Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 1 week ago
The young man who has not...

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 3, P. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Ever from one who comes to-morrow...

Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Merlin's Song, II
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
Just now
Man is a reasoning…

Man is a reasoning animal.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 3 weeks ago
Write in the sand the flaws...

Write in the sand the flaws of your friend.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists‎ (2007) by James Geary
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
2 months 2 weeks ago
Germany is now a field of...

Germany is now a field of cadavers, soon she will be a paradise.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
In man (as the only rational...

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Second Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 1 day ago
Life is the terrible condition

It's quite true that there were billions of years that I didn't exist that I was never bothered about.

Life itself is sitting in a room with a murderer, while eating a nice meal. You're just waiting for the meal to be over...

LIFE is the terrible condition.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 4 weeks ago
Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent,...

Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 days ago
What objection is there in reason...

What objection is there in reason to there being no other purpose in the sum of things save only to exist and happen as it does exist and happen? For him who places himself outside of himself, none; but for him who lives and suffers and desires within himself - for him it is a question of life or death.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 2 weeks ago
It lays down, as is generally...

It lays down, as is generally known, that our speculations upon all subjects whatsoever, pass necessarily through three successive stages: a Theological stage, in which free play is given to spontaneous fictions admitting of no proof; the Metaphysical stage, characterized by the prevalence of personified abstractions or entities; lastly, the Positive stage, based upon an exact view of the real facts of the case.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 2 weeks ago
But bounty and hospitality very seldom...

But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter III, Part V, p. 987.
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
1 month 5 days ago
Those who cannot find moral clarity...

Those who cannot find moral clarity are likely to settle for the far more dangerous simplicity, or purity, instead.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 4 weeks ago
The real issue is not whether...

The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or men who love living.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter Nine, Breaking the Circuit
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 4 weeks ago
The greatest invention of the nineteenth...

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 136
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
I assert(1) There is no method...

I assert(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth [i.e., verification] of a scientific hypothesis...(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', in the sense of the probability calculus.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 1 day ago
The chalk is no unimportant element...

The chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 2 weeks ago
This life affords no solid satisfaction,...

This life affords no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of having done well, and the hopes of another life.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Anthony Collins (23 August 1704), in The Works of John Locke, Vol. X (London, 1823), p. 298; quoted by William Julius Mickle in Voltain in the Shades (London, 1770), p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 4 weeks ago
Nothing is more impressive than the...

Nothing is more impressive than the fact that as mathematics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever greater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of concrete fact. ...The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought", p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
I was walking late one night...

I was walking late one night along a tree-lined path; a chestnut fell at my feet. The noise it made as it burst, the resonance it provoked in me, and an upheaval out of all proportion to this insignificant event thrust me into miracle, into the rapture of the definitive, as if there were no more questions - only answers. I was drunk on a thousand unexpected discoveries, none of which I could make use of. This is how I nearly reached the Supreme. But instead I went on with my walk.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 2 weeks ago
From the fundamental nature of the...

From the fundamental nature of the Philistine, it follows that, in regard to others, as he has no intellectual but only physical needs, he will seek those who are capable of satisfying the latter not the former. And so of all the demands he makes of others the very smallest will be that of any outstanding intellectual abilities. On the contrary, when he comes across these they will excite his antipathy and even hatred. For here he has a hateful feeling of inferiority and also a dull secret envy which he most carefully attempts to conceal even from himself; but in this way it grows sometimes into a feeling of secret rage and rancour. Therefore it will never occur to him to assess his own esteem and respect in accordance with such qualities, but they will remain exclusively reserved for rank and wealth, power and influence, as being in his eyes the only real advantages to excel in which is also his desire.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 344-345
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 months 1 week ago
If we ignore the prior work...

If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify freedom with the outward movement since there is nothing else to identify it with. But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Sovereignty of Good (1970) p. 36.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 2 weeks ago
Men that look upon my outside,...

Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section 11
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 2 weeks ago
Every man is, no doubt, by...

Every man is, no doubt, by nature, first and principally recommended to his own care; and as he is fitter to take care of himself than of any other person, it is fit and right that it should be so.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section II, Chap. II.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
Man differs from other animals in...

Man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep, and does not wake until he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not like this.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 1 day ago
The great tragedy of Science -...

The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Presidential Address at the British Association, "Biogenesis and abiogenesis" (1870); later published in Collected Essays, Vol. 8, p. 229
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
The world is nothing, the man...

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
par. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
Someday the old shack we call...

Someday the old shack we call the world will fall apart. How, we don't know, and we don't really care either. Since nothing has real substance, and life is a twirl in the void, its beginning and its end are meaningless.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 2 days ago
A physician, after he had felt...

A physician, after he had felt the pulse of Pausanias, and considered his constitution, saying, "He ails nothing," "It is because, sir," he replied, "I use none of your physic."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Of Pausanias the Son of Phistoanax
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 week ago
The subversive character of truth inflicts...

The subversive character of truth inflicts upon thought an imperative quality. Logic centers on judgments which are, as demonstrative propositions, imperatives, - the predicative "is" implies an "ought." ... Verification of the proposition involves a process in fact as well as in thought: (S) must become that which it is. The categorical statement thus turns into a categorical imperative; it does not state a fact but the necessity to bring about a fact. For example, it could be read as follows: man is not (in fact) free, endowed with inalienable rights, etc., but he ought to be.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 132-133
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 5 days ago
If by enlightenment and intellectual progress...

If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate-in short, emancipation of fear-then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 2 weeks ago
The Americans never use the word...

The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XVII.
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
3 weeks 1 day ago
The evil of totalitarianism is not...

The evil of totalitarianism is not only that it fails to protect specific liberties but that it extinguishes the very possibility of freedom.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.104)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 4 days ago
It is our deliberate opinion that...

It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
'Sir James Mackintosh', The Edinburgh Review (July 1835), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 215
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
6 days ago
In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel, of...

In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel, of Supply-and-demand, Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil take the hindmost, begins to be one of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached on Earth; or altogether the shabbiest.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
It occurred to him that what...

It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. XI
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 5 days ago
Verily we know nothing. Truth is...

Verily we know nothing. Truth is buried deep.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Another translation: "Of truth we know nothing, for truth is in a well." Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers R.D. Hicks, Ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 day ago
Et illa erant fercula, in quibus...

And these were the dishes wherein to me, hunger-starven for thee, they served up the sun and the moon.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
III, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
As I take up my pen...

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
E 52
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 1 week ago
A good American makes propaganda for...

A good American makes propaganda for whatever existence has forced him to become.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Cousins," from Him With His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 1 week ago
Men looke not at the greatnesse...

Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 76 (Italics as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 week ago
Economics is on the side of...

Economics is on the side of humanity now.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 5 days ago
Having given up autonomy, reason has...

Having given up autonomy, reason has become an instrument.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 21.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
Two things fill the mind with...

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Translated by Lewis White Beck Two things fill the heart with renewed and increasing awe and reverence the more often and the more steadily that they are meditated on: the starry skies above me and the moral law inside me.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
Sadness makes you God's prisoner.

Sadness makes you God's prisoner.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
Just now
Consider that we shouldn't call our...

Consider that we shouldn't call our brother a fool, since we don't know ourselves what we are.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
Mathematics takes us still further from...

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
Of all our infirmities, the most...

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book III, Ch. 13 Variant: Of all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most savage to despise our being. (Charles Cotton translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 week ago
The radical empiricist onslaught ... provides...

The radical empiricist onslaught ... provides the methodological justification for the debunking of the mind by the intellectuals-a positivism which, in its denial of the transcending elements of Reason, forms the academic counterpart of the socially required behavior.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Economic man deals with the "real...

Economic man deals with the "real world" in all its complexity. Administrative man recognizes that the world he perceives is a drastic simplified model... He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation that takes into account just a few of the factors that he regards as most relevant and crucial.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. xxix; As cited in: Jesper Simonsen (1994) Administrative Behavior: How Organizations can be Understood in Terms of Decision Processes. Roskilde Universitet.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
You can take...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
  • 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 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia