Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
John Herschel
John Herschel
1 month 2 weeks ago
Of the splendid constellation of great...

Of the splendid constellation of great names... we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory," - so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence, - so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On the Theory of Light (1828) p.494
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 1 week ago
Although the most acute judges of...
Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 5 days ago
And when all the world....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 5 days ago
It takes intellectual courage to kick...

It takes intellectual courage to kick yourself out of your emotional incredulity and persuade yourself that there is no other rational choice.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Intellectual and Moral Courage of Atheism
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 5 days ago
Every soul, the philosopher says, is...

Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VII, 63
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 5 days ago
Do not act as if thou...

Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IV. 17, trans. George Long
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months 1 week ago
I believe that the advance of...

I believe that the advance of science depends upon the free competition of thought, and thus upon freedom, and that it must come to an end if freedom is destroyed (though it may well continue for some time in some fields, especially in technology).

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 10 "Corroboration, or How a Theory Stands up to Tests", section 85: The Path of Science, p. 279, note 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
1 month 1 week ago
It is as to whether its...

It is as to whether its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentleman for his own amusement is not.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
It is impossible to imagine a...

It is impossible to imagine a more dramatic and horrifying combination of scientific triumph with political and moral failure than has been shown to the world in the destruction of Hiroshima. From the scientific point of view, the atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination of genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
Ever from one who comes to-morrow...

Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Merlin's Song, II
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
5 months 3 days ago
If it recedes one day, leaving...

If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our civilization, the structuralist invasion might become a question or the historian of ideas, or perhaps even an object. But the historian would be deceived if he came to this pass: by the very act of considering the structuralist invasion as an object he would forget its meaning and would forget that what is at stake, first of all, is an adventure of vision, a conversion of the way of putting questions to any object posed before us, to historical objects-his own- in particular. And, unexpectedly among these, the literary objects.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Force and Signification
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 5 days ago
Not to display anger or other...

Not to display anger or other emotions. To be free of passion and yet full of love.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Hays translation) I, 9
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 3 weeks ago
Such night in England ne'er had...

Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Armada, l. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
Pi's face was masked, and it...

Pi's face was masked, and it was understood that none could behold it and live. But piercing eyes looked out from the mask, inexorable, cold and enigmatic.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Mathematician's Nightmare", Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories, 1954
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
9 months 2 weeks ago
The end of life is much easier to imagine

Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 months 1 day ago
I have often felt a bitter...

I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Goethes Gespraeche
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 3 days ago
The constitution of madness as mental...

The constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, bears witness to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the exchange between madness and reason was carried out. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such a silence.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface to 1961 edition
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
The survival of democracy depends on...

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 6 (p. 47)
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 1 week ago
I doubt not, but from self-evident...

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book IV, Ch. 3, sec. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
2 months 1 day ago
But the philosophy that killed off...

But the philosophy that killed off truth proclaims unlimited tolerance for the "language games" (i.e., opinions, beliefs and doctrines) that people find useful. The outcome is expressed in the words of Karl Kraus: "Alles ist wahr und auch das Gegenteil." "Everything is true, and also its opposite."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Our Merry Apocalypse" (1997), as quoted in Is God Happy? Selected Essays (Basic Books, 2013), p. 318
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
4 months 2 weeks ago
A grievous crime indeed against religion...

A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 4 weeks ago
The idea that an aim can...

The idea that an aim can be reasonable for its own sake-on the basis of virtues that insight reveals it to have in itself-without reference to some kind of subjective gain or advantage, is utterly alien to subjective reason, even where it rises above the consideration of immediate utilitarian values and devotes itself to reflection about the social order as a whole.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 1 week ago
Man needed one moral constitution to...

Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, concluding paragraph
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
1 month 2 weeks ago
If wandering is the liberation from...

If wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of the "stranger" presents the unity, as it were, of these two characteristics.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 402; Opening line.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months 1 week ago
I do not believe in what...

I do not believe in what is often called... 'exact terminology'... [or] in definitions... [they] do not... add to exactness... I especially dislike pretentious terminology and... pseudo-exactness concerned with it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 1 week ago
The act of navigation is not...

The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. ... As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 2 weeks ago
To have faith is to trust...

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Essence of Alan Watts
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
2 months 4 days ago
Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have...

Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of commerce.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Theory of the Four Movements (1808), G. Jones, ed. (1966), p. 269
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
Every one knows that there are...

Every one knows that there are no real forests in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London alderman.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 27, pg. 803.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months ago
The work we desire and prize...

The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
The same good sense, that directs...

The same good sense, that directs men in the ordinary occurrences of life, is not hearkened to in religious matters, which are supposed to be placed altogether above the cognizance of human reason.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
3 months 2 weeks ago
A book is a small cog...

A book is a small cog in a much more complex, external machinery. Writing is a flow among others; it enjoys no special privilege and enters into relationships of current and counter-current, of back-wash with other flows - the flows of shit, sperm, speech, action, eroticism, money, politics, etc. Like Bloom, writing on the sand with one hand and masturbating with the other - two flows in what relationship?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
from I have Nothing to Admit
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
We can pool information about experiences....

We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Page 159
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months 2 weeks ago
Now, moral philosophers generally prefer to...

Now, moral philosophers generally prefer to talk about virtues, or about (specific) duties, rights, and so on, rather than about moral images of the world. There are obvious reasons for this; nevertheless, I think that it is a mistake, and that Kant is profoundly right. What we require in moral philosophy is, first and foremost, a moral image of the world, or rather--since, here again, I am more of a pluralist than Kant--a number of complementary moral images of the world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture III: Equality and Our Moral Image of the World
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is a cliché that the...

It is a cliché that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is "civilized." Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with "positive" scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively. What, for example, could the symbol of the sunset of a dynasty, like the Japanese, mean to him when he knows scientifically what the sun is: merely a star, at which one can even fire missiles.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 138
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
4 months 5 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
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 2 weeks ago
The will is not free to...

The will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Thesis 10
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
5 months 1 week ago
We feel and know….

We feel and know that we are eternal.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part V, Prop. XXIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
Freedom of opinion can only exist...

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure...

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 443
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 4 days ago
One of the most difficult of...

One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 5 days ago
All the evolution we know of...

All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. VI, par. 191
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months ago
With his sharp power of vision,...

With his sharp power of vision, resolute power of action, I doubt not he could have learned to write Books withal, and speak fluently enough;-he did harder things than writing of Books. This kind of man is precisely he who is fit for doing manfully all things you will set him on doing.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
5 months 2 weeks ago
In my opinion…

In my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sources: Correspondence with Mersenne note for line 7 (1640), page 36, Die Wiener Zeit page 532 (2008); StackExchange Math Q/A Where did Descartes write...
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
A masterpiece of art has in...

A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Art
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 1 day ago
My Father is glorified in this,...

My Father is glorified in this, that you keep bearing much fruit and prove yourselves my disciples. Just as the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; remain in my love. If you observe my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have observed the commandments of the Father and remain in his love. “These things I have spoken to you, so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full. This is my commandment, that you love one another just as I have loved you. No one has love greater than this, that someone should surrender his life in behalf of his friends. You are my friends if you do what I am commanding you. I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master does. But I have called you friends, because I have made known to you all the things I have heard from my Father.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
15:8-15, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
1 month 1 week ago
All significant concepts of the modern...

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development-in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver-but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 1 week ago
She with one breath attunes the...

She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 4 days ago
The way you use the word...

The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean - but, rather, what you mean.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 50e
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 2 weeks ago
You must go to Mahometanism, to...

You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis & Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter (2 March 1853), quoted in Suggestions for Thought : Selections and Commentaries (1994), edited by Michael D. Calabria and Janet A. MacRae, p. xiii
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 1 week ago
The life-giving Spirit is the very...

The life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you; the first thing the life-giving Spirit says is that you must enter into death, that you must die to, it is this way in order that you many not take Christianity in vain. A life-giving Spirit, that is the invitation; who would not willingly take hold of it! But die first, that is the halt!

0
⚖0
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 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia