Skip to main content
7 months 2 weeks ago

There can never be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corrdiors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The world is not dialectical -- it is sworn to extremes, not to equilibrium, sworn to radical antagonism, not to reconciliation or synthesis. This is also the principle of evil.

0
0
Source
source
Jean Baudrillard in: Eldon Taylor What Does That Mean?: Exploring Mind, Meaning, and Mysteries, Hay House, Inc, 15 January 2010, p. 171
5 months 1 week ago

The highest and ultimate personality values are declared to be independent of contrasts like rich and poor, healthy and sick, etc. The world had become accustomed to considering the social hierarchy, based on status, wealth, vital strength, and power, as an exact image of the ultimate values of morality and personality. The only way to disclose the discovery of anew and higher sphere of being and life, of the "kingdom of God" whose order is independent of that worldly and vital hierarchy, was to stress the vanity of the old values in this higher order.

0
0
Source
source
L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 98
3 months 1 week ago

As for civilization, from which at last we are about to escape, so far from being the social destiny of man, it is only a transient stage - a state of temporary evil with which globes are afflicted during the first ages of their career; it is for the human race a disease of infancy, like teething; but it is a disease which has been prolonged in our globe at least twenty centuries beyond its natural term, owing to the neglect on the part of the ancient philosophy to study association and passional attraction.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Of corruption, the principal and direct use is, to engage the representatives of the people to betray their trust, and sell themselves and the people to the universal corrupter-the monarch, in his capacity of corrupter-general.

0
0
Source
source
Constitutional Code (written between 1820 and 1832), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. XVII (1841), p. 76
5 months 1 week ago

The transition from philosophy to the domain of state and society had been an intrinsic part of Hegel's system.

0
0
Source
source
P. 251
5 months 1 week ago

No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass. Freedom stretches only as far as the limits of our consciousness.

0
0
Source
source
Paracelsus the Physician
2 months 3 weeks ago

It must be obvious... that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

0
0
6 months 6 days ago

As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, ode xi, line 7
6 months 2 weeks ago

Courtship is the time for sowing those seeds which will grow up ten years into domestic hatred.

0
0
Source
source
Letter XXVI
6 months 1 week ago

I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions that seem to have nothing in common with political power, that have the appearance of being independent, but are not.

0
0
Source
source
Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971

I think it's better to think of "God's decrees" here as just subjectively compiled directives, and nature as just deterministic evolutionary processes....

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

The return to order will not be painful, because it will be natural and because it will be favoured by a secret force whose action is wholly creative. We will see precisely the opposite of what we have seen. Instead of these violent commotions, painful divisions, and perpetual and desperate oscillations, a certain stability, and indefinable peace, a universal well-being will announce the presence of sovereignty. There will be no shocks, no violence, no punishment even, except those which the true nation will approve. Even crime and usurpation will be treated with a measured severity, with a calm justice that belongs to legitimate power only. The king will bind up the wounds of the state with a gentle and paternal hand. In conclusion, this is the great truth with which the French cannot be too greatly impressed: the restoration of the monarchy, what they call the counter-revolution, will be not a contrary revolution, but the contrary of revolution.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter X, p. 105
6 months 1 week ago

Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized' how he is to be recognized' how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in a individual way, etc.).

0
0
Source
source
Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
6 months 3 weeks ago

As to fidelity, there is no animal in the world so treacherous as man. Our histories have recorded the violent pursuits that dogs have made after the murderers of their masters.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
7 months 2 weeks ago
Good prose is written only face to face with poetry.
0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Men gather the clouds, and then they complain of the tempests that follow.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, p. 30
3 months 3 weeks ago

Experience is what you get while looking for something else.

0
0
Source
source
"Experience"
6 months 2 weeks ago

There is darkness without and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, nor vastness anywhere; only triviality for a moment and then nothing.

0
0
Source
source
Attributed to Russell in Ken Davis' Fire Up Your Life! (1995), p. 33
4 months 3 weeks ago

Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.

0
0
Source
source
F 53
2 months 2 weeks ago

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Alexander Donald
3 months 1 week ago

Resolve to serve no more, and you are at once freed. I do not ask that you place hands upon the tyrant to topple him over, but simply that you support him no longer; then you will behold him, like a great Colossus whose pedestal has been pulled away, fall of his own weight and break in pieces.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Youth now flees on feathered foot.

0
0
Source
source
To Will H. Low, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
6 months 2 weeks ago

People who invented the word charity, and used it in a good sense, inculcated more clearly, and much more efficaciously, the precept, Be charitable, than any pretended legislator or prophet, who should insert such a maxim in his writings.

0
0
Source
source
Part I, Essay 22: Of the Standard of Taste
5 months 2 weeks ago

By adverting to the dignity of this high calling our ancestors have turned a savage wilderness into a glorious empire: and have made the most extensive, and the only honorable conquests, not by destroying, but by promoting the wealth, the number, the happiness of the human race.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

I am at heart more of a United-States-man than an Englishman.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Andrew Jackson (14 June 1830), quoted in Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume 4, ed. David Maydole Matteson (1929), p. 146
3 months 1 week ago

When we see civilization elated with this declining and decrepit phase of its career, we are reminded of a faded belle who, boasting of her attractions in her fiftieth year, excites at once the remark that she was fairer at twenty-five. So it is with civilization, which, dreaming of perfection and progress, is constantly deteriorating, and which will find but too soon in its industrial achievements new sources of political oppression, crimes and commotions.

0
0
5 months 2 days ago

Myth is depoliticized speech.

0
0
Source
source
p. 145
2 months 1 week ago

Remember that all is opinion.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter X, Part I.
7 months 2 weeks ago

Human justice is very prolix, and yet at times quite mediocre; divine justice is more concise and needs no information from the prosecution, no legal papers, no interrogation of witnesses, but makes the guilty one his own informer and helps him with eternity's memory.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

0
0
Source
source
"Skepticism"
6 months 2 weeks ago

...no matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1 "A Survey of Some Fundamental Problems", Section 1: The Problem of Induction, p. 4.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II, p. 426-427.
6 months 2 weeks ago

An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.

0
0
Source
source
Notebook IV, The Chapter on Capital, p. 308.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

0
0
Source
source
Works and Days
6 months 2 weeks ago

The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II
6 months 2 weeks ago

I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing - the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1
3 months 2 days ago

All rational action is economic. All economic activity is rational action. All rational action is in the first place individual action. Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.

0
0
Source
source
Part II : The Economics of a Socialist Community, § I : The Economics of an Isolated Socialist Community, Ch. 5 : The Nature of Economic Activity, p. 97
6 months 2 weeks ago

For do our Theologians pretend to make a monopoly of the word, action, and may not the atheists likewise take possession of it, and affirm that plants, animals, men, &c. are nothing but particular actions of one simple universal substance, which exerts itself from a blind and absolute necessity?

0
0
Source
source
Part 4, Section 5
5 months 1 week ago

The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

Gather your strength and listen; the whole heart of man is a single outcry. Lean against your breast to hear it; someone is struggling and shouting within you. It is your duty every moment, day and night, in joy or in sorrow, amid all daily necessities, to discern this Cry with vehemence or restraint, according to your nature, with laughter or with weeping, in action or in thought, striving to find out who is imperiled and cries out. And how we may all be mobilized together to free him.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Life is our dictionary.

0
0
Source
source
par. 29
3 months 1 day ago

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
2 months 2 weeks ago

Trade has ever been the extinguisher of war, the eradicator of prejudice, the diffuser of knowledge.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 6
7 months 1 week ago

At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. This must not be forgotten. This must be clung to because the whole consequence of a life can depend on it. The irrational, the human nostalgia, and the absurd that is born of their encounter, these are the three characters in the drama that must necessarily end with all the logic of which an existence is capable.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia