Skip to main content
Image removed.

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 2 weeks ago
In contrast to festivals, events do...

In contrast to festivals, events do not create community.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 2 weeks ago
If, being duke and peer, you...

If, being duke and peer, you would not be contented with my standing uncovered before you, but should also wish that I should esteem you, I should ask you to show me the qualities that merit my esteem. If you did this, you would gain it, and I could not refuse it to you with justice; but if you did not do it, you would be unjust to demand it of me; and assuredly you would not succeed, were you the greatest prince in the world.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 day ago
Whenever the people are well informed,...

Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them to rights.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Richard Price
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 weeks ago
During the last quarter of a...

During the last quarter of a century all the authority associated with the function of spiritual guidance ... has seeped down into the lowest publications. ... Between a poem by Valéry and an advertisement for a beauty cream promising a rich marriage to anyone who used it there was at no point a breach of continuity. So as a result of literature's spiritual usurpation a beauty cream advertisement possessed, in the eyes of little village girls, the authority that was formerly attached to the words of priests.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Morality and literature," p. 164
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 1 week ago
True philosophy must start from the...

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 26 "The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life"
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 4 weeks ago
It seemed to him [Euphemius] it...

It seemed to him [Euphemius] it would be a brilliant notion to call in an outside force to fight on his behalf. This same brilliant notion has occurred to participants in civil wars uncounted times in history and it has ended in catastrophe just about every time, since those called in invariably take over for themselves. Of all history's lessons, this seems to be the plainest, and the most frequently ignored.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 day ago
War is not a courtesy but...

War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Bk. X, ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 day ago
It often happens that reforms merely...

It often happens that reforms merely have the effect of transferring the undesirable tendencies of individuals from one channel to another channel. An old outlet for some particular wickedness is closed; but a new outlet is opened. The wickedness is not abolished; it is merely provided with a different set of opportunities for self-expression.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 3, p. 20 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 1 day ago
Idea or Vision, in its sensuous...

Idea or Vision, in its sensuous meaning, would be something that could be perceived only by the bodily eye and not by any other sense such as taste, hearing, etc.; it would be such a thing as a rainbow, or the forms which pass before us in dreams. Idea or Vision, in its supersensuous meaning, would denote, first of all, in conformity with the sphere in which the word is to be valid, something that cannot be perceived by the body at all, but only by the mind; and then, something that cannot, as many other things can, be perceived by the dim feeling of the mind, but only by the eye of the mind, by clear perception.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Chief Difference Between The Germans And The Other Peoples Of Teutonic Descent p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 1 day ago
Our model citizen is a sophisticate...

Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Think Little
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
5 months ago
The concept of justice I take...

The concept of justice I take to be defined, then, by the role of its principles in assigning rights and duties and in defining the appropriate division of social advantages. A conception of justice is an interpretation of this role.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I, Section 2, pg. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 weeks ago
No matter how busy you may...

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 4 days ago
Nature has willed that man should,...

Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Third Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 days ago
The speaker with whom I was...

The speaker with whom I was most struck, though I dissented from nearly every word he said, was Thirlwall, the historian, since Bishop of St. David's, then a Chancery barrister, unknown except by a high reputation for eloquence acquired at the Cambridge Union before the era of Austin and Macaulay. His speech was in answer to one of mine. Before he had uttered ten sentences, I set him down as the best speaker I had ever heard, and I have never since heard any one whom I placed above him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 125)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 days ago
The old often envy the young;...

The old often envy the young; when they do, they are apt to treat them cruelly.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Love of the absolute engenders a...

Love of the absolute engenders a predilection for self-destruction. Hence the passion for monasteries and brothels. Cells and women, in both cases. Weariness with life fares well in the shadow of whores and saintly women.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
4 months 3 weeks ago
There is no work so mean,...

There is no work so mean, but it would amply serve me to furnish me with sustenance.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
iv. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 3 weeks ago
Why is it after a century...

Why is it after a century of socialist disasters, and an intellectual legacy that has been time and again exploded, the left-wing position remains, as it were, the default position to which thinking people gravitate when called upon for a comprehensive philosophy? Why are "right-wingers" marginalised in the educational system, denounced in the media and regarded by our political class as untouchable, fit only to clean up after the orgies of luxurious nonsense indulged in by their moral superiors?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 5 days ago
In public, as well as in...

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter V, p. 563.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 days ago
In vain I sought relief from...

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)
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 2 weeks ago
Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair...

Lycurgus the Lacedæmonian brought long hair into fashion among his countrymen, saying that it rendered those that were handsome more beautiful, and those that were deformed more terrible. To one that advised him to set up a democracy in Sparta, "Pray," said Lycurgus, "do you first set up a democracy in your own house."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
57 Lycurgus
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 3 weeks ago
But the philosophy that killed off...

But the philosophy that killed off truth proclaims unlimited tolerance for the "language games" (i.e., opinions, beliefs and doctrines) that people find useful. The outcome is expressed in the words of Karl Kraus: "Alles ist wahr und auch das Gegenteil." "Everything is true, and also its opposite."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Our Merry Apocalypse" (1997), as quoted in Is God Happy? Selected Essays (Basic Books, 2013), p. 318
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 3 weeks ago
Have we really the right to...

Have we really the right to speak of the cause of a phenomenon?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 1 day ago
Ask the world to reveal its...

Ask the world to reveal its quietude - not the silence of machines when they are still, but the true quiet by which birdsongs, trees, bellworts, snails, clouds, storms become what they are, and are nothing else.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
But ordinary language is all right....

But ordinary language is all right.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
I don't understand why we must...

I don't understand why we must do things in this world, why we must have friends and aspirations, hopes and dreams. Wouldn't it be better to retreat to a faraway corner of the world, where all its noise and complications would be heard no more? Then we could renounce culture and ambitions; we would lose everything and gain nothing; for what is there to be gained from this world?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 3 weeks ago
Sudden Glory, is the passion which...

Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 27 (italics and spelling as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 1 week ago
Organizations are systems of coordinated action...

Organizations are systems of coordinated action among individuals and groups whose preferences, information, interests, or knowledge differ. Organization theories describe the delicate conversion of conflict into cooperation, the mobilization of resources, and the coordination of effort that facilitate the joint survival of an organization and its members.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Simon (1993. p. 2); Cited in Mario Catalani, ‎Giuseppe F. Clerico (1996) Decision making structures. p. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 2 weeks ago
Arms observe no bounds…

Arms observe no bounds; nor can the wrath of the sword, once drawn, be easily checked or stayed; war delights in blood.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
lines 403-405; (Lycus).
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
4 months 1 day ago
...for stones, plants, and animals there...

...for stones, plants, and animals there is no God, but only for man.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 weeks ago
Think not disdainfully of death, but...

Think not disdainfully of death, but look on it with favor; for even death is one of the things that Nature wills.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IX, 3
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 days ago
Philosophy is said....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 month 3 weeks ago
Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have...

Wisdom, virtue, morality, all these have fallen out of fashion: everybody worships at the shrine of commerce.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Theory of the Four Movements (1808), G. Jones, ed. (1966), p. 269
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 3 weeks ago
No human acquisition is stable. Even...

No human acquisition is stable. Even what appears to us most completely won and consolidated can disappear in a few generations. This thing we call "civilization" - all these physical and moral comforts, all these conveniences, all these shelters, all these virtues and disciplines which have become habit now, on which we count, and which in effect constitute a repertory or system of securities which man made for himself like a raft in the initial shipwreck which living always is - all these securities are insecure securities which in the twinkling of an eye, at the least carelessness, escape from man's hands and vanish like phantoms.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 day ago
All is riddle, and the key...

All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Illusions
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 3 days ago
As much in vain, perhaps, will...

As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an hight of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
4 weeks ago
We have now but to prove...

We have now but to prove a third attribute: I mean the faculty of feeling which the philosophers of all centuries have found in this same substance. ...The Cartesians have made, in vain, to rob matter of this faculty. But in order to avoid insurmountable difficulties, they have flung themselves into a labyrinth from which they have thought to escape by this absurd system "that animals are pure machines."An opinion so absurd has never gained admittance among philosophers... Experience gives us no less proof of the faculty of feeling in animals than of feeling in men.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 weeks ago
That to expect bad people not...

That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It's to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant-the act of a tyrant.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Hays translation) XI, 18
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 3 weeks ago
In the form of the oeuvre,...

In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 days ago
When he entered into the Whig...

When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs, than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution; what they had been during the reign of queen Anne; what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 409
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 1 week ago
But let us now dismiss these...

But let us now dismiss these poetical fictions; because with what is divine they have mingled much of human alloy; and let us now consider what the deity has declared concerning himself and the other gods. The region surrounding the Earth has its existence in virtue of birth. From whom then does it receive its eternity and imperishability, if not from him who holds all things together within defined limits, for it is impossible that the nature of bodies (material) should be without a limit, inasmuch as they cannot dispense with a Final Cause, nor exist through themselves.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 day ago
If we could sniff or swallow...

If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution-then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Wanted, A New Pleasure
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 day ago
The difference between the first- and...

The difference between the first- and second-best things in art absolutely seems to escape verbal definition - it is a matter of a hair, a shade, an inward quiver of some kind - yet what miles away in the point of preciousness!

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
To Henry Rutgers Marshall, 7 February 1899
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 1 week ago
The visible world has, as I...

The visible world has, as I have said, subsisted around him from all eternity: and the Light also which surrounds the world has also its place from all eternity, not intermittently, nor in different degrees at different times, but constantly and in an equable manner. But whosoever will attempt to estimate, as far as thought goes, this external Nature, by the measure of Time, he will very easily discover respecting the Sun, Sovereign of all things, of how many blessings he is, from all eternity, the author to the world.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Try as I will, I don't...

Try as I will, I don't see what might exist...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 day ago
The whole historic existence of mankind...

The whole historic existence of mankind is nothing else than the gradual transition from the personal, animal conception of life to the social conception of life, and from the social conception of life to the divine conception of life.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter IV, Christianity Misunderstood by Men of Science
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months ago
Everything is a subject on which...

Everything is a subject on which there is not much to be said.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Studies in Words (1960), ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 month 1 week ago
Physics is to be regarded not...

Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Unity of Human Knowledge
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 weeks ago
...be tolerant with others and strict...

...be tolerant with others and strict with yourself. Remember, nothing belongs to you but your flesh and blood-and nothing else is under your control.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Hays translation) V, 33
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
The dominion of bad men is...

The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IV, 3 Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Users

☰ ˟
  • All users
  • Historical Figures

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