Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 1 day ago
Those attacks upon language and religion...

Those attacks upon language and religion in Poland, the Baltic provinces, Alsace, Bohemia, upon the Jews in Russia, in every place that such acts of violence occur-in what name have they been, and are they, perpetrated? In none other than the name of that patriotism which you defend. Ask our savage Russifiers of Poland and the Baltic provinces, ask the persecutors of the Jews, why they act thus. They will tell you it is in defence of their native religion and language; they will tell you that if they do not act thus, their religion and language will suffer-the Russians will be Polonised, Teutonised, Judaised.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
A Reply to Criticisms
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week ago
Manuscript culture is conversational if only...

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)
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 1 day ago
The repose of sleep refreshes only...

The repose of sleep refreshes only the body. It rarely sets the soul at rest. The repose of the night does not belong to us. It is not the possession of our being. Sleep opens within us an inn for phantoms. In the morning we must sweep out the shadows.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 2, sect. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
1 month 1 week ago
Every attempt to refer chemical questions...

Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena. . . . but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation....

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 days ago
It is therefore, the interest of...

It is therefore, the interest of all, that every one, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, - that everyone should be placed in the midst of those external circumstances that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be thus prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
A Development of the Principles & Plans on which to establish self-supporting Home Colonies
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
To stand on one leg and...

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
The miracles in fact are a...

The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and others prophecies.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Miracles" (1942), p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 3 weeks ago
Being about to pitch his camp...

Being about to pitch his camp in a likely place, and hearing there was no hay to be had for the cattle, "What a life," said he, "is ours, since we must live according to the convenience of asses!"

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
37 Philip
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 6 days ago
The true discovery of America by...

The true discovery of America by mankind came when those first hunting bands crossed over from Siberia 25,000 years ago. This, however, never seems to count. When people speak of the "discovery of America" they invariably mean its discovery by Europeans.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 5 days ago
Religion comforts us for the defeat...

Religion comforts us for the defeat of our will to power. It adds new worlds to ours, and thus brings us hope of new conquests and new victories. We are converted to religion out of fear of suffocating within the narrow confines of this world.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is no pleasure to me...

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
So far as it has gone,...

So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 463 On the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Justice respects man...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 5 days ago
The premonition of madness is complicated...

The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion, when the intuition of disaster is so painful that it almost provokes a greater madness. One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 days ago
The will of man has no...

The will of man has no power whatever over his opinions; he must, and ever did, and ever will, believe what has been, is, or may be impressed on his mind by his predecessors, and the circumstances which surround him.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 5 days ago
The next simplest feature that is...

The next simplest feature that is common to all that comes before the mind, and consequently, the second category, is the element of Struggle.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.45
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
...out of the tomb of the...

...out of the tomb of the murdered Monarchy in France, has arisen a vast, tremendous, unformed spectre, in a far more terrific guise than any which ever yet have overpowered the imagination and subdued the fortitude of man.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 3 days ago
There is nothing outside…

There is nothing outside the text," which Derrida opponents have characterized to mean that nothing exists but language.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Il n'y a pas de hors-texte. Of Grammatology (1967). G. Spivak translated this as "
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
If you want me to believe...

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
as quoted in Diderot and the Encyclopædists (1897) by John Morley, p. 92.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 4 weeks ago
At one level, this movement on...

At one level, this movement on behalf of oppressed farm animals is emotional...Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer...This idea popularized by Professor Singer - that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species - is one whose time appears to have come...What we're seeing now is an interesting moral moment: a grass-roots effort by members of one species to promote the welfare of others...animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Nicholas Kristof, "Humanity Even for Nonhumans," in The New York Times (8 April 2009).
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
Modern physics... reduces matter to a...

Modern physics... reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 weeks ago
When, in the course of human...

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 days ago
You could read Kant by yourself,...

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Virginibus Puerisque, Ch. 1. Cornhill Magazine,
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
I look forward to a future...

I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples. All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week ago
Older cliches are retrieved both as...

Older cliches are retrieved both as inherent principles that inform the new ground and new awareness, and as archetypal nostalgia figures with transformed meaning in relation to the new ground.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 105
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
We tend to believe the premises...

We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering general laws in any other science.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Regressive Method of Discovering the Premises of Mathematics" (1907), in Essays in Analysis (1973), pp. 273-274
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 1 week ago
An avidity to punish is always...

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 6 days ago
This means that no state, howsoever...

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
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 1 week ago
The next thing is by gentle...

The next thing is by gentle degrees to accustom children to those things they are too much afraid of. But here great caution is to be used, that you do not make too much haste, nor attempt this cure too early, for fear lest you increase the mischief instead of remedying it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
A spectre is haunting Europe; the...

A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of Communism.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preamble, paragraph 1, line 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
There is one very serious defect...

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Moral Problem"
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 days ago
People trifle with love. Now, I...

People trifle with love. Now, I deny that love is a strong passion. Fear is the strong passion; it is with fear that you must trifle, if you wish to taste the intensest joys of living.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Suicide Club, Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 weeks 5 days ago
From whatever side the matter is...

From whatever side the matter is regarded, it is always found that reason confronts our longing for personal immortality and contradicts it. And the truth is, in all strictness, that reason is the enemy of life.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 1 day ago
Sudden Glory, is the passion which...

Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 27 (italics and spelling as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 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
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
4 weeks 1 day ago
The Thou encounters me by grace...

The Thou encounters me by grace - it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 1 week ago
When by these steps he has...

When by these steps he has got resolution enough not to be deterr'd from what he ought to do, by the apprehension of danger; when fear does not, in sudden or hazardous occurrences, decompose his mind, set his body a-trembling, and make him unfit for action, or run away from it, he has then the courage of a rational creature: and such an hardiness we should endeavour by custom and use to bring children to, as proper occasions come in our way.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 1 week ago
In America, more than anywhere else...

In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book Three, Chapter XII.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 1 day ago
People understand the meaning of eating...

People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week ago
The professional tends to classify and...

The professional tends to classify and to specialize, to accept uncritically the ground rules of the environment. The ground rules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serves as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 93)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 5 days ago
Only what we have not accomplished...

Only what we have not accomplished and what we could not accomplish matters to us, so that what remains of a whole life is only what it will not have been.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
Some people talk as if meeting...

Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger-according to the way you react to it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Like the body the soul can...

Like the body the soul can be healthy, youthful, and so on. It can undergo pain, thirst, and hunger. In this physical life, that is, in the visible world, we avoid whatever would defile or deform the body; how much more, then, ought we to avoid that which would tarnish the soul?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
I: My consciousness of the object...

I: My consciousness of the object is only a yet unrecognised consciousness of my production of the representation of an object. Of this production I know no more than that it is I who produce, and thus is all consciousness no more than a consciousness of myself, and so far perfectly comprehensible. Am I in the right? Spirit. Perfectly so ; but whence then is derived the necessity and universality thou hast ascribed to these propositions, to that of causality for instance?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
I construct my memories with my...

I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
The mind itself, its love [of...

The mind itself, its love [of itself] and its knowledge [of itself] are a kind of trinity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 4, Section 4, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
Homeliness is almost as great a...

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
You must picture me alone in...

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 weeks 5 days ago
May we not imagine that possibly...

May we not imagine that possibly this earthly life of ours is to the other life what sleeping is to waking? May not all our life be a dream and death an awakening? But an awakening to what? And supposing that everything is but the dream of God and that God one day will awaken? Will He remember His dream?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Children are all foreigners. September 25,...

Children are all foreigners.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
September 25, 1839
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