Skip to main content
4 months 4 weeks ago

One of the most marked features about the law of mind is that it makes time to have a definite direction of flow from past to future. ...This makes one of the great contrasts between the law of mind and the law of physical force, where there is no more distinction between the two opposite directions in time than between moving northward and moving southward.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

Let us keep to Christ, and cling to Him, and hang on Him, so that no power can remove us.

0
0
Source
source
p. 433
2 months 3 weeks ago

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable?

0
0
7 months ago

I consider one of the most important duties of any scientist the teaching of science to students and to the general public.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Happiness is the proof that time can accommodate eternity.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Simplicity and nonviolence are the basis of an economy of wellbeing, and such an economy must be localised.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Many conflicts within Third World countries are related to the practice of exploiting resources faster than nature can renew them or diverting them away from where people need them. Dams in every society have become major sources of conflict. As water scarcity grows, neighbors, families turn against each other.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

A new theory by the author has been added, which draws the physical inferences consequent on the extension of the foundations of geometry beyond Reimann... and represents an attempt to derive from world-geometry not only gravitational but also electromagnetic phenomena. Even if this theory is still only in its infant stage, I feel convinced that it contains no less truth than Einstein's Theory of Gravitation-whether this amount of truth is unlimited or, what is more probable, is bounded by the Quantum Theory.

0
0
Source
source
From the Author's Preface to Third Edition
6 months 6 days ago

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IX
5 months 3 days ago

A diversity of opinion upon almost every principle of politics, had indeed drawn a strong line of separation between them and some others. However, they were desirous not to extend the misfortune by unnecessary bitterness; they wished to prevent a difference of opinion on the commonwealth from festering into rancorous and incurable hostility. Accordingly they endeavoured that all past controversies should be forgotten; and that enough for the day should be the evil thereof. There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Men may tolerate injuries, whilst they are only personal to themselves. But it is not the first of virtues to bear with moderation the indignities that are offered to our country.

0
0
Source
source
Describing the Government's position at a previous time of deep division in British politics in fact over policy on America, Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 2
4 months 3 weeks ago

Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.

0
0
Source
source
3:15 (KJV) Said to John the Baptist.
6 months 1 day ago

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

0
0
6 months 4 days ago

The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word "world".

0
0
Source
source
On Pantheism as quoted in Faiths of Famous Men in Their Own Words (1900) by John Kenyon Kilbourn; also in Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays (2007), p. 40
7 months 3 days ago

What is asked of a man that he may be able to pray for his enemies? To pray for one's enemies is the hardest thing of all. That is why it exasperates us so much in our present day situation.

0
0
6 months 4 days ago

All styles are good except the boring kind.

0
0
Source
source
L'Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface
6 months 2 weeks ago

Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these about whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?

0
0
Source
source
Book I, ch. 21, 4.
2 months 2 days ago

We might as well say that the Newtonian system of philosophy is a part of the common law, as that the Christian religion is. The truth is that Christianity and Newtonianism being reason and verity itself, in the opinion of all but infidels and Cartesians, they are protected under the wings of the common law from the dominion of other sects, but not erected into dominion over them.

0
0
Source
source
To Dr. Thomas Cooper Monticello, February 10, 1814
6 months 2 days ago

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour, and survival a thing beyond the bounds of possibility.

0
0
Source
source
Themes and Variations, 1950
4 months 4 weeks ago

The mental operation by which one achieves new concepts and which one denotes generally by the inadequate name of induction is not a simple but rather a very complicated process. Above all, it is not a logical process although such processes can be inserted as intermediary and auxiliary links. The principle effort that leads to the discovery of new knowledge is due to abstraction and imagination.

0
0
Source
source
3rd edition, p. 318ff, As quoted by Phillip Frank, Philosophy of Science: The Link Between Science and Philosophy
3 months 4 weeks ago

Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, "I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection". I have dubbed this kind of fallacy "the Argument from Personal Incredulity". Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

The divine is God's concern; the human, man's. My concern is neither the divine nor the human, not the true, good, just, free, etc., but solely what is mine, and it is not a general one, but is - unique, as I am unique. Nothing is more to me than myself!

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 7
6 months 2 days ago

The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 25

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 154
6 months 4 days ago

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

0
0
Source
source
Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien
4 months 4 weeks ago

The terrifying experience and obsession of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of yourself. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness.

0
0
6 months 3 days ago

The South has conquered nothing - but a graveyard.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

There was a time when time did not yet exist. ... The rejection of birth is nothing but the nostalgia for this time before time.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Time! Time! Time! - we must not impugn the Scripture Chronology, but we must interpret it in accordance with whatever shall appear on fair enquiry to be the truth for there cannot be two truths. And really there is scope enough: for the lives of the Patriarchs may as reasonably be extended to 5000 or 50000 years apiece as the days of Creation to as many thousand millions of years.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Charles Lyell after being inspired by his Principles of Geology
2 months 2 days ago

I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love.

0
0
Source
source
"Health is Membership"
5 months ago

Not official revolutionary commissars in any sort of sashes, but rather revolutionary propagandists are to be dispatched into all the provinces and communes and particularly among the peasants who cannot be revolutionised by principles, nor by the decrees of any dictatorship, but only by the act of revolution itself, that is to say, by the consequences that will inevitably ensure in every commune from complete cessation of the legal and official existence of the state.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

So long as a man's power, that is, his capacity to realize what he has in mind, is bound to the goal, to the work, to the calling, it is, considered in itself, neither good nor evil, it is only a suitable or unsuitable instrument. But as soon as this bond with the goal is broken off or loosened, and the man ceases to think of power as the capacity to do something, but thinks of it as a possession, that is, thinks of power in itself, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil; it is power withdrawn from responsibility, power which betrays the spirit, power in itself.

0
0
Source
source
p. 152
4 months 4 weeks ago

The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1, p. 82
6 months 3 days ago

Take the question whether other people exist. ...It is plain that it makes for happiness to believe that they exist - for even the greatest misanthropist would not wish to be deprived of the objects of his hate. Hence the belief that other people exist is, pragmatically, a true belief. But if I am troubled by solipsism, the discovery that a belief in the existence of others is 'true' in the pragmatist's sense is not enough to allay my sense of loneliness: the perception that I should profit by rejecting solipsism is not alone sufficient to make me reject it. For what I desire is not that the belief in solipsism should be false in the pragmatic sense, but that other people should in fact exist. And with the pragmatist's meaning of truth, these two do not necessarily go together. The belief in solipsism might be false even if I were the only person or thing in the universe.

0
0
Source
source
"William James's Conception of Truth" , published in Philosophical Essays, London, 1910
5 months 4 weeks ago

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

0
0
Source
source
Comment to Maurice O'Connor Drury, as quoted in Wittgenstein Reads Freud : The Myth of the Unconscious (1996) by Jacques Bouveresse, as translated by Carol Cosman, p. 14
3 months 3 weeks ago

[Asked "Do you still favour English independence?"] No, I don't think I've ever really favoured English independence. My view is that if the Scots want to be independent then we should aim for the same thing. Scottish independence, I don't think the Welsh want independence, the Northern Irish certainly don't. The Scottish desire for independence is, to some extent, a fabrication. They want to identify themselves as Scots but still to be part of a,[sic] to enjoy the subsidy they get from being part of the kingdom. I can see there are Scottish nationalists who envision something more than that, but if that becomes a real political force then yeah, we should try for independence too. As it is, as you know, the Scots have two votes: they can vote for their own parliament and vote to put their people into our parliament, who come to our parliament with no interest in Scotland but an interest in bullying us.

0
0
6 months 3 days ago

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in Simon Brown (ed.) The New England Farmer, vol. 9 (January 1857) p. 18
5 months 3 days ago

I have seen the truth; I have seen and I know that people can be beautiful and happy without losing the power of living on earth. I will not and cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of mankind. And it is just this faith of mine that they laugh at. But how can I help believing it? I have seen the truth - it is not as though I had invented it with my mind, I have seen it, seen it, and the living image of it has filled my soul for ever. I have seen it in such full perfection that I cannot believe that it is impossible for people to have it.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

0
0
Source
source
Book XXIX: Of the Manner of Composing Laws, Chapter 16: Things to be Observed in the Composing of Laws
2 months 2 days ago

Religion is a subject on which I have ever been most scrupulously reserved. I have considered it as a matter between every man and his Maker in which no other, and far less the public, had a right to intermeddle.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Richard Rush
6 months 3 days ago

Nor is it the irrationality of the form which is taken as characteristic. On the contrary, one overlooks the irrational.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. II, Ch. I, p. 30.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Lamarck, sagacious as many of his views were, mingled them with so much that was crude and even absurd, as to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have effected had he been a more sober and cautious thinker…

0
0
Source
source
Ch.2, p. 125
7 months 3 days ago

A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies. p. 188; also reported in various sources as:Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. A true friend is one soul in two bodies. Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned. For knowledge has no limits, and none has yet achieved perfection in it. Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the possession of women slaves at the millstones.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim no. 1.
5 months 4 weeks ago

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

0
0
Source
source
§ 124
3 months 3 weeks ago

The modern world gives proof at every point that it is far easier to destroy institutions than to create them. Nevertheless, few people seem to understand this truth.

0
0
Source
source
Rousseau & the origins of liberalism, The New Criterion

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia