Skip to main content
4 months 2 weeks ago

One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.

0
0
Source
source
North to the Orient (1935) Ch. 19
4 months 3 weeks ago

Orwell's essay speaks to us today. It tells us that patriotism is the sine qua non of survival, and that it arises spontaneously in the ordinary human heart. It does not depend upon any grand narrative of triumph of the kind put about by the fascists and the communists, but grows from the habits of association that we British have been fortunate enough to inherit. We do not use grand and tainted honorifics like "la patrie" or "das Vaterland". We refer simply to this spot of earth, which belongs to us because we belong to it, have lived in it, loved it, defended it and established peace and prosperity within its borders.

0
0
Source
source
'Brexit will give us back pride in our island roots', The Times (18 November 2017), p. 35
3 months 1 week ago

Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it.

0
0
Source
source
In a 1952 conversation with Heisenberg and Pauli in Copenhagen; quoted in Heisenberg, Werner, Physics and Beyond. (New York: Harper & Row, 1971) p. 206.
5 months 4 weeks ago

A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the "personal unconscious". But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the "collective unconscious". I have chosen the term "collective" because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

0
0
Source
source
p. 3-4
7 months 1 week ago

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

0
0
Source
source
Book 1, Ch. 3 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
5 months 3 weeks ago

The teacher of love teaches struggle. The teacher of lifeless isolation from the world teaches peace.

0
0
5 months 3 days ago

The revolutionaries say: "The government organization is bad in this and that respect; it must be destroyed and replaced by this and that." But a Christian says: "I know nothing about the governmental organization, or in how far it is good or bad, and for the same reason I do not want to support it."

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IX, The Acceptance of the Christian Conception of Life will Emancipate Men from the Miseries of our Pagan Life
4 months 3 weeks ago

Psychoanalysis pretends to investigate the Unconscious. The Unconscious by definition is what you are not conscious of. But the Analysts already know what's in it. They should, because they put it all in beforehand. It's like an Easter Egg hunt.

0
0
Source
source
The Dean's December (1982), ch. 18, p. 298
1 month 2 weeks ago

"In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside."
- Epictetus

See biography for Epictetus:
https://civilsimian.com/Epictetus

Read Epictetus's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/46/content

#philosophy #quotes #CivilSimian #UniversalHumanism

0
0
7 months 4 days ago

No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.

0
0
Source
source
Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 70
5 months 4 weeks ago

I foresee the day when we shall read nothing but telegrams and prayers.

0
0
6 months 3 days ago

A subject interests me and holds my attention only so long as it presents me with difficulties, only so long as I am at odds with it and have, as it were, to struggle with it; but once I have mastered it I hurry on to something else, to a new subject; for my interest is not confined to any particular field or subject; it extends to everything human. This does not mean that I am an intellectual miser or egoist, who amasses knowledge for himself alone; by no means! What I do and think for myself, I must also think and do for others. But I feel the need of instructing others in a subject only so long as, while instructing others, I am also instructing myself.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture I, , R. Manheim, trans. (1967), p. 2
5 months 2 weeks ago

I must avert here once again to my view of the opposition that exists between individuality and personality, notwithstanding the fact that the one demands the other. Individuality is, if I may so express it, the container or thing which contains, personality the content or thing contained, or I might say that my personality is in a certain sense my comprehension, that which I comprehend or embrace within myself - which is in a certain way the whole Universe - and that my individuality is my extension; the one my infinite, the other my finite.

0
0
3 months 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 3 weeks ago

Few people who are not actually practitioners of a mature science realize how much mop-up work of this sort a paradigm leaves to be done or quite how fascinating such work can prove in the execution.

0
0
Source
source
p. 24
5 months 3 weeks ago

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

0
0
Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62
7 months 1 week ago

To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 2
5 months 2 weeks ago

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God. He gave them moral activity. But the Age, the World, Humanity, must give them the means to exercise this moral activity, must give them intellectual cultivation, spheres of action.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

The operations of understanding thus divide the world into numberless polarities, and Hegel uses the expression 'isolated reflection' (isolierte Reflection) to characterize the manner in which understanding forms and connects its polar concepts. The rise and spread of this kind of thinking Hegel connects with the origin and prevalence of crucial relationships in human life. The antagonisms of 'isolated reflections' express real antagonisms. .... Isolation and opposition are not, however, the final state of affairs. The world must not remain a complex of fixed disparates. The unity that underlies the antagonisms must be grasped and realized by reason, which has the task of reconciling the opposites and 'sublimating' them in a true unity.

0
0
Source
source
P. 45
7 months 2 days ago

Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.

0
0
Source
source
King Aegistheus, Act 2
7 months 1 week ago

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

0
0
Source
source
Adagia, 1508
7 months 1 week ago

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

Perhaps some day soon we will have arrived at the point when we can look back with irony at the barbaric old times when in order to be free we had to keep our own brothers and sisters slaves or to be equal we were constrained to inhuman sacrifices of freedom.

0
0
3 months ago

Because most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you'll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, "Is this necessary?" But we need to eliminate unnecessary assumptions as well. To eliminate the unnecessary actions that follow.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) IV, 24
3 months 4 days ago

All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.

0
0
Source
source
"Odyssey of Faith" in TIME magazine
3 months 3 weeks ago

The social conditions that nourished and made use of this ideology can still revive; perhaps - who knows? - the virus is dormant, waiting for the next opportunity. Dreams about the perfect society belong to the enduring stock of civilization.

0
0
Source
source
New Preface, p. vi
7 months 1 week ago

We refuse to have our conscience bound by any work or law, so that by doing this or that we should be righteous, or leaving this or that undone we should be damned.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 2
7 months 2 weeks ago

As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.

0
0
Source
source
p. 277
6 months 2 weeks ago

Most men and women, by birth or nature, lack the means to advance in wealth and power, but all have the ability to advance in knowledge.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Golden Ratio (2002) by Mario Livio
8 months 1 day ago

No matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."

0
0
Source
source
Of Agesilaus the Great
5 months 1 week ago

The techniques of the practitioner are usually called 'synthetic'. He designs by organizing known principles and devices into larger systems.

0
0
Source
source
Simon (1945, p. 353); As cited in: Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (2009) p. 425.
7 months 3 days ago

Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it actually circulates.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 2(c), pg. 145.
7 months 1 week ago

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Ch. 7
8 months 4 days ago

This opinion... appears to be ancient... that the one, excess and defect, are the principles of things... It is not... probable that there are more than three principles... Essence is one certain genus of being: so that principles will differ from each other in prior and posterior alone, but not in genus, for in one genus there is always one contrariety, and all contrarieties appear to be referred to one. That there is neither one element, therefore, nor more than two or three, is evident.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

0
0
Source
source
'On the Athenian Orators', Knight's Quarterly Magazine (August 1824), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), p. 135
8 months 4 days ago

But it is better to assume principles less in number and finite, as Empedocles makes them to be. All philosophers... make principles to be contraries... (for Parmenides makes principles to be hot and cold, and these he demominates fire and earth) as those who introduce as principles the rare and the dense. But Democritus makes the principles to be the solid and the void; of which the former, he says, has the relation of being, and the latter of non-being. ...it is necessary that principles should be neither produced from each other, nor from other things; and that from these all things should be generated. But these requisites are inherent in the first contraries: for, because they are first, they are not from other things; and because they are contraries, they are not from each other.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

The Superior Man is all-embracing and not partial. The inferior man is partial and not all-embracing.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

We all observe that the reality of sexual intercourse is far from perfect; yet this does not convince us that sex is a greatly overrated occupation. Every time a man glimpses a pretty girl pulling up her stocking, he catches a glimpse of what might be called the "primal sexual vision." It is unfortunate that there seems to be a certain disparity between this primal vision and most ordinary sexual experience. But it dances in front of us like a will-o'-the-wisp, luring us into tormented effort. It can lead novelists to write novels, poets to write poems, and musicians to write symphonies.

0
0
Source
source
p. 39
7 months 2 days 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"
3 months 2 weeks ago

No furniture so charming as books.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 289
5 months 4 weeks ago

In deduction the mind is under the dominion of a habit or association by virtue of which a general idea suggests in each case a corresponding reaction. This is the way the hind legs of a frog separated from the rest of the body, reason, when you pinch them. It is the lowest form of psychical manifestation.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

The great extension of our experience in recent years has brought light to the insufficiency of our simple mechanical conceptions and, as a consequence, has shaken the foundation on which the customary interpretation of observation was based.

0
0
Source
source
Niels Bohr, "Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature"
7 months 1 week ago

Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing so certain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You will scarcely think that they repose the smallest confidence in them. The greatest and truest zeal gives us no security against hypocrisy: The most open impiety is attended with a secret dread and compunction. No theological absurdities so glaring that they have not, sometimes, been embraced by men of the greatest and most cultivated understanding. No religious precepts so rigorous that they have not been adopted by the most voluptuous and most abandoned of men.

0
0
Source
source
Part XV - General corollary

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia