Skip to main content
3 months 6 days ago

There are two kinds of people, killers, and everybody else.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone".

0
0
Source
source
No. 193
1 month 1 day ago

As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you.

0
0
1 month 1 day ago

Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well; I belonged to it and labored with it. It deserved well of its country. It was very like the present but without the experience of the present; and forty years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading; and this they would say themselves were they to rise from the dead.

0
0
6 months 3 days ago
The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors.' To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one.
0
0
5 months ago

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

0
0

From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions.

0
0
Source
source
I, 5
5 months 3 days ago

Though the managing ourselves well in this part of our behavior has the name good-breeding, as if a peculiar effect of education; yet... young children should not be much perplexed about it... Teach them humility, and to be good-natur'd, if you can, and this sort of manners will not be wanting; civility being in truth nothing but a care not to shew any slighting or contempt of any one in conversation.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 145
2 months 4 weeks ago

I neither approve nor disapprove. I merely try to understand. Sexual freedom is as natural to newly tribalized youth as drugs.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples.

0
0
Source
source
26:18 (KJV)
3 months 2 weeks ago

All science must start with some assumptions as to the ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals. These assumptions are justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success in representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc suppositions.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 8: "The Quantum Theory", p. 189
1 month 1 week ago

Must we then speak of this subject also: and shall we write concerning things that are not to be told, and shall we publish things not to be divulged, and secrets not to be spoken aloud? Who indeed is Attis or Gallos; who the Mother of the Gods; what is the reason of this rule of Chastity; moreover for what cause has such an institution been established among us from remote antiquity; handed down to us indeed from the most ancient of the Phrygians, but accepted in the first place by the Greeks - and those not the vulgar herd, but the Athenians - taught by the event that they had not done well in ridiculing him that was performing the rites of the Great Mother. For they are said to have insulted and driven off the Gallos, as one who was making innovations in religion: because they did not understand the character of the goddess, or how that she was the very "Deo", "Rhea," and " "Demeter" so much honoured amongst them themselves.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Let us rejoice and give thanks. Not only are we become Christians, but we are become Christ. My brothers, do you understand the grace of God that is given us? Wonder, rejoice, for we are made Christ! If He is the Head, and we the members, then together He and we are the whole man.... This would be foolish pride on our part, were it not a gift of his bounty. But this is what He promised by the mouth of the Apostle: You are the body of Christ, and severally His members.

0
0
Source
source
(1 Cor. 12:27). p. 415

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul. Variant translation: Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

0
0
Source
source
IV, 3.
3 months 3 weeks ago

For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

0
0
Source
source
18:25 (KJV)
1 month 2 weeks ago

When the British came there was, throughout India, a system of communal schools, managed by the village communities. The agents of the East India Company destroyed these village communities, and took steps to replace the schools; even today, after a century of effort to restore them, they stand at only 66% of their number a hundred years ago. Hence, the 93 % illiteracy of India.

0
0
Source
source
(source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p.44).
3 months 3 weeks ago

We return to our analysis of qualities. Something preserves itself throughout this flux, something that passes into other things, but also stands against them as a being for itself. This something can exist only as the product of a process through which it integrates its otherness with its own proper being. Hegel says that its existence comes about through 'the negation of the negation.' The first negation is the otherness in which it turns, and the second is the incorporation of this other into its own self. Such a process presupposes that things possess a certain power over their movement, that they exist in a certain self-relation that enables them to 'mediate' their existential conditions.

0
0
Source
source
P. 132-133

What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) All that is from the gods is full of Providence. II, 3
3 months 3 weeks ago

Miracles are propitious accidents, the natural causes of which are too complicated to be readily understood.

0
0

One must be something in order to do something.

0
0
Source
source
Conversations with Eckermann
5 months 3 days ago

There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Now his principal doctrines were these. That atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe; and that everything else existed only in opinion.

0
0
Source
source
(trans. by Robert Drew Hicks 1925) Often paraphrased as "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion."
3 months 3 weeks ago

My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding. It is what lets me comprehend Buddha, but also what keeps me from following him.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 633
3 months 2 weeks ago

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Church and Home, Vol. 1 (1964) by United Methodist Church, and Evangelical United Brethren Church, p. 21.

We have no reason to fear lest a habit of conscientious inquiry should paralyse the actions of our daily life. But because it is not enough to say, "It is wrong to believe on unworthy evidence," without saying also what evidence is worthy, we shall now go on to inquire under what circumstances it is lawful to believe on the testimony of others; and then, further, we shall inquire more generally when and why we may believe that which goes beyond our own experience, or even beyond the experience of mankind.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

Practice is the best of all instructors.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 439
5 months 4 days ago

The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.

0
0
Source
source
Seventh Thesis
5 months 3 weeks ago

See a person's means (of getting things). Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character? See a person's "being", observe his motive, notice his result. How can a person conceal his character?

0
0
5 months 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
5 months 3 days ago

A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

0
0
Source
source
Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. II, sec. 11
3 months 3 weeks ago

He who has never envied the vegetable has missed the human drama. 

0
0
Source
source
p. 178, first American edition
4 months 3 weeks ago

He was seized and dragged off to King Philip, and being asked who he was, replied, "A spy upon your insatiable greed."

0
0
Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 43. Cf. Plutarch, Moralia, 70CD.
5 months 4 days ago

Now, as there is an infinity of possible universes in the Ideas of God, and as only one of them can exist, there must be a sufficient reason for God's choice, which determines him toward one rather than another. And this reason can be found only in the fitness, or the degrees of perfection, that these worlds contain, since each possible thing has the right to claim existence in proportion to the perfection it involves.

0
0
Source
source
La monadologie (53 & 54).
3 months 3 weeks ago

Big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries. It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries - revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

Civilization gives the barbarian or tribal man an eye for an ear and is now at odds with the electronic world.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 30)
1 month 2 weeks ago

No man can suffer both severely and for a long time; Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short.

0
0
5 months 2 days ago

There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?

0
0
Source
source
"Of Women"
1 month 2 weeks ago

It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2 : On Youth
3 weeks 6 days ago

And first the Doctrine that all their Theory is grounded on, seems to me Inevident and undemonstrated, not to say precarious.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. IV, par. 237
5 months 2 days ago

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection. Interview with Irwin Ross, September 1957;If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

0
0
Source
source
Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (2005), p. 385
2 months 4 weeks ago

All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

We can get some idea of a whole from a part, but never knowledge or exact opinion. Special histories therefore contribute very little to the knowledge of the whole and conviction of its truth. It is only indeed by study of the interconnexion of all the particulars, their resemblances and differences, that we are enabled at least to make a general survey, and thus derive both benefit and pleasure from history.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

Every toiling Manchester, its smoke and soot all burnt, ought it not, among so many world-wide conquests, to have a hundred acres or so of free greenfield, with trees on it, conquered, for its little children to disport in; for its all-conquering workers to take a breath of twilight air in? You would say so! A willing Legislature could say so with effect. A willing Legislature could say very many things! And to whatsoever 'vested interest,' or such like, stood up, gainsaying merely, "I shall lose profits,"-the willing Legislature would answer, "Yes, but my sons and daughters will gain health, and life, and a soul."-

0
0

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

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia