Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Free Books
  • Contact
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 4 weeks ago
I have only two rules...

I have only two rules which I regard as principles of conduct. The first is: Have no rules. The second is: Be independent of the opinion of others.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
4 months 1 week ago
To challenge and to cope with...

To challenge and to cope with this paradoxical state of things, we need a paradoxical way of thinking; since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events. It is not easy. We usually think that holding to the protocols of experimentation and verification is the most difficult thing. But in fact the most difficult thing is to renounce the truth and the possibility of verification, to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Vital Illusion (2000) "The Murder of the Real". Wellek Library Lectures given May 1999 at the University of California, Irvine
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
3 months 3 days ago
We need a good alternative to...

We need a good alternative to Trumpism. There is a majority in favor of that, but... the other party is really not providing that alternative in a very clear way.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
46:46:00
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
5 months 4 weeks ago
A reflective, contented mind is the...

A reflective, contented mind is the best possession.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ushtavaiti Gatha; Yasna 43, 15.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 1 week ago
What is the Jew?...What kind of...

What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish. What is this Jew whom they have never succeeded in enticing with all the enticements in the world, whose oppressors and persecutors only suggested that he deny (and disown) his religion and cast aside the faithfulness of his ancestors?! The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Attributed in "The Final Resolution", in Jewish World Periodical (1908), p. 189
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 2 weeks ago
Ambition is not a vice of...

Ambition is not a vice of little people.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book III, Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
5 months 6 days ago
The evil of marriage, as is...

The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Sir Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne
5 months 1 week ago
Were the happiness of the next...

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
4 months 4 weeks ago
Avoid melancholy with all your might....

Avoid melancholy with all your might. It hurts the service of God more than sin. Satan takes less pleasure in sin than in a man's melancholy over having sinned again and so feeling that he is a slave to sin. Thus the Evil One has caught the poor soul in the net of despair.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Rabbi Jaacob Yitzchak, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 4 days ago
The logical picture of the facts...

The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(3) Original German: Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 3 weeks ago
When the apostle James was talking...

When the apostle James was talking about faith and works against those who thought their faith was enough, and didn't want to have good works, he said, You believe God is one; you do well; the demons also believe, and tremble.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Jas 2:19) 183:13:2
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 4 days ago
Aim at being loved without being...

Aim at being loved without being admired.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 38e
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 months 3 weeks ago
The human race's prospects of survival...

The human race's prospects of survival were considerably better when we were defenceless against tigers than they are today when we have become defenceless against ourselves.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Man and Hunger: The Perspectives of History", Speech to the World Food Congress (4 June 1963)
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 1 week ago
Two very different ideas are usually...

Two very different ideas are usually confounded under the name democracy. The pure idea of democracy, according to its definition, is the government of the whole people by the whole people, equally represented. Democracy, as commonly conceived and hitherto practiced, is the government of the whole people by a mere majority of the people exclusively represented. The former is synonymous with the equality of all citizens; the latter, strangely confounded with it, is a government of privilege in favor of the numerical majority, who alone possess practically any voice in the state. This is the inevitable consequence of the manner in which the votes are now taken, to the complete disfranchisement of minorities.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. VII: Of True and False Democracy; Representation of All, and Representation of the Majority only (p. 247)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 1 week ago
In the vaunted works of Art...

In the vaunted works of Art The master stroke is Nature's part.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Art
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 4 weeks ago
Alas, the Hero from of old...

Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
6 months 3 days ago
The Enlightenment worldview held by Du...

The Enlightenment worldview held by Du Bois is ultimately inadequate, and, in many ways, antiquated, for our time. The tragic plight and absurd predicament of Africans here and abroad requires a more profound interpretation of the human condition - one that goes beyond the false dichotomies of expert knowledge vs. mass ignorance, individual autonomy vs. dogmatic authority, and self-mastery vs. intolerant tradition.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Future of the Race (1997) by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Cornel West, p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 5 days ago
A little flesh, a little breath,...

A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all - that is myself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
II. 2, trans. Maxwell Staniforth
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 months 2 weeks ago
On the same subject you will...

On the same subject you will obtain more complete and more abstruse information by consulting the works upon it composed by the divine Iamblichus: you will find there the extreme limit of human wisdom attained. May the mighty Sun grant me to attain to no less knowledge of himself, and to teach it publicly to all, and privately to such as are worthy to receive it: and as long as the god grants this to us, let us consult in common his well-beloved Iamblichus; out of whose abundance a few things, that have come into my mind, I have here set down. That no other person will treat of this subject more perfectly than he has done, I am well aware; not even though he should expend much additional labour in making new discoveries in the research; for in all probability he will go astray from the most correct conception of the nature of the god.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
As if to demonstrate, by a...

As if to demonstrate, by a striking example, the impossibility of erecting any cerebral barrier between man and the apes, Nature has provided us, in the latter animals, with an almost complete series of gradations from brains little higher than that of a Rodent, to brains little lower than that of Man.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch.2, p. 115
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is hard to imagine an...

It is hard to imagine an experience more horrific than being eaten alive. Most of us would prefer not to imagine what it must feel like. Note that the photographer here had to persuade the park ranger to violate the park rules and put the baby elephant out of his misery.By analogy, suppose it were lawful to visit Third World countries for photoshoots but illegal to "interfere" and help a stricken human baby. Is there a fundamental difference between "ethical" intervention to help humans and "sentimental" pleas to "interfere" and help non-humans? Should we encourage the preservation of life-forms such as the hyena in their current guise? Or do the value judgements underlying the "science" of conservation biology need to be re-examined?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Hyenas Eat Baby Elephant Alive: The Case for Intervention"
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
2 months 2 weeks ago
In our opinion, the task of...

In our opinion, the task of a far-sighted policy of the Third Reich ought to have been that of seeking every possible means to obtain at least the neutrality of the western nations so as to have free hands for a devestating attack exclusively against the Soviet Union-but that would have required the shrewdness and genius of a Metternich.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 81-82
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months 3 weeks ago
The essence of the good is...

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, ch. 29, 1
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
6 months 1 week ago
At present they philosophers seem to...

At present they philosophers seem to be in a very lamentable condition, and such as the poets have given us but a faint notion of in their descriptions of the punishment of Sisyphus and Tantalus. For what can be imagin'd more tormenting, than to seek with eagerness, what for ever flies us; and seek for it in a place, where 'tis impossible it can ever exist?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part 4, Section 3
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
5 months 1 week ago
He who must still exhort himself,...

He who must still exhort himself, and be exhorted, to will the good, has as yet no firm and ever-ready will, but wills a will anew every time he needs it. But he who has such a stable will, wills what he wills for ever, and cannot under any circumstances will otherwise than he always wills. For him freedom of the will is destroyed and swallowed up in necessity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
General Nature of New Eduction p 21
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 4 weeks ago
When you serve your mother...

When you serve your mother and father it is okay to try to correct them once in a while. But if you see that they are not going to listen to you, keep your respect for them and don't distance yourself from them. Work without complaining.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 3 weeks ago
So dazzling was the spread of...

So dazzling was the spread of constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight. I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us - invisibly.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in No More Words : A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001) by Reeve Lindbergh, p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
6 months 3 days ago
From our human experience and history,...

From our human experience and history, at least as far as I am informed, I know that everything essential and great has only emerged when human beings had a home and were rooted in a tradition. Today's literature is, for instance, largely destructive.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months 1 week ago
All our knowledge falls with the...

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
A 146, B 185
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months 2 weeks ago
Friends are as companions on a...

Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Gems of Thought: Being a Collection of More Than a Thousand Choice Selections
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 week ago
There is something in human history...

There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
In an article written for the New York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
4 months 2 weeks ago
Analytic philosophers - both in the...

Analytic philosophers - both in the 'constructivist' camp and in the camp that studies 'the ordinary use of words' - are disturbingly unanimous in regarding 2-valued logic as having a privileged position: privileged, not just in the sense of corresponding to the way we do speak, but in the sense of having no serious rival for logical reasons. If the foregoing analysis is correct, this is a prejudice of the same kind as the famous prejudice in favor of a privileged status for Euclidean geometry (a prejudice that survives in the tendency to cite 'space has three dimensions' as some kind of 'necessary' truth). One can go over from a 2-valued to a 3-valued logic without totally changing the meaning of 'true' and 'false'; and not just in silly ways, like the ones usually cited (e.g. equating truth with high probability, falsity with low probability, and middlehood with 'in between' probability).

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Three-valued logic"
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
3 months 3 weeks ago
The way out of this violent...

The way out of this violent cycle is to deepen democracy-to bring decisions that directly affect people's lives as close as possible to where people are and to where they can take responsibility.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
6 months 3 days ago
How can one be late to...

How can one be late to the end of history? A question for today. It is serious because it obliges one to reflect again, as we have been doing since Hegel, on what happens and deserves the name of event, after history; it obliges one to wonder if the end of history is but the end of a certain concept of history.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Injunctions of Marx
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 6 days ago
Civilizations have always been pyramidal in...

Civilizations have always been pyramidal in structure. As one climbs toward the apex of the social edifice, there is increased leisure and increasing opportunity to pursue happiness. As one climbs, one finds also fewer and fewer people to enjoy this more and more. Invariably, there is a preponderance of the dispossessed. And remember this, no matter how well off the bottom layers of the pyramid might be on an absolute scale, they are always dispossessed in comparison with the apex.So there is always social friction in ordinary human societies. The action of social revolution and the reaction of guarding against such revolution or combating it once it has begun are the causes of a great deal of the human misery with which history is permeated.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 days ago
God is what survives the evidence...

God is what survives the evidence that nothing deserves to be thought.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 5 days ago
No psychic value can disappear without...

No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 209
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 1 week ago
Every tax, however, is to the...

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter II, Part II, p. 927.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 5 days ago
Remember, that to change thy mind...

Remember, that to change thy mind upon occasion, and to follow him that is able to rectify thee, is equally ingenuous, as to find out at the first, what is right and just, without help. For of thee nothing is required, that is beyond the extent of thine own deliberation and judgment, and of thine own understanding.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VII, 14
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 1 week ago
The French want no-one to be...

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Journeys to England and Ireland (1835).
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
7 months 1 week ago
It is impossible for motion to...

It is impossible for motion to subsist without place, and void, and time.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Facts do not cease...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 1 week ago
Useful undertakings which require sustained attention...

Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 2 weeks ago
Few men have been admired by...

Few men have been admired by their own domestics.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book iii. Chap 2. Of Repentance
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 days ago
Scaffolds, dungeons, jails flourish only in...

Scaffolds, dungeons, jails flourish only in the shadow of a faith - of that need to believe which has infested the mind forever. The devil pales beside the man who owns a truth, his truth. We are unfair to a Nero, a Tiberius: it was not they who invented the concept heretic: they were only degenerate dreamers who happened to be entertained by massacres. The real criminals are men who establish an orthodoxy on the religious or political level, men who distinguish between the faithful and the schismatic.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
4 months 1 week ago
An utterance can have Intentionality, just...

An utterance can have Intentionality, just as a belief has Intentionality, but whereas the Intentionality of the belief is intrinsic the Intentionality of the utterance is derived.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 27.
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
5 months 2 weeks ago
If all things are in common...

If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom. What can Juno give which thou canst not receive from Wisdom? What mayest thou admire in Venus which thou mayest not also contemplate in Wisdom? Her beauty is not small, for the lord of all things taketh delight in her. Her I have loved and diligently sought from my youth up.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
Within the last half century, the...

Within the last half century, the labours of such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischof, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled... the successive stages of development which... are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silk-worm moth to the school boy.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch.2, p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 5 days ago
Nothing happens to anyone that he...

Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(Hays translation) Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. , V, 18
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
2 months 5 days ago
At this point in history when...

At this point in history when all things which concern man and the structure and elements of history itself are suddenly revealed to us in a new light, it behooves us in our scientific thinking to become masters of the situation, for it is not inconceivable that sooner than we suspect, as has often been the case before in history, this vision may disappear, the opportunity may be lost, and the world will once again present a static, uniform, and inflexible countenance.

0
⚖0
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

  • Enzo Soltani
  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed

Who's online

There are currently 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia