Skip to main content
1 month 3 weeks ago

Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist.

0
0
Source
source
Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault
1 month 3 days ago

The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries.

0
0
Source
source
Act II.
3 weeks 4 days ago

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

0
0
Source
source
Matthew 7:7-8 (NKJV) (Also Luke 11:9-13)
1 month 1 week ago

The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing onely my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

0
0
Source
source
Section 12
1 month 2 weeks ago

It is requisite to choose the most excellent life; for custom will make it pleasant. Wealth is an infirm anchor, glory is still more infirm; and in a similar manner, the body, dominion, and honour. For all these are imbecile and powerless. What then are powerful anchors. Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake. This is the Law of God, that virtue is the only thing that is strong; and that every thing else is a trifle.

0
0
Source
source
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
2 months 4 weeks ago

...there are more things to admire in men than to despise.

0
0
1 week 3 days ago

From any vocabulary of ideas we can build other ideas by formal combinations of signs. But not any set of ideas will be instructive. One must have the right ideas.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 15, Inductive Logic, p. 139.
1 month 1 week ago

In the pursuit of truth we must beware of being misled by terms which we do not rightly understand. That is the chief point. Almost all philosophers utter the caution; few observe it.

0
0
Source
source
Paragraph 1
6 months 1 week ago

It is also crucial to bear in mind the interconnection between the Decalogue... and its modern obverse, the celebrated 'human Rights'. As the experience of our post-political liberal-permissive society amply demonstrates, human Rights are ultimately, at their core, simply Rights to violate the Ten Commandments. 'The right to privacy' — the right to adultery, in secret, where no one sees me or has the right to probe my life. 'The right to pursue happiness and to possess private property' -- the right to steal (to exploit others). 'Freedom of the press and of the expression of opinion' -- the right to lie. 'The right of free citizens to possess weapons' -- the right to kill. And, ultimately, 'freedom of religious belief' — the right to worship false gods.

0
0
4 weeks 1 day ago

I long to be free - desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.

0
0
3 weeks 4 days ago

Understanding finds nothing but itself when it seeks the essence behind the appearance of things. 'It is manifest that behind the so-called curtain, which is to hide the inner world, there is nothing to be seen unless we ourselves go behind there, as much in order that we may thereby see, as that there may be something behind there which can be seen.'

0
0
Source
source
P. 111

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 26)
2 months 2 days ago

The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.

0
0
Source
source
p. 15
2 months 3 days ago

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

0
0
Source
source
Voluntaries, st. 3
1 month 2 days ago

Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.

0
0
3 weeks 4 days ago

Peace be with you. Receive my peace unto yourselves. Beware that no one lead you astray saying Lo here or lo there! For the Son of Man is within you. Follow after Him! Those who seek Him will find Him. Go then and preach the gospel of the Kingdom. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 4. tion.
3 weeks 4 days ago

Hegel's theological discussion repeatedly asks what the true relation is between the individual man and a state that no longer satisfies his capacities but exists rather as an 'estranged' institution from which the active political interest of the citizens has disappeared. Hegel defined this state with almost the same categories as those of eighteenth century liberalism: the state rests on the consent of the individuals, it circumscribes their rights and duties and protects its members from those internal and external dangers that might threaten the perpetuation of the whole.

0
0
Source
source
P. 32
3 weeks 2 days ago

When we are told, in the same tone, that these people will be rewarded in "heaven" for their distress, and that "heaven" is the exact reverse of the earthly order ("the first shall be last"), we distinctly feel how the ressentiment-laden man transfers to God the vengeance he himself cannot wreak on the great. In this way, he can satisfy his revenge at least in imagination, with the aid of an other-worldly mechanism of rewards and punishments.

0
0
Source
source
L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 97
2 months 3 days 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
1 month 3 weeks ago

Antisthenes ... said once to a youth from Pontus who was on the point of coming to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted, "You want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet;"

0
0
Source
source
meaning a new mind. § 4
2 months 3 days ago

I remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told me that I should find, as I got acquainted with new people, that I had been taught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember very imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 34)
2 months 2 days ago

Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."

0
0

I agree as to the doubtful value of competitive examination. The qualities which you really want, viz., self-control, self-reliance, habits of accurate thought, integrity and what you generally call trustworthiness, are not decided by competitive examination, which test little else than the memory.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Lord Stanley (May 17, 1857), published in Florence Nightingale on Wars and the War Office: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale. Vol. 15 (2011), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 265.
1 month 3 days ago

Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI, Part I, p. 174.
3 months 5 days ago
The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
0
0
2 months 3 days ago

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.

0
0
Source
source
1855
2 months 3 days ago

Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.

0
0
Source
source
Language

Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view. "

0
0
Source
source
The Precession of Simulacra," p. 10
2 months 3 days ago

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

0
0
Source
source
pars. 7-8
2 months 5 days ago

If pains be to be taken to give him a manly air and assurance betimes, it is chiefly as a fence to his virtue when he goes into the world under his own conduct.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 70
4 weeks 1 day ago

What distinct meaning can attach to saying that an idea in the past in any way affects an idea in the future, from which it is completely detached?

0
0
2 weeks 2 days ago

As a black woman interested in feminist movement, I am often asked whether being black is more important than being a woman; whether feminist struggle to end sexist oppression is more important than the struggle to racism or vice versa. All such questions are rooted in competitive either/or thinking, the belief that the self is formed in opposition to an other. ... Most people are socialized to think in terms of opposition rather than compatibility. Rather than seeing anti-racist work as totally compatible with working to end sexist oppression, they often see them as two movements competing for first place.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Tomorrow we will be back on the vast ocean.

0
0
Source
source
The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations: The Illiterati's Guide to Latin Maxims, Mottoes, Proverbs and Sayings
4 weeks 1 day ago

A human being possessed by a belief and not eager to pass it on to others is a phenomenon alien to the earth, where our mania for salvation makes life unbreathable.

0
0
2 months 1 day ago

Monsieur ... I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

0
0
4 weeks 1 day 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
2 months 2 weeks ago

What is the use of believing, if the dost blaspheme? Thou adorest Him as Head, and dost blaspheme Him in His body. He loves His body. Thou canst cut thyself off from the body, but the Head does not detach itself from its body. "Thou dost honor me in vain," He cries from heaven, "thou dost honor Me in vain!" If someone wished to kiss thy cheek, but insisted at the same time on trampling thy feet; if with his hailed boots he were to crush thy feet as he tries to hold thy head and kiss thee, wouldst thou not interrupt his expression of respect and cry out: "What are thou doing, man? Thou art trampling upon me!" It is for this reason that before He ascended into heaven our Lord Jesus Christ recommended to us His body, by which He was to remain upon earth. For He foresaw that many would pay Him homage because of His glory in heaven, but that their homage would be vain, so long as they despise His members on earth.

0
0
Source
source
(pp. 436-437)
2 months 4 days ago

A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.

0
0
Source
source
"Tyranny", 1764
2 months 4 days ago

There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?

0
0
Source
source
"Of Women"
2 months 5 days ago

When we reflect on the long and dense night in which France and all Europe have remained plunged by their governments and their priests, we must feel less surprise than grief at the bewilderment caused by the first burst of light that dispels the darkness.

0
0
Source
source
Author's Inscription: French Edition
1 month 1 week ago

All things are in the Universe, and the universe is in all things: we in it, and it in us; in this way everything concurs in a perfect unity.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Aristodemus, a friend of Antigonus, supposed to be a cook's son, advised him to moderate his gifts and expenses. "Thy words," said he, "Aristodemus, smell of the apron."

0
0
Source
source
44 Antigonus I
1 month 3 days ago

Falsehood has a perennial spring.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Jews hate the name of Christ and have a secret and innate rancor against the people among whom they live.

0
0
Source
source
See Silent Truth by Mark Edwards
3 weeks 4 days ago

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

0
0
Source
source
8:20 (KJV)
1 month 1 week ago

In the deep discovery of the Subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some enquirers.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia