Skip to main content
2 months 4 weeks ago

There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.

0
0
5 months 1 day ago

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope. Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like an eternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. Thus do ideas exist in the God-Idea, but not thus do men live in the living God, in the God-Man.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

Prove your words by your deeds.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

The question is asked in ignorance, by one who does not even know what can have led him to ask it.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

To work and create "for nothing," to sculpture in clay, to know one's creation has no future, to see one's work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries, this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating on the one hand and magnifying on the other, it the way open to the absurd creator. He must give the void its colors.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

When a reasonable Soul forsaketh his divine nature, and becometh beast-like, it dieth. For though the substance of the Soul be incorruptible: yet, lacking the use of Reason, it is reputed dead; for it loseth the Intellective Life.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Know all ye mortals who have entered this contest, that according to our laws and decrees the victor is allowed to exult but the vanquished must not complain. Depart then wherever you please, and in future live every one of you under the guidance of the gods. Let every man choose his own guardian and guide.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

There must have been many who had a relationship to Jesus similar to that of Barabbas (his name was Jesus Barrabas). The Danish "Barrabas" is about the same as "N.N." [Mr. X or John Doe], filius patris, his father's son. - It is too bad, however, that we do not know anything more about Barrabas; it seems to me that in many ways he could have become a counterpart to the Wandering Jew. The rest of his life must have taken a singular turn. God knows whether or not he became a Christian. - It would be a poetic motif to have him, gripped by Christ's divine power, step forward and witness for him.

0
0
3 months 4 days ago

A man is as old as his arteries, and as young as his ideas.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 4 : On Old Age
2 months 3 weeks ago

To accomplish anything whatsoever one must have standards. None have yet accomplished anything without them.

0
0
Source
source
Book 1; On the necessity of standards
4 months 1 week ago

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves-to that part of us which is conscious. ... The independence of this consciousness, which has the strength to be immune to the noise of history and the distractions of our immediate surroundings, is what the life struggle is all about. The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 16-17
5 months 2 weeks ago

Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue and does not leave the man hesitating in the moment of decision sceptical, puzzled, and unresolved. Prejudice renders a man's virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it--the life of that man is one long sin against mankind.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known & seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper & sufficient antagonist to error.

0
0
Source
source
Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson : 1816-1826 (1899) edited by Paul Leicester Ford, v. 2, p. 102
5 months 1 week ago

"What is truth?" is a fundamental question. But what is it compared to "How to endure life?" And even this one pales beside the next: "How to endure oneself?" - That is the crucial question in which no one is in a position to give us an answer.

0
0
3 months 6 days ago

All this of Liberty and Equality, Electoral suffrages, Independence and so forth, we will take, therefore, to be a temporary phenomenon, by no means a final one. Though likely to last a long time, with sad enough embroilments for us all, we must welcome it, as the penalty of sins that are past, the pledge of inestimable benefits that are coming.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

A philosopher is a man who has to cure many intellectual diseases in himself before he can arrive at the notions of common sense.

0
0
Source
source
p. 44e
6 months 1 week ago

Scientific Method... is even less existent than some other non-existent subjects.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

0
0
Source
source
September 7, 1851
6 months 3 weeks ago

It (marriage) happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

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

The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite.

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

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

0
0
Source
source
Letter (19 April 1951); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 230
6 months 2 weeks ago

In the metaphysical elements of aesthetics the various nonmoral feelings are to be made use of; in the elements of moral metaphysics the various moral feelings of men, according to the differences in sex, age, education, and government, of races and climates, are to be employed.

0
0
Source
source
Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 58
5 months 2 weeks ago

Hegel ... proceeds abstractly from the pre-existence of the intellect. ... He does not appeal to the intellect within us.

0
0
Source
source
Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 68
4 weeks ago

"If it is my interest to have a farm, it is my interest to take it away from my neighbour; if it is my interest to have a cloak, it is my interest also to steal it from a bath. This is the source of wars, seditions, tyrannies, plots."
- Epictetus

See biography for Epictetus:
https://civilsimian.com/Epictetus

Read Epictetus's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/46/content

#philosophy #quotes #CivilSimian #UniversalHumanism

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

In our opinion, the task of a far-sighted policy of the Third Reich ought to have been that of seeking every possible means to obtain at least the neutrality of the western nations so as to have free hands for a devestating attack exclusively against the Soviet Union-but that would have required the shrewdness and genius of a Metternich.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 81-82
3 months 3 weeks ago

To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different.

0
0
Source
source
Two Faces of Liberalism (New Press, 2000, ISBN 0-745-62259-3. 168 pages), ch. 1: Liberal Toleration (p. 21)
1 week 6 days ago

"When a change occurs in Nature, the quantity of action necessary for that change is as small as possible."
- Pierre Louis Maupertuis

See biography for Pierre Louis Maupertuis:
https://civilsimian.com/Pierre-Louis-Maupertuis

Read Pierre Louis Maupertuis's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/390/content

0
0
3 months ago

Man with the great M is only an ideal, the species only something thought of.

0
0
Source
source
Dover 2005, p. 182
7 months 2 weeks ago
Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.
0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Every definition implies an axiom, since it asserts the existence of the object defined. The definition then will not be justified, from the purely logical point of view, until we have proved that it involves no contradiction either in its terms or with the truths previously admitted.

0
0
Source
source
Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 131
6 months 2 weeks ago

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Niels Bohr : The Man, His Science, & the World They Changed (1966) by Ruth Moore, p. 196
4 months 1 week ago

A writer who says that there are no truths, or that all truth is 'merely relative,' is asking you not to believe him. So don't.

0
0
Source
source
"The Nature of Philosophy" (p. 6)
6 months 2 weeks ago

The way for a person to develop a [writing] style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in part 2 of Sherwood Eliot Wirt in "The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis", 1963
2 months 2 weeks ago

I said to the almond tree: "Speak to me of God."and the almond tree blossomed.

0
0
Source
source
The Fratricides
5 months 1 week ago

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.

0
0
Source
source
Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post
5 months 3 weeks ago

A good Soul hath neither too great joy, nor too great sorrow: for it rejoiceth in goodness; and it sorroweth in wickedness. By the means whereof, when it beholdeth all things, and seeth the good and bad so mingled together, it can neither rejoice greatly; nor be grieved with over much sorrow.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

0
0
Source
source
Marx quoted and translated by Engels (in an 1882 letter to Eduard Bernstein) about the peculiar Marxism which arose in France 1882.
5 months 5 days ago

When an active individual of sound common sense perceives the sordid state of the world, desire to change it becomes the guiding principle by which he organizes given facts and shapes them into a theory. The methods and categories as well as the transformation of the theory can be understood only in connection with his taking of sides. This, in turn, discloses both his sound common sense and the character of the world. Right thinking depends as much on right willing as right willing on right thinking.

0
0
Source
source
p. 162.
5 months 1 week ago

Suppose a surface to be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course, no part can be both red and blue. What then, is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point. ...it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time... Thus, the present is half past and half time to come. ...Take another case: the velocity of a particle at any instant of time is its mean velocity during an infinitesimal instant in which that time is consumed. Just so, my immediate feeling is my feeling through an infinitesimal duration containing the present instant.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

For me any of the little gestures I make are all tentative probes. That's why I feel free to make them sound as outrageous or extreme as possible. Until you make it extreme, the probe is not very efficient.

0
0
Source
source
Marshall McLuhan: the man and his message, edited by George Sanderson and Frank MacDonald, Fulcrum, 1989, p. 32

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia