Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 week ago
The universities are schools of education,...

The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 2 weeks ago
Transcendence constitutes selfhood. Essence of Ground

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Essence of Ground
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 2 weeks ago
From whence it follows, that were...

From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Second Part, Chapter 19, p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 3 weeks ago
The owl of Minerva first begins...

The owl of Minerva first begins her flight with the onset of dusk.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 3 weeks ago
The discourse of truth is quite...

The discourse of truth is quite simply impossible. It eludes itself. Everything eludes itself, everything scoffs at its own truth, seduction renders everything elusive. The fury to unveil the truth, to get at the naked truth, the one which haunts all discourses of interpretation, the obscene rage to uncover the secret, is proportionate to the impossibility of ever achieving this. ...But this rage, this fury, only bears witness to the eternity of seduction and to the impossibility of mastering it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 73)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 3 weeks ago
Speculative philosophy as the realisation of...

Speculative philosophy as the realisation of God is the positing of God, and at the same time his cancellation or negation; theism and at the same time atheism: for God - in the sense of theology - is God only as long as he is taken to be a being distinguished from and independent of the being of man as well as of nature. The theism that as the positing of God is simultaneously his negation or, conversely, as the negation of God equally his affirmation, is pantheism. Theological theism - that is, theism properly speaking - is nothing other than imaginary pantheism which itself is nothing other than real and true theism.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part I, Section 14
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Lucidity's task: to attain a correct...

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
Kindly remember…

Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Line 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
"You're a bitter man," said Candide....

"You're a bitter man," said Candide. "That's because I've lived," said Martin.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 weeks ago
Do not listen to the reasoners;...

Do not listen to the reasoners; there has been too much reasoning in France, and reasoning has banished reason. Put aside your fears and reservations, and trust the infallible instinct of your conscience. Do you want to redeem yourselves in your own eyes? Do you want to acquire the right of self-esteem? Do you want to accomplish a sovereign act? . . . Recall your sovereign.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter VIII, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 4 weeks ago
After experience had taught me that...

After experience had taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile; seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them, I finally resolved to inquire whether there might be some real good having power to communicate itself, which would affect the mind singly, to the exclusion of all else: whether, in fact, there might be anything of which the discovery and attainment would enable me to enjoy continuous, supreme, and unending happiness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
Without risks or prizes for the...

Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military character in stock - if keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection, - so that Roosevelt's weaklings and mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face of nature.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Dissimulation is innate in woman, and...

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Of Women"
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
Martyrs create faith, faith does not...

Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 3 weeks ago
But like the desire for eternal...

But like the desire for eternal life, the desire for omniscience and absolute perfection is merely an imaginary desire; and, as history and daily experience prove, the supposed human striving for unlimited knowledge and perfection is a myth. Man has no desire to know everything; he only wants to know the things to which he is particularly drawn.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
The cup of life is not...

The cup of life is not so shallow

That we have drained the best 

That all the wine at once we swallow 

And lees make all the rest.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1827
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Probably in time physiologists will be...

Probably in time physiologists will be able to make nerves connecting the bodies of different people; this will have the advantage that we shall be able to feel another man's tooth aching.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 493
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
The church is a sort of...

The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are taken into it live like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailors' Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of religious cripples sitting outside in sunny weather.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 1 week ago
Truth is the ultimate end of...

Truth is the ultimate end of the whole universe.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
I, 1, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
3 months 2 days ago
Pascal is called the founder of...

Pascal is called the founder of modern probability theory. He earns this title not only for the familiar correspondence with Fermat on games of chance, but also for his conception of decision theory, and because he was an instrument in the demolition of probabilism, a doctrine which would have precluded rational probability theory.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 3, Opinion, p. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
I foresee the day when we...

I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 2 weeks ago
We seek not what God could...

We seek not what God could have done but what He has done.... God could have caused birds to fly with bones of solid gold, with veins full of quicksilver, with flesh heavier than lead and very small and heavy wings, so as to better show His power ... but He wanted to make their bones, flesh and feathers very light ... to teach us that He likes simplicity and ease.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Notes in a copy of Jean-Baptiste Morin's "Famous and ancient problems of the earth's motion or rest, yet to be solved" (published 1631).
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 1 week ago
Regressive listeners behave like children. Again...

Regressive listeners behave like children. Again and again and with stubborn malice, they demand the one dish they have once been served.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 290
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 3 weeks ago
In the same way as philosophy...

In the same way as philosophy loses sight of its true object and appropriate matter, when either it passes into and merges in theology, or meddles with external politics, so also does it mar its proper form when it attempts to mimic the rigorous method of mathematics.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Philosophy of Life, Lecture 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Society is not a disease, it...

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1 month 5 days ago
Woe to that nation whose literature...

Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Variant translation, as quoted in TIME
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 1 week ago
Many conflicts within Third World countries...

Many conflicts within Third World countries are related to the practice of exploiting resources faster than nature can renew them or diverting them away from where people need them. Dams in every society have become major sources of conflict. As water scarcity grows, neighbors, families turn against each other.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 3 days ago
"Fire is the first and final...

"Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres." Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say: "Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance in. I cannot wait." Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space - insect or star or idea - turns into dance.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 4 weeks ago
It is unjust that the whole...

It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I, Part IV, Conclusion, p. 881.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 2 weeks ago
What we call objective reality is,...

What we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, what is common to many thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we shall see, can only be the harmony expressed by mathematical laws. It is this harmony... which is the sole objective reality, the only truth we can attain; and when I add that the universal harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be understood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult progress which little by little enables us to know it better.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks ago
If man reflects on the changes...

If man reflects on the changes and transformations which follow one another like wave after wave and their rapidity, he will despise everything which is perishable.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IX, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 2 weeks ago
The lowest stage of humanity is...

The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
Slavery they can have anywhere. It...

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
2 months 3 days ago
Whoever imposes severe punishment becomes repulsive...

Whoever imposes severe punishment becomes repulsive to the people; while he who awards mild punishment becomes contemptible. But whoever imposes punishment as deserved becomes respectable. For punishment when awarded with due consideration, makes the people devoted to righteousness and to works productive of wealth and enjoyment; while punishment, when ill-awarded under the influence of greed and anger or owing to ignorance, excites fury even among hermits and ascetics dwelling in forests, not to speak of householders.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I : "Concerning Discipline" Chapter 4 "Determination of the Place of Varta and of Dandaniti"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
I like mathematics because it is...

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, March, 1912, as quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012), p. 1318
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 4 weeks ago
There are three successive states of...

There are three successive states of morality answering to the three principal stages of human life; the personal, the domestic, and the social stage.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 104
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
The Sophist demonstrates that everything is...

The Sophist demonstrates that everything is true and nothing is true.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
So in the end....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
Our responsibility is much greater than...

Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Existentialism and Human Emotions
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 1 week ago
Thus the sum…

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, line 75 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 week ago
A young delicate tree, that is...

A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 3 days ago
If you are going to build...

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
F 39
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 2 weeks ago
A man's character is formed by...

A man's character is formed by the Odes, developed by the Rites and perfected by music.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 1 week ago
Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral...

Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order. The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed. In their ranks the soldiers of the coming revolutions are recruited.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part V : The Economics of a Socialist Community, § V : Destructionism, Ch. 33 : The Motive Powers of Destructionism, p. 440
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
All men that are ruined, are...

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
No. 1, volume v, p. 286
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
The prejudices of the second species,...

The prejudices of the second species, since they impose upon the intellect by the sensual conditions restricting the mind if it wishes in certain cases to attain to what is intellectual, lurk more deeply. One of them is that which affects knowledge of quantity, the other that affecting knowledge of qualities generally. The former is: every actual multiplicity can be given numerically, and hence, every infinite quantity; the latter, whatever is impossible contradicts itself. In either of them the concept of time, it is true, does not enter into the very notion of the predicate, nor is it attributed as a qualification to the subject. But yet it serves as a means for forming an idea of the predicate, and thus, being a condition, affects the intellectual concept of the subject to the extent that the latter is only attained by its aid.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks 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
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 week ago
Parents will strip themselves of everything,...

Parents will strip themselves of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical well-being of their child, will wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some physical ailment of their beloved one; but will remain cold and indifferent, without the slightest understanding before the soul cravings and the yearnings of their child, neither hearing nor wishing to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition. On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring, of a new life of beauty and splendor of love; they will put the long lean finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to the silvery song of the individual growth, of the beauty of character, of the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worth living.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
As if to demonstrate, by a...

As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, Nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a Rodent, to brains little lower than that of Man.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch.2, p. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 weeks ago
I refuse to make money...

I refuse to make money out of my science. My laurel is not for sale like so many bales of cotton.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Users

☰ ˟
  • All users
  • Historical Figures

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