Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Water is the first principle of...

Water is the first principle of everything.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983b
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 4 days ago
It is your concern....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 6 days ago
I am at heart more of...

I am at heart more of a United-States-man than an Englishman.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Andrew Jackson (14 June 1830), quoted in Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume 4, ed. David Maydole Matteson (1929), p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
The book written against fame and...

The book written against fame and learning has the author's name on the title-page.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1857
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 4 days ago
The entire history of social improvement...

The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of an universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 days ago
What a monument of human smallness...

What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most - that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman - the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. 1, Ch 8 "The Philosopher King"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 4 days ago
A very few, as heroes, patriots,...

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 4 weeks ago
Philosophy will not be able to...

Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavors. Only a god can still save us. I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline; so that we do not, simply put, die meaningless deaths, but that when we decline, we decline in the face of the absent god.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 1 day ago
If there be such a thing...

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. 1, bk. 1, ch.4
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
2 months 1 week ago
Knowledge that is not Infallible is...

Knowledge that is not Infallible is not certain knowledge.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
I. Introduction, p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 6 days ago
For it is with the same...

For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all of the real, coincide with their simulation models.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Precession of Simulacra," pp. 1-2
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 4 weeks ago
What will be the attitude of...

What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities? The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
In matters that are so obscure...

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
I, xviii, 37. Modern translation by J.H. Taylor
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
2 months 4 days ago
Before either of us knew it,...

Before either of us knew it, we belonged to each other.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 month 3 weeks ago
The concept of guilt is found...

The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 178
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 days ago
I am writing to you to...

I am writing to you to tell you of my decision to return to your Government the Carl von Ossietzsky medal for peace. I do so reluctantly and after two years of private approaches on behalf of Heinz Brandt, whose continued imprisonment is a barrier to coexistence, relaxation of tension and understanding between East and West... I regret not to have heard from you on this subject. I hope that you will yet find it possible to release Brandt through an amnesty which would be a boon to the cause of peace and to your country.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Walter Ulbricht, January 7, 1964.
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 4 weeks ago
Analytical philosophy was very interesting. It...

Analytical philosophy was very interesting. It always struck me as being very interesting and full of tremendous intellectual curiosities. It is wonderful to see the mind at work in such an intense manner, but, for me, it was still too far removed from my own issues.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Interview in African-American Philosophers: 17 Conversations (1998) edited by George Yancy, p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 6 days ago
The close-up of a face is...

The close-up of a face is as obscene as a sexual organ seen from up close. It is a sexual organ. The promiscuity of the detail, the zoom-in, takes on a sexual value.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 43)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 3 days ago
People ... become so preoccupied with...

People ... become so preoccupied with the means by which an end is achieved, as eventually to mistake it for the end. Just as money, which is a means of satisfying wants, comes to be regarded by a miser as the sole thing to be worked for, leaving the wants unsatisfied; so the conduct men have found preferable because most conducive to happiness, has come to be thought of as intrinsically preferable: not only to be made a proximate end (which it should be), but to be made an ultimate end, to the exclusion of the true ultimate end.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ethics (New York:1915), § 14, pp. 38-39
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 5 days ago
Life is just a notebook with...

Life is just a notebook with blank pages. Every time we make a mistake, the pages get stained and living in it becomes impossible.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
Shut out the evil love of...

Shut out the evil love of the world, that you may be filled with the love of God. You are a vessel that was already full: you must pour away what you have, that you may take in what you have not.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Second Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 2 weeks ago
It seems as if the female...

It seems as if the female spirit of the world were mourning everlastingly over blessings, not lost, but which she has never had, and which, in her discouragement she feels that she never will have, they are so far off.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 3 weeks ago
The animals themselves are incapable of...

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with selfinterest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 6: Speciesism Today
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
The annual labour of every nation...

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 6 days ago
Rights are, then, the fruits of...

Rights are, then, the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law-no rights contrary to the law-no rights anterior to the law. Before the existence of laws there may be reasons for wishing that there were laws-and doubtless such reasons cannot be wanting, and those of the strongest kind;-but a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, does not constitute a right. To confound the existence of a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, with the existence of the right itself, is to confound the existence of a want with the means of relieving it. It is the same as if one should say, everybody is subject to hunger, therefore everybody has something to eat.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pannomial Fragments (c. 1831), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. III (1838), p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 2 days ago
Our concern is solely with the...

Our concern is solely with the basic structure of society and its major institutions and therefore with the standard cases of social justice.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter II, Section 10, pg. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 5 days ago
Someday, someday, this crazy world will...

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God, Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 days ago
No punishment has ever possessed enough...

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Epilogue
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 1 week ago
I believe the world grows near...

I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section 45
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 3 weeks ago
To disappear into deep water or...

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 5 days ago
All these people talk so eloquently...

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States-and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in "An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Carey Horwitz, Library Journal, Apr. 15, 1973: 1131
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
Cantare amantis est. Singing is of...

Singing is of a lover.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Variant translation: To sing is characteristic of the lover. 336
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
There is a plague on Man,...

There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 weeks ago
Persons who feel themselves to be...

Persons who feel themselves to be exiles in this world-and what noble mind, from Empedocles down, has not had that feeling?-are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 39-40
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
This morning I thought, hence lost...

This morning I thought, hence lost my bearings, for a good quarter of an hour.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 weeks 1 day ago
Perpetual devotion to what a man...

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
An Apology for Idlers.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
You can't be reluctant to give...

You can't be reluctant to give up your lie and still tell the truth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 44e
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
Man exists for his own sake...

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
November 15, 1839
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 weeks 1 day ago
To know what you prefer, instead...

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying Amen to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
An Inland Voyage (1878), Ch. III, "The Royal Sport Nautique".
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 weeks ago
Tomorrow we will….

Tomorrow we will be back on the vast ocean.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations: The Illiterati's Guide to Latin Maxims, Mottoes, Proverbs and Sayings
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 2 days ago
When the basic structure of society...

When the basic structure of society is publicly known to satisfy its principles for an extended period of time, those subject to these arrangements tend to develop a desire to act in accordance with these principles and to do their part in institutions which exemplify them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter III, Section 29, pg.177
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 4 weeks ago
The anarchists put the thing upside...

The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Philipp Van Patten
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 4 days ago
Man grows used to everything, the...

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 4 days ago
I hardly know an intellectual man,...

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, - that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 2 weeks ago
For what is a child? Ignorance....

For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. For where a child has knowledge, he is no worse than we are.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, ch. 1, 16
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months ago
Accepting the absurdity of everything around...

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
No natural boundary seems to be...

No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do. Variant: What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 6 days ago
I remembered the way out suggested...

I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
This passage contains a statement Qu'ils mangent de la brioche that has usually come to be attributed to Marie Antoinette; this was written in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was 10
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 week 3 days ago
The modern world inherits the Christian...

The modern world inherits the Christian view in which salvation is played out in history. In Christian myth human events follow a design known only to God; the history of humankind is an ongoing story of redemption. This is an idea that informs virtually all of western thought - not least when it is intensely hostile to religion. From Christianity onwards, human salvation would be understood (at least in the west) as involving movement through time. All modern philosophies in which history is seen as a process of human emancipation - whether through revolutionary change or incremental improvement - are garbled versions of this Christian narrative, itself a garbled version of the original message of Jesus.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Faith of Puppets: The Revelation of Philip K. Dick (p. 60)
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 4 days ago
To study the meaning of man...

To study the meaning of man and of life - I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
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