Skip to main content
3 months 1 week ago

In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 6 Of the Causes of the actual rapid Advance of the Physical Sciences compared with their Progress at an earlier Period
7 months 3 days ago

The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse - to challenge others to form free opinions.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress. The virtuous is frank and open; the non-virtuous is secretive and worrying.

0
0
5 months 2 days ago

Manuscript culture is conversational if only because the writer and his audience are physically related by the form of publication as performance.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 96)
7 months 1 week ago

Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies - except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.

0
0
Source
source
Statement to a friend shortly before his death, as recounted in Men of Letters by Lord Henry Brougham
7 months 3 days ago

...and if you are common, you can dress up as a woman, show you behind or write poems: there's nothing offensive about a naked behind if it's everybody's; each person will be mirrored in it.

0
0
Source
source
p. 463
7 months 6 days ago

Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.

0
0
Source
source
"On the Sufferings of the World"
7 months 6 days ago

To understand political power aright, and derive from it its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man.

0
0
Source
source
Second Treatise of Government, Ch. II, sec. 4
3 months 1 day ago

A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you're in the same room with him, you know it.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) XI, 15
6 months ago

When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.

0
0
6 months 2 days ago

It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 4
6 months 1 week ago

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

0
0
Source
source
Article on Government
6 months 5 days ago

Being at one is god-like and good, but human, too human, the mania Which insists there is only the One, one country, one truth, and one way.

0
0
Source
source
"The Root of All Evil" as translated by Michael Hamburger
5 months 2 days ago

The user of the electric light -- or a hammer, or a language, or a book -- is the content. As such, there is a total metamorphosis of the user by the interface. It is the metamorphosis that I consider the message.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Edward T. Hall, 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 397
5 months 4 days ago

There is no single speech nor article in which it is not said that the purpose of all these orgies is the peace of Europe. At a dinner given by the representatives of French literature, all breathe of peace. M. Zola, who, a short time previously, had written that war was inevitable, and even serviceable; M. de Vogue, who more than once has stated the same in print, say, neither of them, a word as to war, but speak only of peace. The sessions of Parliament open with speeches upon the past festivities; the speakers mention that such festivities are an assurance of peace to Europe. It is as if a man should come into a peaceful company, and commence energetically to assure everyone present that he has not the least intention to knock out anyone's teeth, blacken their eyes, or break their arms, but has only the most peaceful ideas for passing the evening.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1
6 months 5 days ago

Nothing made a happy slave, but a degraded man. In proportion as the mind grew callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride was lost, the slave felt comfort. In fact, he was no longer a man. If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakspeare,"Man is a being, holding large discourse,Looking before and after."A slave was incapable of either looking before or after.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 71
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.

0
0
Source
source
p. 123
6 months 2 days ago

This means that no state, howsoever democratic its forms, not even the reddest political republic - a people's republic only in the sense of the lie known as popular representation - is capable of giving the people what they need: the free organization of their own interests from below upward, without any interference, tutelage, or coercion from above. That is because no state, not even the most republican and democratic, not even the pseudo-popular state contemplated by Marx, in essence represents anything but government of the masses from above downward, by an educated and thereby privileged minority which supposedly understands the real interests of the people better than the people themselves.

0
0
6 months 5 days ago

Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it's not true and that it's blushing just as I am now, all over.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

One need only open the eyes to see that the conquests of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice.As Mach says, these devotees have spared their successors the trouble of thinking.

0
0
Source
source
Author's Essay Prefatory to the Translation: "The Choice of Facts," p.4
7 months 4 days ago

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

0
0
Source
source
"The Will to Believe" p. 10
6 months 5 days ago

In dreams you sometimes fall from a height, or are stabbed, or beaten, but you never feel pain unless, perhaps, you really bruise yourself against the bedstead, then you feel pain and almost always wake up from it. It was the same in my dream. I did not feel any pain, but it seemed as though with my shot everything within me was shaken and everything was suddenly dimmed, and it grew horribly black around me. I seemed to be blinded, and it benumbed, and I was lying on something hard, stretched on my back; I saw nothing, and could not make the slightest movement.

0
0
8 months 5 days ago

Since... nature is a principle of motion and mutation... it is necessary that we should not be ignorant of what motion is... But motion appears to belong to things continuous; and the infinite first presents itself to the view in that which is continuous. ...Frequently ...those who define the continuous, employ the nature or the infinite, as if that which is divisible to infinity is continuous.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Work at these things, practice them, these are the things you ought to desire; they are what will put you on the path of divine virtue - yes, by the one who entrusted our soul with the tetraktys, source of ever-flowing nature. Pray to the gods for success and get to work.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
7 months 5 days ago

What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

0
0
Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 95
5 months 3 weeks ago

I would say act like a man of thought and think like a man of action.

0
0
Source
source
Speech at the Descartes Conference in Paris (1937) Quoted in The Forbes Scrapbook of Thoughts on the Business of Life (1950), p. 442, as "Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
3 months 1 day ago

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

0
0
Source
source
II, 17
7 months 5 days ago

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

0
0
Source
source
p. 219-220
5 months 2 weeks ago

One gloomy and pessimistic writer with a powerful style affects a whole generation of writers, who in turn affect almost every educated person in the country.

0
0
Source
source
p. 79
7 months 4 days ago

The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.

0
0
Source
source
First Visit to England
5 months 2 weeks ago

What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?

0
0
Source
source
D 62

The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws. But before this can be accepted it must show itself capable of explaining the tridimensionality of space, the laws of motion, and the general characteristics of the universe, with mathematical clearness and precision ; for no less should be demanded of every Philosophy.

0
0
8 months 5 days ago

Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Imagination, which is the social sense, animates the inanimate and anthropomorphizes everything; it humanizes everything and even makes everything identical with man. And the work of man is to supernaturalize Nature - that is to say, to make it divine by making it human, to help it to become conscious of itself, in short. The action of reason, on the other hand, is to mechanize or materialize.

0
0
7 months 6 days ago

Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2 "On Various Subjects" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
6 months 2 days ago

Nothing could be more natural than the developement of the passions, nor more striking than the views of the human heart. What delicate struggles! and uncommonly pretty turns of thought!

0
0
Source
source
Mary: A Fiction
3 months 4 days ago

The law books abound with similar instances of the care the judges take of the public integrity, Laws, moreover, abridging the natural right of the citizen, should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.

0
0
3 months 4 days ago

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Benjamin Banneker (30 August 1791), quoted in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1853), p. 291
3 months 2 days ago

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing. Original text:Les fausses opinions ressemblent à la fausse monnaie qui est frappée d'abord par de grands coupables et dépensée ensuite par d'honnêtes gens qui perpétuent le crime sans savoir ce qu'ils font.

0
0
Source
source
"First Dialogue," p. 13
7 months 3 days ago

Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Section 26, pg. 151
7 months 4 days ago

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. 

0
0
Source
source
To his young son from the Yosemite Valley on
3 months 1 day ago

Of the life of man the duration is but a point.

0
0
Source
source
II. 17, trans. C.R. Haines
7 months 1 week ago

Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Story of Philosophy (1933) by Will Durant, p. 176
5 months 3 weeks ago

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

0
0
Source
source
George Santayana, as quoted in Quotations for Our Time (1977) edited by Laurence J. Peter
7 months 5 days ago

It is evident that this, among many other of the purposes of my father's scheme of education, could not have been accomplished if he had not carefully kept me from having any great amount of intercourse with other boys. He was earnestly bent upon my escaping not only the ordinary corrupting influence which boys exercise over boys, but the contagion of vulgar modes of thought and feeling; and for this he was willing that I should pay the price of inferiority in the accomplishments which schoolboys in all countries chiefly cultivate. The deficiencies in my education were principally in the things which boys learn from being turned out to shift for themselves, and from being brought together in large numbers.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 35)
1 month 3 days ago

What's crazy to me is that the situation for basic education has become so bad it's not even necessary for you create something new, help develop a new direction and so forth....just posting the great ideas of the past alone is fighting the fight that has to be won, the battle against brain eroding anti-intellectualism.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.

0
0
Source
source
Section 44 Compare: "I know death hath ten thousand several doors / For men to take their exits.", John Webster, Duchess of Malfi (1623); Act IV, scene ii.
5 months 4 days ago

And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia