Skip to main content
2 months 3 weeks ago

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us - they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture VIII, "The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification"
2 months 1 week ago

Brave men were living before Agamemnon. 

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, ode ix, line 25
1 month 6 days ago

Barbusse has shown us that the Outsider is a man who cannot live in the comfortable, insulated world of the bourgeois, accepting what he sees and touches as reality.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
2 months 3 weeks ago

By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by extracting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor...

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IV, p. 450 (On Highland Clearances).
3 months 1 week ago

Now, as the Word of God is the Son of God, so the love of God is the Holy Spirit.

0
0
Source
source
Art. 8
2 months 2 weeks ago

Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. ... It is possible only because we possess a certain kind of insight - the capacity to transcend ourselves in thought.If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the situation is not absurd until the perception arises), then what reason can we have to resent or escape it? ... It results from the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter of agony unless we make it so. Nor need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud. Such dramatics even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

0
0
Source
source
"The Absurd" (1971), p. 23.
3 weeks 4 days ago

I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy - because we're experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that's what's going on now.

0
0
Source
source
Interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
2 months 3 weeks ago

As geological time goes, it is but a moment since the human race began and only the twinkling of an eye since the arts of civilization were first invented. In spite of some alarmists, it is hardly likely that our species will completely exterminate itself. And so long as man continues to exist, we may be pretty sure that, whatever he may suffer for a time, and whatever brightness may be eclipsed, he will emerge sooner or later, perhaps strengthened and reinvigorated by a period of mental sleep. The universe is vast and men are but tiny specks on an insignificant planet. But the more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.

0
0
Source
source
"If We are to Survive this Dark Time", The New York Times Magazine, 9/3/1950
3 months 3 weeks ago

And surely to know what this good is, is of great importance for the conduct of life, for in that case we shall be like archers shooting at a definite mark, and shall be more likely to do what is right. But, if this is the case, we must try to comprehend, in outline at least, what it is and to which of the sciences it belongs.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. There is but one moral code that the absurd man can accept, the one that is not separated from God: the one that is dictated. But it so happens that he lives outside that God. As for the others (I mean also immoralism), the absurd man sees nothing in them but justifications and he has nothing to justify. I start out here from the principle of his innocence. That innocence is to be feared. "Everything is permitted," exclaims Ivan Karamazov. That, too, smacks of the absurd. But on condition that it not be taken in a vulgar sense. I don't know whether or not it has been sufficiently pointed out that it is not an outburst of relief or of joy, but rather a bitter acknowledgment of a fact.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 184)
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is the privilege of true genius, and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.

0
0
Source
source
"Siècle de Louis XIV," ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation," Criticism of the Kantian philosophy, 1818
2 months 3 weeks ago

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.

0
0
Source
source
p. 491
3 days ago

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Golden Treasury of Thought : A Gathering of Quotations from the Best Ancient and Modern Authors (1873) by Theodore Taylor, p. 227
1 month 6 days ago

Now he saw the problem with great clarity. If he lived here, life would be pleasant and safe. But it would also be predictable. A child could be born here, grow up here, die here, without ever experiencing the excitement of discovery. Why did Dona question him endlessly about his life in the burrow and his journey to the country of the ants? Because for her, it represented a world that was dangerous and full of fascinating possibilities. For the children of this underground city, life was a matter of repetition, of habit. And this, he suddenly realized, was the heart of the problem. Habit. Habit was a stifling, warm blanket that threatened you with suffocation and lulled the mind into a state of perpetual nagging dissatisfaction. Habit meant the inability to escape from yourself, to change and develop . . .

0
0
Source
source
pp. 132-133
3 months 1 day ago

For the history of the centuries that have passed since the birth of Christ nowhere reveals conditions like those of the present. There has never been such building and planting in the world. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth? There have arisen all kinds of art and sculpture, embroidery and engraving, the like of which has not been seen during the whole Christian era. In addition men are so delving into the mysteries of things that today a boy of twenty knows more than twenty doctors formerly knew.

0
0
Source
source
Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent, Luke 21:25-36 (1522), as translated in The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker
2 months 3 weeks ago

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

0
0
Source
source
"Fatherland", 1764
1 month 6 days ago

The progress of human knowledge depends on maintaining that touch of scepticism even about the most "unquestionable" truths. A century ago, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was regarded as scientifically unshakeable; today, most biologists have their reservations about it. Fifty years ago, Freud's sexual theory of neurosis was accepted by most psychiatrists; today, it is widely recognized that his methods were highly questionable. At the turn of this century, a scientist who questioned Newton's theory of gravity would have been regarded as insane; twenty years later, it had been supplanted by Einstein's theory, although, significantly, few people actually understood it. It seems perfectly conceivable that our descendants of the twenty-second century will wonder how any of us could have been stupid enough to have been taken in by Darwin, Freud or Einstein.

0
0
Source
source
p. 4
2 months 3 weeks ago

The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or-if they think there is not-at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Chapter 5, "The Practical Conclusion"

The first remark we have to make, and which - though already presented more than once - cannot be too often repeated when the occasion seems to call for it, - is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle - Plan of Existence - Law - is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as such - however true in itself - is not completely real.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Great joys, why do they bring us sadness? Because there remains from these excesses only a feeling of irrevocable loss and desertion which reaches a high degree of negative intensity. At such moments, instead of a gain, one keenly feels loss. sadness accompanies all those events in which life expends itself. its intensity is equal to its loss. Thus death causes the greatest sadness.

0
0
2 days ago

To say that all philosophy is writing is, minimally, to say that it is never the transparent expression of thought.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 3, Deconstruction and Criticism, p. 46
2 months 3 weeks ago

Nor mourn the unalterable Days That Genius goes and Folly stays.

0
0
Source
source
In Memoriam E. B. E., st. 9
1 month 3 weeks ago

The conception of Rights involves that when men are to live in a community, each must so restrict his freedom as to permit the coexistence of the freedom of all others. But it does not involve that this particular person, A, is to restrict his freedom by the freedom of those particular persons, B, C, and D. That it has happened so that I, A, must conform myself particularly to the freedom of these, B, C, and D, of all other men, is purely the result of my living together with them; and I so live with them, simply by my free-will, not because there is an obligation for me to do so.

0
0
Source
source
P. 23-24
3 months 1 day ago

We believe that the very beginning and end of salvation, and the sum of Christianity, consists of faith in Christ, who by His blood alone, and not by any works of ours, has put away sin, and destroyed the power of death.

0
0
Source
source
p. 224
2 months 3 weeks ago

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness. ... In former times the English plays used to finish with a petition for the King. The old Indian dramas close with these words: "May all living beings be delivered from pain." Tastes differ; but in my opinion there is no more beautiful prayer than this.

0
0
Source
source
Part III, Ch. VIII, 4, pp. 213-214 First line often paraphrased as: Compassion is the basis of all morality.
3 months 3 weeks ago

I don't believe in flying saucers... The energy requirements of interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

The phenomenon of the will [in Epictetus ] [...] a different mental ability whose chief characteristic is that it speaks an imperative even when it commands nothing but our ability to think. The goal is to annihilate reality insofar it concerns me.

0
0
Source
source
Hannah Arendt Lecture on Thinking
2 weeks 2 days ago

Faith exalts the human heart, by removing it from the market-place, making it sacred and unexchangeable. Under the jurisdiction of religion our deeper feelings are sacralized, so as to become raw material for the ethical life: the life lived in judgement.

0
0
Source
source
"Avant-garde and Kitsch" (p. 91)
1 month 3 weeks ago

I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.

0
0
3 months 2 days ago

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 20
1 month 1 week ago

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

0
0
Source
source
p. 102.

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

0
0
Source
source
A 11
2 months 3 weeks ago

Nobody knows what is going to happen because so much depends on an enormous number of variables, on simple hazard. On the other hand if you look at history retrospectively, then, even though it was contingent, you can tell a story that makes sense.... Jewish history, for example, in fact had its ups and downs, its, enmities and its friendships, as every history of all people has. The notion that there is one unilinear history is of course false. But if you look at it after the experience of Auschwitz it looks as though all of history-or at least history since the Middle Ages - had no other aim than Auschwitz.... This, is the real problem of every philosophy of history how is it possible that in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn't have happened otherwise?

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

0
0
2 weeks 6 days ago

4 ways: Agnosticism, Relativism, Amorality, Morality. 

1) I don't know. 2) Everybody is different. 3) Do whatever you can. 4) Do what you should.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Humility is the fruit of inner security and wise maturity. To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status. And, even more pointedly, to be humble is to revel in the accomplishments or potentials of others -- especially those with whom one identifies and to whom one is linked organically.

0
0
Source
source
(p38)
3 months 1 week ago

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

0
0
Source
source
St. Augustine, Sermo 169, 11, 13: PL 38, 923 as quoted in Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S. J.. Saved: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics (p. 15). Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition.
2 months 2 weeks ago

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.

0
0
Source
source
(p20)
1 month 2 weeks 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
Just now

Science is not distinguished from myth by science being literally true and myth only a type of poetic analogy. While their aims are different, both are composed of symbols we use to deal with a slippery world.

0
0
Source
source
Beyond the Last Thought: Freud's cigars and the long way round to Nirvana (p. 96)
3 months 1 week ago

Much learning does not teach understanding.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

There are two sides to every question.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Lives of Eminent Philosophers, by Diogenes Laërtius, Book IX, Sec. 51
2 weeks 5 days ago

When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things.

0
0
Source
source
The Sire de Maletroit's Door.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia