Skip to main content
5 months 1 week ago

100 per cent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.
3 months 2 weeks ago

My own view is that philosophy at its best has always, in every period, included some philosophers who brilliantly represent the moral face of the subject and some philosophers who brilliantly represent the theoretical face, as well as some geniuses whose insights span and unite both sides of the subject. To renounce either the moral ambitions of philosophy or its theoretical ambitions is not just to kill the subject of philosophy; it is to commit intellectual and spiritual suicide.

0
0
Source
source
Science and Philosophy
4 months 1 day ago

It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

0
0
Source
source
4:7 (KJV) Said to Satan. The reference is to Deuteronomy 6:16, "Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God, as ye tempted him in Massah." (KJV)
1 month 6 days ago

Yes, you can--if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable. You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.

0
0
Source
source
II, 5
2 months 1 day ago

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

0
0
Source
source
7A:1, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 62
4 months 1 week ago

You seek life, and a godly fire Gushes and gleams for you out of the earth, As, with shuddering long, you Hurl yourself down to the flames of the Etna. So by a queen's wanton whim Pearls were dissolved in wine- heed her not! What folly, poet, to cast your riches Into that bright and bubbling cup! Yet still are you holy to me, as the might of the earth That bore you away, audaciously perishing! And I would follow the hero into the depths Did love not hold me.

0
0
Source
source
"Empedokles"
2 weeks ago

If you're looking for good men.....best I can do is, not terrible.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

My dear reader, read aloud, if possible! If you do so, allow me to thank you for it: if you not only do it yourself, if you also influence others to do it, allow me to thank each one of them, and you again and again!

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Logic is figure without a ground.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 241)
5 months 1 week ago

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

0
0
Source
source
par. 48
5 months 1 week ago

the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable...is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments...This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2
4 months 1 day ago

Every moment celebrates obsequies over the virtues of its predecessor.

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

The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition - it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind - yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!

0
0
Source
source
To Henry Rutgers Marshall, 7 February 1899
2 months 2 weeks ago

We should always speak what would please the man of whom we expect a favour, like the hunter who sings sweetly when he desires to shoot a deer.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

He who does not prevent a crime, when he can, encourages it.

0
0
Source
source
line 291; (Agamemnon)
1 month 6 days ago

In attempting to expose the views of another, one is forced to make one's own view appear infallible and absolute, which is a procedure altogether to be avoided if one is making a specifically non-evaluative investigation. The second possible approach is nevertheless to combine such a non-evaluative analysis with a definite epistemology. Viewed from the angle of this second approach there are two separate and distinct solutions to the problem of what constitutes reliable knowledge - the one solution may be termed relationism, and the other relativism.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

He that defers his charity 'till he is dead, is (if a man weighs it rightly) rather liberal of another man's, than of his own.

0
0
Source
source
Ornamenta Rationalia, [§55]
4 months 4 weeks ago

Those who have a well-ordered character lead also a well-ordered life.

0
0
4 months 1 day ago

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

0
0
Source
source
The Black Prince (1973); 2003, p. 10.
1 month 5 days ago

Shamed, dishonored, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics - as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity - so it appears in all its hideous nakedness.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (1970), trns: Mary-Alice Waters
1 month 2 weeks ago

A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 4
4 months 5 days ago

Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces, the unity of the psyche would never be shattered. And the wider and more numerous the fissures on the surface, the more the unity is strengthened in the depths.

0
0
Source
source
Civilization in Transition
5 months 2 weeks ago

Apollo said that every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
2 months 3 weeks ago

Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today's tides of all yesterday's scribblings.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

I think television has betrayed the meaning of democratic speech, adding visual chaos to the confusion of voices. What role does silence have in all this noise?

0
0
Source
source
"Television"
1 month 1 week ago

With respect to the new Government, nine or ten States will probably have accepted by the end of this month. The others may oppose it. Virginia, I think, will be of this number. Besides other objections of less moment, she will insist on annexing a bill of rights to the new Constitution, i.e. a bill wherein the Government shall declare that, 1. Religion shall be free; 2. Printing presses free; 3. Trials by jury preserved in all cases; 4. No monopolies in commerce; 5. No standing army. Upon receiving this bill of rights, she will probably depart from her other objections; and this bill is so much to the interest of all the States, that I presume they will offer it, and thus our Constitution be amended, and our Union closed by the end of the present year.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Mr. Dumas
2 months ago

It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
4 months 5 days ago

What are you waiting for in order to give up?

0
0
3 months 5 days ago

To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 6 "Origins and Miracles" (p. 141)
6 months 6 days ago

A punishment that penalizes without forestalling is indeed called revenge.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Photography and cinema contributed in large part to the secularization of history, to fixing it in its visible, "objective" form at the expense of the myths that once traversed it. Today cinema can place all its talent, all its technology in the service of reanimating what it itself contributed to liquidating. It only resurrects ghosts, and it itself is lost therein.

0
0
Source
source
"History: A Retro Scenario," p. 48
5 months 4 days ago

I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in San Francisco: Democracy Matters
5 months 1 week ago

The even larger difference between rich and poor makes the latter even worse off, and this violates the principle of mutual advantage.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II, Section 13, pg. 79
6 months 1 week ago

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
1 month 3 weeks ago

Let us greedily enjoy our friends, because we do not know how long this privilege will be ours.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

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
5 months 2 weeks ago

The Law continues to exist and to function. But it no longer exists for me.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 2, Verse 19
4 months 1 day ago

For such Truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome.

0
0
Source
source
Review and Conclusion, p. 396, (Last text line)
2 months ago

In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

Once the philosophical foundation of democracy has collapsed, the statement that dictatorship is bad is rationally valid only for those who are not its beneficiaries, and there is no theoretical obstacle to the transformation of this statement into its opposite.

0
0
Source
source
p. 29.
5 months 4 days ago

The world and life are one.

0
0
Source
source
(5.621) Original German: Die Welt und das Leben sind Eins.
4 months 4 weeks ago

As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me in fine state... fat and sleek, a true hog of Epicurus' herd.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, epistle iv, lines 15-16
5 months 1 week ago

It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.

0
0
Source
source
MSS 29, 32, University College Collection
4 months 2 weeks ago

Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Now he saw the problem with great clarity. If he lived here, life would be pleasant and safe. But it would also be predictable. A child could be born here, grow up here, die here, without ever experiencing the excitement of discovery. Why did Dona question him endlessly about his life in the burrow and his journey to the country of the ants? Because for her, it represented a world that was dangerous and full of fascinating possibilities. For the children of this underground city, life was a matter of repetition, of habit. And this, he suddenly realized, was the heart of the problem. Habit. Habit was a stifling, warm blanket that threatened you with suffocation and lulled the mind into a state of perpetual nagging dissatisfaction. Habit meant the inability to escape from yourself, to change and develop . . .

0
0
Source
source
pp. 132-133

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia