Skip to main content
8 months 2 weeks ago

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.

0
0
Source
source
1859
3 weeks 4 days ago

I honestly had never even heard of Bias before I started doing this....

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

0
0
Source
source
Book 2, Ch. 29 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
9 months 2 weeks ago

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 261)
7 months 1 week ago

Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country's productive forces.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

The most thought provoking thing in our thought provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

0
0
Source
source
What is Called Thinking? (1951-1952), as translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray
7 months 1 week ago

Criticism is a misconception: we must read not to understand others but to understand ourselves.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

We unfold out of the Idea of Space the propositions of geometry, which are plainly truths of the most rigorous necessity and universality. But if the idea of space were merely collected from observation of the external world, it could never enable or entitle us to assert such propositions: it could never authorize us to say that not merely some lines, but all lines, not only have, but must have, those properties which geometry teaches. Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter; and indeed of which she but half comprehends the meaning.

0
0
Source
source
Part I Of Ideas, Book I Of Ideas in General, Chap. 12 The Fundamental Ideas Are Not Derived From Experience
6 months 1 week ago

There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless - too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume responsibility for so much. This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.

0
0
Source
source
There Is Simply Too Much to Think About (1992), pp. 173-174
6 months 3 weeks ago

Being precedes identity. 
Existence precedes essence. 

Contingent identity subgroups are never more important than the deterministic universal evolution. 

"Precedence Culture" builds a culture around being, before choice, rather than identity particularity that is contingent and after choice. Identity particularity can't even exist without deterministic emergence. Respect life first.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

There were many special laws affecting the several kings inscribed about the temples, but the most important was the following: They were not to take up arms against one another, and they were all to come to the rescue if any one in any of their cities attempted to overthrow the royal house; like their ancestors, they were to deliberate in common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the descendants of Atlas. And the king was not to have the power of life and death over any of his kinsmen unless he had the assent of the majority of the ten.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world-or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.

0
0
Source
source
p. 198; Cited in: P. Slovic (1972) From Shakespeare to Simon: Speculations - And Some Evidence About Man's Ability to Process Information. Oregon Research Institute Monograph, 1972. p. 1.
8 months 2 weeks ago

First Shakespeare sonnets seem meaningless; first Bach fugues, a bore; first differential equations, sheer torture. But training changes the nature of our spiritual experiences. In due course, contact with an obscurely beautiful poem, an elaborate piece of counterpoint or of mathematical reasoning, causes us to feel direct intuitions of beauty and significance. It is the same in the moral world.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 14, p. 333 [2012 reprint]
8 months 4 days ago

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.

0
0
Source
source
(trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60
5 months 5 days ago

By awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

We must now turn to the question of how the existence of archetypes can be proved. Since archetypes are supposed to produce certain psychic forms, we must discuss how and where one can get hold of the material demonstrating these forms. The main source, then, is dreams, which have the advantage of being involuntary, spontaneous products of nature not falsified by any conscious purpose. By questioning the individual one can ascertain which of the motifs appearing in the dream are known to him... Consequently, we must look for motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer and yet behave functionally of the archetype known from historical sources.

0
0
Source
source
p. 48
4 months 4 days ago

Man tries to make for himself in the fashion that suits him best a simplified and intelligible picture of the world; he then tries to some extent to substitute this cosmos of his for the world of experience, and thus to overcome it. This is what the painter, the poet, the speculative philosopher, and the natural scientist do, each in his own fashion. Each makes this cosmos and its construction the pivot of his emotional life, in order to find in this way the peace and security which he cannot find in the narrow whirlpool of personal experience.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

The perfection of a thing does not annul its existence, but, on the contrary, asserts it. Imperfection, on the other hand, does annul it ; therefore we cannot be more certain of the existence of anything, than of the existence of a being absolutely infinite or perfect-that is, of God. For inasmuch as his essence excludes all imperfection, and involves absolute perfection, all cause for doubt concerning his existence is done away, and the utmost certainty on the question is given. This, I think, will be evident to every moderately attentive reader.

0
0
Source
source
Part I, Prop. XI
6 months 1 week ago

They would receive the same care and attention as those who belong to the establishment. Nor will there be any distinction made between the children of those parents who are deemed the worst, and of those who may be esteemed the best members of society: indeed I would prefer to receive the offspring of the worst, if they shall be sent at an early age; because they really require more of our care and pity and by well-training these, society will be more essentially benefited than if the like attention were paid to those whose parents are educating them in comparatively good habits. On educating children of the poor, and of neighboring communities.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

I see too many proofs of the imperfection of human reason, to entertain wonder or intolerance at any difference of opinion on any subject; and acquiesce in that difference as easily as on a difference of feature or form; experience having long taught me the reasonableness of mutual sacrifices of opinion among those who are to act together for any common object, and the expediency of doing what good we can, when we cannot do all we would wish.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to John Randolph (1 December 1803), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 109, pp. 54
8 months 3 weeks ago

Careful thought about this will reveal how few there are who are truly converted from evil habits, especially among those who have prolonged their lives of sin right up to the end. The path down to evil is quick, slippery, and easy. But to turn and "to go forth to the upper air . . . this is effort, this is toil." Think of Aesop's goat before you descend and remember that climbing out is not easy.

0
0
Source
source
p. 147
5 months 3 weeks ago

So dazzling was the spread of constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight. I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us - invisibly.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in No More Words : A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001) by Reeve Lindbergh, p. 41
7 months 1 day ago

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

0
0
Source
source
No. 35. (Usbek writing to Gemchid)
8 months 5 days ago

Animals no doubt have different interests from humans, and may experience different pleasures and pains, but the principle of equal consideration for similar interests still holds, and pleasures and pains of similar intensity and duration should be given equal weight, whether they are experienced by humans or by animals.

0
0
Source
source
p. 342
8 months 1 week ago

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next... It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this. Aim at Heaven and you will get earth "thrown in": aim at earth and you will get neither.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Chapter 10, "Hope"
7 months 1 week ago

Since the communists cannot enter upon the decisive struggle between themselves and the bourgeoisie until the bourgeoisie is in power, it follows that it is in the interest of the communists to help the bourgeoisie to power as soon as possible in order the sooner to be able to overthrow it.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

We have the wolf by the ears, and we can neither hold him nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, self-preservation in the other.

0
0
Source
source
On slavery, in a letter to John Holmes
7 months 1 week ago

We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. (He is already on the way; he is like Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god.)

0
0
Source
source
The Symbolic Life - in The Collected Works: The Symbolic Life. Miscellaneous Writings (1977), p. 281
8 months 1 week ago

For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

So what is the alternative to traditional anthropocentric ethics? Antispeciesism is not the claim that "All Animals Are Equal", or that all species are of equal value, or that a human or a pig is equivalent to a mosquito. Rather the antispeciesist claims that, other things being equal, equally strong interests should count equally. Experiences that are subjectively negative or positive in hedonic tone to the same degree must count for the same.

0
0
Source
source
"The Antispeciesist Revolution", Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 26 Jul. 2013
7 months 2 weeks ago

Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.

0
0
Source
source
Section 25
9 months 2 weeks ago
Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today.
0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour'd with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, War is made upon the Sufferers, who having no appeal on Earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such Cases, an appeal to Heaven.

0
0
Source
source
Two Treatises of Government. The Second Treatise. Chapter 3: The State of War, §20 p. 281 books.google
6 months 1 week ago

There is no need to make an inventory of the times. It is demoralizing to describe ourselves to ourselves yet again. It is especially hard on us since we believe (as we have been educated to believe) that history has formed us and that we are all mini-summaries of the present age.

0
0
Source
source
Mozart: An Overture (1992), pp. 13-14
8 months 2 weeks ago

Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, so there is no place for them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist.

0
0
Source
source
pages 176-177; Early Modern Texts page 16
8 months 2 weeks ago

There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, "The Christian religion as a natural religion"
8 months 1 week ago

Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.

0
0
Source
source
Discourse on Language, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France, 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith
7 months 1 week ago

The will is a unity of two different aspects or moments: first, the individual's ability to abstract from every specific condition and, by negating it, to return to the absolute liberty of the pure ego; secondly, the individual's act of freely adopting a concrete condition, freely affirming his existence as a particular, limited ego.

0
0
Source
source
P. 185
7 months 1 week ago

Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind.

0
0
Source
source
p. 64
7 months 1 week ago

True, the law is sacred to the bourgeois, for it is his own composition, enacted with his consent, and for his benefit and protection. He knows that, even if an individual law should injure him, the whole fabric protects his interests; and more than all, the sanctity of the law, the sacredness of order as established by the active will of one part of society, and the passive acceptance of the other, is the strongest support of his social position. Because the English bourgeois finds himself reproduced in his law, as he does in his God, the policeman's truncheon which, in a certain measure, is his own club, has for him a wonderfully soothing power. But for the working-man quite otherwise! The working-man knows too well, has learned from too oft-repeated experience, that the law is a rod which the bourgeois has prepared for him; and when he is not compelled to do so, he never appeals to the law.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

To kill someone for committing murder is a punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands.

0
0
Source
source
Part 1, Chapter 2
6 months 3 weeks ago

When we can't dream any longer we die.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted by Margaret C. Anderson in "Emma Goldman in Chicago", Mother Earth magazine
7 months 3 weeks ago

If thou intend to do any good; tarry not till to-morrow! for thou knowest not what may chance thee this night.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia