Skip to main content
3 months 3 weeks ago

The free being with absolute freedom proposes to itself certain ends. It wills because it wills, and the willing of an object is itself the last ground of such willing. Thus we have previously determined a free being, and any other determination would destroy the conception of an Ego, or of a free being. Now, if it could be so arranged that the willing of an unlawful end would necessarily - in virtue of an always effective law - result in the very reverse of that end, then the unlawful will would always ANNIHILATE ITSELF. A person could not will that end for the very reason because he did will it; his unlawful will would become the ground of its own annihilation, as the will is indeed always its own last ground.

0
0
Source
source
p. 193
1 month 2 weeks ago

Ever since prehistoric antiquity one field of study after another has crossed the divide between what the historian might call its prehistory as a science and its history proper. These transitions to maturity have seldom been so sudden or so unequivocal as my necessarily schematic discussion may have implied. But neither have they been historically gradual, coextensive, that is to say, with the entire development of the fields within which they occurred.

0
0
Source
source
p. 22
5 months 5 days ago

The believing man hath the Holy Ghost; and where the Holy Ghost dwelleth, He will not suffer a man to be idle, butstirreth him up to all exercises of piety and godliness, and of true religion, to the love of God, to the patient suffering of afflictions, to prayer, to thanksgiving, and the exercise of charity towards all men.

0
0
Source
source
p. 320
4 months 4 weeks ago

Wit and good nature meeting in a fair young lady as they do in you make the best resemblance of an angel that we know; and he that is blessed with the conversation and friendship of a person so extraordinary enjoys all that remains of paradise in this world.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Mary Clarke (7 May 1682), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 221
5 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing can discourage the appetite for divinity in the heart of man.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing of the All is either empty or superfluous.

0
0
Source
source
fr. 13
4 months 4 weeks ago

A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous.

0
0
Source
source
Attributed to Russell at the end of Isaac Asimov's short story Franchise with no specific source given.
3 weeks 6 days ago

I have always said, and always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.

0
0
Source
source
Attributed to Jefferson by Daniel Webster in a letter of 15 June 1852 addressed to Professor Pease, recalling a Sunday spent with Jefferson more than a quarter of a century before.
3 weeks 6 days ago

The mother principle is that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.

0
0

There are cultures that can only picture their origins and not their ends. Some are obsessed by both. Two other positions are possible: only picturing one's end - our own culture; picturing neither beginning nor end - the coming culture.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 1
3 weeks 6 days ago

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms within his own lands.

0
0
Source
source
Draft Constitution for Virginia (June 1776)
4 months 3 weeks ago

When you have reached your own room, be kind to those who have chosen different doors and to those who are still in the hall. If they are wrong they need your prayers all the more; and if they are your enemies, then you are under orders to pray for them. That is one of the rules common to the whole house.

0
0
Source
source
Preface
5 months 5 days ago

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 13
3 weeks 4 days ago

Nothing great has great beginnings.

0
0
Source
source
XXIII, p. 73
3 months 3 weeks ago

The abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary. ... The outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

Money, then, appears as this overturning power both against the individual and against the bonds of society, etc., which claim to be essences in themselves. It transforms fidelity into infidelity, love into hate, hate into love, virtue into vice, vice into virtue, servant into master, master into servant, idiocy into intelligence and intelligence into idiocy.

0
0
Source
source
"The Power of Money in Bourgeois Society" p. 105, The Marx-Engels Reader
4 months 3 weeks ago

Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.

0
0
Source
source
Social Aims
1 month 1 week ago

Lay hold of today's task, and you will not need to depend so much upon tomorrow's. While we are postponing, life speeds by.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Emptiness empties the one seeing into what is seen.

0
0
3 months 5 days ago

I might try to save the view that 'future contingents' have no truth value by saying that even present-tense statements have no truth value if they refer to the outcome of events that are so far away that a causal signal informing me of the outcome could not have reached me-now without traveling faster than light. In other words, I might attempt saying that statements about events that are in neither the upper half nor the lower half of my light-cone have no truth value. In addition, statements about events in the upper half of my light-cone have no truth value, since they are in my future according to every coordinate system. So only statements about events in the lower half of my light-cone have a truth value; only events that are in 'my past* according to all observers are determined.

0
0
Source
source
Time and physical geometry
3 months 3 weeks ago

To be is to be cornered.

0
0
4 months 2 days ago

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller
4 months 4 weeks ago

What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which describes a loftier course through purer stratum. It rises on me like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading through some far stratum in the sky.

0
0
Source
source
1850
1 month 3 weeks ago

It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is impossible. Not only would it make every experiment fruitless, but even if we wished to do so, it could not be done. Every man has his own conception of the world, and this he cannot so easily lay aside. We must, for example, use language, and our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. IX: Hypotheses in Physics, Tr. George Bruce Halsted
1 month 1 week ago

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always, and indeed then most truly when it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances. Care for distress at home and care for distress elsewhere do but help each other if, working together, they wake men in sufficient numbers from their thoughtlessness, and call into life a new spirit of humanity.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. XI : Conclusion
3 months 3 weeks ago

How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks 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
2 months 1 week ago

I have had to suffer the violence and brutality that comes with rising fundamentalism, and I've asked myself how a society that is the cradle of peace, the land of Gandhi and Buddha, could be reduced to one of the most volatile societies in the world.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

0
0
Source
source
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
5 months 4 weeks ago

But it is better perhaps to examine next the universal good, and to enquire in what sense the expression is used. Though such an investigation is likely to be difficult, because the persons who have introduced these ideas are our friends. Yet it will perhaps appear the best, and indeed the right course, at least for the preservation of truth, to do away with private feelings, especially as we are philosophers; for since both are dear to us, we are bound to prefer the truth.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.

0
0
Source
source
Epilogue, p. 235
4 months 3 weeks ago

When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.

0
0
Source
source
Letter XIV
4 months 2 weeks ago

Truth is great and its effectiveness endures. 

0
0
Source
source
Maxim no. 5. Cf. 1 Esdras 4:41
4 months 3 weeks ago

"And I say also this. I do not think the forest would be so bright, nor the water so warm, nor love so sweet, if there were no danger in the lakes."

0
0
Source
source
Hyoi, p. 76
4 months 1 week ago

Disbelieve nothing wonderful concerning the gods, nor concerning divine dogmas.

0
0
Source
source
Symbol 4
2 months 4 days ago

Near-ubiquitous technological monitoring is a consequence of the decline of cohesive societies that has occurred alongside the rising demand for individual freedom.

0
0
Source
source
In the Puppet Theatre: An Iron Mountain and a Shifting Spectacle (p. 121)
1 month 1 week ago

The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III: Etatism
4 months 3 weeks ago

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

0
0
Source
source
Worship
3 months 2 weeks ago

The metaphysical apologia at least betrayed the injustice of the established order through the incongruence of concept and reality. The impartiality of scientific language deprived what was powerless of the strength to make itself heard and merely provided the existing order with a neutral sign for itself. Such neutrality is more metaphysical than metaphysics.

0
0
Source
source
E. Jephcott, trans., p. 17.
3 months 1 week ago

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."

0
0
Source
source
The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143.
4 months 4 weeks ago

It seems that sin is geographical. From this conclusion, it is only a small step to the further conclusion that the notion of "sin" is illusory, and that the cruelty habitually practised in punishing it is unnecessary.

0
0
Source
source
A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 283
3 months 1 week ago

When power is separated from any communicative context, it becomes naked violence.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

By Hercules, the state would have sustained a great loss if you had not brought him forth from the oblivion to which his two splendid qualities, eloquence and independence, had consigned him: he is now read, is popular, is received into men's hands and bosoms, and fears no old age: but as for those who butchered him, before long men will cease to speak even of their crimes, the only things by which they are remembered.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

During the Vietnam War, which lasted longer than any war we've ever been in -- and which we lost -- every respectable artist in this country was against the war. It was like a laser beam. We were all aimed in the same direction. The power of this weapon turns out to be that of a custard pie dropped from a stepladder six feet high.

0
0
Source
source
Vonnegut at 80 Interview with David Hoppe Alternet
4 months 2 weeks ago

"Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young."

0
0
Source
source
Cæsar Augustus
5 months 3 weeks ago

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

0
0

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

0
0
Source
source
K 68
3 months 4 weeks ago

You may have made a Revolution, but not a Reformation. You may have subverted Monarchy, but not recover'd freedom.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 46

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia