Skip to main content
7 months 5 days ago

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

0
0
Source
source
Attributed to Russell in Crainer's The Ultimate Book of Business Quotations (1997), p. 258
7 months 1 week ago

No fixed capital can yield any revenue but by means of a circulating capital.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 311.
3 months 1 day ago

Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind.

0
0
Source
source
IX, 9
7 months 5 days ago

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value to you than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself; because only through ordering what you know by comparing every truth with every other truth can you take complete possession of your knowledge and get it into your power. You can think about only what you know, so you ought to learn something; on the other hand, you can know only what you have thought about.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 257 "On Thinking for Yourself" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms(1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
6 months 4 days ago

They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility
4 months ago

Education is what survives when what has been learned has been forgotten.

0
0
Source
source
"New methods and new aims in teaching", in New Scientist, 22(392) (21 May 1964), pp.483-4
3 months ago

Not that I at all disallow the use of reasoning upon experiments, or the endeavouring to discern as early as we can the confederations, and differences, and tendencies of things: for such an absolute suspension of the exercise of reasoning were exceeding troublesome, if not impossible. And, as in that rule of arithmetic, which is commonly called regula falsi by proceeding upon a conjecturally-supposed number, as if it were that, which we inquire after, we are wont to come to the knowledge of the true number sought for; so in physiology it is sometimes conducive to the discovery of truth, to permit the understanding to make an hypothesis, in order to the explication of this or that difficulty, that by examining how far the phænomena are, or are not, capable of being solved by that hypothesis, the understanding may, even by its own errors, be instructed.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Why then do you occupy me with the words rather than with the works of wisdom? Make me braver, make me calmer, make me the equal of Fortune, make me her superior.

0
0
3 months 1 day ago

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) III, 10
3 months 2 weeks ago

Everything of this sort is not anger, but the semblance of anger, like that of boys who want to beat the ground when they have fallen upon it, and who often do not even know why they are angry, but are merely angry without any reason or having received any injury, yet not without some semblance of injury received, or without some wish to exact a penalty for it.

0
0
3 months 1 day ago

It is not fit that I should give myself pain, for I have never intentionally given pain even to another.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 42
7 months 1 week ago

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 97

Why should we divide the sensitive principle which thinks in man? ...For a thing that is divided can no longer without absurdity be regarded as indivisible.

0
0
8 months ago

When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.

0
0
3 months 4 days ago

We never repent of having eaten too little.

0
0
6 months ago

The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave's virtue.

0
0
7 months 6 days ago

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

0
0
Source
source
Attributed to Voltaire in Likharev, K.K. (2021). On Government and Politics. In: Likharev, K.K. (eds) Essential Quotes for Scientists and Engineers.
7 months 3 days ago

The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.

0
0
Source
source
p. 15
3 months 1 day ago

All the science in the world began in temples, and the first astronomers especially were priests. I do not say that it necessary to begin again with the antique initiation, and to change the presidents of our academies into hierophants, but I say that all things begin again as they began, that they all carry an original principle that modifies itself according to the different character of nations and the progressive advance of the human mind, but which however always shows itself in one way or another. Priests have preserved everything, brooded over everything, and taught us everything.

0
0
Source
source
p. 283
3 months 4 days ago

Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

0
0
Source
source
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front in Farming: A Hand Book
7 months 1 week ago

A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.

0
0
Source
source
Ninth Thesis
5 months 3 weeks ago

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

0
0
Source
source
No. 46. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
8 months 6 days ago
So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.
0
0
3 months 4 days ago

Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare. For about half of the last century, we worried about world conquest by international communism. Now with less worry (so far) we are witnessing world conquest by international capitalism. Though its political means are milder (so far) than those of communism, this newly internationalized capitalism may prove even more destructive of human cultures and communities, of freedom, and of nature. Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Let's go dance under the elms:

Step lively, young lassies.

Let's go dance under the elms:

Gallants, take up your pipes.

0
0
Source
source
Le devin du village, 1752
7 months 5 days ago

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
3 months 3 days ago

It is too narrow an understanding of production which confines it merely to the making of things. Production includes not merely the making of things, but the bringing of them to the consumer. The merchant or storekeeper is thus as truly a producer as is the manufacturer, or farmer, and his stock or capital is as much devoted to production as is theirs.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Ch. 2
6 months 4 days ago

Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people, is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

Virtuous, worthy, wise and capable people are chosen as leaders.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Living virtuously is equal to living in accordance with one's experience of the actual course of nature.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 182.
3 months 4 days ago

Every word is an Ark of the Covenant around which we dance and shudder, divining God to be its dreadful inhabitant. You shall never be able to establish in words that you live in ecstasy. But struggle unceasingly to establish it in words. Battle with myths, with comparisons, with allegories, with rare and common words, with exclamations and rhymes, to embody it in flesh, to transfix it! God, the Great Ecstatic, works in the same way. He speaks and struggles to speak in every way He can, with seas and with fires, with colors, with wings, with horns, with claws, with constellations and butterflies, that he may establish His ecstasy. Like every other living thing, I also am in the center of the Cosmic whirlpool.

0
0
7 months 3 days ago

The true Enlightenment thinker, the true rationalist, never wants to talk anyone into anything. No, he does not even want to convince; all the time he is aware that he may be wrong. Above all, he values the intellectual independence of others too highly to want to convince them in important matters. He would much rather invite contradiction, preferably in the form of rational and disciplined criticism. He seeks not to convince but to arouse - to challenge others to form free opinions.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The central fact for me is, I think, that the [role of the] intellectual ... cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is publicly to raise embarrassing questions, to confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than to produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d'être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug. Representation of the Intellectual

0
0
Source
source
1994
3 months 4 days ago

In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

0
0
7 months 3 days ago

Kant stated that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge to make room for faith," but all he had "denied" was knowledge of things that are unknowable, and he had not made room for faith but for thought.

0
0
Source
source
p. 63
6 months 4 weeks ago

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

0
0
Source
source
Journal entry
7 months 4 days ago

The law of the table is beauty, a respect to the common soul of the guests. Everything is unreasonable which is private to two or three, or any portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law; never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talk shop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from insults, while they sit in one parlor with common friends.

0
0
Source
source
Social Aims
5 months ago

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 1 "Explaining the Very Improbable"
6 months ago

If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.

0
0
Source
source
Mysterium Coniunctionis, from The Collected Works of C. G. Jung
7 months 3 weeks ago

The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe.

0
0
Source
source
q. 1, art. 2, ad 4
5 months 2 weeks 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 5 days ago

I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VI: International relations, p. 99

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia