Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 1 day ago
And in a flash I understood...

And in a flash I understood the meaning of sex. It is a craving for the mingling of consciousness, whose symbol is the mingling of bodies. Every time a man and a woman slake their thirst in the strange waters of the other's identity, they glimpse the immensity of their freedom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 252
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 weeks 4 days ago
The stars are scattered all over...

The stars are scattered all over the sky like shimmering tears, there must be great pain in the eye from which they trickled.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act IV.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
We have two bits of evidence...

We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place.) ...The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put in our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
I think modern educational theorists are...

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
5 days ago
Much reading has brought upon us...

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
F 144
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
I cannot believe - and I...

I cannot believe - and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable - that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Pursuit of Truth" in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, 1993
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Good breeding in cattle depends on...

Good breeding in cattle depends on physical health, but in men on a well-formed character.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Freeman (1948), p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 days ago
Certainly it is true that Christians,...

Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be un-Christian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 3 weeks ago
He marveled at the strange blindness...

He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs to one another.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 days ago
Let all the 'free-will' in the...

Let all the 'free-will' in the world do all it can with all its strength; it will never give rise to a single instance of ability to avoid being hardened if God does not give the Spirit, or of meriting mercy if it is left to its own strength.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 202
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 days ago
All men would...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is absurd to hold that...

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with reason when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 1 day ago
It has been said of old,...

It has been said of old, all roads lead to Rome. In paraphrased application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education, especially in their application to the free development of the child; the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by, art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 days ago
There is the name and the...

There is the name and the thing: the name is a voice which denotes and signifies the thing; the name is no part of the thing, nor of the substance; 'tis a foreign piece joined to the thing, and outside it. God, who is all fulness in Himself and the height of all perfection, cannot augment or add anything to Himself within; but His name may be augmented and increased by the blessing and praise we attribute to His exterior works: which praise, seeing we cannot incorporate it in Him, forasmuch as He can have no accession of good, we attribute to His name, which is the part out of Him that is nearest to us. Thus is it that to God alone glory and honour appertain; and there is nothing so remote from reason as that we should go in quest of it for ourselves; for, being indigent and necessitous within, our essence being imperfect, and having continual need of amelioration, 'tis to that we ought to employ all our endeavour.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 5 days ago
Rousseau has said in his Emile...

Rousseau has said in his Emile (book iv.): "Even though philosophers should be in a position to discover the truth, which of them would take any interest in it? Each one knows well that his system is not better founded than the others, but he supports it because it is his. ...The essential thing is to think differently from others. With believers he is an atheist; with atheists he is a believer." How much substantial truth there is in these gloomy confessions of this man of painful sincerity.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 3 weeks ago
When by these steps he has...

When by these steps he has got resolution enough not to be deterr'd from what he ought to do, by the apprehension of danger; when fear does not, in sudden or hazardous occurrences, decompose his mind, set his body a-trembling, and make him unfit for action, or run away from it, he has then the courage of a rational creature: and such an hardiness we should endeavour by custom and use to bring children to, as proper occasions come in our way.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 weeks 4 days ago
I like to walk about amidst...

I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Irony of Liberalism"
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
1 week 1 day 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
Avicenna
Avicenna
2 months 1 week ago
God, the supreme being, is neither...

God, the supreme being, is neither circumscribed by space, nor touched by time; he cannot be found in a particular direction, and his essence cannot change. The secret conversation is thus entirely spiritual; it is a direct encounter between God and the soul, abstracted from all material constraints.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 3 weeks ago
No man of sense can put...

No man of sense can put himself and his soul under the control of names... You must consider courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything carelessly.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
I would like to go mad...

I would like to go mad on one condition, namely, that I would become a happy madman, lively and always in a good mood, without any troubles and obsessions, laughing senselessly from morning to night.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 week 4 days ago
A modern factory reaches perhaps almost...

A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold and desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium.Physical labour may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 weeks 2 days ago
The new order contradicts reason so...

The new order contradicts reason so fundamentally that reason does not dare to doubt it. Even the consciousness of oppression fades. The more incommensurate become the concentration of power and the helplessness of the individual, the more difficult for him to penetrate the human origin of his misery.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 44.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 4 days ago
The people are led to find...

The people are led to find in the productive apparatus the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered. And in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Conscience is absolved by reification. p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 week 4 days ago
What appears as the positive is...

What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
Our aim is precisely to establish...

Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one's own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say "I think" we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He realizes that he can't be anything unless others recognize him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 1 week ago
The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond...

The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond comparison. There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity; instead of life, eternity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, Chapter 29
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 3 weeks ago
Newspapers are the second hand of...

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 19, § 233
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
We cannot always choose the vocation...

We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
When we see men of...

When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 1 day ago
Silent listening unites a people and...

Silent listening unites a people and creates community without communication.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
5 days ago
Nothing makes one old so quickly...

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
K 13
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
Everyone must destroy their life. According...

Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
2 months 4 weeks ago
There are ages in which the...
There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 4 days ago
Loren von Stein thus turned the...

Loren von Stein thus turned the dialectic into an ensemble of objective laws calling for social reform as the adequate solution of all contradictions and neutralized the critical elements of the dialectic.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 388
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 4 days ago
Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye...

Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things: Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
11:52
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
1 month ago
A common monetary standard will be...

A common monetary standard will be established, with the consent of the various governments, by which industrial transactions will be greatly facilitated. Three spheres made respectively of gold, silver, and platinum, and each weighing fifty grammes, would differ sufficiently in value for the purpose. The sphere should have a small flattened base, and on the great circle parallel to it the Positivist motto would be inscribed. At the pole would be the image of the immortal Charlemagne, the founder of the Western Republic, and round the image his name would be engraved, in its Latin form, Carolus; that name, respected as it is by all nations of Europe alike, would be the common appellation of the universal monetary standard.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 430
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 days ago
The oldest and best known evil...

The oldest and best known evil was ever more supportable than one that was new and untried.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Beauty without grace is the hook...

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Beauty
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 weeks 5 days ago
The romantic poetry…

The romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Progressive Universalpoesie (1798)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
Things have their root and their...

Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
1 month 4 weeks ago
The more exquisite any good is,...

The more exquisite any good is, of which a small specimen is afforded us, the sharper is the evil, allied to it; and few exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature. The most sprightly wit borders on madness; the highest effusions of joy produce the deepest melancholy; the most ravishing pleasures are attended with the most cruel lassitude and disgust; the most flattering hopes make way for the severest disappointments. And, in general, no course of life has such safety (for happiness is not to be dreamed of) as the temperate and moderate, which maintains, as far as possible, a mediocrity, and a kind of insensibility, in every thing. As the good, the great, the sublime, the ravishing are found eminently in the genuine principles of theism; it may be expected, from the analogy of nature, that the base, the absurd, the mean, the terrifying will be equally discovered in religious fictions and chimeras.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part XV - General corollary
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 week 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
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 weeks 5 days ago
There is no sin, and there...

There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, ch. 3 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to a devout widow afraid of death
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 4 days ago
And that servant, which knew his...

And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Luke 12:47 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 4 days ago
As we divided natural philosophy in...

As we divided natural philosophy in general into the inquiry of causes, and productions of effects: so that part which concerneth the inquiry of causes we do subdivide according to the received and sound division of causes. The one part, which is physic, inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and the other, which is metaphysic, handleth the formal and final causes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book VII, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
1 month 1 week ago
Time is the wisest…

Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 5 days ago
I have in general no very...

I have in general no very exalted opinion of the virtue of paper government.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 week 4 days ago
The first thing that we know...

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
2 months 3 days ago
It is easier for the prince...

It is easier for the prince to make friends of those men who were contented under the former government, and are therefore his enemies, than of those who, being discontented with it, were favourable to him and encouraged him to seize it. 

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 20
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Content
  • 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