Skip to main content
10 months 1 week ago

Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Except are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

Administration is not unlike play-acting. The task of the good actor is to know and play his role, although different roles may differ greatly in content. The effectiveness of the performance will depend on the effectiveness of the play and the effectiveness with which it is played. The effectiveness of the administrative process will vary with the effectiveness of the organization and the effectiveness with which its members play their parts.

0
0
Source
source
p. 252; As cited in: Herbert Simon (1996) The Sciences of the Artificial. page xii.
5 months 1 week ago

Does the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn't your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?

0
0
Source
source
XII. 15:294
10 months 1 week ago

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

0
0
10 months 1 day ago

The way which the superior man pursues, reaches wide and far, and yet is secret. Common men and women, however ignorant, may intermeddle with the knowledge of it; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage does not know. Common men and women, however much below the ordinary standard of character, can carry it into practice; yet in its utmost reaches, there is that which even the sage is not able to carry into practice. Great as heaven and earth are, men still find some things in them with which to be dissatisfied. Thus it is that, were the superior man to speak of his way in all its greatness, nothing in the world would be found able to embrace it, and were he to speak of it in its minuteness, nothing in the world would be found able to split it.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

To subdue destruction is one of the most important affirmations of which we are capable in this world. It is the affirmation of this life, bound up with yours, and with the realm of the living: an affirmation caught up with a potential for destruction and its countervailing force.

0
0
Source
source
p. 65
9 months 2 weeks ago

There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
9 months 1 week ago

Everybody knows that the same sum of money is of much greater value to a poor man that to a rich one. Give £10 a year to the man who has but £10 a year, you double his income, and you nearly double his enjoyments. Add £10 more, you do not add to his enjoyments so much as you did by the first £10. The third £10 is less valuable than the second, and the fourth less valuable than the third. To the possessor of £1,000 a year the addition of £10 would be scarcely perceptible; to the possessor of £10,000 it would not be worth slooping for.The richer a man is the less he is benefited by any further addition to his income. The man of £4,000 a year has four times the income of the man who has but £1,000; but does anybody suppose that he has four times the happiness?

0
0
Source
source
John Stuart Mill, Primogeniture, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 26, p. 336
8 months 4 days ago

Loren von Stein thus turned the dialectic into an ensemble of objective laws calling for social reform as the adequate solution of all contradictions and neutralized the critical elements of the dialectic.

0
0
Source
source
P. 388
8 months 4 weeks ago

Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much contested proof which I have spoken.

0
0
Source
source
Frag. B 7.3-8.1, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3
9 months 1 week ago

It is sad that often, to be a good patriot, one must be the enemy of the rest of mankind.

0
0
Source
source
"Country"
9 months 1 week ago

Whate'er we leave to God, God doesAnd blesses us.

0
0
Source
source
"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
8 months 1 week ago

They who bow to the enemy abroad will not be of power to subdue the conspirator at home.

0
0
Source
source
p. 18
7 months 1 week ago

Our subjective judgment of what seems like a good bet is irrelevant to what is actually a good bet.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 6 "Origins and Miracles" (p. 162)
5 months 3 weeks ago

Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.

0
0
Source
source
Intellectual Yoga
9 months 1 week ago

It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.

0
0
Source
source
Act 2, sc. 4
10 months 1 week ago

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

The irony of world history turns everything upside down. We, the "revolutionaries," the "rebels"-we are thriving far better on legal methods than on illegal methods and revolt. The parties of order, as they call themselves, are perishing under the legal conditions created by themselves. They cry despairingly with Odilon Barrot: la légalité notes tue, legality is the death of us; whereas we, under this legality, get firm muscles and rosy cheeks and look like eternal life.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction (1895) to Marx's The Class Struggles in France (1848-50), p. 27
5 months 1 week ago

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) III, 10
5 months 1 week ago

Final causes or intentions are the torment of modern philosophy, which neglects nothing to get rid of them. From this, among other things, comes its great axiom: nature creates only individuals. Indeed, since all classification supposes order, this philosophy has denied classes to deny order. In order to establish this marvellous reasoning, it fixes its suspicious eyes on the differences between beings to dispense itself from turning them to their similarities. It does not want to recognize that nuances between classes and individuals constitute another order, and that diversity in resemblance supposes intention more visibly than mere resemblance.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

0
0
Source
source
Essai sur le Mérite de la Vertu (1745)
9 months 1 day ago

It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken of.

0
0
Source
source
§ 3; quoted also by Marcus Aurelius, vii. 36
9 months 6 days ago

If we compare the third-person attitude of someone who simply says how things stand (this is the attitude of the scientist, for example) with the performative attitude of someone who tries to understand what is said to him (this is the attitude of the interpreter, for example), the implications ... become clear. ... First, interpreters relinquish superiority that observers have by virtue of their privileged position, in that they themselves are drawn, at least potentially, into negotiations about the meaning and validity of utterances. By taking part in communicative action, they accept in principle the same status as those whose utterances they are trying to understand. ... It is impossible to decide a priori who is to learn from whom.

0
0
Source
source
p. 26
8 months 1 week ago

No one should forget: Eros alone can fulfill life; knowledge, never. Only Eros makes sense; knowledge is empty infinity; - for thoughts, there is always time; life has its time; there is no thought that comes too late; any desire can become a regret.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.

0
0
Source
source
B 41
10 months 1 day ago

Recompense hatred with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.

0
0
9 months 2 weeks ago

God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12
9 months 1 week ago

We later learned that all the nineteen passengers in the non-smoking compartment had been killed. When the plane had hit the water a hole had been made in the plane and the water had rushed in. I had told a friend at Oslo who was finding me a place that he must find me a place where I could smoke, remarking jocularly, 'If I cannot smoke, I shall die'. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be true.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

A very weighty argument is this - namely, that neither does the light which descends from thence, chiefly upon the world, mix itself with anything, nor admit of dirtiness or pollution, but remains entirely, and in all things that are, free from defilement, admixture, and suffering. Besides, we must pay attention to the other kinds of phenomena, both to the Intelligible, and yet more to the Sensible - whatever are connected with matter, or will manifest themselves in relation to our subject.

0
0
8 months 2 days ago

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
6 months 1 week ago

The familial union presents as well a mixture of inconvenient ages and characters that inhibit conversation. Morality engenders a frigid atmosphere, as in all places where it reigns.

0
0
Source
source
Oeuvres completetes de Charles Fourier
8 months 2 weeks ago

Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.

0
0
Source
source
The character Suzanne Simon, in La Religieuse [The Nun]
5 months 1 week ago

A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake.

0
0
Source
source
From a letter to John Taylor (June 1798), after the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts
7 months 3 weeks ago

Enlightenment is an awakening to the everyday.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light. ... Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, Ch. 11
9 months 2 weeks ago

For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer's question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

And now I ask, whether, with this map of misgovernment before me, I can suppose myself bound by my vote to continue, upon any principles of pretended public faith, the management of these countries in those hands? If I kept such a faith (which in reality is no better than a fides latronum) with what is called the Company, I must break the faith, the covenant, the solemn, original, indispensable oath, in which I am bound, by the eternal frame and constitution of things, to the whole human race.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons on India (1 December 1783), quoted in The Parliamentary Register: Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, Volume XII (1782), p. 247
6 months 2 weeks ago

Genes and culture have co-evolved. But crudely, natural selection "designed" male human primates to hunt nonhumans and build coalitions of other male human primates in order to wage territorial wars of aggression. Nature didn't design us to become a scientific community and collaborate to overcome aging. It's difficult to imagine that any human enemy could inflict such gruesome damage on the victims as growing old. The ravages of aging strike down combatants and civilians alike. So the trillions of dollars that humans currently spend on ways to harm and kill each other ("defence") would be more fruitfully spent on defeating our common enemy. We should work together to build a "Triple S" civilisation of superlongevity, superhappiness and superintelligence.

0
0
Source
source
Transhumanism 2017: Towards a 'Triple S' civilisation of Superlongevity, Superintelligence and Superhappiness, Timeship Buddha
9 months 1 week ago

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

0
0
Source
source
"On the Sufferings of the World"
8 months 4 days ago

In proportion as a man's interests become humane and his efforts rational, he appropriates and expands a common life, which reappears in all individuals who reach the same impersonal level of ideas.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VIII: Ideal Society
9 months 1 week ago

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.

0
0
Source
source
p. 490
10 months 1 day ago

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

It is easy to see that the existing generation are conspiring with a beneficence, which, in its working for coming generations, sacrifices the passing one, which infatuates the most selfish men to act against their private interest for the public welfare. We build railroads, we know not for what or for whom; but one thing is certain, that we who build will receive the very smallest share of benefit. Benefit will accrue; they are essential to the country, but that will be felt not until we are no longer countrymen. We do the like in all matters: - 'Man's heart the Almighty to the Future setBy secret and inviolable springs.'

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Exactly. This is all we need to promote human flourishing and avoid human suffering....

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia