Skip to main content
1 month 2 weeks ago

I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

0
0
Source
source
The Peace of Wild Things in Green River Review, No. 1
5 months 6 days ago

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.

0
0
Source
source
(trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60
1 month 3 weeks ago

Resignation as to knowledge of the world is for me not an irretrievable plunge into a scepticism which leaves us to drift about in life like a derelict vessel. I see in it that effort of honesty which we must venture to make in order to arrive at the serviceable world-view which hovers within sight. Every world-view which fails to start from resignation in regard to knowledge is artificial and a mere fabrication, for it rests upon an inadmissible interpretation of the universe.

0
0
3 months 5 days ago

From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptuousness, a system in which the two great commandments were, to hate your neighbour, and to love your neighbour's wife.

0
0
Source
source
p. 351
4 months 3 weeks ago

To say that man is a compound of strength and weakness, light and darkness, smallness and greatness, is not to indict him, it is to define him.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations (1963) by Norbert Gutermam
5 months 2 weeks ago

In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 17, Section IV, pg. 581.
3 months 4 weeks ago

Silent listening unites a people and creates community without communication.

0
0
2 months 1 day ago

I do not know whether I shall make progress; but I should prefer to lack success rather than to lack faith.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion - even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: "Some people think the earth is round, and others think it is flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion." Instead of this we say: "The earth is round." By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 17: The Ethics of Power
3 months 2 weeks ago

Remember then: there is only one time that is important-Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!

0
0
Source
source
Part VII: Stories Given to Aid Persecuted Jews (1903) "Three Questions", translated by Louise and Aylmer Maude, p271.
3 months 3 weeks ago

The function of knowledge in the decision-making process is to determine which consequences follow upon which of the alternative strategies. It is the task of knowledge to select from the whole class of possible consequences a more limited subclass, or even (ideally) a single set of consequences correlated with each strategy.

0
0
Source
source
p. 78.
1 month 3 weeks ago

The way to true mysticism leads up through rational thought to deep experience of the world and of our will-to-live. We must all venture once more to be "thinkers," so as to reach mysticism, which is the only direct and the only profound world-view. We must all wander in the field of knowledge to the point where knowledge passes over into experience of the world. We must all, through thought, become religious.This rational thought must become the prevailing force among us, for all the valuable ideas that we need develop out of it. In no other fire than that of the mysticism of reverence for life can the broken sword of idealism be forged anew.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in the night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice.

0
0
Source
source
Diary entry of Saturday noon (10 February?)
2 months 1 week ago

Literature, the strange entity so called,-that indeed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Literacy, in translating man out of the closed world of tribal depth and resonance, gave man an eye for an ear and ushered him into a visual open world of specialized and divided consciousness.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Speciesism-the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term-is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal
3 months 2 weeks ago

Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.

0
0
1 month 2 weeks ago

I hold the brimming wineglass and relive the toils of my grandfathers and great-grandfathers. The sweat of my labor runs down like a fountain from my tall, intoxicated brow. I am a sack filled with meat and bones, blood, sweat, and tears, desires and visions.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 10
3 months 2 weeks ago

The electronic age is a world in which causes and effects become almost interchangeable, as in music structures.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 99)
4 months 1 week ago

I have taken pains to make my distinction of icons, indices, and tokens clear, in order to enunciate this proposition: in a perfect system of logical notation signs of these several kinds must all be employed. Without tokens there would be no generality in the statements, for they are the only general signs; and generality is essential to reasoning. ... But tokens alone do not state what is the subject of discourse ; and this can, in fact, not be described in general terms ; it can only be indicated. The actual world cannot be distinguished from a world of imagination by any description. Hence the need of pronoun and indices, and the more complicated the subject the greater the need of them.

0
0
5 months 6 days ago

To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes at the slave market, he said, "Come, see that you obey orders."

0
0
Source
source
Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 36
5 months 2 weeks ago

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!

0
0
Source
source
Act 1
4 months 1 week ago

It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Self-directedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction.

0
0
Source
source
L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 96
7 months 2 weeks ago

Caring about others....all you need to know....

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state is not an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to protect it. The social world emerges through free association, rooted in friendship and community life. And the customs and institutions that we cherish have grown from below, by the 'invisible hand' of co-operation. They have rarely been imposed from above by the work of politics, the role of which, for a conservative, is to reconcile our many aims, and not to dictate or control them.

0
0
Source
source
"Stand up for the real meaning of freedom," The Spectator
6 months 6 days ago

Chi Wan thought thrice, and then acted. When the Master was informed of it, he said, "Twice may do."

0
0
4 months 3 days ago

But the capacity to enjoy is impossible without the capacity to suffer; and the faculty of enjoyment is one with that of pain. Whosoever does not suffer does not enjoy, just as whosoever is insensible to cold is insensible to heat.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?

0
0
Source
source
The Third Part, Chapter 43, p. 330
1 month 2 weeks ago

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Count Diodati
5 months 2 weeks ago

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Section 24, pg. 141
3 months 2 weeks ago

The TV generation is postliterate and retribalized. It seeks by violence to scrub the old private image and to merge in a new tribal identity, like any corporate executive.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 201)
5 months 2 weeks ago

Morals excite passions, and produce or prevent actions. Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason.

0
0
Source
source
Part 1, Section 1
2 months 4 weeks ago

People don't want to be understood - I mean not completely. It's too destructive. Then they haven't anything left.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. Variants: It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions. For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

0
0
Source
source
Book I, Ch. 23
1 month 1 week ago

Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.

0
0
Source
source
IV, 51
1 month 2 weeks ago

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to George Washington (1796); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., (1903-04), 9:341
2 months 1 week ago

Alas! such is the miseducation of these days, it is only among those that are called the uneducated classes - those educated by experience - that you can look for a Man. Even among these, such a sight is growing daily rarer. My father, in several respects, has not, that I can think of, left his fellow. Perhaps among Scottish peasants what Samuel Johnson was among English authors. I have a sacred pride in my peasant father, and would not exchange him, even now, for any king known to me. Gold and the guinea stamp - the Man and the clothes of the man. Let me thank God for that greatest of blessings, and strive to live worthily of it.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

As the nature of the universal has given to every rational being all the powers that it has, so we have received from it this power also. For as the universal nature converts and fixes in its predestined place everything which stands in the way and opposes it, and makes such things a part of itself, so also the rational animal is able to make every hindrance its own material, and to use it for such purpose as it may have designed.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 35
2 months 1 week ago

We can not... escape the conclusion that the rule of reasoning by recurrence is irreducible to the principle of contradiction. ...Neither can this rule come to us from experience... This rule, inaccessible to analytic demonstration and to experience, is the veritable type of the synthetic a priori judgment. On the other hand, we can not think of seeing in it a convention, as in some of the postulates of geometry. ...it is only the affirmation of the power of the mind which knows itself capable of conceiving the indefinite repetition of the same act when once this act is possible. The mind has a direct intuition of this power, and experience can only give occasion for using it and thereby becoming conscious of it.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. I. (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
5 months 3 weeks ago

No wind serves him who addresses his voyage to no certain port.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Ch. 1

Every philosophy is complete in itself and, like a genuine work of art, contains the totality. Just as the works of Apelles and Sophocles, if Raphael and Shakespeare had known them, should not have appeared to them as mere preliminary exercises for their own work, but rather as a kindred force of the spirit, so, too reason cannot find in its own earlier forms mere useful preliminary exercises for itself.

0
0
Source
source
Difference of the Fichtean and Schellingean System of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 49
4 months 1 week ago

Thought is as much a lie as love or faith.

0
0
4 months 1 week 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 2 weeks ago

It is by the Imperial Capital that contemporaries (and posterity, too) judge an Empire, and its magnificence impresses them mightily and leads them to judge the Emperor a great man and hero, even though it may all be based on robbery, and though the provinces of the Empire may be sunk in misery.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

This art is music. It stands quite apart from all the others. In it we do not recognize the copy, the repetition, of any Idea of the inner nature of the world. Yet it is such a great and exceedingly fine art, its effect on man's innermost nature is so powerful, and it is so completely and profoundly understood by him in his innermost being as an entirely universal language, whose distinctness surpasses even that of the world of perception itself, that in it we certainly have to look for more than that.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation: Second Aspect, as translated by Eric F. J. Payne, 1958
3 months 4 weeks ago

No sacrifice is lost for a great ideal!

0
0
Source
source
(p. 135)

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia