Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 3 weeks ago
"And seeing every man is presumed...

And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 78
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 6 days ago
Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle...

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, 'Thou shalt make no graven image.'

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 6 days ago
I believe that...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 days ago
'Try now to answer my third...

Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?'

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pilgrim's Regress 52
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 2 days ago
I am myself deeply convinced that...

I am myself deeply convinced that imagination is the basis of a sound reason. It is by dint of feeling, and of putting ourselves in fancy into the place of other men, that we can learn how we ought to treat them, and be moved to treat them as we ought. Man, to express the thing in familiar language, is a complex being, made up of a head and a heart. So far as we are employed in heaping up facts and in reasoning upon them merely, we are a species of machine; it is our impulses and our sentiments, that are the glory of our nature.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Of Religion (1818), quoted in Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, Volume 7: Religious Writings, ed. Mark Philp
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months ago
Our language can be seen as...

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
§ 18
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
I knew a parson who frightened...

I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Defects in Christ's Teaching"
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 weeks ago
Movement in direct experience is alteration...

Movement in direct experience is alteration in the qualities of objects, and space as experienced is an aspect of this qualitative change. Up and down, back and front, to and fro, this side and that- or right and left- here and there, feel differently. The reason they do is that they are not static points in something itself static, but objects in movement, qualitative changes of value. For "back" is short for backwards and front for forwards. So with velocity. Mathematically there are no such things as fast and slow. They mark simply greater and less on a number scale. As experienced they are qualitatively as unlike as noise and silence, heat and cold, black and white. To be forced to wait a long time for an important event to happen is a length very different from that measured by the movements of the hands of a clock. It is something qualitative.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
A man must be perfectly crazy...

A man must be perfectly crazy who, where there is tolerable security, does not employ all the stock which he commands…

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I, p. 313 (see opportunity cost).
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 5 days ago
There is no worse lie than...

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
2 weeks ago
There is no disease so destructive...

There is no disease so destructive as lust.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas...

Olympian bards who sung Divine ideas below, Which always find us young And always keep us so.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ode to Beauty, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is the love of...

There is the love of knowing without the love of learning; the beclouding here leads to dissipation of mind.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 5 days ago
The supporters of the Development Hypothesis......

The supporters of the Development Hypothesis... can show that any existing species-animal or vegetable-when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 day ago
The woman is increasingly aware that...

The woman is increasingly aware that love alone can give her full stature, just as the man begins to discern that spirit alone can endow his life with its highest meaning. Fundamentally, therefore, both seek a psychic relation to the other, because love needs the spirit, and the spirit love, for their fulfillment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 185
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct...
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 4 weeks ago
From whence are these "rights of...

From whence are these "rights of individuals" derived, and why should we care? Unless we presume the existence of some greater power that determines what is good, isn't it arbitrary to posit that human survival is more important than private property rights, an equally artificially construed concept? Isn't it arbitrary to assume that some sort of equality is preferable to a system where, say, the poor are assumed to have bad karma? If these 'rights of individuals' are derived only from shared humanity, then do 'individuals' (a thoroughly meaningless term, by the way), begin to lose them when they act inhumanely? And isn't it totally arbitrary to grant rights to humans rather than other creatures anyway?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture in New Haven, On Constructed Rights
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 6 days ago
The next thing you can learn...

The next thing you can learn from the woman who was a sinner, something she herself understood, is that with regard to finding forgiveness she is able to do nothing at all.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Once we have tasted the sweetness...

Once we have tasted the sweetness of what is spiritual, the pleasures of the world will have no attraction for us. If we disregard the shadows of things, then we will penetrate their inner substance.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 3 days ago
No rational argument will have a...

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 1 week ago
Dying is nothing. You have to...

Dying is nothing. You have to know how to disappear. Dying comes down to a biological chance and that is of no consequence. Disappearing is of a far higher order of necessity. You must not leave it to biology to decide when you will disappear. To disappear is to pass into an enigmatic state which is neither life nor death. Some animals know how to do this, as do savages, who withdraw while still alive, from the sight of their own people.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 1 week ago
What I had to say was...

What I had to say was so clear and I felt it so deeply that I am amazed by the tediousness, repetitiousness, verbiage, and disorder of this writing. What would have made it lively and vehement coming from another's pen is precisely what has made it dull and slack coming from mine. The subject was myself, and I no longer found on my own interest that zeal and vigor of courage which can exalt a generous soul only for another person's cause.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On the Subject and Form of This Writing; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months ago
History has proved us, and all...

History has proved us, and all who thought like us, wrong. It has made it clear that the state of economic development on the Continent at that time was not, by a long way, ripe for the removal of capitalist production.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction (1895) to Marx's The Class Struggles in France
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 3 weeks ago
Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding...

Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding some its assertions, that the forms of knowledge and consequently the relations of man to nature and to other men never change. According to rationalism, too, all subjective and objective potentialities are rooted in insights which the individual already possesses, but rationality uses existing objects as well as the active inner striving and ideas of man to construct standards for the future. In this regard, it is not so closely associated with the present order as is empiricism.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 day ago
But if you can breed cattle...

But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as "these are not one-dimensional abilities" apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice. I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question? From the Afterword, The Herald

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Glasgow, Scotland, 20 November 2006
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 days ago
He who helps the guilty, shares...

He who helps the guilty, shares the crime.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim 139
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 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
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 1 week ago
One always speaks badly….

One always speaks badly when one has nothing to say.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1827
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 5 days ago
We are obviously heading for revolution-something...

We are obviously heading for revolution-something I have never once doubted since 1850. The first act will include a by no means gratifying rehash of the stupidities of '48-'49. However, that's how world history runs its course, and one has to take it as one finds it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (28 December 1862), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860-64 (2010), p. 437
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
Generally speaking, the errors in religion...

Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part 4, Section 7
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 5 days ago
Who looks in the sun will...

Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
March 10, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 weeks 6 days ago
M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, might...

M. Comte's philosophy, in practice, might be compendiously described as Catholicism minus Christianity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On the Physical Basis of Life
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 weeks 6 days ago
The method of scientific investigation is...

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Sobriety, as opposed to inebriety and...

Sobriety, as opposed to inebriety and gluttony, is of admirable use in teaching men that nature is satisfied with a little, and enabling them to content themselves with simple and frugal fare.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
It seems that thought itself has...

It seems that thought itself has a power for which it has never been given credit.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 2 days ago
Privilege is a regulation rendering a...

Privilege is a regulation rendering a few men, and those only, by the accident of their birth, eligible to certain situations. It kills all liberal ambition in the rest of mankind, by opposing to it an apparently insurmountable bar. It diminishes it in the favored class itself, by showing them the principal qualification as indefeasibly theirs. Privilege entitles a favored few to engross to themselves gratifications which the system of the universe left at large to all her sons; it puts into the hands of those few the means of oppression against the rest of their species; it fill them witth vain-glory, and affords them every incitement to insolence and a lofty disregard to the feeling and interests of others.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book V, Chapter 11, "Moral Effects of Aristocracy"
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 day ago
There is a class of writers...

There is a class of writers who are ever boasting of the progress of civilization and of the human mind in modern times. If we were to credit their pretensions, we should be led to believe that the science of society had reached its highest degree of perfection, because old metaphysical and economic theories have been somewhat refined upon.In answer to their boasts of social progress, it is not sufficient to refer to the deeply-rooted social evils which exist, and which prey upon our boasted civilized social order. We will mention but a single one, the frightful increase of national debts and of taxation.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Theory of Social Organization. Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
4 weeks ago
A developed legal system, with elaborate...

A developed legal system, with elaborate common law rights, and supported by a system of natural justice, was the most precious legacy of our empire. If it were still permissible to defend colonization, I should justify it in terms of this bequest, and at the same time contrast the colonization of Africa with the Soviet "colonization" of eastern Europe, which has advanced not by the generation but by the destruction of law.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
A colonial inheritance once again cast off', The Times (6 September 1983), p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
2 months 1 day ago
Nature consists of the elements given...

Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". ... The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 day ago
Mutation may be random, but selection...

Mutation may be random, but selection definitely is not.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 3, "The Message from the Mountain" (p. 82)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 5 days ago
I have been baptised and educated...

I have been baptised and educated in the Church of England; and have seen no cause to abandon that communion. ... I think that Church harmonises with our civil constitution, with the frame and fashion of our Society, and with the general Temper of the people. I think it is better calculated, all circumstances considered, for keeping peace amongst the different sects, and of affording to them a reasonable protection, than any other System. Being something in a middle, it is better disposed to moderate.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to an unknown correspondent (26 January 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 215
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Verily I say unto you, If...

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 3 weeks ago
Life was given to me as...

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
No. 76. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 days ago
In the spiritual realm nothing is...

In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VII
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
The true test of civilization is,...

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 days ago
If I find in myself a...

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book III, Chapter 10, "Hope"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 5 days ago
One cannot too soon forget his...

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
January 9, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 5 days ago
"And your education! Is not that...

"And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 days ago
I entered the [Communist] Party because...

I entered the [Communist] Party because its cause was just and I will leave it when it ceases to be just.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Hugo to Hoederer, Act 5, sc. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 3 weeks ago
In ressentiment morality, love for the...

In ressentiment morality, love for the "small," the "poor," the "weak," and the "oppressed" is really disguised hatred, repressed envy, an impulse to detract, etc., directed against the opposite phenomena: "wealth," "strength," "power," "largesse." When hatred does not dare to come out into the open, it can be easily expressed in the form of ostensible love-love for something which has features that are the opposite of those of the hated object. This can happen in such a way that the hatred remains secret. When we hear that falsely pious, unctuous tone (it is the tone of a certain "socially-minded" type of priest), sermonizing that love for the "small" is our first duty, love for the "humble" inspirit, since God gives "grace" to them, then it is often only hatred posing as Christian love.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 96-97
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