Skip to main content
7 months 3 weeks ago

It depends only on the weakness of our organs and of our self-excitement (Selbstberuhrung), that we do not see ourselves in a Fairy-world. All Fabulous Tales (Mahrchen) are merely dreams of that home world, which is everywhere and nowhere. The higher powers in us, which one day as Genies, shall fulfil our will, are, for the present, Muses, which refresh us on our toilsome course with sweet remembrances.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

0
0
6 months 4 weeks ago

The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 30)
8 months 4 weeks ago

There is no virtue they should be excited to, nor fault they should be kept from, which I do not think they may be convinced of; but it must be by such reasons as their age and understandings are capable of, and those propos'd always in very few and plain words.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 81
8 months 4 weeks ago

It is, therefore, a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave: Though at the same time, it appears somewhat strange, that a maxim should be true in politics, which is false in fact. But to satisfy us on this head, we may consider, that men are generally more honest in their private than in their public capacity, and will go greater lengths to serve a party, than when their own private interest is alone concerned. Honour is a great check upon mankind: But where a considerable body of men act together, this check is, in a great measure, removed; since a man is sure to be approved of by his own party, for what promotes the common interest; and he soon learns to despise the clamours of adversaries.

0
0
Source
source
Part I, Essay 6: Of The Independency of Parliament; first line often paraphrased as "It is a just political maxim, that every man must be supposed a knave."
6 months 3 weeks ago

A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.

0
0
6 months 4 days ago

Even if I set out to make a film about a fillet of sole, it would be about me.

0
0
Source
source
On the autobiographical nature of his films, in The Atlantic
4 months 3 weeks ago

Only now, as we feel the onslaught behind us, do we begin dimly to apprehend why the animals fought, begot, and died; and behind them the plants; and behind these the huge reserve of inorganic forces. We are moved by pity, gratitude, and esteem for our old comrades-in-arms. They toiled, loved, and died to open a road for our coming. We also toil with the same delight, agony, and exaltation for the sake of Someone Else who with every courageous deed of ours proceeds one step farther. All our struggle once more will have a purpose much greater than we, wherein our toils, our miseries, and our crimes will have become useful and holy.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Buddhists know this....

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Wait for the appointed hour.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Lives of the Sophists by Eunapius (online exerpt)
7 months 3 weeks ago

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

No man with a genius for legislation has appeared in America. They are rare in the history of the world. There are orators, politicians, and eloquent men, by the thousand; but the speaker has not yet opened his mouth to speak who is capable of settling the much-vexed questions of the day.

0
0
8 months 1 day ago

When we desire to confine our words, we commonly say they are spoken under the rose.

0
0
Source
source
Pseudodoxia Epidemica Book 5, Ch. 22, sect. 6
5 months 2 weeks ago

I think he once told us his first short clothes were a hull made mostly or wholly of leather. We all only laughed, for it is now long ago. Thou dear father! Through what stern obstructions was thy way to manhood to be forced, and for us and for our travelling to be made smooth!

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Wealth is like sea-water; the more we drink, the thirstier we become.

0
0
Source
source
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 347
7 months 3 weeks ago

To be or not to be...Neither one nor the other.

0
0
6 months 5 days ago

Humans are prone to status quo bias. So let's do a thought-experiment. Imagine we stumble across an advanced civilisation that has abolished predation, disease, famine, and all the horrors of primitive Darwinian life. The descendants of archaic lifeforms flourish unmolested in their wildlife parks - free living, but not "wild". Should we urge scrapping their regime of compassionate stewardship of the living world - and a return to asphyxiation, disembowelling and being eaten alive? Or is a happy biosphere best conserved intact? Reply to "Should humans wipe out all carnivorous animals so the succeeding generations of herbivores can live in peace?"

0
0
Source
source
, Quora, 16 Jun. 2018
9 months 5 days ago

As Christ had recommended peace during the whole of his life, mark with what anxiety he enforces it at the approach of his dissolution. Love one another, says he; as I have loved you, so love one another; and again, my peace I give unto you, my peace I leave you. Do you observe the legacy he leaves to those whom he loves? Is it a pompous retinue, a large estate, or empire? Nothing of this kind. What is it then? Peace he giveth, his peace he leaveth; peace, not only with our near connections, but with enemies and strangers!

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 7, p. 262-3
7 months 2 weeks ago

We cannot credit our enjoyment of a flower or of the atmosphere of a room to an autonomous esthetic instinct. Man's esthetic responsiveness relates in its prehistory to various forms of idolatry; his belief in the goodness or sacredness of a thing precedes his enjoyment of its beauty. The applies no less to such concepts as freedom and humanity.

0
0
Source
source
p. 36.

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

0
0
Source
source
L 23
6 months 4 weeks ago

Although it is commonly supposed that war making is the specific activity of nations, the blind rage that motivates war destroys the very social bonds that make nations possible. Of course, it can fortify the nationalism of a nation, producing a provisional coherence bolstered by war and enmity, but it also erodes the social relations that make politics possible. The power of destruction unleashed by war breaks social ties and produces anger, revenge, and distrust ("embitterment") such that it becomes unclear whether reparation is possible, undermining not only those relations that may have been built in the past, but also the future possibility of peaceful coexistence.

0
0
Source
source
p. 154
7 months 2 weeks ago

The medieval peasant prior to the 13th century does not compare himself to the feudal lord, nor does the artisan compare himself to the knight. ... From the king down to the hangman and the prostitute, everyone is "noble" in the sense that he considers himself as irreplaceable. In the "system of free competition," on the other hand, the notions on life's tasks and their value are not fundamental, they are but secondary derivations of the desire of all to surpass all the others. No "place" is more than a transitory point in this universal chase.

0
0
Source
source
L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 56
9 months 3 weeks ago

It is of this sort of divine service I used the expression that, in comparison with the Christianity of the New Testament, it is playing Christianity. The expression is essentially true and characterizes the thing perfectly. For what does it mean to play, when one reflects how the word must be understood in this connection? It means to imitate, to counterfeit, a danger when there is no danger, and to do it in such a way that the more art is applied to it, the more delusive the pretense is that the danger is present.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today's factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 15: Preventing Human Extinction (p. 177)
5 months 3 weeks ago

The most obvious failure of organized religions is surely that almost all of them have made a mockery of what their founders taught.

0
0
Source
source
p. 267
8 months 2 weeks ago

The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual. It belongs, even in minor cases, to the ceremonies by which power is manifested.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter One, The body of the condemned
8 months 2 weeks ago

The different pieces of evidence did not constitute so many neutral elements, until such time as they could be gathered together into a single body of evidence that would bring the final certainty of guilt. Each piece of evidence aroused a particular degree of abomination. Guilt did not begin when all the evidence was gathered together; piece by piece, it was constituted by each of the elements that made it possible to recognize a guilty person. Thus a semi-proof did not leave the suspect innocent until such time as it was completed; it made him semi-guilty; slight evidence of a serious crime marked someone as slightly criminal. In short, penal demonstration did not obey a dualistic system: true or false; but a principle of continuous gradation; a degree reached in the demonstration already formed a degree of guilt and consequently involved a degree of punishment.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter One, The body of the condemned, pp.23
7 months 3 weeks ago

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.

0
0
Source
source
Opening lines of Concerning the Gods (DK 80 B4).
6 months 2 weeks ago

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

0
0
Source
source
The Armada, l. 34
2 months 2 days ago

Religions have to accept universal human rights and respect that reality IS reality...then, it's really just cultural balance that becomes an issue. It's easier to move the location of a person than it is to change their minds...that's a reality we have to face.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought the practices that we accept rest.

0
0
Source
source
"Practicing criticism, or, is it really important to think?", interview by Didier Eribon, May 30-31, 1981, in Politics, Philosophy, Culture, ed. L. Kriztman (1988), p. 155
8 months 3 weeks ago

No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon.

0
0
Source
source
"The Will to Believe" p. 15
8 months 4 weeks ago

There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible.

0
0
Source
source
La monadologie (33).
9 months 3 weeks ago

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

The cause of anger is the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not be lightly entertained. We ought not to fly into a rage even when the injury appears to be open and distinct: for some false things bear the semblance of truth. We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.

0
0
Source
source
De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 22, line 2 Alternate translation: Time discovers truth. (translator unknown).
5 months 2 weeks ago

The infinite, absolute character of Virtue has passed into a finite, conditional one; it is no longer a worship of the Beautiful and Good; but a calculation of the Profitable.

0
0
9 months 3 weeks ago

Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.

0
0

What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed...

0
0
Source
source
B 52
8 months 3 weeks ago

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

This is how I feel about the discussion of being. It's using words to describe.. not prescribe or prohibit...

AI: A nosegay is a small bouquet of flowers, usually fragrant ones, traditionally held in the hand or pinned to clothing. 

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

Kant ... discovered "the scandal of reason," that is the fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless cannot help thinking about.

0
0
Source
source
p. 14
7 months 5 days ago

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in firs and starts . It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines- real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. An organ-machine is plugged into an energy-source-machine: the one produces a flow that the other interrupts The breast is a machine that produces milk, and the mouth a machine coupled to it.

0
0
Source
source
The Desiring Machine
8 months 3 weeks ago

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 27, § 370 Variant translation: To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia