Skip to main content
6 months 3 weeks ago

But after these, Pythagoras changed that philosophy, which is conversant about geometry itself, into the form of a liberal doctrine, considering its principles in a more exalted manner; and investigating its theorems immaterially and intellectually; who likewise invented a treatise of such things as cannot be explained in geometry, and discovered the constitution of the mundane figures.

0
0
Source
source
Chap. IV.
3 months 5 days ago

No longer let thy breathing only act in concert with the air which surrounds thee, but let thy intelligence also now be in harmony with the intelligence which embraces all things. For the intelligent power is no less diffused in all parts and pervades all things for him who is willing to draw it to him than the aërial power for him who is able to respire it.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 54
5 months 5 days ago

Fortune is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 274
6 months 4 weeks ago

If we tried to rely entirely on reason, and pressed it hard, our lives and beliefs would collapse - a form of madness that may actually occur if the inertial force of taking the world and life for granted is somehow lost. If we lose our grip on that, reason will not give it back to us.

0
0
Source
source
"The Absurd" (1971), p. 20.
3 months 3 weeks ago

God has given to all things their course and decided how high and how far they may go, not higher, not lower.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

What one has to say to begin with is that, as humans, we are limited in intelligence and we really have no reliable foresight. So none of us will come up with answers to the whole great problem. What we can do is judge our behavior, our history, and our present situation by a better standard than "efficiency" or "profit," or those measures that we're still using to determine economic decisions.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

0
0
Source
source
Correspondence with Helen Keller, 1908, in The Correspondence of William James: April 1908-August 1910, Vol. 12
3 months 4 weeks ago

Sir William Hunter, estimated that 40,000,000 of the people of India were seldom or never able to satisfy their hunger. In 1901, 272,000 died of plague introduced from abroad, in 1902, 500,000 died of plague; in 1903, 800,000; in 1904, 1,000,000. We can now understand why there are famines in India. Their cause, in plain terms, is not the absence of food, but the inability of the people to pay for it. It was hoped the railways would solve the problem...the fact that the worst famines have come since the building of the railways...behind all these, as the fundamental source of the terrible famines in India, lies such merciless exploitation, such unbalanced exploitation of goods, and such brutal collection of high taxes in the very midst of famine....

0
0
Source
source
(source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p.50-53).
5 months 6 days ago

Applied knowledge in the Renaissance had to take the form of translation of the auditory into visual terms, of the plastic into retinal form.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 180)
3 months 3 weeks ago

To no creature besides man has been given wisdom, foresight, industry, and reflection.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Apart from logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Himself adequately rewarded by the final emergence of Hitler and Stalin and the H-bomb. 

0
0
Source
source
Preface
5 months 3 weeks ago

Underlying the concept of positivity is the conviction that the positive is intrinsically positive in itself, without anyone pausing to ask what is to be regarded as positive. ... It is significant and really quite interesting that the term 'positive' actually contains this ambivalence. On the one hand, 'positive' means what is given, is postulated, is there-as when we speak of positivism as the philosophy that sticks to the facts. But, equally, 'positive' also refers to the good, the approvable, in a certain sense, the ideal. And I imagine that this semantic constellation expresses with precision what countless people actually feel to be the case.

0
0
Source
source
p. 18
5 months 4 weeks ago

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
3 months 5 days ago

The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

0
0
Source
source
VII, 61
3 months 4 days ago

As for silver, I never could see any degree of fire make it part with any of its three principles. ...But admitting, that some parts of the silver were driven away by the violence of the fire, what proof is there, that it was either the salt, the sulphur, or the mercury of the metal, and not rather a part of it homogeneous to what remained? for besides that the silver, that was left, seemed not sensibly altered, which probably would have appeared, had so much of any one of its principles been separated from it.

0
0
5 months 4 days ago

McDonald: Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are - well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good - not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort.Dawkins: There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting - it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

I lie on the beach like a crocodile and let myself be roasted by the sun. I never see a newspaper and don't give a damn for what is called the world.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Max Born, 1918, from The Born-Einstein Letters: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times, Macmillan (2005 edition), pg 7.
6 months 1 week ago

In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.

0
0
Source
source
Book Three, Chapter XII.
3 months 2 weeks ago

All women's dresses, in every age and country, are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.

0
0
Source
source
In Vogue, as quoted by The Reader's Digest, Vols. 30-31 (1937), p. 69
6 months 4 days ago

...the relatively unconscious man driven by his natural impulses because, imprisoned in his familiar world, he clings to the commonplace, the obvious, the probable, the collectively valid, using for his motto: 'Thinking is difficult. Therefore, let the herd pronounce judgement.'

0
0
Source
source
Frequently misquoted as "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge" and close variants. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. (1959), C.G. Jung, R.F.C. Hull (translator) (Princeton Press, 1979, ISBN 9780691018225
4 months 5 days ago

The learning of the gentleman enters through his ears, fastens to his heart, spreads through his four limbs, and manifests itself in his actions. ... The learning of the petty person enters through his ears and passes out his mouth. From mouth to ears is only four inches-how could it be enough to improve a whole body much larger than that?

0
0
Source
source
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 259
6 months ago

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

0
0
Source
source
Jesus, Mark 16:16-18
5 months 2 days ago

The errors of the times of superstition and bigotry still hold some sway, and compel those who wish to preserve a regard to their respectability in society to an over strained demeanor; and this demeanor sometimes degenerates into hypocrisy, and is often the cause of great inconsistency. It is destructive of every open, honest, generous, and manly feeling. It disgusts many, and drives them to the opposite extreme. It is sometimes the cause of insanity. It is founded in ignorance. While erroneous customs prevail in any country, it would evince an ignorance of human nature in any individual to offend against them, until he has convinced the community of their error.

0
0
Source
source
Essay Third
3 months 3 weeks ago

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

0
0
Source
source
Line 18.
7 months 1 week ago

For man holds his ground only by surpassing himself, in the same sense in which it is said that one ceases to love if one does not love increasingly everyday.

0
0
Source
source
p. 238
4 months 3 weeks ago

Owning our seeds through seed freedom, our own food through food freedom, our own minds and intelligence through intellectual freedom, our own economies through freedom to produce and consume ecologically and locally, is the 'barbarianism' that the 1% would like to extinguish.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

0
0
Source
source
L 23
7 months 3 days ago

The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. It's matrix-If you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being elliptical in order to come more quickly to my principle theme-is the determination of Being as presence in all sense of this word.

0
0
Source
source
Structure, Sign and Play
7 months 2 weeks ago

The human understanding is unquiet; it cannot stop or rest, and still presses onward, but in vain. Therefore it is that we cannot conceive of any end or limit to the world, but always as of necessity it occurs to us that there is something beyond... But he is no less an unskilled and shallow philosopher who seeks causes of that which is most general, than he who in things subordinate and subaltern omits to do so.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 48
3 months 1 week ago

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to William Carmichael and William Short
5 months 3 weeks ago

I'm exclusive of those that exclude...

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.

0
0
Source
source
p. 9
3 months 5 days ago

Remember this, then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere.

0
0
Source
source
VIII, 25
5 months 3 weeks ago

The human body is an instrument for the production of art in the life of the human soul.

0
0
Source
source
p. 349.
5 months 5 days ago

Success makes some crimes honorable.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 326
7 months 1 week ago

We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.

0
0
Source
source
Prospects
3 months 3 weeks ago

Every love to which there clings but the smallest speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that he owes the object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 260
6 months 1 week ago

Whoever hasn't yet arrived at the clear realization that there might be a greatness existing entirely outside his own sphere and for which he might have absolutely no feeling; whoever hasn't at least felt obscure intimations concerning the approximate location of this greatness in the geography of the human spirit: that person either has no genius in his own sphere, or else he hasn't been educated to the level of the classic.

0
0
Source
source
Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), "Critical Fragments," § 36
7 months 1 week ago

I feel like that intellectual but plain-looking lady who was warmly complimented on her beauty. In accepting his Nobel Prize, in December 1950; Russell denied that he had contributed anything in particular to literature.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in LIFE, Editorials: "A great mind is still annoying and adorning our age", 26 May 1952
5 months 4 weeks ago

A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

I must also call your attention to the fact that it is crucial for my viewpoint that human behavior is to a large extent charged with a considerable amount of energy, but that in contrast to Freud I do not consider this energy to be sexual, but the vital energy within any organism which, according to biological laws, gives man the desire to live, and that means to adapt himself to the social necessities of his society. To go back to what I consider to be the misunderstanding, it has never been my position that society only deforms or manifests that which is already there. If we make the distinction between human necessities in general and human desires in particular then indeed, society creates particular desires which, however, follow the general laws of the necessities rooted in human nature.

0
0
6 months 4 days ago

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.

0
0
Source
source
p. 489
3 months 5 days ago

Choose what's best.-Best is what benefits me.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) III, 6
3 months 3 weeks ago

No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.

0
0
Source
source
Line 4.
6 months 1 week ago

This reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death.

0
0
Source
source
Section 38
7 months 2 weeks ago

Holy Christendom has, in my judgment, no better teacher after the apostles than St. Augustine.

0
0
Source
source
Luther's Works, American Ed., Robert H. Fischer, Helmut T. Lehman, eds., Concordia Publishing House/Fortress Press, 1959, ISBN 0800603370 (Word and Sacrament III), vol. 37:107
7 months 2 weeks ago

It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech that are the true ends of knowledge, but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them.

0
0
Source
source
Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works, Vol. I, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia