Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 1 week ago
The perfection of a thing does...

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
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks ago
We are brought to a belief...

We are brought to a belief of God either by reason or by force. Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. Yet will they not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven if you give them a good thrust with a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness has abated and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they will easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled to the public faith and examples.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 1 week ago
That which has no existence cannot...

That which has no existence cannot be destroyed - that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense - nonsense upon stilts. But this rhetorical nonsense ends in the old strain of mischievous nonsense for immediately a list of these pretended natural rights is given, and those are so expressed as to present to view legal rights. And of these rights, whatever they are, there is not, it seems, any one of which any government can, upon any occasion whatever, abrogate the smallest particle. The often-quoted phrase 'nonsense upon stilts' is often modernised to 'nonsense on stilts'.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 2 weeks ago
I approached the task of destroying...

I approached the task of destroying images by first tearing them out of the heart through God's Word and making them worthless and despised. This indeed took place before Dr. Karlstadt ever dreamed of destroying images. For when they are no longer in the heart, they can do no harm when seen with the eyes. But Dr. Karlstadt, who pays no attention to matters of the heart, has reversed the order by removing them from sight and leaving them in the heart. For he does not preach faith, nor can he preach it; unfortunately, only now do I see that. Which of these two forms of destroying images is best, I will let each man judge for himself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 84-85
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 2 days ago
Let us not pretend to doubt...

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. V, par. 265
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
For those who need consolation no...
For those who need consolation no means of consolation is so effective as the assertion that in their case no consolation is possible: it implies so great a degree of distinction that they at once hold up their heads again.
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 1 week ago
Not to be content with Life...

Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
The confession of evil works is...

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate XII on John 3:6-21, and 13
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 3 weeks ago
One day, observing a child drinking...

One day, observing a child drinking out of his hands, he cast away the cup from his wallet with the words, "A child has beaten me in plainness of living."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 37
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 2 weeks ago
The entire method consists in the...

The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Rules for the Direction of the Mind: X.379 As quoted in Clarke, Desmond M. (2006). Descartes : a Biography. Cambridge Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-521-82301-2.
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
3 months 1 week ago
Thus I may be said….

Thus it may be said that not only the soul, the mirror of an indestructible universe, is indestructible, but also the animal itself, though its mechanism may often perish in part and take off or put on an organic slough.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
La monadologie (77). Sometimes paraphrased as: The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 5 days ago
Scientific theories are distinguished from myths......

Scientific theories are distinguished from myths... in being criticizable, and... open to modifications... They can be neither verified nor probabilified.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 weeks ago
Why trouble ye the woman? for...

Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
26:10-13 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 3 weeks ago
An imaginary perfection is automatically at...

An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it - neither higher nor lower.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 240
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks ago
It should be noted that children...

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. Variants: It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions. For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, Ch. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
I am not virtuous. Our sons...

I am not virtuous. Our sons will be if we shed enough blood to give them the right to be.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act 3, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 days ago
Artistic creation....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
In conclusion, I wish to say...

In conclusion, I wish to say that my attitude to the whole tragic question is not dictated by my Jewish antecedents. It is motivated by my abhorrence of injustice, and man's inhumanity to man. It is because of this that I have fought all my life for anarchism which alone will do away with the horrors of the capitalist régime and place all races and peoples, including the Jews, on a free and equal basis. Until then I consider it highly inconsistent for socialists and anarchists to discriminate in any shape or form against the Jews.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 6 days ago
Seize the moments of happiness, love...

Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book IV, Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 1 week ago
And because it may be too...

And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage...

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. XII, sec. 143
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
Just now
There is no science apart from...

There is no science apart from the general. It may even be said that the very object of the exact sciences is to spare us these direct verifications.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. I. (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 month ago
There is but one mode by...

There is but one mode by which man can possess in perpetuity all the happiness which his nature is capable of enjoying, - that is by the union and co-operation of all for the benefit of each. Union and co-operation in war obviously increase the power of the individual a thousand fold. Is there the shadow of a reason why they should not produce equal effects in peace; why the principle of co-operation should not give to men the same superior powers, and advantages, (and much greater) in the creation, preservation, distribution and enjoyment of wealth?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Superior Man has nothing...

The Superior Man has nothing to compete for. But if he must compete, he does it in an archery match, wherein he ascends to his position, bowing in deference. Descending, he drinks (or has [the winner] drink) the ritual cup. Note: Bowing is a courtesy for the host who invites him as well drinking a cup.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 6 days ago
Rhodora! if the sages ask thee...

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Rhodora
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Too little liberty brings stagnation, and...

Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Authority and the Individual (1949), p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 days ago
Violence is the effort to maintain...

Violence is the effort to maintain and restore a weakened psyche.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 377)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 days ago
I heard what you were saying....

I heard what you were saying. You - you know nothing of my work. You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you ever got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Cameo appearance as himself in Woody Allen's 1977 film Annie Hall
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 5 days ago
Gratitude looks to the past and...

Gratitude looks to the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter XVI
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
Just now
My dear Kepler, what would you...

My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Johannes Kepler (1610), as quoted in The Crime of Galileo (1955) by Giorgio De Santillana
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 1 day ago
Of course, the aim of a...

Of course, the aim of a constitutional democracy is to safeguard the rights of the minority and avoid the tyranny of the majority. Yet the concrete practice of the US legal system from 1883 to 1964 promoted a tyranny of the white majority much more than a safeguarding of the rights of black Americans.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 102-3)
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 day ago
Colonization on a grand scale....

Colonization on a grand scale is a political necessity of absolutely the first order. A nation that does not colonize is irrevocably vowed to socialism, to war between rich and poor. The conquest of a nation of inferior race by a superior race, which establishes itself as the ruler, has nothing shocking about it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
92-93
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 days ago
What is troubling us is the...

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Remarks to John Wisdom, quoted in Zen and the Work of WIttgenstein by Paul Weinpaul in The Chicago Review Vol. 12, (1958), p. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 4 days ago
It is only afterward that a...

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
Detachment from the world as an...

Detachment from the world as an attachment to the ego... Who can realize the detachment in which you are as far away from yourself as you are from the world?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
Criminals together. We're in hell, my...

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing. Act 1, sc. 5 Variant translation: Among murderers. We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
From whatever side the matter is...

From whatever side the matter is regarded, it is always found that reason confronts our longing for personal immortality and contradicts it. And the truth is, in all strictness, that reason is the enemy of life.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
Not one moment when I have...

Not one moment when I have not been conscious of being outside Paradise.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 day ago
Be afraid of the Chinese. I...

Be afraid of the Chinese. I mean, the Chinese shoot down satellites in space; they hack into Google's computers; the Osama bin Laden people can't make their underwear blow up.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On The Colbert Report (2 May 2011), answering the question of who Americans should be scared of now that bin Laden is dead
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 week ago
Nothing is so much to be...

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
September 7, 1851
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Disease of the home and of...

Disease of the home and of the life comes about in the same way as that of the body.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Freeman (1948), p. 170 Variant: Disease occurs in a household, or in a life, just as it does in a body.
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 weeks ago
To-day the Enlightenment ideal has been...

To-day the Enlightenment ideal has been changed into a reality; not only in legislation, which is the mere framework of public life, but in the heart of every individual, whatever his ideas may be, and even if he be a reactionary in his ideas, that is to say, even when he attacks and castigates institutions by which those rights are sanctioned.... The sovereignty of the unqualified individual, of the human being as such, generically, has now passed from being a juridical idea or ideal to be a psychological state inherent in the average man. And note this, that when what was before an ideal becomes a component part of reality, it inevitably ceases to be an ideal. The prestige and the magic that are attributes of the ideal are volatilised.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chap.II: The Rise Of The Historic Level
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
Constitutional freedom, as the right of...

Constitutional freedom, as the right of every citizen to have to obey no other law than that to which he has given his consent or approval.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Man is a credulous animal, and...

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 weeks 1 day ago
There is no fundamental biological reason...

There is no fundamental biological reason why the human genome can't be rewritten to allow everyone to be "in" love with everyone else - if we should so choose. But simply loving each other will be miraculous enough; and will probably suffice. An empty religious piety can be transformed into a biological reality. 

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Brave New World? A Defence of Paradise-Engineering", BLTC Research, 1998
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 6 days ago
The Life according to Reason consists...

The Life according to Reason consists herein, -that the Individual forget himself in the Race, place his own life in the life of the Race, and dedicate it thereto;-the Life opposed to Reason, on the contrary, consists in this, that the Individual think of nothing but himself, love nothing but himself and in relation to himself, and set his whole existence in his own personal well-being alone: -and since we may briefly call that which is according to Reason good, and that which is opposed to Reason evil, so there is but One Virtue, to forget one's own personality;-and but One Vice,-to make self the object of our thoughts.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 4 days ago
Even when the wound is healed,...

Even when the wound is healed, the scar remains.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim 236
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 1 week ago
What a pity and what a...

What a pity and what a poverty of spirit, to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which affect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, &c. [...] Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table, and dissect him living, to show the mezarian veins. You discover in him all the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves to be incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature. [...] The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts, who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Beasts", in A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 2, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824, p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 6 days ago
Maybe this world is another planet's...

Maybe this world is another planet's Hell.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 239 Point Counter Point (New York: The Modern Library, 1928), Chapter XVII, p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 6 days ago
Each individual imagines that he can...

Each individual imagines that he can exist, live, think, and act for himself, and believes that he himself is the thinking principle of his thoughts; whereas in truth he is but a single ray of the ONE universal and necessary Thought.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
It is the nature of all...

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Who's new

  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed
  • Slavoj Žižek

Who's online

There are currently 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia