Skip to main content
5 months 3 weeks ago

This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears.

0
0
7 months 2 days ago

Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men.

0
0
Source
source
Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 223
7 months 1 day ago

The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 4
4 months 4 weeks ago

Each new technology is a reprogramming of sensory life.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 33)
6 months 4 weeks ago

Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do - any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.

0
0
Source
source
p. 56
7 months 4 days ago

Upstart greatness is everywhere less respected than ancient greatness.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Part II, p. 773.
6 months 1 day ago

The statue of Freedom has not been cast yet, the furnace is hot, we can all still burn our fingers.

0
0
Source
source
Act I.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Now, let there be an indefinite succession of these inferential acts of comparative perception; and it is plain that the last moment will contain objectively the whole series. Let there be, not merely an indefinite succession, but a continuous flow of inference through a finite time; and the result will be a mediate objective consciousness of the whole time in the last moment. In this last moment, the whole series will be recognized, or known as known before.

0
0
7 months 1 day ago

I've got a one-dimensional mind.

0
0
Source
source
Said to Rupert Crawshay-Williams; Russell Remembered (1970), p. 31
3 months 3 weeks ago

Ideals are imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. XII: "The Business of the Great Society", §9, p. 259
6 months 1 week ago

How can even the lowest mind, if he reflects at all the marvels of this earth and sky, the brilliant fashioning of plants and animals, remain blind to the fact that this wonderful world with its settled order must have a maker to design, determine and direct it?

0
0
Source
source
Tibawi, A.L. (ed. and tr.). (1965) Al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle) "Al-Ghazali's Tract on Dogmatic Theology". In: The Islamic Quarterly, 9:3-4 (1965), 3-4.
6 months 1 day ago

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

0
0

Discord which appears at first to be a lamentable breach and dissolution of the unity of a party, is really the crowning proof of its success.

0
0
Source
source
§ 575
7 months 1 day ago

In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. I sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition.

0
0
Source
source
(pp. 134-135)
3 months 3 weeks ago

There is no idea so obscure that someone could not come to regard it as self-evident.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter Seven, Pragmatism and Positivism, p. 156
6 months 1 day ago

Freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun. .

0
0
Source
source
Act IV
5 months 3 weeks ago

Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.

0
0
Source
source
p. 58
7 months 1 day ago

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, "Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta."

0
0
Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 27
6 months ago

Man needed one moral constitution to fit him for his original state; he needs another to fit him for his present state; and he has been, is, and will long continue to be, in process of adaptation. And the belief in human perfectibility merely amounts to the belief that, in virtue of this process, man will eventually become completely suited to his mode of life. Progress, therefore, is not an accident, but a necessity. Instead of civilization being artificial, it is part of nature; all of a piece with the development of the embryo or the unfolding of a flower. The modifications mankind have undergone, and are still undergoing, result from a law underlying the whole organic creation; and provided the human race continues, and the constitution of things remains the same, those modifications must end in completeness.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, concluding paragraph
7 months 1 day ago

Long hours of labour seem to be the secret of the rational and healthful processes, which are to raise the condition of the labourer by an improvement of his mental and moral powers and to make a rational consumer out of him.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 520.
3 months 2 weeks ago

What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things.

0
0
Source
source
Line 5 Here, Seneca uses the same observation that Sallust made regarding friendship (in his historical account of the Catilinarian conspiracy, Bellum Catilinae[XX.4]) to define wisdom.
7 months 1 day ago

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

The social conditions that nourished and made use of this ideology can still revive; perhaps - who knows? - the virus is dormant, waiting for the next opportunity. Dreams about the perfect society belong to the enduring stock of civilization.

0
0
Source
source
New Preface, p. vi
5 months 3 weeks ago

When language is used without true significance, it loses its purpose as a means of communication and becomes an end in itself.

0
0
5 months 4 weeks ago

Here then is what we understand by these words: "the equalization of the classes." It would perhaps have been better to say suppression of the classes, the unification of society by the abolition of economic and social inequality. But we have also demanded the equalization of the individuals, and it is there especially that we attract all the thunderbolts of outraged eloquence from our adversaries. One has made use of that part of our proposition to prove in a conclusive manner that we are nothing but communists.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.

0
0
Source
source
Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557
3 months 2 weeks ago

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. II, letter to Lord Murray (29 September 1843), p. 501
7 months 1 week ago

But the other conception, namely the infusion of the soul, it is piously and suitably believed, was without any sin, so that while the soul was being infused, she would at the same time be cleansed from original sin and adorned with the gifts of God to receive the holy soul thus infused. And thus, in the very moment in which she began to live, she was without all sin.

0
0
Source
source
Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 4, 694
5 months 3 weeks ago

While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.

0
0
Source
source
"The Meaning of Life".
7 months 1 week ago

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk- they are all part of the curriculum.

0
0
Source
source
The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
7 months 2 days ago

As the strata of the earth preserve in succession the living creatures of past epochs, so the shelves of libraries preserve in succession the errors of the past and their expositions, which like the former were very lively and made a great commotion in their own age but now stand petrified and stiff in a place where only the literary palaeontologist regards them.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2 "On Books and Writing" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
11 months 6 days ago

The symptom is not only a cyphered message, it is at the same time a way for the subject to organize his enjoyment - that is why, even after the completed interpretation, the subject is not prepared to renounce his symptom.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Some subjects are so serious that one can only joke about them.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
4 months 4 weeks ago

If your parent is just, revere him; if not, bear with him.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 27
4 months 4 weeks ago

The magic of the cave image lies in its being, not in its being seen. The symbolic does not refer. It is.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 350)
3 months ago

Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. Not only so; but scarcely any attempt is entirely a failure; scarcely any theory, the result of steady thought, is altogether false; no tempting form of Error is without some latent charm derived from Truth.

0
0
Source
source
Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy in England, Lecture 7., 1852
5 months 1 week 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
7 months 1 day ago

The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labor as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, ch.1, section 4.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The struggle between the opponents and defenders of capitalism is a struggle between innovators who do not know what innovation to make and conservatives who do not know what to conserve.

0
0
Source
source
p. 233
7 months 3 weeks ago

Query: How to contrive not to waste one's time? Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while. Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting room; by remaining on one's balcony all a Sunday afternoon; by travelling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by queueing at the box-office of theatres and then not booking a seat.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

We need to recognize the destructive role played by the media in fanning the flames of the "Black-Jewish Conflict." Cornel West, bell hooks, Richard Green, Barbara Christian, Henry Louis Gates, Marian Wright Edelman, Nell Painter, Albert Raby....Why are these names not as well known outside the African American community as the names of Louis Farrakhan or Leonard Jeffries? Are they, in their diversity and dynamism, less representative of the African American community?

0
0
Source
source
Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz "Jews, Class, Color, and the Cost of Whiteness" in The Issue is Power
5 months 3 weeks ago

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

I was aggressively nonpolitical. I believed that people who make a fuss about politics do so because their heads are too empty to think about more important things. So I felt nothing but impatient contempt for Osborne's Jimmy Porter and the rest of the heroes of social protest.

0
0
Source
source
p. 2
7 months ago

I am almost inclined to set it up as a canon that a children's story which is enjoyed only by children is a bad children's story. The good ones last. A waltz which you can like only when you are waltzing is a bad waltz.

0
0
Source
source
"On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952) - in Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories (1967), p. 24
8 months 3 days ago
Arrogance on the part of the meritorious is even more offensive to us than the arrogance of those without merit: for merit itself is offensive.
0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through life; for death comes upon thee at last, and the perishable part falls to the ground.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia