Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months ago
The less somebody knows and understands...

The less somebody knows and understands himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 51e
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 weeks 1 day ago
The pursuit of wealth...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 4 days ago
The ideal form for a poem,...

The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. II, sec. 4, "The Ideal Writer"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 5 days ago
He was one of those who...

He was one of those who wished for the abolition of the Slave Trade. He thought it ought to be abolished on principles of humanity and justice.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons (9 May 1788), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVII (1816), column 502
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 2 days ago
To have been a Sovereign, yet...

To have been a Sovereign, yet the champion of liberty,-a revolutionary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of William. Till his accession the British Constitution was in its Chaos. It had contained, from a very remote period, the simple elements of an harmonious government. But they were in a state not of amalgamation, but of conflict,-not of equilibrium but of alternate elevation and depression. The tyranny of Charles the first produced civil war and anarchy. Tyranny had now again produced resistance and revolution. And, but for the wisdom of the new King, it seems probable that the same cycle of misery would have been again described.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
'Essay on the Life and Character of King William III' (1822), written for the Greaves Historical Prize at Cambridge, quoted in The Times Literary Supplement (1 May 1969), p. 469
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 days ago
I will take it all: tongs,...

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 days ago
But, if it will help ease...

But, if it will help ease your irritated souls, please know, dearly departed, that you have ruined our lives.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Aegistheus, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 3 weeks ago
Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachm...

Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachm of Antigonus. "That," said he, "is too little for a king to give." "Why, then," said the other, "give me a talent." "And that," said he, "is too much for a Cynic (or, for a dog) to receive."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
45 Antigonus I
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 day ago
It requires wisdom to understand wisdom:...

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. XV: "The Moralist in an Unbelieving World", §2, p. 324.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 4 weeks ago
The new governmental reason does not...

The new governmental reason does not deal with what I would call the things in themselves of governmentality, such as individuals, things, wealth, and land. It no longer deals with these things in themselves. It deals with the phenomena of politics, that is to say, interests, which precisely constitute politics and its stakes; it deals with interests, or that respect in which a given individual, thing, wealth, and so on interests other individuals or the collective body of individuals. ... In the new regime, government is basically no longer to be exercised over subjects and other things subjected through these subjects. Government is now to be exercised over what we could call the phenomenal republic of interests. The fundamental question of liberalism is: What is the utility value of government and all actions of government in a society where exchange determines the value of things?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture 2, January 17, 1979, pp. 45-46
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 week 4 days ago
For those who live inside a...

For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact. Human progress is a fact of this kind. If you accept it you have a place in the grand march of humanity. Humankind is, of course, not marching anywhere. 'Humanity' is a fiction composed from billions of individuals for each of whom life is singular and final. But the myth of progress is extremely potent. When it loses its power those who have lived by it are - as Conrad put it, describing Kayerts and Carlier - 'like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedoms'. When faith in the future is taken from them, so is the image they have of themselves. If they then opt for death, it is because without that faith they can no longer make sense of living.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
An Old Chaos: The Call of Progress (pp. 6-7)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 days ago
Either the USSR was not the...

Either the USSR was not the country of socialism, in which case socialism didn't exist anywhere and doubtless, wasn't possible: or else, socialism was that, this abominable monster, this police state, the power of beasts of prey.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 184
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 1 week ago
To say that the cross emblazoned...

To say that the cross emblazoned with the papal coat of arms, and set up by the indulgence preachers, is equal in worth to the cross of Christ is blasphemy.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Thesis 79
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 2 weeks ago
So clearly will….

So clearly will truths kindle light for truths.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, line 1117 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse and M. F. Smith)
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 2 weeks ago
We are all sprung…

We are all sprung from a heavenly seed.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, line 991 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 5 days ago
The monopoly of capital becomes a...

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
If any one will piously and...

If any one will piously and soberly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus spoke on the mount, as we read it in the Gospel according to Matthew, I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life: and this we do not rashly venture to promise, but gather it from the very words of the Lord Himself. For the sermon itself is brought to a close in such a way, that it is clear there are in it all the precepts which go to mould the life. He has sufficiently indicated, as I think, that these sayings which He uttered on the mount so perfectly guide the life of those who may be willing to live according to them, that they may justly be compared to one building upon a rock.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On the Sermon on the Mount, as translated by William Findlay (1888), Book I, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 5 days ago
Most boys or youths who have...

Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but over-laid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own: and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 31)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 2 days ago
A man possessed of splendid talents,...

A man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who in that department succeeded pre-eminently.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 2 weeks ago
The best books are those, which...

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
What would become of the rich,...

What would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage-workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 weeks ago
No work of art can be...

No work of art can be instantaneously perceived because there is the no opportunity for conservation and increase in tension, and hence none for that release and unfolding which gives volume to a work of art.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 189
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
'But why,' (some ask), 'why, if...

But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 5 days ago
Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and...

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 5 days ago
I am aware that the age...

I am aware that the age is not what we all wish. But I am sure, that the only means of checking its precipitate degeneracy, is heartily to concur with whatever is the best in our time; and to have some more correct standard of judging what that best is, than the transient and uncertain favour of a court. If once we are able to find, and can prevail on ourselves to strengthen an union of such men, whatever accidentally becomes indisposed to ill-exercised power, even by the ordinary operation of human passions, must join with that society, and cannot long be joined, without in some degree assimilating to it. Virtue will catch as well as vice by contact; and the public stock of honest manly principle will daily accumulate. We are not too nicely to scrutinize motives as long as action is irreproachable. It is enough, (and for a worthy man perhaps too much,) to deal out its infamy to convicted guilt and declared apostacy.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 5 days ago
That chastity of honour which felt...

That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Volume iii, p. 332
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 3 weeks ago
I regard Peter as one of...

I regard Peter as one of the great moralists, because I suspect that more than anyone he has helped to change the attitudes of very many people to the sufferings of animals. Peter is a utilitarian in normative ethics, and a humane attitude to animals is a natural corollary of utilitarianism. Utilitarian concern for animals goes back to Bentham, who, presumably alluding to the Kantians, said that the question was not whether animals can reason, but whether they can suffer.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
J. J. C. Smart, Reply to Singer, in Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan and Jean Norman (eds.), Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart, Oxford, 1987, p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 5 days ago
How absurd men are! They never...

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech. Either/Or Part I, Swenson Translation p. 19 Variations include: People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
2 months 2 days ago
It is impossible for any man,...

It is impossible for any man, when the most favourable circumstances concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted with uncontrolled power; how then must they be violated when his very elevation is an insuperable bar to the attainment of either wisdom or virtue; when all the feelings of a man are stifled by flattery, and reflection shut out by pleasure! Surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him NECESSARILY below the meanest of his subjects! But one power should not be thrown down to exalt another--for all power intoxicates weak man; and its abuse proves, that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 days ago
Where any answer is possible, all...

Where any answer is possible, all answers are meaningless.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 5 days ago
A living dog is better than...

A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 366-67
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
A self-respecting man is a man...

A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 5 days ago
I cannot read a sentence in...

I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and seems as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour, unworn by time with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English dress as indifferently as the Sanscrit.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
August 6, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
3 months 3 weeks ago
A lifetime is a child playing,...

A lifetime is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 days ago
The ornament of a house is...

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Domestic Life
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 day ago
It is sometimes difficult to avoid...

It is sometimes difficult to avoid the impression that there is a sort of foreknowledge of the coming series of events.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 days ago
Scientific writing is abhorrently stylized and...

Scientific writing is abhorrently stylized and places a premium on poor quality.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 5 days ago
It will be easy for us...

It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 2 days ago
Now in this island of Atlantis...

Now in this island of Atlantis there was a great and wonderful empire which had rule over the whole island and several others, and over parts of the continent and, furthermore, the men of Atlantis had subjected the parts of Libya within the columns of Heracles as far as Egypt, and of Europe as far as Tyrrhenia. This vast power, gathered into one, endeavored to subdue at a blow our country and yours and the whole of the region within the straits, and then, Solon, your country shone forth, in the excellence of her virtue and strength, among all mankind.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 weeks ago
For joys fall….

For joys fall not to the rich alone, nor has he lived ill, who from birth to death has passed unknown.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, epistle xvii, line 9
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 4 days ago
The End of the Life of...

The End of the Life of Mankind on Earth is this,-that in this Life they may order all their relations with FREEDOM according to REASON.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 3 weeks ago
When the great religious and philosophical...

When the great religious and philosophical conceptions were alive, thinking people did not extol humility and brotherly love, justice and humanity because it was realistic to maintain such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate from them, or because these maxims were more in harmony with their supposedly free tastes than others. They held to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 34.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 days ago
All that I know about my...

All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 5 days ago
The march of the human mind...

The march of the human mind is slow.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
So many of my thoughts and...

So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Journeys to England and Ireland, 1835.
Philosophical Maxims
Boethius
Boethius
3 months 3 weeks ago
Music is associated not only with...

Music is associated not only with speculation but with morality. When rhythms and modes reach an intellect through the ear, they doubtless affect and reshape that mind according to their particular character.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 weeks ago
Time begins to emit a scent...

Time begins to emit a scent when it gains duration; when it is given a narrative or deep tension; when it gains depth and breadth, even space.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 week ago
Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to...

Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone".

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
No. 193
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 2 weeks ago
The most momentous thing in human...

The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, as translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
The true hero fights and dies...

The true hero fights and dies in the name of his destiny, and not in the name of a belief.

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