Skip to main content
6 months 1 week ago

Just as when a man commits suicide ne negates the body, this rational limit of subjectivity, so when he lapses into fantastic and trascendental practice he associates himself with embodied divine and ghostly appearances, namely, he negates in practise the difference between imagination and perception.

0
0
Source
source
Part III, Section 29
7 months 1 week ago

Space is employed as the type even of the concept of time itself, representing it by a line, and its limits - moments - by points. Time, on the other had, approaches more to a universal and rational concept, comprising under its relations all things whatsoever, to wit, space itself, and besides, those accidents which are not comprehended in the relations of space, such as the thoughts of the soul. Again, time, besides this, though it certainly does not dictate the laws of reason, yet constitutes the principal conditions tinder favor of which the mind compares its notions according to the laws of reason. Thus, I cannot judge what is impossible except by predicating a and not-a of the same subject at the same time.

0
0
7 months 4 days ago

The less somebody knows and understands himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.

0
0
Source
source
p. 51e
6 months 4 weeks ago

Once, when he was applauded by rascals, he remarked, "I am horribly afraid I have done something wrong."

0
0
Source
source
§ 5
7 months 1 week ago

Correct and accurate conclusions may be arrived at if we carefully observe the relation of the spheres of concepts, and only conclude that one sphere is contained in a third sphere, when we have clearly seen that this first sphere is contained in a second, which in its turn is contained in the third. On the other hand, the art of sophistry lies in casting only a superficial glance at the relations of the spheres of the concepts, and then manipulating these relations to suit our purposes, generally in the following way: - When the sphere of an observed concept lies partly within that of another concept, and partly within a third altogether different sphere, we treat it as if it lay entirely within the one or the other, as may suit our purpose.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 10, as translated by R. B. Haldane
7 months 3 weeks ago

These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

0
0
Source
source
(44).
2 months 4 weeks ago

I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

As image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

0
0
Source
source
"Priestesses in the Church?" (1948), p. 237
3 months 6 days ago

Remember that what pulls the strings is the force hidden within; there lies the power to persuade, there the life,-there, if one must speak out, the real man.

0
0
Source
source
X, 38
6 months 4 weeks ago

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have ... "an ambition of transcendence."

0
0
Source
source
Introduction to Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume I (1991).
7 months 4 weeks ago

The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.

0
0
6 months 1 day ago

Art can speak its own language only as long as the images are alive which refuse and refute the established order.

0
0
Source
source
p. 62
6 months 1 week ago

And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I'd say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened....Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

0
0
Source
source
Part 1, Chapter 7
7 months 1 week ago

It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

0
0
Source
source
Zadig, 1747
5 months 4 weeks ago

Even to-day, in spite of some signs which are making a tiny breach in that sturdy faith, even to-day, there are few men who doubt that motorcars will in five years' time be more comfortable and cheaper than to-day. They believe in this as they believe that the sun will rise in the morning. The metaphor is an exact one. For, in fact, the common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes that it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly-endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.... These traits together make up the well-known psychology of the spoilt child. Chap.

0
0
Source
source
VI: The Dissection Of The Mass-Man Begins
4 months 2 weeks ago

There are not two kinds of human being, savage and civilized. There is only the human animal, forever at war with itself.

0
0
Source
source
An Old Chaos: Frozen Horses and Deserts of Brick (p. 25)
6 months 1 day ago

Intuition is a method of feeling one's way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in Georgia O'Keeffe, 1887-1986 : Flowers in the Desert (2000) by Britta Benke, p. 28
6 months 1 day ago

Often it is only after immense intellectual effort, which may have continued over centuries, that humanity at last succeeds in achieving knowledge of a concept in its pure form, by stripping off the irrelevant accretions which veil it from the eye of the mind.

0
0
Source
source
Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
5 months 4 weeks ago

"There is no God," cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values - is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

And surely to know what this good is, is of great importance for the conduct of life, for in that case we shall be like archers shooting at a definite mark, and shall be more likely to do what is right. But, if this is the case, we must try to comprehend, in outline at least, what it is and to which of the sciences it belongs.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

0
0
Source
source
p. 607
3 months 3 weeks ago

The customs of that most criminal nation have gained such strength that they have now been received in all lands. The conquered have given laws to the conquerors.

0
0
Source
source
Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe by Robert Orlando; p. 108
3 months 1 week ago

I am convinced that those societies (as the Indians) which live without government enjoy in their general mass an infinitely greater degree of happiness than those who live under the European governments.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington, Paris,
6 months 5 days ago

Knowledge is the plague of life, and consciousness, an open wound in its heart.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

0
0
Source
source
p. 53
8 months 1 week ago
Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations...
0
0
6 months 5 days ago

The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process.

0
0
Source
source
The Theory of Psychoanalysis
3 months 2 weeks ago

A new theory by the author has been added, which draws the physical inferences consequent on the extension of the foundations of geometry beyond Reimann... and represents an attempt to derive from world-geometry not only gravitational but also electromagnetic phenomena. Even if this theory is still only in its infant stage, I feel convinced that it contains no less truth than Einstein's Theory of Gravitation-whether this amount of truth is unlimited or, what is more probable, is bounded by the Quantum Theory.

0
0
Source
source
From the Author's Preface to Third Edition
6 months 1 week ago

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Faith which refuses to face indisputable facts is but little faith. Truth is always gain, however hard it is to accommodate ourselves to it. To linger in any kind of untruth proves to be a departure from the straight way of faith.

0
0
Source
source
p. 290
7 months 1 week ago

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

0
0
Source
source
"Slavery in Massachusetts", 1854
5 months 1 week ago

Obsolescence is the moment of superabundance.

0
0
Source
source
Yeats studies, Issue 2, Irish University Press, 1972, p. 135
8 months 1 week ago
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 26, sect. 311a
6 months 2 weeks ago

A blow from your friend is better than a kiss from your enemy.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists‎ (2007) by James Geary, p. 118
7 months 1 week ago

For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

I mean to lead a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily - like a hermit crab. But I do not. I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. My husband and five children must make their way in the world. The life I have chosen as a wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it.

0
0
Source
source
Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 145
3 months 6 days ago

How many, once lauded in song, are given over to the forgotten; and how many who sung their praises are clean gone long ago!

0
0
Source
source
VII, 6
6 months 3 weeks ago

When Darius offered him ten thousand talents, and to divide Asia equally with him, "I would accept it," said Parmenio, "were I Alexander." "And so truly would I," said Alexander, "if I were Parmenio." But he answered Darius that the earth could not bear two suns, nor Asia two kings.

0
0
Source
source
42 Alexander
3 months 5 days ago

Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 8
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 106
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is very well to say "be prudent, be careful, try to know each other." But how are you to know each other? Unless a woman had lost all pride, how is it possible for her, under the eyes of all her family, to indulge in long exclusive conversations with a man? "Such a thing" must not take place till after her "engagement." And how is she to make an engagement, if "such a thing" has not taken place?

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

0
0
Source
source
Theory of Knowledge, 1913
7 months 1 week ago

In a field of ripening corn I came to a place which had been trampled down by some ruthless foot; and as I glanced amongst the countless stalks, every one of them alike, standing there so erect and bearing the full weight of the ear, I saw a multitude of different flowers, red and blue and violet. How pretty they looked as they grew there so naturally with their little foliage! But, thought I, they are quite useless; they bear no fruit; they are mere weeds, suffered to remain only because there is no getting rid of them. And yet, but for these flowers, there would be nothing to charm the eye in that wilderness of stalks. They are emblematic of poetry and art, which, in civic life-so severe, but still useful and not without its fruit-play the same part as flowers in the corn.

0
0
Source
source
"Similes, Parables and Fables" Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, § 380A
8 months 5 days ago

"What on earth prompted you to take a hand in this?""I don't know. My... my code of morals, perhaps.""Your code of morals. What code, if I may ask?" "Comprehension."

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia