Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Free Books
  • Contact
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
An increase in the productivity of...

An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Notebook IV, The Chapter on Capital, p. 308.
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 months 1 week ago
There is obviously a place in...

There is obviously a place in life for a religious attitude for awe and astonishment at existence. That is also a basis for respect for existence. We don't have much of it in this culture, even though we call it materialistic. In this culture we call materialistic, today we are of course bent on the total destruction of material and its conversion into junk and poisonous gases. This is of course not a materialistic culture because it has no respect for material. And respect is in turn based on wonder.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Images of God
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Whatever we know....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
It is a bad thing to...

It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (25 January 1843)
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
3 months 1 week ago
If one does not preserve the...

If one does not preserve the learned in a state he will be injuring the state; if one is not zealous (to recommend) the virtuous upon seeing one, he will be neglecting the ruler. Enthusiasm is to be shown only to the virtuous, and plans for the country are only to be shared with the learned. Few are those, who, neglecting the virtuous and slighting the learned, could still maintain the existence of their countries. Book 1; Befriending the Learned Variant translation: To enter upon rulership of a country but not preserve its scholars will result in the downfall of the country. To see the worthy but not hasten to them will make the country's ruler less able to perform his duties. To the unworthy is due no attention. The ignorant should remain without inclusion in the state's affairs. To impede the virtuous and neglect the scholarly and still maintain the survival of the state has yet to be, indeed.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 2 weeks ago
But the wise man knows that...

But the wise man knows that all things are in store for him. Whatever happens, he says: "I knew it."

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
The individual produces an object and,...

The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction, p. 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
6 months ago
It would be an endless task...

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
7 months 4 weeks ago
Hungary conquered and in chains has...

Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years. But for this lesson to get through and convince those in the West who shut their eyes and ears, it was necessary, and it can be no comfort to us, for the people of Hungary to shed so much blood which is already drying in our memories. In Europe's isolation today, we have only one way of being true to Hungary, and that is never to betray, among ourselves and everywhere, what the Hungarian heroes died for, never to condone, among ourselves and everywhere, even indirectly, those who killed them. It would indeed be difficult for us to be worthy of such sacrifices.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
8 months 3 days ago
If, then, in the sphere of...

If, then, in the sphere of action there is some one end which we desire for its own sake, and for the sake of which we desire every thing else; and if we do not choose every thing for the sake of something else, for this would go on without limit, and our desire would be idle and futile, it is clear that this must be the supreme good, and the best thing of all.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
3 months 3 weeks ago
As for one-party rule, it was...

As for one-party rule, it was questioned neither by the Left Opposition nor by the Right [wing of the Communist party]. All were prisoners of their own doctrine and their own past: all had worked with a will to create the apparatus of violence that crushed them. Bukharin's hopeless attempt to form a league with Kamenev was no more than a pitiful epilogue to his career. In November 1929 the deviationists performed a public act of penance, but even this did not save them. Stalin's victory was complete; the collapse of the Bukharinite opposition meant the triumph of autocracy in the party and in the country. In December 1929 Stalin's fiftieth birthday was celebrated as a major historical event, and from this point we may date the "cult of personality". Trotsky's prophecy of 1903 had come true: party rule had become Central Committee rule, and this in turn had becorne the personal tyranny of a dictator.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(pp. 42-3)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
7 months 4 weeks ago
For those of us who have...

For those of us who have been thrown into hell, mysterious melodies and the torturing images of a vanished beauty will always bring us, in the midst of crime and folly, the echo of that harmonious insurrection which bears witness, throughout the centuries, to the greatness of humanity.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
6 months 3 days ago
The first and the simplest emotion...

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part I Section I
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing that was worthy in the...

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
7 months 2 days ago
As image and apprehension are in...

As image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Priestesses in the Church?" (1948), p. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
7 months 4 weeks ago
Man is the only creature who...

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
6 months 3 weeks ago
Beneath the humanization of the penalties,...

Beneath the humanization of the penalties, what one finds are all those rules that authorize, or rather demand, 'leniency', as a calculated economy of the powder to punish. But they also provoke a shift in the point of application of this power: it is no longer the body, with the ritual play of excessive pains, spectacular branding in the ritual of the public execution; it is the mind or rather a play of representations and sings circulating discreetly but necessarily and evidently in the minds of all. It is no longer the body, but the soul, said Mably. And we see very clearly what he meant by this term: the correlative of a technique of power. Old 'anatomies' of punishment are abandoned, But have we really entered the age of non-corporal punishment?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter Two, Generalized Punishment, pp. 101
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 2 days ago
The priests of the different religious...

The priests of the different religious sects, who dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of day-light; and scowl on it the fatal harbinger announcing the subversion of the duperies on which they live. In this the Presbyterian clergy take the lead. the tocsin is sounded in all their pulpits, and the first alarm denounced is against the particular creed of Doctr. Cooper; and as impudently denounced as if they really knew what it is.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to José Correia da Serra
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
6 months 2 weeks ago
Incorporeal hypostases, in descending, are distributed...

Incorporeal hypostases, in descending, are distributed into parts, and multiplied about individuals with a diminution of power; but when they ascend by their energies beyond bodies, they become united, and proceed into a simultaneous subsistence, through exuberance of power.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
3 months 1 day ago
The equal right of all men...

The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air - it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book VII, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
6 months 2 weeks ago
Animals are rational; in most of...

Animals are rational; in most of them logos is imperfect, but it is certainly not wholly lacking. So if, as our opponents say, justice applies to rational beings, why should not justice, for us, also apply to animals?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
3, 18, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 2 weeks ago
School children and students who love...

School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
3 months 4 weeks ago
Man's power appears to have increased...

Man's power appears to have increased out of all proportion to his wisdom. He has never been in a better position to build a healthy, happy, and productive world; yet things have perhaps never seemed so black.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Science and Human Behavior
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
5 months 3 weeks ago
The human race, in its intellectual...

The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
5 months 4 days ago
One of the great American tragedies...

One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Interviewed by Roger Friedman, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut", FoxNews.com
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
4 months 3 weeks ago
And why were those haughty [French]...

And why were those haughty [French] nobles destroyed with that utter destruction? Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks wasted, their palaces dismantled, their heritage given to strangers? Because they had no sympathy with the people, no discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the pride and narrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings might have saved them theorists and speculators; because they refused all concession till the time had arrived when no concession would avail.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (20 September 1831), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Verily I say unto you, All...

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Mark 3:28-29 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 4 weeks ago
The things... which are proper to...

The things... which are proper to the understanding no other man is used to impede, for neither fire, nor iron, nor tyrant, nor abuse, touches it in any way. When it has been made a sphere, it continues a sphere.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VIII, 41
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
7 months 5 days ago
Collectively, the more civilized men are,...

Collectively, the more civilized men are, the more they are actors. They assume the appearance of attachment, of esteem for others, of modesty, and of disinterestedness, without ever deceiving anyone, because everyone understands that nothing sincere is meant. Persons are familiar with this, and it is even a good thing that this is so in this world, for when men play these roles, virtues are gradually established, whose appearance had up until now only been affected. These virtues ultimately will become part of the actor's disposition. To deceive the deceiver in ourselves, or the tendency to deceive, is a fresh return to obedience.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 37
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
7 months 3 days ago
The first intellectual operation in which...

The first intellectual operation in which I arrived at any proficiency, was dissecting a bad argument, and finding in what part the fallacy lay: and though whatever capacity of this sort I attained was due to the fact that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was most perseveringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in studying it, were among the principal instruments of this drilling. I am persuaded that nothing, in modern education, tends so much, when properly used, to form exact thinkers, who attach a precise meaning to words and propositions, and are not imposed on by vague, loose, or ambiguous terms. The boasted influence of mathematical studies is nothing to it; for in mathematical processes, none of the real difficulties of correct ratiocination occur.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 19)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 weeks ago
Nothing is indefensible - from the...

Nothing is indefensible - from the absurdest proposition to the most monstrous crime.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 months 2 days ago
I think we must be careful...

I think we must be careful about too easily accepting, or being too easily grateful for, sacrifices made by others, especially if we have made none ourselves.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 weeks ago
It has ever been held the...

It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity,-Necessity will make him submit,-but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God's-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good;-that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
6 months ago
If women be educated for dependence;...

If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
3 months 4 weeks ago
Religious minds, which are distrustful of...

Religious minds, which are distrustful of philosophic dogmas, fall into the error - inculcated by philosophy - of supposing that Providence is limited in its action; that is does not extend to the social world or the social relations of mankind, and that God has not determined upon any plan of social organization for the regulation of those relations. If they had a PROFOUND FAITH IN THE UNIVERSALITY OF PROVIDENCE, they would be convinced that all human needs must have been foreseen and provided for, and especially that the most urgent of them all could not have been overlooked - namely, the need of a social order for the regulation of our industrial and social relations.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Theory of Social Organization. Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier, p. 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
7 months 4 days ago
One always speaks badly….

One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1827
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
7 months 2 weeks ago
Look now, this is the starting...

Look now, this is the starting point of philosophy: the recognition that different people have conflicting opinions, the rejection of mere opinion so that it comes to be viewed with mistrust, an investigation of opinion to determine whether it is rightly held, and the discovery of a standard of judgement, comparable to the balance that we have devised for the determining of weights, or the carpenter's rule for determining whether things are straight or crooked.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, ch. 11, 13.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
The history of all hitherto existing...

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (1848), p.2
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
5 months 5 days ago
To affirm equality is to affirm...

To affirm equality is to affirm a cohabitation defined in part by an interdependency that takes the edge off the individual boundaries of the body, or that works that edge for its social and political potential.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
7 months 1 day ago
Each human reality is at the...

Each human reality is at the same time a direct project to metamorphose its own For-itself into an In-itself-For-itself, a project of the appropriation of the world as a totality of being-in-itself, in the form of a fundamental quality. Every human reality is a passion in that it projects losing itself so as to found being and by the same stroke to constitute the In-itself which escapes contingency by being its own foundation, the Ens causa sui, which religions call God. Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Man is a useless passion. Part 4, Chapter 2, III
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
Perhaps the most valuable result of...

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Technical Education
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
5 months 2 weeks ago
If one is to take Lulu's...

If one is to take Lulu's twelve-tone chord as the integral totality of complementary harmony, then Berg's allegorical genius proves itself within a historical perspective which makes the brain reel: just as Lulu in the world of total illusion longs for nothing but her murderer and finally finds him in that sound, so does all harmony of unrequited happiness long for its fatal chord as the cipher of fulfillment - twelve-tone music is not to be separated from dissonance. Fatal: because all dynamics come to a standstill within it without finding release. The law of complementary harmony already implies the end of the musical experience of time, as this was heralded in the dissociation of time according to Expressionistic extremes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Philosophy of Modern Music (1973) as translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
5 months 2 weeks ago
Newton's law is nothing but the...

Newton's law is nothing but the statistics of gravitation, it has no power whatever. Let us get rid of the idea of power from law altogether. Call law tabulation of facts, expression of facts, or what you will; anything rather than suppose that it either explains or compels.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Suggestions for Thought : Selections and Commentaries (1994), edited by Michael D. Calabria and Janet A. MacRae, p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whoso is full of sacred (religious,...

Whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
S. Byington, trans. (1913), p. 383
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
5 months 1 week ago
Truth and falsity are the most...

Truth and falsity are the most fundamental terms of rational criticism, and any adequate philosophy must give some account of these, or failing that, show that they can be dispensed with.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Introduction: Philosophy of language and the rest of philosophy"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
5 months 3 weeks ago
"There is no God," cry the...

"There is no God," cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values - is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months ago
Paradox is the technique for seizing...

Paradox is the technique for seizing the conflicting aspects of any problem. Paradox coalesces or telescopes various facets of a complex process in a single instant.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 106)
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
3 months 2 days ago
Terms which imply theoretical views are...

Terms which imply theoretical views are admissible, as far as the theory is proved.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 3 weeks ago
Bourgeois political economy ... never gets...

Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 months 3 days ago
This is the moment of greatest...

This is the moment of greatest crisis. This is the signal for the March to begin. If you do not hear this Cry tearing at your entrails, do not set out.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Users

☰ ˟
  • All users
  • Historical Figures

Who's new

  • Enzo Soltani
  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed

Who's online

There are currently 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia