young ladies.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Macvey Napier
2 months 2 weeks ago

The river of my title is a river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

0
0
Source
source
Section 1, paragraph 19
3 months 3 weeks ago

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
3 months 2 weeks ago

To its very core, the mind of ressentiment man is filled with envy, the impulse to detract, malice, and secret vindictiveness. These affects have become fixed attitudes, detached from all determinate objects. Independently of his will, this man's attention will be instinctively drawn by all events which can set these affects in motion. The ressentiment attitude even plays a role in the formation of perceptions, expectations, and memories. It automatically selects those aspects of experience which can justify the factual application of this pattern of feeling.

0
0
Source
source
L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 74

The goal to be reached is the mind's insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary, ... because by nothing less could that all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is - for that reason, the individual mind, in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains.

0
0
Source
source
Preface (J. B. Baillie translation), § 29
3 weeks 1 day ago

The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a thing of the mere intellect. It must be animated with the religious sentiment and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the self-interest of the few or of the many. It must seek justice. For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1 : The Increasing Importance of Social Questions
4 months 3 weeks ago

A thing forgotten on one day will be remembered on the next. Something we have made the most strenuous efforts to recall, but all in vain, will, soon after... saunter into the mind... The sphere of possible recollection may be wider than we think, and... apparent oblivion is no proof against possible recall under other conditions.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 16
3 months 2 weeks ago

The general fellowship of our human situation has been rendered even more dubious than before, inasmuch as, though the old ties of caste have been loosened, a new restriction of the individual to some prescribed status in society is manifest. Less than ever, perhaps, is it possible for a man to transcend the limitations imposed by his social origins.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

0
0
Source
source
Book One, Chapter V.
5 months 1 day ago

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Ch. 26
3 months 2 weeks ago

To repeat to yourself a thousand times a day: 'Nothing on Earth has any worth,' to keep finding yourself at the same point, to circle stupidly as a top, eternally...

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Progressives on the left have shown themselves willing to abandon liberal values in pursuit of social justice objectives. There has been a sustained intellectual attack on liberal principles over the past three decades coming out of academic pursuits like gender studies, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, that deny the universalistic premises underlying modern liberalism. The challenge is not simply one of intolerance of other views or "cancel culture" in the academy or the arts. Rather, the challenge is to basic principles that all human beings were born equal in a fundamental sense, or that a liberal society should strive to be color-blind.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

In particular, it is certainly wrong to condemn poor old Homo sapiens as the only species to kill his own kind, the only inheritor of the mark of Cain, and similar melodramatic charges. Whether a naturalist stresses the violence or the restraint of animal aggression depends partly on the kinds of animals he is used to watching, and partly on his evolutionary preconceptions-Lorenz is, after all, a 'good of the species' man. Even if it has been exaggerated, the gloved fist view of animal fights seems to have at least some truth. Superficially this looks like a form of altruism. The selfish gene theory must face up to the difficult task of explaining it. Why is it that animals do not go all out to kill rival members of their species at every possible opportunity?

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 5. Aggression: stability and the selfish machine
4 months 3 weeks ago

We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

0
0
Source
source
April 12, 1834
4 months 3 weeks ago

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

0
0
Source
source
Commonly attributed to Mere Christianity, where it is not found. Earliest reference seems to be an unsourced attribution to George MacDonald in an 1892 issue of the Quaker periodical The British Friend.
1 week 6 days ago

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect, I am not a Jew.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

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

The journalists have constructed for themselves a little wooden chapel, which they also call the Temple of Fame, in which they put up and take down portraits all day long and make such a hammering you can't hear yourself speak.

0
0
Source
source
D 20
4 months 3 weeks ago

The worker's existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer, And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists.

0
0
Source
source
Wages of Labor, p. 20.
5 months 2 days ago

It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech that are the true ends of knowledge, but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them.

0
0
Source
source
Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works, Vol. I, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
3 months 2 weeks ago

A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction
1 month 4 days ago

Students have powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly. But deprived of literary guidance, they no longer have any image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one.

0
0
Source
source
p. 67.
3 months 6 days ago

Eros and depression are opposites.

0
0
3 weeks 2 days ago

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour?

0
0
Source
source
1782, reported in Henry Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux, Historical Sketches of Statesmen who Flourished in the Time of George III (1845), Vol. II, p. 62.
2 months 3 weeks ago

You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 262
4 months 3 weeks ago

Men became scientific because they expected law in Nature; and they expected law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 3: "The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism"
5 months 6 days ago

It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Accordingly, time logically supposes a continuous range of intensity of feeling. It follows then, from the definition of continuity, that when any particular kind of feeling is present, an infinitesimal continuum of all feelings differing infinitesimally from that, is present.

0
0
3 weeks 2 days ago

A 'Natural System' is one which attempts to make 'all' the divisions natural, the widest as well as the narrowest; and therefore applies 'no' characters 'peremptorily'.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Scientists try to eliminate their false theories, they try to let them die in their stead. The believer-whether animal or man-perishes with his false beliefs.

0
0
Source
source
Epistemology Without A Knowing Subject
4 months 3 weeks ago

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Science has taught... me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia