Skip to main content
6 months 3 weeks ago

True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of all existing institutions she raises her glorious head, as the new foundress of the world.

0
0
Source
source
English translation as quoted in The Dublin Review Vol. III (July-October 1837)
7 months 2 weeks ago

Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests; moreover, since a vegetarian diet is cheaper than one based on meat dishes, they would have more money available to devote to famine relief, population control, or whatever social or political cause they thought most urgent. ... when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 6: Speciesism Today
7 months 4 weeks ago

I wrote the books I should have liked to read. That's always been my reason for writing. People won't write the books I want, so I have to do it for myself.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in C.S. Lewis (1963), by Roger Lancelyn Green, p. 9
8 months 2 weeks ago

No pleasure is in itself evil, but the things which produce certain pleasures entail annoyances many times greater than the pleasures themselves.

0
0

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
3 months 3 weeks ago

I am glad (sayes Eleutherius) to see the Vanity or Envy of the canting Chymists thus discover'd and chastis'd; and I could wish, that Learned Men would conspire together to make these deluding Writers sensible, that they must no longe[r] hope with Impunity to abuse the World. For whilst such Men are quietly permitted to publish Books with promising Titles, and therein to Assert what they please, and contradict others, and ev'n themselves as they please, with as little danger of being confuted as of being understood, they are encourag'd to get themselves a name, at the cost of the Readers, by finding that intelligent Men are wont for the reason newly mention'd, to let their Books and Them alone: And the ignorant and credulous (of which the number is still much greater then that of the other) are forward to admire most what they least understand.

0
0
7 months 4 weeks ago

There is only one way to science-or to philosophy... to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part-unless you should meet another... more fascinating problem, or... obtain a solution. But even if you do... you may... discover, to your delight, the... a whole family of enchanting... perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

The jingoes and war speculators are filling the air with the sentimental slogan of hypocritical nationalism, "America for Americans," "America first, last, and all the time."

0
0
7 months 4 weeks ago

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction, p. 31.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Third, these general ideas are not mere words, nor do they consist in this, that certain concrete facts will every time happen under certain descriptions of conditions; but they are just as much, or rather far more, living realities than the feelings themselves out of which they are concreted. And to say that mental phenomenon are governed by law does not mean merely that they are describable by a general formula; but that there is a living idea, a conscious continuum of feeling which pervades them, and to which they are docile.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
7 months 4 weeks ago

In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important a function as recollecting.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 16
4 months 2 weeks ago

The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 3, p. 83
6 months 3 weeks ago

Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

0
0
Source
source
17:11-12 (KJV)
8 months 6 days ago

No doubt you know that Galileo had been convicted not long ago by the Inquisition, and that his opinion on the movement of the Earth had been condemned as heresy. Now I will tell you that all things I explain in my treatise, among which is also that same opinion about the movement of the Earth, all depend on one another, and are based upon certain evident truths. Nevertheless, I will not for the world stand up against the authority of the Church. ...I have the desire to live in peace and to continue on the road on which I have started.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Marin Mersenne (end of Feb., 1634) as quoted by Amir Aczel, Pendulum: Leon Foucault and the Triumph of Science

Essentially, this war...is a great race-conflict, a conflict of Teuton and Slav, in which certain other nations, England, France and Belgium, have been led into cooperation with the Slav. ... The conflict of Germany and Russia has been produced not by this or that diplomatic incident, but by primitive passions expressing themselves in the temper of the two races.

0
0
Source
source
War: The Offspring of Fear (1914), quoted in Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 (1996), p. 373
6 months 1 week ago

The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

0
0
Source
source
p. 108
8 months 1 week ago

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 27. Of Friendship
6 months 3 weeks ago

To think is to submit to the whims and commands of an uncertain health.

0
0

He who has thought most deeply loves what is most alive.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

America is like a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair!

0
0
Source
source
In Quote: The Weekly Digest, vol. 23, no. 19 (4 May 1952) p. 16
5 months 3 weeks ago

How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium - in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

If we are serious about peace, then we must work for it as ardently, seriously, continuously, carefully, and bravely as we have ever prepared for war.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

To have accomplished nothing and to die overworked.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Speech is insufficient to utter the last things; and this troubles it not, because the last things may be heard speaking for themselves. At last, after long delay the wondering soul gives form to that which is stirring within it and produces its works art and song and mighty deeds.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

From whatever side the matter is regarded, it is always found that reason confronts our longing for personal immortality and contradicts it. And the truth is, in all strictness, that reason is the enemy of life.

0
0
8 months 1 day ago

The first who was king was a fortunate soldier: Who serves his country well has no need of ancestors.

0
0
Source
source
Mérope, act I, scene III (1743). Borrowed from Lefranc de Pompignan's "Didon"
7 months 4 weeks ago

After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

0
0
Source
source
"The Rest is Silence"

The ultimate most holy form of theory is action. Not to look on passively while the spark leaps from generation to generation, but to leap and to burn with it!

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.

0
0
Source
source
p. 32
8 months 1 week ago

We ought neither to fasten our ship to one small anchor nor our life to a single hope.

0
0
Source
source
Fragment 30 (Oldfather translation)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Indeed, I think we may concede to our Academician, without flattery, his claim that in the principle [principio, i. e., accelerated motion] laid down in this treatise he has established a new science dealing with a very old subject. Observing with what ease and clearness he deduces from a single principle the proofs of so many theorems, I wonder not a little how such a question escaped the attention of Archimedes, Apollonius, Euclid and so many other mathematicians and illustrious philosophers, especially since so many ponderous tomes have been devoted to the subject of motion.

0
0
Source
source
(Galileo referred to himself as the/our Academician in his dialogue) Sagredo, Third Day P. 242
7 months 4 days ago

Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena. . . . but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation....

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Can the man say, Fiat lux, Let there be light; and out of chaos make a world? Precisely as there is light in himself, will he accomplish this.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.

0
0
Source
source
Commentary on the Psalms (c. 1273), Introduction
6 months 1 week ago

Organizations and institutions provide the general stimuli and attention-directors that channelize the behaviors of the members of the group, and that provide those members with the intermediate objectives that stimulate action.

0
0
Source
source
p. 100.

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.

0
0
Source
source
J 70 Variant translation: The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
4 months 3 weeks ago

As for one-party rule, it was questioned neither by the Left Opposition nor by the Right [wing of the Communist party]. All were prisoners of their own doctrine and their own past: all had worked with a will to create the apparatus of violence that crushed them. Bukharin's hopeless attempt to form a league with Kamenev was no more than a pitiful epilogue to his career. In November 1929 the deviationists performed a public act of penance, but even this did not save them. Stalin's victory was complete; the collapse of the Bukharinite opposition meant the triumph of autocracy in the party and in the country. In December 1929 Stalin's fiftieth birthday was celebrated as a major historical event, and from this point we may date the "cult of personality". Trotsky's prophecy of 1903 had come true: party rule had become Central Committee rule, and this in turn had becorne the personal tyranny of a dictator.

0
0
Source
source
(pp. 42-3)
8 months 1 week ago

Rules for Demonstrations. I. Not to undertake to demonstrate any thing that is so evident of itself that nothing can be given that is clearer to prove it. II. To prove all propositions at all obscure, and to employ in their proof only very evident maxims or propositions already admitted or demonstrated. III. To always mentally substitute definitions in the place of things defined, in order not to be misled by the ambiguity of terms which have been restricted by definitions.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 120
7 months 4 weeks ago

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
4 months 3 weeks ago

Point set topology is a disease from which the human race will soon recover.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in D MacHale, Comic Sections
3 months 3 weeks ago

Only to the rational animal is it given to follow voluntarily what happens; but simply to follow is a necessity imposed on all.

0
0
Source
source
X, 28
7 months 4 weeks ago

It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.

0
0
Source
source
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in London, March 1850
6 months 2 weeks ago

The Text is plural. Which is not simply to say that it has several meanings, but that it accomplishes the very plural of meaning: an irreducible (and not merely an acceptable) plural. The Text is not a co-existence of meanings but a passage, an overcrossing; thus it answers not to an interpretation, even a liberal one, but to an explosion, a dissemination.

0
0
Source
source
Proposition 4
6 months 1 week ago

"What I believe" is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect. While it may be true that Herbert Spencer's formulation of liberty is the most important on the subject, as a political basis of society, yet life is something more than formulas. In the battle for freedom, as Ibsen has so well pointed out, it is the struggle for, not so much the attainment of, liberty, that develops all that is strongest, sturdiest and finest in human character.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia