Skip to main content
6 months 3 weeks ago

There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 23
4 months 1 week ago

A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral constraint-for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no hope of economic, let alone social, order.

0
0
Source
source
"The Limits of Liberty," The American Spectator
5 months 6 days ago

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VI
5 months 1 week ago

We regret not having the courage to make such and such decision; we regret much more having made one - any one. Better no action than the consequences of an action.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
3 months 2 weeks ago

Hayek's blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.

0
0
Source
source
King Aegistheus, Act 2
5 months 2 weeks ago

The universe comprises all being in a totality; for nothing that exists is outside or beyond infinite being, as the latter has no outside or beyond.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions; but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.

0
0
Source
source
Philo to Cleanthes, Part II
4 months 1 week ago

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

0
0
Source
source
My Religion (1884)
4 months 3 weeks ago

The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Part II, p. 773.
6 months 2 weeks ago

The evident justice and utility of the foregoing maxims have recommended them more or less to the attention of all nations.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II, Part II, p. 894.
6 months 4 weeks ago

All things must needs be borne on through the calm void moving at equal rate with unequal weights.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, lines 238-239 (tr. Bailey)
6 months 1 week ago

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 6 (p. 47)
6 months 2 weeks ago

Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1: The Impulse to Power
7 months 2 weeks ago

And how does the God's existence emerge from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of continuity? Or have we not here an analogy to the behavior of the little Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll it stands on its head. As soon as I let it go, I must therefore let it go. So also with the proof. As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i.e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that I am engaged in proving it; but when I let the proof go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be taken into the account, this little moment, brief as it may be – it need not be long, for it is a leap. However brief this moment, if only an instantaneous now, this "now" must be included in the reckoning.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

This enterprise is for the young; for those who can follow it up, and bear it through to its consummation. It shall have all my prayers, & these are the only weapons of an old man.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

For we carry our fate with us - and it carries us.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) III, 4
5 months 2 weeks ago

We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

0
0
Source
source
"Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot"
4 months 3 weeks ago

I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. So I felt nothing but impatient contempt for Osborne's Jimmy Porter and the rest of the heroes of social protest.

0
0
Source
source
p. 2

To all this, someone is sure to object that life ought to subject itself to reason, to which we will reply that nobody ought to do what he is unable to do, and life cannot subject itself to reason. "Ought, therefore can," some Kantian will retort. To which we shall demur: "Cannot, therefore ought not." And life cannot submit itself to reason, because the end of life is living and not understanding.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

I have taken pains to make my distinction of icons, indices, and tokens clear, in order to enunciate this proposition: in a perfect system of logical notation signs of these several kinds must all be employed. Without tokens there would be no generality in the statements, for they are the only general signs; and generality is essential to reasoning. ... But tokens alone do not state what is the subject of discourse ; and this can, in fact, not be described in general terms ; it can only be indicated. The actual world cannot be distinguished from a world of imagination by any description. Hence the need of pronoun and indices, and the more complicated the subject the greater the need of them.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

In the world of today can there be peace anywhere until there is peace everywhere?

0
0
5 months 4 days ago

Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.

0
0
Source
source
p. 45
5 months 2 weeks ago

What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

If it's really true, that the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labelled as being 3000 years old, then that is an educational disgrace. It is debauching the whole idea of a university, and I would strongly encourage any members of Liberty University who may be here...to leave and go to a proper university.

0
0
Source
source
At Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, (23 October 2006) Broadcasted by C-SPAN2
6 months 1 week ago

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

0
0
Source
source
Act 6, sc. 2
7 months 1 week ago

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

The possibility of democracy on a global scale is emerging today for the very first time.

0
0
Source
source
(xi)
6 months 1 week ago

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 4
6 months 3 weeks ago

The monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

0
0
Source
source
Essex's Device
4 months 3 weeks ago

It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

There has been an inversion in the hierarchy of the two principles of antiquity, "Take care of yourself" and "Know yourself." In Greco-Roman culture, knowledge of oneself appeared as the consequence of the care of the self. In the modern world, knowledge of oneself constitutes the fundamental principle.

0
0
Source
source
"Technologies of the Self," Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth (1994), p. 228
6 months 2 weeks ago

In every stock-jobbing swindle everyone knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 5, pg. 296.
2 months 3 weeks ago

And so I am not concerned to justify the perpetrators of violence but to enquire into the function of the violence of the working classes in contemporary socialism.

0
0
Source
source
p. 42

Gimp gradient, Affinity Liquify. I would like to enjoy the romantic nature of these quotes about "God", but, unfortunately religion has ruined the Truth about "God" so we can't even responsibly talk about it romantically. It's too dangerous to safety and peace. I'm not going to kill you guys with color...lol...I just get bored...

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

France wanted to make proselytes to her opinions, and turn every government in the world into a republic. If every government was against her, it was because she had declared herself hostile to every government. He knew of nothing to which this strange republic could be compared, but to the system of Mahomet, who with the koran in one hand, and a sword in the other, held out the former to the acceptance of mankind, and with the latter compelled them to adopt it as their creed. The koran which France held out, was the declaration of the rights of man and universal fraternity; and with the sword she was determined to propagate her doctrines, and conquer those whom she could not convince.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons (14 December 1792), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXX (1817), column 72

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia