Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 4 weeks ago
Friendship is almost always the union...

Friendship is almost always the union of a part of one mind with the part of another; people are friends in spots.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Friendships"
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 months 1 week ago
When it became...

When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@ Interview with Joel Bleifuss, In These Times
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 5 days ago
The Anarchists are right in everything;...

The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"On Anarchy", in Pamphlets : Translated from the Russian (1900) as translated by Aylmer Maude, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 6 days ago
The great majority of men and...

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large. They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought, and without considering that by sufficient effort the whole conditions of their lives could be changed.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction, p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 2 weeks ago
I may become a poor man;...

I may become a poor man; I shall then be one among many. I may be exiled; I shall then regard myself as born in the place to which I shall be sent. They may put me in chains. What then? Am I free from bonds now? Behold this clogging burden of a body, to which nature has fettered me! "I shall die," you say; you mean to say "I shall cease to run the risk of sickness; I shall cease to run the risk of imprisonment; I shall cease to run the risk of death."

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
Merit is a work for the...

Merit is a work for the sake of which Christ gives rewards. But no such work is to be found, for Christ gives by promise. Just as if a prince should say to me, "Come to me in my castle, and I will give you a hundred florins." I do a work, certainly, in going to the castle, but the gift is not given me as the reward of my work in going, but because the prince promised it to me.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 409
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
3 months 3 weeks ago
Those who have ever valued liberty...

Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 6 days ago
Granted I am a babbler, a...

Granted I am a babbler, a harmless vexatious babbler, like all of us. But what is to be done if the direct and sole vocation of every intelligent man is babble, that is, the intentional pouring of water through a sieve?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part 1, Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
4 months 2 days ago
The traditional disputes of philosophers are,...

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 1, first lines.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 3 weeks ago
Who is this that cries from...

Who is this that cries from the ends of the earth? Who is this one man who reaches to the extremities of the universe? He is one, but that one is unity. He is one, not one in a single place, but the cry of this one man comes from the remotest ends of the earth. But how can this one man cry out from the ends of the earth, unless he be one in all?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p.423
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is not enough to be...

It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 5 days ago
That we are overdone with banking...

That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Abbe Salimankis, 1810. ME 12:379
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 6 days ago
Custom reconciles us to every thing....

Custom reconciles us to every thing.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part IV Section XVIII
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 4 days ago
"And yet, it was not, not...

"And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and, oh, gloriously she did) it was for another's sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming. The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed with his approach. I cast down my eyes."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Orual
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 4 weeks ago
Sleep on now, and take your...

Sleep on now, and take your rest: behold, the hour is at hand, and the Son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. Rise, let us be going: behold, he is at hand that doth betray me.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
26:45-46 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 2 weeks ago
The shortest way…

The shortest way to wealth is through the contempt of wealth.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 5 days ago
Thus then does the Doctrine of...

Thus then does the Doctrine of Knowledge, which in its substance is the realisation of the absolute Power of intelligising which has now been defined, end with the recognition of itself as a mere Schema in a Doctrine of Wisdom, although indeed a necessary and indispensable means to such a Doctrine: - a Schema, the sole aim of which is, with the knowledge thus acquired, - by which knowledge alone a Will, clear and intelligible to itself and reposing upon itself without wavering or perplexity, is possible, - to return wholly into Actual Life; - not into the Life of blind and irrational Instinct which we have laid bare in all its nothingness, but into the Divine Life which shall become visible to us.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 5 days ago
Under all speech....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 3 days ago
Pardon one offence…

Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim 750
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 4 weeks ago
One need only open the eyes...

One need only open the eyes to see that the conquests of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice.As Mach says, these devotees have spared their successors the trouble of thinking.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Author's Essay Prefatory to the Translation: "The Choice of Facts," p.4
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 weeks ago
The institutions of the Ruler are...

The institutions of the Ruler are rooted in his own character and conduct, and sufficient attestation of them is given by the masses of the people. He examines them by comparison with those of the three kings, and finds them without mistake. He sets them up before Heaven and Earth, and finds nothing in them contrary to their mode of operation. He presents himself with them before spiritual beings, and no doubts about them arise. He is prepared to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, and has no misgivings. His presenting himself with his institutions before spiritual beings, without any doubts arising about them, shows that he knows Heaven. His being prepared, without any misgivings, to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, shows that he knows men.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
The great end of life is...

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Technical Education"
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
Underlying even the so-called problem of...

Underlying even the so-called problem of knowledge there is simply this human feeling, just as underlying the inquiry into the "why," the cause, there is simply the search for the "wherefore," the end. All the rest is either to deceive oneself or to wish to deceive others; and to wish to deceive others in order to deceive oneself.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 2 weeks ago
The liturgy of emptiness dispels the...

The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 2 weeks ago
Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are...

Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the "higher classes," who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere "knowledge of good and evil" leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 1 week ago
For a very small expence the...

For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I, Part III, Article II, p. 847.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 weeks 4 days ago
Our experience hitherto justifies us...

Our experience hitherto justifies us in trusting that nature is the realization of the simplest that is mathematically conceivable. I am convinced that purely mathematical construction enables us to find those concepts and those lawlike connections between them that provide the key to the understanding of natural phenomena. Useful mathematical concepts may well be suggested by experience, but in no way can they be derived from it. Experience naturally remains the sole criterion of the usefulness of a mathematical construction for physics. But the actual creative principle lies in mathematics. Thus, in a certain sense, I take it to be true that pure thought can grasp the real, as the ancients had dreamed.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
4 months 3 days ago
To romanticize the world is to...

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 3 days ago
Opinion is so powerful in war...

Opinion is so powerful in war that it can alter the nature of the same event and give it two different names, for no reason other than its own whim. A general throws his men between two enemy armies and he writes to his king, I have split him, he has lost. His opponent writes to his king, He has put himself between two fires, he is lost. Which of the two is mistaken? Whoever is seized by the cold goddess. Assuming that all things, especially size, are at least approximately equal, the only difference between the two positions is a purely moral one. It is imagination that loses battles.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Seventh Dialogue," p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 6 days ago
It cannot at this time be...

It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 6 days ago
Far or forgot to me is...

Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Brahma, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 1 week ago
I can look a whole day...

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, & I like it the better, to affect all harmony, and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section 9
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
Dear rulers ... I maintain that...

Dear rulers ... I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. ... If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
letter to the German rulers (1524), as quoted in The History of Compulsory Education in New England, John William Perrin, 1896
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 6 days ago
Socrates did not stop with a...

Socrates did not stop with a philosophical consideration of mankind; he addressed himself to each one individually, wrested everything from him, and sent him away empty-handed.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 6 days ago
We plant trees, we build stone...

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
But though there be naturally a...

But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to encrease and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 days ago
I am not advocating a morality...

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 1. Why Are People?
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 1 day ago
The cruelest lies are often told...

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Truth of Intercourse.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 days ago
Yet living and dying, honour and...

Yet living and dying, honour and dishonour, pain and pleasure, riches and poverty, and so forth are equally the lot of good men and bad. Things like these neither elevate nor degrade; and therefore they are no more good than they are evil.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
II, 11
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 1 week ago
For those who live inside a...

For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact. Human progress is a fact of this kind. If you accept it you have a place in the grand march of humanity. Humankind is, of course, not marching anywhere. 'Humanity' is a fiction composed from billions of individuals for each of whom life is singular and final. But the myth of progress is extremely potent. When it loses its power those who have lived by it are - as Conrad put it, describing Kayerts and Carlier - 'like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedoms'. When faith in the future is taken from them, so is the image they have of themselves. If they then opt for death, it is because without that faith they can no longer make sense of living.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
An Old Chaos: The Call of Progress (pp. 6-7)
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 3 weeks ago
Being asked where in Greece he...

Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, "Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 2 weeks ago
That man and woman have an...

That man and woman have an equality of duties and rights is accepted by woman even less than by man. Behind his destiny woman must annihilate herself, must be only his complement. A woman dedicates herself to the vocation of her husband; she fills up and performs the subordinate parts in it. But if she has any destiny, any vocation of her own, she must renounce it, in nine cases out of ten.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 4 weeks ago
Saint-Simon, like Hegel, begins with the...

Saint-Simon, like Hegel, begins with the assertion that the social order engendered by the French Revolution proved that mankind has reached the adult state. In contrast to Hegel, however, he described this stage primarily in terms of its economy; the industrial process was the sole integrating factor in the new social order.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 330
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 weeks ago
The English never abolish anything. They...

The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 36, January 19, 1945.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 6 days ago
The truly good and wise man...

The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months 2 weeks ago
Hype is the awkward and desperate...

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Hype"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 6 days ago
Marriage is for women the commonest...

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 1 week ago
This is that which I think...

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind, and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections ; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in "Hand Book : Caution and Counsels" in The Common School Journal Vol. 5, No. 24 (15 December 1843) by Horace Mann, p. 371
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
Love in animals, has not for...

Love in animals, has not for its only object animals of the same species, but extends itself farther, and comprehends almost every sensible and thinking being. A dog naturally loves a man above his own species, and very commonly meets with a return of affection.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part 2, Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
5 months 1 day ago
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained...

Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Question Concerning Technology
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Users

☰ ˟
  • All users
  • Historical Figures

Who's new

  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed
  • Slavoj Žižek

Who's online

There are currently 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia