Skip to main content
4 months 5 days ago

Scientific truth is characterized by its exactness and the certainty of its predictions. But these admirable qualities are contrived by science at the cost of remaining on a plane of secondary problems. leaving intact the ultimate and decisive questions. ... Yet science is but a small part of the human mind and organism. Where it stops, man does not stop.

0
0
Source
source
p. 13
4 months 1 week ago

We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

"Spirit" is matter seen in a stronger light. What else did Malebranche mean when he spoke of "seeing all things in God"? Existence is a mystery because the light of it is inexhaustible.

0
0
Source
source
Near the Brink: Observations of a Nonagenarian (1952). p. 17.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The camera is as subjective as we are.

0
0
Source
source
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
4 months 2 weeks ago

Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XVIII.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Paradise on earth is where I am.

0
0
Source
source
Le Mondain, 1736
6 months 1 week ago

Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.

0
0
Source
source
Authority and the Individual, 1949
4 months ago

We should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe.

0
0
Source
source
p. 129
1 month 1 week ago

As the nature of the universal has given to every rational being all the powers that it has, so we have received from it this power also. For as the universal nature converts and fixes in its predestined place everything which stands in the way and opposes it, and makes such things a part of itself, so also the rational animal is able to make every hindrance its own material, and to use it for such purpose as it may have designed.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 35
5 months 1 week ago

Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent attitude. Prudent in my analysis, in the moral and theoretical postulates I use: I try to figure out what's at stake. But to question the relations of power in the most scrupulous and attentive manner possible, looking into all the domains of its exercise, that's not the same thing as constructing a mythology of power as the beast of the apocalypse.

0
0
Source
source
"Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual", interview in History of the Present 4
4 months 1 day ago

What objection is there in reason to there being no other purpose in the sum of things save only to exist and happen as it does exist and happen? For him who places himself outside of himself, none; but for him who lives and suffers and desires within himself - for him it is a question of life or death.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Part II, p. 531.
4 months 1 week ago

The bourgeoisie ... lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!

0
0
Source
source
p. 112
5 months 2 weeks ago

A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 25
5 months 2 weeks ago

The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.

0
0
4 months 1 day ago

Apart from the fact there is no normal standard of health, nobody has proved that man is necessarily cheerful by nature. And further, man, by the very fact of being man, of possessing consciousness, is, in comparison with the ass or the crab, a diseased animal. Consciousness is a disease.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

I met, not long ago, a young man who aspired to become a novelist. Knowing that I was in the profession, he asked me to tell him how he should set to work to realize his ambition. I did my best to explain. 'The first thing,' I said, 'is to buy quite a lot of paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen. After that you merely have to write.'

0
0
Source
source
"Sermons in Cats"
3 months 3 weeks ago

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless joy.

0
0
3 months 3 days ago

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles II. But the seamen were not gentlemen, and the gentlemen were not seamen.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch. 2
4 months 1 week ago

If you don't want to explode with rage, leave your memory alone, abstain from burrowing there.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

The source of an emotion is very difficult to grasp, but it comes to just that. That holds for all phenomena, for faith, etc. Why did it begin, how did it develop? and so forth-only he who has the gift of divination can perceive where it really comes from. But it is not accessible to reflection.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable of reading them.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (16 January 1787) Lipscomb & Bergh ed. 6:57 Compare letter to John Norvell (11 June 1807), below.
3 months 4 weeks ago

Fertilisation of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 283
4 months 5 days ago

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

0
0
Source
source
p. 148
1 month 4 weeks ago

No man can suffer both severely and for a long time; Nature, who loves us most tenderly, has so constituted us as to make pain either endurable or short.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder which mythology had not helped to explain... Whatever the common eye sees at all and expresses as best it may, he sees uncommonly and describes with rare completeness. The multitude that thronged the theatre could no doubt go along with him to the end... The social condition of genius is the same in all ages. Aeschylus was undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery of the universe.

0
0
Source
source
January 29, 1840
3 months 3 weeks ago

At the time of its initial publication, Public Administration helped to define this field of study and practice by introducing two major new emphases: an orientation toward human behavior and human relations in organizations, and an emphasis on the interaction between administration, politics, and policy. Without neglecting more traditional concerns with organization structure, Simon, Thompson, and Smithburg viewed administration in its behavioral and political contexts. The viewpoints they express still are at the center of public administration's concerns.

0
0
Source
source
Book abstract, 1991

One must be something in order to do something.

0
0
Source
source
Conversations with Eckermann
4 months 6 days ago

The color is of the object and the object in all its qualities is expressed through color. For it is objects that glows- gems and sunlight; and it is objects that are splendid- crowns, robes, sunlight. Except as they express objects, through being the significant color-quality of materials of ordinary experience, colors effect only transient excitations.

0
0
Source
source
p. 212
3 months 3 weeks ago

By public administration is meant, in common usage, the activities of the executive branches of national, state, and local governments; independent boards and commissions set up by the congress and state legislatures; government corporations, and certain agencies of a specialized character. Specifically excluded are judicial and legislative agencies within the government and nongovernmental administration.

0
0
Source
source
p. 7
4 months 1 week ago

I think that I have succeeded in making it clear that this doctrine gives room for explanations of many facts which without it are absolutely and hopelessly inexplicable; and further that it carries along with it the following doctrines: first, a logical realism of the most pronounced type; second, objective idealism; third, tychism, with its consequent thoroughgoing evolutionism. We also notice that the doctrine presents no hindrences to spiritual influences, such as some philosophies are felt to do.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 6 (p. 47)
3 months 3 weeks ago

Computers were within my sphere of attention, but only computers used as number crunchers. In spite of the "giant brain" metaphor, there is little suggestion in this 1950 talk that the most important application of computers might lie in imitating intelligence symbolically, not numerically.

0
0
Source
source
p. 199.
5 months 1 week ago

Even atheists rebel and express, like Hardy and Housman, their rage against God although (or because) He does not, on their view, exist...

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

0
0
Source
source
Preface, Dover abridged edition (1952), p. xxii
4 months 1 week ago

Every act of courage is the work of an unbalanced man. Animals, normal by definition, are always cowardly except when they know themselves to be stronger, which is cowardice itself.

0
0

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Spirituality and Liberation: Overcoming the Great Fallacy (1988) by Robert McAfee Brown, p. 136
1 month 2 weeks ago

My God and I are horsemen galloping in the burning sun or under drizzling rain. Pale, starving, but unsubdued, we ride and converse. "Leader!" I cry. He turns his face toward me, and I shudder to confront his anguish. Our love for each other is rough and ready, we sit at the same table, we drink the same wine in this low tavern of life.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

If life is a test, what do you have to defend what you stood for? Your actions in a tumultuous confusing world? If life is a test, you're going to want to have developed your own philosophy to point to.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises, existed for Donoso Cortés only in that short interim period in which it was possible to answer the question "Christ or Barabbas?" with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a commission of investigation.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

Whereas, our tenet ever was, and, indeed, it is almost the only landmark which now divides the federalists from the republicans, that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated;...

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

0
0
Source
source
Part V, Prop. XLII, Scholium
5 months 1 week ago

The rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity has so poisoned our hearts, minds and souls that a dominant self-righteous neoliberal soulcraft of smartness, dollars and bombs thrives with little opposition.

0
0
Source
source
America is spiritually bankrupt. We must fight back together. The Guardian,

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia