Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 weeks ago
A farewell does not dilute the...

A farewell does not dilute the presence of the past; it may make an even deeper presence.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
What Heaven has conferred is called...

What Heaven has conferred is called The Nature; an accordance with this nature is called The Path of duty; the regulation of this path is called Instruction. The path may not be left for an instant. If it could be left, it would not be the path. On this account, the superior man does not wait till he sees things, to be cautious, nor till he hears things, to be apprehensive.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 1 week ago
Hegel once observed that comedy is...

Hegel once observed that comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning. Although Lincoln does not possess the grandiloquence of historical action, as an average man of the people he has its humour.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 2 days ago
Youth is wholly experimental. Letter to...

Youth is wholly experimental.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to a Young Gentleman Scribner's Magazine (September 1888).
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 3 weeks ago
My purpose here is to denounce...

My purpose here is to denounce an idea which seems to be dangerous and false. ... Revolutionary trade unionists and orthodox communists are at one in considering everything that is purely theoretical as bourgeois. ... The culture of a socialist society would be a synthesis of theory and practice; but to synthesize is not the same as to confuse together; it is only contraries that can be synthesized. ... Marx's principal glory is to have rescued the study of societies not only from Utopianism but also and at the same time from empiricism. ... Humanity cannot progress by importing into theoretical study the processes of blind routine and haphazard experiment by which production has so long been dominated. ... The true relation between theory and application only appears when theoretical research has been purged of all empiricism.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The teaching of mathematics," p. 71-72
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 3 weeks ago
This was once revealed to me...

This was once revealed to me in a dream.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 6 days ago
The practical consequence of such a[n...

The practical consequence of such a[n individualistic] philosophy is the well-known democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,-is, at any rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant. These phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears. Once they had a passionate inner meaning. Such a passionate inner meaning they may easily acquire again if the pretension of our nation to inflict its own inner ideals and institutions vi et armis upon Orientals should meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far it has been gallant and spirited. Religiously and philosophically, our ancient national doctrine of live and let live may prove to have a far deeper meaning than our people now seem to imagine it to possess.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Preface"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
All that is Life in me...

All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
And when we speak of "abandonment"...

And when we speak of "abandonment" - a favorite word of Heidegger - we only mean to say that God does not exist and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence to the end.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 32-33
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
It is natural for us to...

It is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste; a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
A on his lips and not-A...

A on his lips and not-A in his heart.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
E 95
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
I assert, that the ancient Whigs...

I assert, that the ancient Whigs held doctrines, totally different from those I have last mentioned. I assert, that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,-a breach of the original contract, implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords, and Commons.-That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified only upon the necessity of the case; as the only means left for the recovery of that antient constitution, formed by the original contract of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the same government. These are, the points to be proved.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 411
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 weeks ago
As we speak…

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
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 6 days ago
All evil results from the non-adaptation...

All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 2 weeks ago
If there were no limits to...

If there were no limits to human rationality administrative theory would be barren. It would consist of the single precept: Always select that alternative, among those available, which will lead to the most complete achievement of your goals.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Simon (1945, p. 240); As cited in:
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 days ago
I'm not clever enough to be...

I'm not clever enough to be a physicist. When asked about why he chose to become a biologist.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
UR Samtiden - Verklighetens magi 27 October 2012.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
I exist, that is all, and...

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

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is questionable whether there does...

It is questionable whether there does not exist in man an obscure and blind will to make war; an impulse towards change, towards emergence from the familiarities of everyday life and from the stabilities of well-known conditions - something like a will to death as a will to annihilation and self-sacrifice, a vague enthusiasm for the upbuilding of a new world.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is almost everywhere the case...

It is almost everywhere the case that soon after it is begotten the greater part of human wisdom is laid to rest in repositories.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
K 37
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
Once the needs of hunger are...

Once the needs of hunger are satisfied - and they are soon satisfied - the vanity, the necessity - for it is a necessity - arises of imposing ourselves upon and surviving in others. Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts even of his weakness and his misfortunes, for want of anything better to boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 day ago
In... "The Education of Children"... Plutarch...

In... "The Education of Children"... Plutarch gives an anecdote of Theocritus, a sophist, as an example of athuroglossos... he is... "a giant in impudence"... strong not because of his reason, or his rhetorical ability... or his ability to pronounce the truth, but only because he is arrogant. ...His fourth trait is... "putting his confidence in bluster." He is confident in thorubos... the noise made by a strong voice, by a scream, a clamor, or uproar. ...The final characteristic ...his confidence in ..."ignorant outspokenness..." ... it lacks mathesis ...-learning or wisdom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ref: Plutarch, "The Education of Children", Moralia (1927) Vol. 1, Tr. Frank Cole Babbit, p. 4, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
The lover who kills himself for...

The lover who kills himself for a girl has an experience which is more complete and much more profound than the hero who overturns the world.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 week ago
The notion that truths external to...

The notion that truths external to the mind may be known by intuition or consciousness, independently of observation and experience, is, I am persuaded, in these times, the great intellectual support of false doctrines and bad institutions. By the aid of this theory, every inveterate belief and every intense feeling, of which the origin is not remembered, is enabled to dispense with the obligation of justifying itself by reason, and is erected into its own all-sufficient voucher and justification. There never was such an instrument devised for consecrating all deep-seated prejudices.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(pp. 225-226)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 weeks ago
I find that...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nietzsche's great concept of Yea-saying gave...

Nietzsche's great concept of Yea-saying gave him a notion of purpose that is seen as positive.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Nietzsche, in short, was a religious mystic. p. 275
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 6 days ago
We are always getting ready to...

We are always getting ready to live, but never living.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
April 12, 1834
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
1 month 1 week ago
It is indeed a matter of...

It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for we have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which are the causes and effects of the true motions.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Definitions - Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Self-expression is impossible in relation with...

Self-expression is impossible in relation with other men; their self-expression interferes with it. The greatest heights of self-expression in poetry, music, painting - are achieved by men who are supremely alone.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter Eight, The Outsider as a Visionary
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
When people come to me saying...

When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, "What's your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act." And they do calm down.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
One is still what one is...

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book 2, "The Melodious Child Dead in Me"
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 weeks ago
Life cannot wait until the sciences...

Life cannot wait until the sciences may have explained the universe scientifically. We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, "here and now" without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank. And culture, which is but its interpretation, cannot wait any more than can life itself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Mission of the University [Misión de la Universidad (PDF)] (1930; translation © 1944, first published 1946), p. 73 [p. 15 in Spanish PDF], translated by Howard Lee Nostrand. ISBN 978-1-56000-560-5
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 1 week ago
Love is of all the passions….

Love is of all the passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the body.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Le Dernier Volume Des Œuvres De Voltaire: Contes - Comédie - Pensées - Poésies - Lettres, 1862
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks ago
As far as physicians go, chance...

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 3 weeks ago
Thought must be judged by something...

Thought must be judged by something that is not thought, by its effect on production or its impact on social conduct, as art today is being ultimately gauged in every detail by something that is not art, be it box-office or propaganda value.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
describing the pragmatist view, p. 51.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 5 days ago
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely...

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment" (1949), p. 292 Similar statements were included in "A Reply to Professor Haldane" (1946) (see above), published posthumously.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 1 week ago
That a woman is presented as...

That a woman is presented as a teacher, as a prototype of piety, cannot amaze anyone who knows that piety or godliness is fundamentally womanliness. ... from a woman you learn concern for the one thing needful, from Mary, sister of Lazarus, who sat silent at Christ's feet with her heart's choice: the one thing needful.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 1 week ago
The unity is brought about by...

The unity is brought about by force.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 70.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 days ago
Man has to awaken to wonder...

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 5e
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 day ago
What all these people are doing...

What all these people are doing is not aggressive; they are inventing new possibilities of pleasure with strange parts of their body - through the eroticization of the body. I think it's ... a creative enterprise, which has as one of its main features what I call the desexualization of pleasure.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
In reference to Sadism and Masochism, as quoted in Who's Who in Contemporary Gay & Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (2001) by Robert Aldrich and Gary Wotherspoon
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
Nothing made a happy slave, but...

Nothing made a happy slave, but a degraded man. In proportion as the mind grew callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride was lost, the slave felt comfort. In fact, he was no longer a man. If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakspeare,"Man is a being, holding large discourse,Looking before and after."A slave was incapable of either looking before or after.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 71
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
In no other country in the...

In no other country in the world is the love of property keener or more alert than in the United States, and nowhere else does the majority display less inclination toward doctrines which in any way threaten the way property is owned.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
If we could sleep twenty-four hours...

If we could sleep twenty-four hours a day, we would soon return to the primordial slime, the beatitude of that perfect torpor before Genesis-the dream of every consciousness sick of itself.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 days ago
At electric speed, all forms are...

At electric speed, all forms are pushed to the limits of their potential.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
There may be a rationalist who...

There may be a rationalist who has never wavered in his conviction of the mortality of the soul, and there may be a vitalist who has never wavered in his faith in immortality; but at the most this would prove that just as there are natural monstrosities, so there are those who are stupid as regards heart and feeling, however great their intelligence, and those who are stupid intellectually, however great their virtue. But, in normal cases, I cannot believe those who assure me that never, not in a fleeting moment, not in the hours of direst loneliness and grief, has this murmur of uncertainty breathed upon their consciousness.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
Newspapers are the second hand of...

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 19, § 233
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 days ago
The seat of faith, however, is...

The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God. Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p 85
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 4 days ago
It may be that the public...

It may be that the public mind of India may expand under our system till it has outgrown that system; that by good government we may educate our subjects into a capacity for better government, that, having become instructed in European knowledge, they may, in some future age, demand European institutions. Whether such a day will ever come I know not. But never will I attempt to avert or to retard it. Whenever it comes, it will be the proudest day in English history.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 4 days ago
You want to know whether I...

You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Yet its essence was the certitude...

Yet its essence was the certitude that his life was not totally at the mercy of chance. Somehow, it was more important than that. This sense of power inside his head - which he could intensify by pulling a face and wrinkling up the muscles of his forehead - aroused a glow of optimism, an expectation of exciting events. He knew that for him, fate held something special in store.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 5 days ago
'God!' said the Ghost, glancing around...

God!' said the Ghost, glancing around the landscape. 'God what?' asked the Spirit. 'What do you mean, "God what"?' asked the Ghost. 'In our grammar God is a noun' said the Spirit.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Who's new

  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed
  • Slavoj Žižek

Who's online

There are currently 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia