Skip to main content
1 month 2 weeks ago

Tis evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men. Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another [...] And 'tis remarkable, that tho' almost all animals use in play the same member, and nearly the same action as in fighting; a lion, a tyger, a cat their paws; an ox his homs; a dog his teeth; a horse his heels: Yet they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho' they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the sense brutes have of each other's pain and pleasure.

0
0
Source
source
Part 2, Section 12
1 month 1 week ago

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

0
0
Source
source
Fate
1 week ago

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities, that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II, Part II, p. 892.
2 weeks 3 days ago

We carry with us the wonders, we seek without us: There is all Africa, and her prodigies in us; we are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies, wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

0
0
Source
source
Section 15
1 month 1 week ago

Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Religion is not 'doctrinal knowledge,' but wisdom born of personal experience.

0
0
Source
source
Holborn, Hajo; A HISTORY OF MODERN GERMANY: The Reformation; 1959/1982 Princeton university Press
1 month 2 weeks ago

God the Almighty has made our rulers mad; they actually think they can do-and order their subjects to do-whatever they please. And the subjects make the mistake of believing that they, in turn, are bound to obey their rulers in everything.

0
0
Source
source
p. 83
1 week 5 days ago

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

0
0
Source
source
p. 440
1 month 1 week ago

I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!! That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts.

0
0
Source
source
Journal entries (12 March 1915 and 15 March 1915) p. 41
1 month 3 weeks ago

Logic has borrowed, perhaps, the rules of geometry, without comprehending their force... it does not thence follow that they have entered into the spirit of geometry, and I should be greatly averse... to placing them on a level with that science that teaches the true method of directing reason.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education

Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture V, R. Manheim, trans. (1967), pp. 35-36
1 week ago

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

0
0
Source
source
The New York Herald-Tribune Magazine, 3/6/1938
1 month 2 days ago

We are responsible not only for what we do but also for what we could have prevented.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction (p. xv)
1 month 1 week ago

Thus heaven I've forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for hell.

0
0
Source
source
"The Pale Maiden" (1837) ballad
1 month 1 week ago

Animals come when their names are called. Just like human beings.

0
0
Source
source
p. 67e
1 month 3 weeks ago

Who dismisses his adulterous wife and marries another woman, whereas his first wife still lives, remains perpetually in the state of adultery. Such a man does not any efficacious penance while he refuses to abandon the new wife. If he is a catechumen, he cannot be admitted to baptism, because his will remains rooted in the evil. If he is a (baptized) penitent, he cannot receive the (ecclesiastical) reconciliation as long as he does not break with his bad attitude.

0
0
Source
source
De adulterinis coniugiis, 2, 16, in Bishop Athanasius Schneider, Reaction to Synod Door to communion for divorced & remarried officially kicked open, November 2nd, 2015
1 week ago

To conceive a thought - just one, but one that would tear the universe to pieces.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

From the winter of 1821, when I first read Bentham, and especially from the commencement of the Westminster Review, I had what might truly be called an object in life; to be a reformer of the world. My conception of my own happiness was entirely identified with this object. The personal sympathies I wished for were those of fellow labourers in this enterprise. I endeavoured to pick up as many flowers as I could by the way; but as a serious and permanent personal satisfaction to rest upon, my whole reliance was placed on this...

0
0
Source
source
(p. 132)
2 weeks 2 days ago

He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.

0
0
Source
source
p. 204
1 month 2 weeks ago

One may be humble out of pride.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Ch. 17. Of Presumption
1 month 1 week ago

My difficulty is only an - enormous - difficulty of expression.

0
0
Source
source
Journal entry (8 March 1915) p. 40
4 days ago

Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast. No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

0
0
Source
source
9:15-17 (KJV)
3 days ago

Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase "takes place". The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole.

0
0
Source
source
p. 160
2 months 1 week ago

Moreover, there is a victory and defeat, the first and best of victories, the lowest and worst of defeat, which each man gains or sustains at the hands, not of another, but of himself; this shows that there is a war against ourselves going on within every one of us. Book I Sometimes paraphrased as "The first and best victory is to conquer self".

0
0
1 week 4 days ago

Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. IV, The Relativity of All Knowledge
1 week 5 days ago

It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

0
0
Source
source
Preface to Brissot's Address
1 month 1 week ago

Surplus value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one [is] exactly measured by the diminution of necessary labour.

0
0
Source
source
Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 259.
2 months 1 day ago

To worship to other than one's own ancestral spirits is brown-nosing. If you see what is right and fail to act on it, you lack courage. Variant: To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle.

0
0
1 week 5 days ago

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

0
0
2 weeks 2 days ago

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you've got to keep your feet warm.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own informer and helps him with eternity's memory.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Reason nevertheless prevails in world history.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

In the natural state no concept of God can arise, and the false one which one makes for himself is harmful. Hence the theory of natural religion can be true only where there is no science; therefore it cannot bind all men together.

0
0
Source
source
Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 60
1 month 1 week ago

The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be heroic.

0
0
Source
source
Quotation and Originality
1 month 1 week ago

I mean, a genuinely productive society. I mean you could produce plenty of goods without much freedom, but I think the whole sort of creative life of man is ultimately impossible without a considerable measure of individual freedom, of initiative, creation, all these things which we value, and I think value properly, are impossible without a large measure of freedom.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

I call this Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is "nothing better" now to be had.

0
0
1 week ago

No one should try to live if he has not completed his training as a victim.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

0
0
Source
source
Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière, 28 February 1778

But like the desire for eternal life, the desire for omniscience and absolute perfection is merely an imaginary desire; and, as history and daily experience prove, the supposed human striving for unlimited knowledge and perfection is a myth. Man has no desire to know everything; he only wants to know the things to which he is particularly drawn.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
1 month 6 days ago

Quality leadership is neither the product of one great individual nor the result of odd historical accidents. Rather, it comes from deeply bred traditions and communities that shape and mold talented and gifted persons. Without a vibrant tradition of resistance passed on to new generations, there can be no nurturing of a collective and critical consciousness-only professional conscientiousness survives.

0
0
Source
source
(p37)
1 month 1 week ago

Because machines could be made progressively more and more efficient, Western man came to believe that men and societies would automatically register a corresponding moral and spiritual improvement. Attention and allegiance came to be paid, not to Eternity, but to the Utopian future. External circumstances came to be regarded as more important than states of mind about external circumstances, and the end of human life was held to be action, with contemplation as a means to that end. These false and historically, aberrant and heretical doctrines are now systematically taught in our schools and repeated, day in, day out, by those anonymous writers of advertising copy who, more than any other teachers, provide European and American adults with their current philosophy of life. And so effective has been the propaganda that even professing Christians accept the heresy unquestioningly and are quite unconscious of its complete incompatibility with their own or anybody else's religion.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience. . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture I, "Religion and Neurology"
1 month 1 week ago

I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.

0
0
Source
source
Fact and Fiction (1961), Part I, Ch. 6: "The Pursuit of Truth", p. 37
1 month 1 week ago

Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms. The more the peculiarities are pressed the better the result. The air would rot without lightning; and without the violence of direction that men have, without bigots, without men of the fixed idea, no excitement, no efficiency. The novelist should not make any character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by others. For it is so in life. Nonsense will not keep its unreason if you come into the humorist's point of view, but unhappily we find it is fast becoming sense, and we must flee again into the distance if we would laugh.

0
0
Source
source
"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 45
1 week 1 day ago

For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

0
0
Source
source
p. 67

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia