Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
Other curious and rather ominous consequences...

Other curious and rather ominous consequences of war are the increased anti-Semitism which one meets in all classes, particularly the common people, and the strong recrudescence of anti-negro passions in the South. The first is due to the age-old dislike of a monied, influential and pushing minority, coupled with a special grudge against the Jews as being chiefly instrumental, in public opinion, in getting America into the war.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Julian Huxley (1943), published in Letters of Aldous Huxley (1970), p. 486, also in Aldous Huxley: A Quest for Values, 2017
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 3 weeks ago
The mathematical thermology created by Fourier...

The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II: Astronomy, Ch. I: General View
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
To live in a saint's heart?...

To live in a saint's heart? I'm afraid of setting the sky ablaze.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
Much of the modern resistance to...

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they "own" their bodies - those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter XXI
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 2 weeks ago
The division of Philosopher and Poet...

The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 2 weeks ago
The true philosophical Act is annihilation...

The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
6 days ago
He was a one-book man. Some...

He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 402
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
I decline the election. - It...

I decline the election. - It has ever been my rule through life, to observe a proportion between my efforts and my objects. I have never been remarkable for a bold, active, and sanguine pursuit of advantages that are personal to myself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech at Bristol on declining the poll (9 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 170
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 4 weeks ago
Faith looks to the word and...

Faith looks to the word and the promise; that is, to the truth. But hope looks to that which the word has promised, to the gift.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month ago
More controversially, technology can accelerate the...

More controversially, technology can accelerate the transition from harming to helping free-living sentient beings: mankind's fitfully expanding "circle of compassion". The civilising process needn't be species-specific but instead extend to free-living dwellers in tomorrow's wildlife parks. Every cubic metre of the biosphere will soon be computationally accessible to surveillance, micro-management and control. Fertility regulation via immunocontraception can replace Darwinian ecosystems governed by starvation and predation. Any species of obligate carnivore we choose to preserve can be genetically and behaviourally tweaked into harmlessness. Asphyxiation, disembowelling, and agonies of being eaten alive can pass into the dustbin of history.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
High-tech Jainism, The World Transformed, Jul. 2014
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 week ago
From a correct Marxian point of...

From a correct Marxian point of view ... all measures designed to restrain, to regulate and to improve capitalism were simply "petty-bourgeois" nonsense ... True socialists should not place any obstacles in the way of capitalist evolution. For only the full maturity of capitalism could bring about socialism. It is not only vain, but harmful to the interests of the proletarians to resort to such measures.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
At any street corner the feeling...

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
Of America it would ill beseem...

Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglosaxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy... But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said... Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there... Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Latter Day Pamphlets, No. 1., p. 23, 24.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
The habits of study acquired at...

The habits of study acquired at Universities are of the highest importance in after-life. At the season when you are in young years the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to order it to form itself into. The mind is in a fluid state, but it hardens up gradually to the consistency of rock or iron, and you cannot alter the habits of an old man, but as he has begun he will proceed and go on to the last.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 weeks ago
Is there anything we cannot contrive...

Is there anything we cannot contrive to call the demands of the times, and is there anything that does not acquire a certain prestige by being the demand of the times? But for decisive religious categories to become the demand for the times is eo ipso a contradiction. “The times” is too abstract a category to be able as claimant to demand the decisive religious categories that belong specifically to individuality and particularity; loud collective demands en mass for what can be shared only by the single individual in particularity, in solitariness, in silence, cannot be made.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Two Ages: The Age of Revolution and the Present Age. A Literary Review.
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 2 weeks ago
The need of black conservatives to...

The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p52)
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
6 days ago
The fact is that in order...

The fact is that in order to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months 4 weeks ago
Men never do good unless necessity...

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book 1, Ch. 3 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
I wiped away the weeds and...

I wiped away the weeds and foam, And fetched my sea-born treasures home; But the poor, unsightly, noisome things Had left their beauty on the shore With the sun, and the sand, and the wild uproar.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Each and All, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 weeks ago
As far as physicians go, chance...

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
Just now
As a social bond, now one...

As a social bond, now one does not find even a faith of the warrior kind, that is, relationships of loyalty and honour. The social bond assumes a utilitarian and economic character; it is an agreement based on convenience and material interest - a type only a merchant would accept.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
Enough had been thought, and said,...

Enough had been thought, and said, and felt, and imagined. It was about time that something should be done.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 6 days ago
In the past human life was...

In the past human life was lived in a bullock cart; in the future it will be lived in an aeroplane; and the change of speed amounts to a difference in quality.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 137
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 3 weeks ago
In most cases, people, even the...

In most cases, people, even the most vicious, are much more naive and simple-minded than we assume them to be. And this is true of ourselves too.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
6 days ago
To preserve the life…

To preserve the life of citizens, is the greatest virtue in the father of his country.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The quote is from a Roman tragedy Octavia; Act 2, Line 444, where Seneca advises Nero against carrying out his tyrannical plans. Seneca's attribution to the play is generally discredited by modern scholarship.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Scientific discourse extracts truths from...

The Scientific discourse extracts truths from the errors which surround and oppose it on all sides and in every form; and, by demolition of these opposing views as error, and as impossible to true thought, shows the truth as that which alone remains after their withdrawal, and therefore as the only possible truth:--and in this separation of opposites, and elucidation of the truth from the confused chaos in which truth and error lie mingled together, consists the peculiar and characteristic nature of the Scientific discourse. This method creates and produces truth, before our eyes, out of a world full of error.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 26-27
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is no rule more invariable...

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 254
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
2 months 1 week ago
Life is agid. Life is fulgid....

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).
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
2 weeks ago
The history of utopias is no...

The history of utopias is no less fascinating than the history of metallurgy or of chemical engineering.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
New Preface, p. vi
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is the duty...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
Through laziness and cowardice a large...

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
The Great Man here too, as...

The Great Man here too, as always, is a Force of Nature. Whatsoever is truly great in him springs up from the inarticulate deeps.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
Just you think first, and don't...

Just you think first, and don't bother to speak afterward, either.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 1 week ago
When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing...

When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
62 Eudæmonidas
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
All violence consists in some people...

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Law of Love and the Law of Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
The child learns to believe...

The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 4 days ago
The whole title by which you...

The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 3 weeks ago
Love the Muslims

In the electoral campaign, President Bush named as the most important person in his life Jesus. Now he has a unique chance to prove that he meant it seriously: for him, as for all Americans today, "Love thy neighbor!" means "Love the Muslims!" OR IT MEANS NOTHING AT ALL.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 3 weeks ago
The more exquisite any good is,...

The more exquisite any good is, of which a small specimen is afforded us, the sharper is the evil, allied to it; and few exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature. The most sprightly wit borders on madness; the highest effusions of joy produce the deepest melancholy; the most ravishing pleasures are attended with the most cruel lassitude and disgust; the most flattering hopes make way for the severest disappointments. And, in general, no course of life has such safety (for happiness is not to be dreamed of) as the temperate and moderate, which maintains, as far as possible, a mediocrity, and a kind of insensibility, in every thing. As the good, the great, the sublime, the ravishing are found eminently in the genuine principles of theism; it may be expected, from the analogy of nature, that the base, the absurd, the mean, the terrifying will be equally discovered in religious fictions and chimeras.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part XV - General corollary
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 5 days ago
Ritual society is a society of...

Ritual society is a society of rules. It is based not on virtues but on a passion for rules.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
Three days later the little princess...

Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Bk. IV, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
3 weeks 4 days ago
One persistent strand in utopian thinking,...

One persistent strand in utopian thinking, as we have often mentioned, is the feeling that there is some set of principles obvious enough to be accepted by all men of good will, precise enough to give unambiguous guidance in particular situations, clear enough so that all will realize its dictates, and complete enough to cover all problems which actually arise. Since I do not assume that there are such principles, I do not presume that the political realm will whither away. The messiness of the details of a political apparatus and the details of how it is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple utopian scheme.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopian Means and Ends, p. 330
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
The deadliest enemies of nations are...

The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
He blamed as severely what he...

He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(pp. 49-50)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
Even when the experts all agree,...

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 281
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers...

Hypnotized by their rear-view mirrors, philosophers and scientists alike tried to focus the figure of man in the old ground of nineteenth-century industrial mechanism and congestion. They failed to bridge from the old figure to the new. It is man who has become both figure and ground via the electrotechnical extension of his awareness. With the extension of his nervous system as a total information environment, man bridges art and nature.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 11)
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 6 days ago
Whatever moral rules you have deliberately...

Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself abide by them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating any of them. Don't regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours. How long, then, will you put off thinking yourself worthy of the highest improvements and follow the distinctions of reason? You have received the philosophical theorems, with which you ought to be familiar, and you have been familiar with them. What other master, then, do you wait for, to throw upon that the delay of reforming yourself?... Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(50).
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
1 month 1 week ago
Whenever you say anything good about...

Whenever you say anything good about East Germany, immediately somebody jumps up and says, "My God, you're a Stalinist..." I'm not defending everything about it, of course. But I laboured on the chapter that talks about the east. I fact-checked it; I had somebody else fact-check it. I knew that I was going to get a lot of flak for that. But in the beginning, East Germany did a better job. They just did.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
From an interview with Alex Clark, as cited in "Nazism, slavery, empire: can countries learn from national evil?", The Guardian
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Idleness is only fatal to the...

Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 2 weeks ago
Time with its continuity logically involves...

Time with its continuity logically involves some other kind of continuity than its own. Time, as the universal form of change, cannot exist unless there is something to undergo change, and to undergo a change continuous in time, there must be a continuity of changeable qualities.

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