Skip to main content
4 months 1 week ago

The remembrance of forbidden fruit is the earliest thing in the memory of each of us, as it is in that of mankind.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I: Moral Obligation
4 months 1 week ago

The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful. But this distinction itself must be validated. Men must come to see it and to find their way from false to true consciousness, from their immediate to their real interest. They can do so only if they live in need of changing their way of life, of denying the positive, of refusing. It is precisely this need which the established society manages to repress to the degree to which it is capable of "delivering the goods" on an increasingly large scale, and using the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of man.

0
0
Source
source
pp. xlv-xlvi
6 months 1 week ago

Religious law makes it illegal for the ignorant to drink wine, but intelligence makes it legal for the intellectual.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

When all these things are lacking there is no culture; there is in the strictest sense of the word, barbarism. And let us not deceive ourselves, this is what is beginning to appear in Europe under the progressive rebellion of the masses. The traveller who arrives in a barbarous country knows that in that territory there are no ruling principles to which it is possible to appeal. Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

0
0
Source
source
Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
5 months 3 weeks ago

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2 "On Women" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
4 months 3 weeks ago

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

0
0
Source
source
Book Three, Chapter XXII.
4 months 1 week ago

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.

0
0
Source
source
16:2-4 (KJV)
5 months 2 weeks ago

He was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he repeated it until it became a cliché) each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. III
4 months 3 days ago

Yet its essence was the certitude that his life was not totally at the mercy of chance. Somehow, it was more important than that. This sense of power inside his head - which he could intensify by pulling a face and wrinkling up the muscles of his forehead - aroused a glow of optimism, an expectation of exciting events. He knew that for him, fate held something special in store.

0
0
Source
source
p. 26
4 months 3 weeks ago

Since I have spread my wings to purpose high, The more beneath my feet the clouds I see, The more I give the winds my pinions free, Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, in The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
5 months 4 weeks ago

For a man to love again where he is loved, it is the charity of publicans contracted by mutual profit and good offices; but to love a man's enemies is one of the cunningest points of the law of Christ, and an imitation of the divine nature.

0
0
Source
source
Of The Exaltation of Charity
2 months ago

Unbelievably, there is still here [in Los Angeles] one of my most favorite places-the home of Henry and Ruth Denison at the very top of the hill, at the end of a road going nowhere, hanging above a reservoir-lake surrounded with pines. They have a sundeck under a eucalyptus tree where I have slept some memorably deep sleeps, and awakened very early in the morning, before sunrise, with stars still showing through the branches. In this house I have made some of my greatest friendships, so much so that I cannot think of it without that curious pleasure-pain which the Japanese call aware-the sense of echoes in the courtyards of the mind after the sun has left and the people have gone their ways forever.

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

In writing a history of madness, Foucault has attempted-and this is the greatest merit, but also the very infeasibility of his book-to write a history of madness itself. Itself.

0
0
Source
source
Of madness itself. That is by letting madness speak for itself. Cogito and The History of Madness, p.37 (Routledge classics edition)
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true Word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers, will bring us to Him.

0
0
Source
source
Letter (8 November 1952); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 247
6 months 4 days ago

Does anyone bathe in a mighty little time? Don't say that he does it ill, but in a mighty little time. Does anyone drink a great quantity of wine? Don't say that he does ill, but that he drinks a great quantity. For, unless you perfectly understand the principle from which anyone acts, how should you know if he acts ill? Thus you will not run the hazard of assenting to any appearances but such as you fully comprehend.

0
0
Source
source
(45).
5 months 2 weeks ago

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.

0
0
Source
source
The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon)
6 months 2 weeks ago

Generals are usually a conservative force who can be relied on to oppose social change.

0
0
4 months 1 day ago

In one sense, I do believe I am "like a man," as Parthe [the writer's sister] says. But how? In having sympathy. ... Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. ... They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Madame Mohl
4 months 2 weeks ago

A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It's not easy to be on the wrong foot with life

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

All became so jealous of the rights of their own personality that they did their very utmost to curtail and destroy them in others, and made that the chief thing in their lives. Slavery followed, even voluntary slavery; the weak eagerly submitted to the strong, on condition that the latter aided them to subdue the still weaker. Then there were saints who came to these people, weeping, and talked to them of their pride, of their loss of harmony and due proportion, of their loss of shame. They were laughed at or pelted with stones.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Someone within me is struggling to lift a great weight, to cast off the mind and flesh by overcoming habit, laziness, necessity. I do not know from where he comes or where he goes. I clutch at his onward march in my ephemeral breast, I listen to his panting struggle, I shudder when I touch him.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

0
0
Source
source
O World, Thou Choosest Not
1 month 2 weeks ago

It needs to realize that what happens to everyone-bad and good alike-is neither good nor bad.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) IV, 39
2 months ago

So, too, in the Vedanta the whole world is seen as the lila and the maya of the Self, the first word meaning "play" and the second having the complex sense of illusion (from the Latin ludere, to play), magic, creative power, art, and measuring-as when one dances or draws a design to a certain measure. From this point of view the universe in general and playing in particular are, in a special sense, "meaningless": that is, they do not-like words and symbols-signify or point to something beyond themselves, just as a Mozart sonata conveys no moral or social message and does not try to suggest the natural sounds of wind, thunder, or birdsong.

0
0
Source
source
p. 94
3 months 3 weeks ago

I can calculate the motions of erratic bodies, but not the madness of a multitude.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "Mammon and the Money Market", in The Church of England Quarterly Review (1850), p. 142
5 months 1 week ago

Be cheerful while you are alive.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim no. 34.
2 months ago

I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.

0
0
Source
source
The Two Hands of God : The Myths of Polarity (1963), p. 29
5 months 2 weeks ago

The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man's, so that they cannot both be right. People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.

0
0
Source
source
"How to Become a Philosopher" (1942), in The Art of Philosophizing, and Other Essays (New York: Philosophical Library, 1968), p. 2
4 months 2 weeks ago

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected. Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "Voices of the New Time" as translated by C. C. Shackford in The Radical Vol. 7 (1870), p. 329
2 months 3 weeks ago

Much in the study of the paranormal was what we would now call pseudo-science. But the line between science and pseudo-science is smudged and shifting; where it lies seems clear only in retrospect. There is no pristine science untouched by the vagaries of faith.

0
0
Source
source
Foreword: Two Attempts to Cheat Death (p. 5)
4 months 1 day ago

The Church is now more like the Scribes and Pharisees than like Christ... What are now called the "essential doctrines" of the Christian religion he does not even mention.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 392
5 months 2 weeks ago

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
5 months 2 weeks ago

I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers-back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.

0
0
Source
source
describing his experiment with mescaline, p. 22
3 months 1 week ago

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

0
0
Source
source
The Jefferson Lectures (1977), p. 139
5 months 3 weeks ago

Saying is one thing and doing is another.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 31
3 months 1 week ago

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The #1 New York Times Bestseller (1992) by John Bear, p. 93
5 months 2 weeks ago

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

0
0
Source
source
Days
3 months 4 weeks ago

The criterion of efficiency dictates that choice of alternatives which produces the largest result for the given application of resources.

0
0
Source
source
Simon (1945, p. 179); As cited in: Harry M. Johnson (1966) Sociology: A Systematic Introduction. p. 287.
5 months 3 weeks ago

This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation: Second Aspect, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne, 1958
2 months 5 days ago

Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 108
4 months 6 days ago

The cult of the Virgin, Mariolatry, which by the gradual elevation of the divine element in the Virgin has led almost to her deification, answers merely to the feeling that God should be a perfect man, that God should include in his nature the feminine element. The progressive exaltation of the Virgin Mary, the work of Catholic piety, having its beginning in the expression Mother of God, ...has culminated in attributing to her the status of co-redeemer and in the dogmatic declaration of her conception without the stain of original sin. Hence she now occupies a position between Humanity and Divinity and nearer Divinity than Humanity. And it has been surmised that in course of time she may perhaps even come to be regarded as yet another personal manifestation of the Godhead.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

The empirical research of the last fifteen years on the structure of large organizations seems to confirm the hypothesis of Herbert Simon that human cognitive limits are a basic limiting factor in determining organization structures .

0
0
Source
source
Jay R. Galbraith, "Organization design: An information processing view." Organizational Effectiveness Center and School 21 (1977). p. 21
3 months 2 weeks ago

The unformulated message of an assembly of news items from every quarter of the globe is that the world today is one city. All war is civil war. All suffering is our own.

0
0
Source
source
p. 291
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting; the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new makes no appeal at all. The old in the new is what claims the attention,-the old with a slightly new turn.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI: Attention
3 months 2 weeks ago

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found himself. Anna Pávlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to her guests. As a clever maître d'hôtel serves up as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pávlovna served up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbé, as peculiarly choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

0
0
Source
source
Bk. I, Ch. III
2 months 1 week ago

The eye of the intellect "sees in all objects what it brought with it the means of seeing."

0
0
Source
source
Varnhagen von Ense's Memoirs.
3 months 1 week ago

Yes, I am in favor of censorship, but it has to be conducted by people like me. And that's the difficulty (laughs). I'm in favor of encouraging every possible form of self-restraint and parental control. And I certainly don't think that pornography should be protected under the American Constitution.

0
0
Source
source
Interview with Salon.com, 1998
4 months 2 weeks ago

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia