Skip to main content
5 months 2 weeks ago

In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.

0
0
Source
source
Laws of Motion, II
4 months 6 days ago

When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."

0
0
Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 46, 69
1 month 1 week ago

Speech is human, silence is divine, yet also brutish and dead: therefore we must learn both arts.

0
0
Source
source
Notebooks (1830).
4 months 2 weeks ago

The South may keep her pine-apples, and we will be content with our strawberries, which are, as it were, pine-apples with "going a-strawberrying" stirred into them, infinitely enhancing their flavor.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

We are all secularised anarchists today.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Nature is satisfied with little; and if she is, I am also.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Story of Philosophy (1933) by Will Durant, p. 176
2 weeks 2 days ago

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

0
0
Source
source
24 June 1813
2 months 1 week ago

You could give Aristotle a tutorial. And you could thrill him to the core of his being. Aristotle was an encyclopedic polymath, an all time intellect. Yet not only can you know more than him about the world, you also can have a deeper understanding of how everything works. Such is the privilege of living after Newton, Darwin, Einstein, Planck, Watson, Crick and their colleagues.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea!

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves.

0
0
Source
source
August 30, 1856
3 months 2 weeks ago

The end of the philosophical dialogue lies in itself; it can never serve a purpose outside of itself. Just as a sculptor does not cease to be a work of art even if it lies at the bottom of the sea, so indeed every work of philosophy endures, even if uncomprehended in its own time. One would be grateful if it were merely a matter of incomprehension. Instead, the work is usually refitted and appropriated by various entities-some playing the part of the opponent; others, that of the proponent.

0
0
Source
source
P.3-4
4 months 1 week ago

In France at least, the history of science and thought gives pride of place sciences, sciences of the necessary, all close to philosophy: one can observe in their history the almost uninterrupted emergence of truth and pure reason. The other disciplines, however - those, for example, that concern living beings, languages, or economic facts - are considered too tinged with empirical thought, too exposed to the vagaries of chance or imagery to age old traditions and external events, for it to be supposed that their history could be anything other irregular. At most, they are expected to provide evidence of a state of mind, an intellectual fashion, a mixture of archaism and bold conjecture, of intuition and blindness. But what if empirical knowledge, at a given time and in a given culture, did possess a well defined regularity.

0
0
Source
source
Foreword to the English edition
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is necessary that every thing which is harmonized, should be generated from that which is void of harmony, and that which is void of harmony from that which is harmonized. ...But there is no difference, whether this is asserted of harmony, or of order, or composition... the same reason will apply to all of these.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
3 months 2 days ago

History is full of religious wars; but, we must take care to observe, it was not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

0
0
Source
source
No. 65. (Usbek writing to his wives)
3 months 1 week ago

I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.

0
0
2 weeks ago

The rights of men to the use of land are not joint rights: they are equal rights. Were there only one man on earth, he would have a right to the use of the whole earth or any part of the earth. When there is more than one man on earth, the right to the use of land that any one of them would have, were he alone, is not abrogated: it is only limited. The right of each to the use of land is still a direct, original right, which he holds of himself, and not by the gift or consent of the others; but it has become limited by the similar rights of the others, and is therefore an equal right.

0
0
Source
source
Part I : Declaration, Ch. III : "Social Statics" - The Right of Property
4 months 2 weeks ago

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

0
0
Source
source
Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
3 months 1 week ago

The source of an emotion is very difficult to grasp, but it comes to just that. That holds for all phenomena, for faith, etc. Why did it begin, how did it develop? and so forth-only he who has the gift of divination can perceive where it really comes from. But it is not accessible to reflection.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It ends with death, but not before.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

When one is not understood one should as a rule lower one's voice, because when one really speaks loudly enough and is not heard, it is because people do not want to hear. One had better begin to mutter to oneself, then they get curious.

0
0
Source
source
Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1988), p. 30
1 week 5 days ago

Whatever may happen to thee, it was prepared for thee from all eternity; and the implication of causes was from eternity spinning the thread of thy being, and of that which is incident to it. Alternate Translation: Whatever may befall you, it was preordained for you from everlasting.

0
0
Source
source
X, 5
3 months 2 weeks ago

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

0
0
Source
source
Part III, Chapter 2
2 weeks 2 days ago

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Count Diodati
3 months 2 weeks ago

There are three successive states of morality answering to the three principal stages of human life; the personal, the domestic, and the social stage.

0
0
Source
source
p. 104
3 months 1 week ago

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

0
0
Source
source
Matthew 7:7-8 (NKJV) (Also Luke 11:9-13)
3 months 1 week ago

All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

A fate is not a punishment.

0
0
2 weeks 2 days ago

The bank mania is one of the most threatening of these imitations. It is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Josephus B. Stuart (May 10, 1817) ME 15:112; reported in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (1904), vol. 15, p. 112
3 months 1 week ago

How can a past idea be present?... it can only be going, infinitesimally past, less past than any assignable past date. We are thus brought to the conclusion that the present is connected to the past by a series of real infinitesimal steps.

0
0
1 month 1 day ago

If the press was to be free, nothing would be so important as precisely its liberation from every coercion that could be put on it in the name of a law. And, that it might come to that, I my own self should have to have absolved myself from obedience to the law.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 249
3 months 2 weeks ago

Humiliate the reason and distort the soul...

0
0
Source
source
Part 2, Chapter ?
2 weeks 2 days ago

The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say; by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who either contributes by his purse or person to the support of his country.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

We have to construct the figure of a new David, the multitude as champion of asymmetrical combat, immaterial workers who became a new kind of combatants, cosmopolitan bricoleurs of resistance and cooperation.

0
0
Source
source
50
4 months 5 days ago

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, epistle xviii, line 71
4 months 2 weeks ago

The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IX, Section 83, p. 554
3 months 1 week ago

The revolution, Stahl declared, is the 'world-historic mark of our age.' It would found 'the entire State on the will of man instead of on the commandment and ordinance of God.'

0
0
Source
source
p. 364
5 months 1 week ago

In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.

0
0
4 months 6 days ago

Speciesism-the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term-is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal
5 months 1 week ago

Predicting the future is a hopeless, thankless task, with ridicule to begin with and, all too often, scorn to end with.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity, Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew, The conscious stone to beauty grew.

0
0
Source
source
The Problem, st. 2
2 weeks 2 days ago

It has always been denied by the republican party in this country, that the Constitution had given the power of incorporation to Congress. On the establishment of the Bank of the United States, this was the great ground on which that establishment was combated; and the party prevailing supported it only on the argument of its being an incident to the power given them for raising money.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Dr. Maese, 1809. ME 12:231
3 weeks 4 days ago

Let us not admit discourses by Epicureans or Pyrrhonists - though indeed the gods have already in their wisdom destroyed their works, so that most of their books are no longer available. Nevertheless, there is no reason why I should not, by way of example, mention these works too, to show what sort of discourses priests must especially avoid; and if such discourses, then much more must they avoid such thoughts.

0
0
Source
source
Fragmentum Epistulae, 288a-305d
1 month 4 weeks ago

I don't believe a committee can write a book. ... It can, oh, govern a country, perhaps. But I don't believe it can write a book.

0
0
Source
source
Interviewed by Christopher Wright (1955). Printed in James Nelson (ed.) Wisdom: Conversations with the Elder Wise Men of Our Day (New York: Norton, 1958) p. 208
2 months 1 day ago

There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe, by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features, is stripped off.

0
0
Source
source
Autobiography
4 months 2 weeks ago

What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia