Skip to main content
Image removed.

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
A sect or party is an...

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
June 20, 1831
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 week ago
As soon as the discourse is...

As soon as the discourse is about a holy spirit, about believing in the holy spirit, how many do you think believe in that? Or when the discourse is about an evil spirit that should be renounced: how many do you think believe in such a thing? How can this be? Is it perhaps because the subject becomes too earnest when it is the holy spirit? For I can talk about, believe in, the spirit of the age, the spirit of the world, and the like and do not thereby need to think of anything specific. It is a kind of spirit, but I am not absolutely bound by what I say. And not being bound by what one says is highly prized.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 1 week ago
Nonviolence has now to be understood...

Nonviolence has now to be understood less as a moral position adopted by individuals in relation to a field of possible action than as a social and political practice undertaken in concert, culminating in a form of resistance to systemic forms of destruction coupled with a commitment to world building that honors global interdependency of the kind that embodies ideals of economic, social, and political freedom and equality.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
The light dove, cleaving the air...

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
B 8
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months ago
To become god....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
Declining from the public ways, walk...

Declining from the public ways, walk in unfrequented paths.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Symbol 5
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
3 weeks 1 day ago
You have the courage to tell...

You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it is still the truth that had to said in the age of the Welfare State.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Mises' letter to Ayn Rand praising Atlas Shrugged,(23 January 1958), quoted in Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (2007).
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
2 days ago
And of universal nature, the notion...

And of universal nature, the notion I would offer, should be something like this. Nature is the aggregate of the bodies, that make up the world, in its present state, considered as a principle, by virtue whereof, they act and suffer, according to the laws of motion, prescribed by the author of things.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sect. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
The blazing evidence of immortality is...

The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
July 1855
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
Soon fades the spell, soon comes...

Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night: Say will it not be then the same, Whether we played the black or white,Whether we lost or won the game?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sermon in a Churchyard, st. 8 (1825), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 390
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
I do not believe that woman...

I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot improve on man's mistakes, why perpetrate the latter?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 4 days ago
I see your vile implication. My...

I see your vile implication. My only explanation for it is that you are criminally insane.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 6 days ago
I'll know how to die with...

I'll know how to die with courage; that is easier than living.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime...

I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species. But the Gods have been against me.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 4 days ago
The anger of lovers renews the...

The anger of lovers renews the strength of love.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim 24
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
That passivity was the essence of...

That passivity was the essence of the problem. The human being was intended to be passive only in a condition of fatigue, and not always then. Too much passivity of body produced surplus fat, short-windedness, indigestion: passivity of mind produced the same symptoms on the mental level. a feeling of spiritual dyspepsia. Since the average human being has no purposes that are not connected with the activities of keeping alive, the black room was bound to produce passivity, increasing dullness, a state in which the mind is at once awake and static, motionless, stagnant. This sense of dullness was nothing less than the collapse of the sense of reality and of values, the retreat into one's inner world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 72
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 week ago
Everything which distinguishes man from the...
Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries, a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world.
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 4 weeks ago
Thought is led, by the situation...

Thought is led, by the situation of its objects, to measure their truth in terms of another logic, another universe of discourse. And this logic projects another mode of existence: the realization of the truth in the words and deeds of man. And inasmuch as this project involves man as societal animal," the polis, the movement of thought has a political content. Thus, the Socratic discourse is political discourse inasmuch as it contradicts the established political institutions. The search for the correct definition, for the "concept" of virtue, justice, piety, and knowledge becomes a subversive undertaking, for the concept intends a new polis.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 133-134
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
3 weeks 5 days ago
Both Stoicism and Epicureanism - the...

Both Stoicism and Epicureanism - the apathetic acceptance of defeat, and the effort to forget defeat in the arms of pleasure - were theories as to how one might yet be happy though subjugated or enslaved; precisely as the stoicism of Schopenhauer and the despondent epicureanism of Renan were in the nineteenth century the symbols of a shattered revolution and a broken France.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 1 week ago
Our philosophy... reduceth to a single...

Our philosophy... reduceth to a single origin and relateth to a single end, and maketh contraries to coincide so that there is one primal foundation both of origin and of end. From this coincidence of contraries, we deduce that ultimately it is divinely true that contraries are within contraries; wherefore it is not difficult to compass the knowledge that each thing is within every other.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As translated by Dorothea Waley Singer
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month ago
Indeed, I think we may concede...

Indeed, I think we may concede to our Academician, without flattery, his claim that in the principle [principio, i. e., accelerated motion] laid down in this treatise he has established a new science dealing with a very old subject. Observing with what ease and clearness he deduces from a single principle the proofs of so many theorems, I wonder not a little how such a question escaped the attention of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and so many other mathematicians and illustrious philosophers, especially since so many ponderous tomes have been devoted to the subject of motion.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Galileo referred to himself as the/our Academician in his dialogue) Sagredo, Third Day P. 242
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 5 days ago
I hate victims who respect their...

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Loser Wins (Les Séquestrés d'Altona: A Play in Five Acts)
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 3 days ago
I must also have a dark...

I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 3 weeks ago
But if one should…

But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book V, lines 1117-1119 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
To an atheist all writings tend...

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
When we have chosen the vocation...

When we have chosen the vocation in which we can contribute most to humanity, burdens cannot bend us because they are only sacrifices for all. Then we experience no meager, limited, egotistic joy, but our happiness belongs to millions, our deeds live on quietly but eternally effective, and glowing tears of noble men will fall on our ashes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
What I know at sixty, I...

What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is the business of the...

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
2 weeks 3 days ago
Only when the true ends of...

Only when the true ends of society have nothing to do with the sublime does "culture" become necessary as a veneer to cover over the void. Culture can at best appreciate the monuments of earlier faith; it cannot produce them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Commerce and Culture," p. 280.
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 3 weeks ago
No human acquisition is stable. Even...

No human acquisition is stable. Even what appears to us most completely won and consolidated can disappear in a few generations. This thing we call "civilization" - all these physical and moral comforts, all these conveniences, all these shelters, all these virtues and disciplines which have become habit now, on which we count, and which in effect constitute a repertory or system of securities which man made for himself like a raft in the initial shipwreck which living always is - all these securities are insecure securities which in the twinkling of an eye, at the least carelessness, escape from man's hands and vanish like phantoms.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
4 months 3 weeks ago
"Do not blame Caesar, blame the...

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
This is also from the 1965 essay by Justice Millard Caldwell. It is not clear if this is based in any specific dialogue.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 week ago
The similarity between Christ and Socrates...

The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 1 week ago
Thus the social position of women...

Thus the social position of women is in this respect very similar to that of philosophers and of the working classes. And we now see why these three elements should be united. It is their combined action which constitutes the moral or modifying force of society.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 235
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
Those that will combat use and...

Those that will combat use and custom by the strict rules of grammar do but jest.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 2 weeks ago
If it had pleased them [the...

If it had pleased them [the legislators] to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 4 days ago
Sleep is for the inhabitants of...

Sleep is for the inhabitants of Planets only. In another time, Man will sleep and wake continually at once. The greater part of our Body, of our Humanity itself, yet sleeps a deep sleep.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
There is no road or ready...

There is no road or ready way to virtue.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section 55
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
6 days ago
By scientific thought we mean the...

By scientific thought we mean the application of past experience to new circumstances by means of an observed order of events. By saying that this order of events is exact we mean that it is exact enough to correct experiments by, but we do not mean that it is theoretically or absolutely exact, because we do not know. The process of inference [is] in itself an assumption of uniformity, and... as the known exactness of the uniformity became greater, the stringency of the inference [is] increased. By saying that the order of events is reasonable we do not mean that everything has a purpose, or that everything can be explained, or that everything has a cause; for neither of these is true. But we mean that to every reasonable question there is an intelligible answer, which either we or posterity may know by the exercise of scientific thought.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
155-156.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 day ago
The different pieces of evidence did...

The different pieces of evidence did not constitute so many neutral elements, until such time as they could be gathered together into a single body of evidence that would bring the final certainty of guilt. Each piece of evidence aroused a particular degree of abomination. Guilt did not begin when all the evidence was gathered together; piece by piece, it was constituted by each of the elements that made it possible to recognize a guilty person. Thus a semi-proof did not leave the suspect innocent until such time as it was completed; it made him semi-guilty; slight evidence of a serious crime marked someone as slightly criminal. In short, penal demonstration did not obey a dualistic system: true or false; but a principle of continuous gradation; a degree reached in the demonstration already formed a degree of guilt and consequently involved a degree of punishment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter One, The body of the condemned, pp.23
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
For where God built a church,...

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel...Thus is the Devil ever God's ape.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
67. Compare "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, part III, section 4, member 1, subsection 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing is more ancient than God,...

Nothing is more ancient than God, for He was never created; nothing more beautiful than the world, it is the work of that same God; nothing is more active than thought, for it flies over the whole universe; nothing is stronger than necessity, for all must submit to it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Love and Live Or Kill and Die: Realities of the Destruction of Human Life (2009) by James H. Wilson, p. 72
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week ago
I hate all virtues based on...

I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies;though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fedby that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels.I like to name that flame which burns within me God!

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Odysseus, Book XI, line 840
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
The vitality of the ordinary members...

The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 4 days ago
Life is a disease of the...

Life is a disease of the spirit; a working incited by Passion. Rest is peculiar to the spirit.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 3 weeks ago
Certainly He says this for me,...

Certainly He says this for me, for thee, for this other man, since He bears His body, the Church. Unless you imagine, brethren, that when He said: My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass away from (Matt. 26:39), it was the Lord that feared to die. . . . But Paul longed to die, that he might be with Christ. What? The Apostle desires to die, and Christ Himself should fear death? What can this mean, except that He bore our infirmity in Himself, and uttered these words for those who are in His body and still fear death? It is from these that the voice came; it was the voice of His members, not of the Head. When He said, My soul is sorrowful unto death (Matt. 26:38), He manifested Himself in thee, and thee in Himself. And when He said, My God, my God, why has Thou forsaken Me? (Matt. 27:46), the words He uttered on the cross were not His own, but ours.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 weeks 1 day ago
It is truly not the merit...

It is truly not the merit of the school if we do not come out selfish. Each sort of corresponding pride and every wind of covetousness, eagerness for office, mechanical and servile officiousness, hypocrisy, etc., is bound as much with extensive knowledge as with elegant, classical education, and since this whole instruction exercises no influence of any sort on our ethical behavior, it thus frequently falls to the fate of being forgotten in the same measure as it is not used: one shakes off the dust of the school.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 days ago
A religious symbol does not rest...

A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
In the deepest heart of all...

In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
3 weeks 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
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 1 week ago
It is because the method of...

It is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension that we have to go on further.

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