Skip to main content
7 months 3 weeks ago

I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps -- what more can the heart of man desire?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part 1, Chapter V
8 months 3 weeks ago

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature - this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. II, Ch. 17 : The Rights of Children
10 months 1 week ago

A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.

0
⚖0
9 months 3 weeks ago

The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Acquisition of Ideas"
7 months 2 weeks ago

Take any aspect of the Western inheritance of which our ancestors were proud, and you will find university courses devoted to deconstructing it. Take any positive feature of our political and cultural inheritance, and you will find concerted efforts in both the media and the academy to place it in quotation marks, and make it look like an imposture or a deceit.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 40)
6 months 6 days ago

To no creature besides man has been given wisdom, foresight, industry, and reflection.

0
⚖0
7 months 5 days ago

We are either going to have a future where women lead the way to make peace with the Earth or we are not going to have a future at all.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Quoted in "Woman power to the fore," by R.S. Binuraj, The Hindu
7 months 2 weeks ago

I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism. Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. Whether from the growth of experience or the decline of animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain other faults; and it follows, of course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying towards the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these forms and sources of error.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Crabbed Age and Youth.
5 months 3 weeks ago

The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Louisiana Treaty of Cession, Art. III
9 months 2 weeks ago

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

0
⚖0
6 months 6 days ago

Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

0
⚖0
6 months 1 week 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 1 week ago

Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase "takes place". The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 160
8 months 3 days ago

Though he made a joke when asked to do the right thing, he always did it. He was so much more in earnest than he appeared. He did not do himself justice.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, as quoted in Victorian England : Aspects of English and Imperial History, 1837-1901 (1973) by Lewis Charles Bernard Seaman, p. 108
6 months 2 weeks ago

All achievement should be measured in human happiness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. IV: "The Golden Rule and After", p. 90
9 months 1 week ago

Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Freeman (1948), p. 155
9 months 3 weeks ago

So much of modern mathematical work is obviously on the border-line of logic, so much of modern logic is symbolic and formal, that the very close relationship of logic and mathematics has become obvious to every instructed student. The proof of their identity is, of course, a matter of detail: starting with premisses which would be universally admitted to belong to logic, and arriving by deduction at results which as obviously belong to mathematics, we find that there is no point at which a sharp line can be drawn, with logic to the left and mathematics to the right. If there are still those who do not admit the identity of logic and mathematics, we may challenge them to indicate at what point, in the successive definitions and deductions of Principia Mathematica, they consider that logic ends and mathematics begins. It will then be obvious that any answer must be quite arbitrary.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 18: Mathematics and Logic
8 months 5 days ago

But as I listened to him, I felt a touch of coldness inside of me, as if I had suddenly become aware of the eyes of some dangerous creature. It passed in a moment, but I found myself shuddering.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 29
10 months 1 week ago

By extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, one may thus likewise not err from what is right.

0
⚖0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Rosa Luxemburg is an outstanding example of a type of mind that is often met with in the history of Marxism and appears to be specially attracted by the Marxist outlook. It is characterized by slavish submission to authority, together with a belief that in that submission the values of scientific thought can be preserved. No doctrine was so well suited as Marxism to satisfy both these attitudes, or to provide a mystification combining extreme dogmatism with the cult of "scientific" thinking, in which the disciple could find mental and spiritual peace. Marxism thus played the part of a religion for the intelligentsia, which did not prevent some of them, like Rosa Luxemburg herself, from trying to improve the deposit of faith by reverting to first principles, thus strengthening their own belief that they were independent of dogma.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(pp. 94-5)
4 months 1 week ago

"Not only can logos be seen in absolutely all animals, but in many of them it has the groundwork for being perfected."
- Porphyry

See biography for Porphyry:
https://civilsimian.com/Porphyry

Read Porphyry's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/103/content

#philosophy #quotes #CivilSimian #UniversalHumanism

0
⚖0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The bank mania is one of the most threatening of these imitations. It is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Josephus B. Stuart (May 10, 1817) ME 15:112; reported in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (1904), vol. 15, p. 112
9 months 2 weeks ago

Diversity makes critical argument fruitful. ...[P]artners in an argument must share ...the wish to know, and the readiness to learn from the other ...by severely criticizing his views... and hearing... [the] reply. ...the so-called method of science consists in this kind of criticism.

0
⚖0
6 months 6 days ago

Would not anyone who is a man have his slumbers broken by a war-trumpet rather than by a chorus of serenaders?

0
⚖0
6 months 2 weeks ago

The learning of the gentleman enters through his ears, fastens to his heart, spreads through his four limbs, and manifests itself in his actions. ... The learning of the petty person enters through his ears and passes out his mouth. From mouth to ears is only four inches-how could it be enough to improve a whole body much larger than that?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 259
9 months 2 weeks ago

Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 44e
8 months 2 weeks ago

It is of great importance to observe that the character of every man is, in some degree, formed by his profession. A man of sense may only have a cast of countenance that wears off as you trace his individuality, whist the weak, common man has scarcely ever any character, but what belongs to the body; at least, all his opinions have been so steeped in the vat consecrated by authority, that the faint spirit which the grape of his own vine yields, cannot be distinguished.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 1
8 months 3 weeks ago

What man is to be, he must become; and as he is to be a being for himself, must become through himself. Nature completed all her works; only from man did she withdraw her hands, and precisely thereby gave him over to himself. Cultivability, as such, is the character of mankind. The impossibility of subsuming to the human form any other conception than that of his own Ego, is it, which forces every man inwardly to consider every other man as his equal.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 119
8 months 5 days ago

Power turns pure being into a having.

0
⚖0
6 months ago

Even the mathematical framework helps nothing, I would first like to understand how Nature avoids the contradictions.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(1927) Quoted in Werner Heisenberg: Die Sprache der Atome (2010) by H. Rechenberg, p. 564.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Poverty is a crime. I do not mean that it is a crime to be poor. Murder is a crime; but it is not a crime to be murdered; and a man who is in poverty, I look upon, not as a criminal in himself, so much as the victim of a crime for which others, as well perhaps as himself, are responsible.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Crime of Poverty, 1885
9 months 3 weeks ago

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Culture
10 months 1 day ago

I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II
9 months 2 weeks ago

For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.

0
⚖0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Commonplace notebooks, Part I
8 months 2 weeks ago

It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
G 29
1 year 1 month ago

Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.

0
⚖0
9 months 3 weeks ago

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important." This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Importance of Individuals"
10 months 1 day ago

You worry whether the drought will end. It is far better that you pray that God may water your mind lest virtue wither away in it. You are greatly concerned with money that is lost or being wasted, or you worry about the advance of old age. I think it much to be desired that you provide first of all for the needs of your soul.

0
⚖0
8 months 2 weeks ago

Nobody really thinks who does not abstract from that which is given, who does not relate the facts to the factors which have made them, who does not - in his mind - undo the facts. Abstractness is the very life of thought, the token of its authenticity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 134
10 months 2 weeks ago

Writing is an addiction more powerful than alcohol, than nicotine, than crack. I could not conceive of not writing.

0
⚖0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia