Skip to main content
3 months 1 week ago

We cannot hope to be secure when our government has declared, by its readiness "to act alone," its willingness to be everybody's enemy.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

My own belief is, if philosophers be entitled to any credit, that the Sun is the common parent of all men, to use a comprehensive term. It is a true proverb, "Man begets man, and so does the Sun:" but souls that luminary showers down upon earth, both out of himself, and out of the other gods: which souls show to what end they were propagated by the kind of life that they pursue. But well is it for that man who, from the third generation backwards, and a long succession of years, has been dedicated to the service of this god; yet neither is that person's condition to be despised who, feeling in his own nature that he is a servant of this deity, alone, or with few on his side, shall have devoted himself to his worship.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

And if the matter of the Philosophers Stone, and the manner of preparing it, be such Mysteries as they would have the World believe them, they may Write Intelligibly and Clearly of the Principles of mixt Bodies in General, without Discovering what they call the Great Work.

0
0
5 months 4 days ago

Kant's position is extremely subtle - so subtle, indeed, that no commentator seems to agree with any other as to what it is.

0
0
Source
source
Some More -isms (p. 25)
6 months 4 days ago

The historical world, in so far as it is built, organized, and shaped by the conscious activity of thinking subjects, is a realm of mind. But the mind is fully realized and exists in its true form only when it indulges in its proper activity, namely, in art, religion, and philosophy.

0
0
Source
source
P. 87
7 months 3 weeks ago

The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.

0
0
Source
source
IV, 3 Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
7 months 1 week ago

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
4 months 2 days ago

Every noble crown is, and on earth will forever be, a crown of thorns.

0
0
Source
source
Bk. III, ch. 7.
6 months 1 week ago

First of all, this prince is an idiot, and, secondly, he is a fool--knows nothing of the world, and has no place in it.

0
0
Source
source
Part 4, Chapter 5
4 months 4 days ago

But the philosophy that killed off truth proclaims unlimited tolerance for the "language games" (i.e., opinions, beliefs and doctrines) that people find useful. The outcome is expressed in the words of Karl Kraus: "Alles ist wahr und auch das Gegenteil." "Everything is true, and also its opposite."

0
0
Source
source
"Our Merry Apocalypse" (1997), as quoted in Is God Happy? Selected Essays (Basic Books, 2013), p. 318
7 months 3 weeks ago

As to the objection that these rules are common in the world, that it is necessary to define every thing and to prove every thing, and that logicians themselves have placed them among their art, I would that the thing were true and that it were so well known... But so little is this the case, that, geometricians alone excepted, who are so few in number that they are a single in a whole nation and long periods of time, we see no others that know it.

0
0
7 months 2 days ago

If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought, morally, to do it.

0
0
8 months ago

Come the Day of Judgment, some believe that the body will be different from our present body. This is only transient, that will be eternal. For this also there are religious arguments.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

The murder of one person is called unrighteous and incurs one death penalty. Following this argument, the murder of ten persons will be ten times as unrighteous and there should be ten death penalties; the murder of a hundred persons will be a hundred times as unrighteous and there should be a hundred death penalties. All the gentlemen of the world know that they should condemn these things, calling them unrighteous. But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking states, they do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, they applaud it, calling it righteous.

0
0
Source
source
Book 5: Condemnation of Offensive War I
7 months 1 week ago

You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream. Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myth that feminist movement has completely transformed society, so much so that the politics of patriarchal power have been inverted and that men, particularly white men, just like emasculated black men, have become the victims of dominating women. So, it goes, all men (especially black men) must pull together (as in the Clarence Thomas hearings) to support and reaffirm patriarchal domination. Add to this the widely held assumptions that blacks, other minorities, and white women are taking jobs from white men, and that people are poor and unemployed because they want to be, and it becomes most evident that part of our contemporary crisis is created by a lack of meaningful access to truth.

0
0
Source
source
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
3 months 3 weeks ago

Only at quite rare moments have I felt really glad to be alive. I could not but feel with a sympathy full of regret all the pain that I saw around me, not only that of men but that of the whole creation. From this community of suffering I have never tried to withdraw myself. It seemed to me a matter of course that we should all take our share of the burden of pain which lies upon the world.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 125)
7 months 2 weeks ago

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

0
0
Source
source
53
6 months 1 week ago

To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

ennui "On-WEE" : A feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement — boredom, but with a heavier existential weight to it.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

My education, which was wholly his work, had been conducted without any regard to the possibility of its ending in this result; and I saw no use in giving him the pain of thinking that his plans had failed, when the failure was probably irremediable, and, at all events, beyond the power of his remedies. Of other friends, I had at that time none to whom I had any hope of making my condition intelligible. It was however abundantly intelligible to myself; and the more I dwelt upon it, the more hopeless it appeared.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 135)

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
7 months 1 week ago

Whensoever therefore the legislative shall transgress this fundamental rule of society; and either by ambition, fear, folly or corruption, endeavour to grasp themselves, or put into the hands of any other, an absolute power over the lives, liberties, and estates of the people; by this breach of trust they forfeit the power the people had put into their hands for quite contrary ends, and it devolves to the people, who have a right to resume their original liberty, and, by the establishment of a new legislative, (such as they shall think fit) provide for their own safety and security, which is the end for which they are in society.

0
0
Source
source
Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. XIX, sec. 222
6 months 1 week ago

We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade to the void.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights of individuals.

0
0
Source
source
Part I : Declaration, Ch. IV : Mr. Spencer's Confusion as to Rights
5 months 3 weeks ago

If the passion for truthfulness is merely controlled and stilled without being satisfied, it will kill the activities it is supposed to support. This may be one of the reasons why, at the present time, the study of the humanities runs a risk of sliding from professional seriousness, through professionalization, to a finally disenchanted careerism.

0
0
Source
source
p. 3
7 months 1 week ago

It comes, it comes!' they sang. 'Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.' One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed - not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots Time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming, I buried my face in the fold of the Teacher's robe. 'The morning! The morning!' I cried. 'I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.'

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 14
7 months 1 week ago

It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks the magistrate."

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism
8 months 1 week ago

There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

Whence we see spiders, flies, or ants entombed and preserved forever in amber, a more than royal tomb.

0
0
Source
source
Historia Vitæ et Mortis; Sylva Sylvarum, Cent. i. Exper. 100, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
3 months 1 week ago

We cannot think with precision unless in our own minds we use words with precision.

0
0
Source
source
General Introduction
5 months 4 weeks ago

Little can be hoped for from a ruler... who has not at some time or other been preoccupied, even if only confusedly, with the first beginning and ultimate end of all things, and above all of man, with the "why" of his origin and the "wherefore" of his destiny.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered: and all this in a nook of this part of the world; and not even here do all agree, no, not any one with himself: and the whole earth too is a point.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 21
5 months 3 weeks ago

It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.

0
0
Source
source
p. 286
6 months 1 week ago

The poem of the understanding is philosophy.

0
0
Source
source
"Logological Fragments," Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #24
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is not religion but revolution which is the opium of the people.

0
0
Source
source
p. 159
7 months 3 weeks ago

Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. Thou mayest say, "I love only God, God the Father." Wrong! If Thou lovest Him, thou dost not love Him alone; but if thou lovest the Father, thou lovest also the Son. Or thou mayest say, "I love the Father and I love the Son, but these alone; God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; only these do I love." Wrong again! If thou lovest the Head, thou lovest also the members; if thou lovest not the members, neither dost thou love the Head.

0
0
Source
source
p 438
7 months 3 weeks ago

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, lines 830-831 (tr. Rouse)
6 months 1 week ago

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

Truly man is a marvellously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1. That Men by various Ways arrive at the same End (tr. Donald M. Frame)Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
5 months 1 week ago

In Catch-22, the figure of the black market and the ground of war merge into a monster presided over by the syndicate. When war and market merge, all money transactions begin to drip blood.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 211)
7 months 6 days ago

The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

0
0
Source
source
p. 785

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia