Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months ago
The extreme nature of dominant-end views...

The extreme nature of dominant-end views is often concealed by the vagueness and ambiguity of the end proposed.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter IX, Section 83, p. 554
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Crime in full glory consolidates authority...

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Skepticism is an exercise in defascination.

Skepticism is an exercise in defascination.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 4 weeks ago
Naturally, every age thinks that all...

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 3 weeks ago
As soon as we cease to...

As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs, then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 2 days ago
Worse than war…

Worse than war is the very fear of war.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
line 572 (Chorus).
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 days ago
There are many people who reach...

There are many people who reach their conclusions about life like schoolboys; they cheat their master by copying the answer out of a book without having worked out the sum for themselves.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 day ago
I am not much an advocate...

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Culture
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 week 2 days ago
Truth and clarity are complementary. As...

Truth and clarity are complementary.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism : Philosophical Responses to Quantum Mechanics (2000) by Christopher Norris, p. 234
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 3 weeks ago
If this superstitious fear of Spirits...

If this superstitious fear of Spirits were taken away, and with it, Prognostiques from Dreams, false Prophecies, and many other things depending thereon, by which, crafty ambitious persons abuse the simple people, men would be much more fitted then they are for civill Obedience.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 2, p. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 weeks 3 days ago
There is no means of avoiding...

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XX: Interest, Credit Expansion, The Trade Cycle, § 8 : The Monetary or Circulation Theory of the Trade Cycle
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
1 month 3 weeks ago
I'm delighted to hear someone make...

I'm delighted to hear someone make the claim that there is moral progress because it can be such a incendiary thing to say, and its something that I say and deeply believe in.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
1 week 4 days ago
All the future of socialism resides...

All the future of socialism resides in the autonomous development of workers' syndicates.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Essays in Political Philosophy, Vidya Dhar Mahajan, Doaba House, Lahore, 1943 p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
Laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio...

Man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 days ago
In our science and philosophy, even,...

In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 4 days ago
Distinctive signs, full signs, never seduce...

Distinctive signs, full signs, never seduce us.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 59)
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 4 weeks ago
For once touched by love, everyone...

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 day ago
Small creatures die because larger creatures...

Small creatures die because larger creatures are hungry. How superior to this human confusion of greed and creed, blood and fire.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months ago
Generosity is nothing else than a...

Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months ago
Always remember that it is impossible...

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 6 days ago
The surface of American society is...

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter II.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 days ago
Man ought to be content…

Man ought to be content, it is said; but with what?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pensées, Remarques, et Observations de Voltaire; ouvrage posthume (1802)
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
In a certain sense, everything is...

In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
4 months 2 weeks ago
The world is divided into men...

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 days ago
If there is some end of...

If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 3 weeks ago
The world is a great place...

The world is a great place and stocked with wealth and beauty, and there is no limit to the rewards that may be offered. Such an one who would refuse a million of money may sell his honour for an empire or the love of a woman.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Rajah's Diamond, The Adventure of Prince Florizel and a Detective.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Because the book became a freak...

Because the book became a freak 'bestseller', because I found myself bracketed with the 'Angry Young Men' of the period, I found myself carried to 'fame' on a wave of publicity -- only to discover that this kind of fame is one of the subtlest forms of obscurity. Everybody knew who I was, and nobody knew what I stood for. The public image meant that nobody was interested in what I had to say, for everyone was convinced that they already knew. I could talk until I was blue in the face about my attempt to revise the pessimistic existentialism of Heidegger, Camus and Sartre; as far as most people were concerned, I was an autodidact who was angry about something or other.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 188, George Bernard Shaw: A personal view
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 3 weeks ago
Thought is led, by the situation...

Thought is led, by the situation of its objects, to measure their truth in terms of another logic, another universe of discourse. And this logic projects another mode of existence: the realization of the truth in the words and deeds of man. And inasmuch as this project involves man as societal animal," the polis, the movement of thought has a political content. Thus, the Socratic discourse is political discourse inasmuch as it contradicts the established political institutions. The search for the correct definition, for the "concept" of virtue, justice, piety, and knowledge becomes a subversive undertaking, for the concept intends a new polis.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 133-134
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
4 months 2 weeks ago
I will speak in a low voice..

I will speak in a low voice, just so as to let the judges hear me. For men are not wanting who would be glad to excite that people against me and against every eminent man; and I will not assist them and enable them to do so more easily.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero; Translation by C.D. Yonge., 1856.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 3 weeks ago
The only possible way of accounting...

The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be obeyed precisely. It makes an element of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chance in nature. Just as, when we attempt to verify any physical law, we find our observations cannot be precisely satisfied by it, and rightly attribute the discrepancy to errors of observation, so we must suppose far more minute discrepancies to exist owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself, to a certain swerving of the facts from any definite formula.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 4 days ago
... happiness is not an ideal...

... happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination, resting on merely empirical grounds…

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
4:418-19, p.29
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
The day of your...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 3 weeks ago
When men and women agree, it...

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. VI: Free Society
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
We have lost, being born, as...

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 days ago
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only...

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 1 day ago
Never till now, in the history...

Never till now, in the history of an Earth which to this hour nowhere refuses to grow corn if you will plough it, to yield shirts if you will spin and weave in it, did the mere manual two-handed worker (however it might fare with other workers) cry in vain for such "wages" as he means by "fair wages," namely food and warmth!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 days ago
All persons possessing any portion of...

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 2 days ago
The much occupied…

The much occupied man has no time for wantonness, and it is an obvious commonplace that the evils of leisure can be shaken off by hard work.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Line 9
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months ago
My argument against God was that...

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, Chapter 1, "The Rival Conceptions of God"
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is beyond dispute that the...

It is beyond dispute that the state exercises very great power over human life and it always shows a tendency to go beyond the limits laid down for it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 1 day ago
Germany is now a field of...

Germany is now a field of cadavers, soon she will be a paradise.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 3 weeks ago
Anger is a momentary madness….

Anger is a momentary madness so control your passion or it will control you.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, epistle ii, line 62
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 week 3 days ago
The visible world has, as I...

The visible world has, as I have said, subsisted around him from all eternity: and the Light also which surrounds the world has also its place from all eternity, not intermittently, nor in different degrees at different times, but constantly and in an equable manner. But whosoever will attempt to estimate, as far as thought goes, this external Nature, by the measure of Time, he will very easily discover respecting the Sun, Sovereign of all things, of how many blessings he is, from all eternity, the author to the world.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
2 months 2 weeks ago
I retain my faith in the...

I retain my faith in the humanist tradition, that it's possible to deal with discrepant experiences truthfully without resolving into simple things like only women should write about women, only Chicanos should write about Chicanos, only Latinos should write about Latinos... I think that's the most damaging crime, and misapprehension of what I'm saying. That's why they debate all these things and they trace them back to me and people say 'you did that!' Absolutely not. I'm talking from a universalistic, if you like cosmopolitan point of view to which I adhere and which is the only way the world makes sense to me. I don't believe in the politics of identity, although in many ways paradoxically I seem to be the father of identity politics, but it's a thing I totally disbelieve in because I realise the damage that identities have done.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Interview with Michaël Zeeman for Leven en Werken
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 1 week ago
What I am saying, then, is...

What I am saying, then, is that elements of what we call "language" or "mind" penetrate so deeply into what we call "reality" that the very project of representing ourselves as being "mappers" of something "language-independent" is fatally compromised from the very start. Like Relativism, but in a different way, Realism is an impossible attempt to view the world from Nowhere. In this situation it is a temptation to say, "So we make the world," or "our language makes up the world," or "our culture makes up the world"; but this is just another form of the same mistake. If we succumb, once again we view the world-the only world we know-as a product. One kind of philosopher views it as a product from a raw material: Unconceptualized Reality. The other views it as a creation ex nihilo. But the world isn't a product. It's just the world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Realism with a Human Face"
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Let not that which in the...

Let not that which in the case of another is contrary to nature become an evil for you; for you are born not to be humiliated along with others, nor to share in their misfortunes, but to share in their good fortune. If, however, someone is unfortunate, remember that his misfortune concerns himself. For God made all mankind to be happy, to be serene.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book III, ch. 24, 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 days ago
Children should not be suffer'd to...

Children should not be suffer'd to lose the consideration of human nature in the shufflings of outward conditions. The more they have, the better humor'd they should be taught to be, and the more compassionate and gentle to those of their brethren who are placed lower, and have scantier portions. If they are suffer'd from their cradles to treat men ill and rudely, because, by their father's title, they think they have a little power over them, at best it is ill-bred; and if care be not taken, will by degrees nurse up their natural pride into an habitual contempt of those beneath them. And where will that probably end but in oppression and cruelty?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 117
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 2 days ago
If you would not have a...

If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
There were honest people long before...

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
L 16
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 2 weeks ago
What is food to one...

What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book IV, line 637 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations) Compare: "What's one man's poison, signor, / Is another's meat or drink", Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (1647), Act III, scene 2
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