Skip to main content
Image removed.

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 1 week ago
Camus said there is only really...

Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question, which is whether or not to commit suicide. I think there are four or five serious philosophical questions: The first one is: Who started it? The second is: Are we going to make it? The third is: Where are we going to put it? The fourth is: Who's going to clean up? And the fifth: Is it serious?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Out Of Your Mind (2004), Audio lecture 1: The Nature of Consciousness: A Game That's Worth The Candle
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Get, by six hundred and fifty-eight...

Get, by six hundred and fifty-eight votes, or by no vote at all, by the silent intimation of your own eyesight and understanding given you direct out of Heaven, and more sacred to you than anything earthly, and than all things earthly,-a correct image of the fact in question, as God and Nature have made it: that is the one thing needful; with that it shall be well with you in whatsoever you have to do with said fact. Get, by the sublimest constitutional methods, belauded by all the world, an incorrect image of the fact: so shall it be other than well with you; so shall you have laud from able editors and vociferous masses of mistaken human creatures; and from the Nature's Fact, continuing quite silently the same as it was, contradiction, and that only. What else?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 4 weeks ago
In civil law the existing property...

In civil law the existing property relationships are declared to be the result of the general will. The jus utendi et abutendi itself asserts on the one hand the fact that private property has become entirely independent of the community, and on the other the illusion that private property itself is based solely on the private will, the arbitrary disposal.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
ibid, pp. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 4 weeks ago
This opinion... appears to be ancient......

This opinion... appears to be ancient... that the one, excess and defect, are the principles of things... It is not... probable that there are more than three principles... Essence is one certain genus of being: so that principles will differ from each other in prior and posterior alone, but not in genus, for in one genus there is always one contrariety, and all contrarieties appear to be referred to one. That there is neither one element, therefore, nor more than two or three, is evident.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
3 months 5 days ago
Statistics began as the systematic study...

Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 12, Political Arithmetic, p. 102.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 4 weeks ago
As for the commercial business, I...

As for the commercial business, I can no longer make head or tail of it. At one moment crisis seems imminent and the City prostrated, the next everything is set fair. I know that none of this will have any impact on the catastrophe.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Friedrich Engels (4 February 1852), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 39. Letters 1852-55 (2010), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
Eating and reading are two pleasures...

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 4 weeks ago
There are three lines of life...

There are three lines of life which stand out prominently to view: the life of pleasure, the political life, and the life of reflection.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in...

Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
We have chosen Mahomet not as...

We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what he meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 4 weeks ago
Among the Romans in Christian times...

Among the Romans in Christian times Mithras-worship as very widely spread, and so late as the Middle Ages we meet with a secret Mithras-worship ostensibly connected with the order of the Knights-Templars. Mithras thrusting the knife into the neck of the ox is a figurative representation belonging essentially to the cult of Mithras, of which examples have been frequently found in Europe. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol 2 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson p. 81-82
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes...

Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes away, for in some way or another everything is perpetuated; and everything, after passing through time, returns to eternity.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 4 weeks ago
Of the evils most liable to...

Of the evils most liable to attend on any sort of early proficiency, and which often fatally blights its promise, my father most anxiously guarded against. This was self-conceit. He kept me, with extreme vigilance, out of the way of hearing myself praised, or of being led to make self-flattering comparisons between myself and others. From his own intercourse with me I could derive none but a very humble opinion of myself; and the standard of comparison he always held up to me, was not what other people did, but what a man could and ought to do. He completely succeeded in preserving me from the sort of influences he so much dreaded. I was not at all aware that my attainments were anything unusual at my age.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(pp. 32-33)
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
A truly powerful holder of power...

A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 2 weeks ago
Being good is just a matter...

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 14, p. 127. Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 2 weeks ago
Leaving virtue without proper cultivation;...

Leaving virtue without proper cultivation; not thoroughly discussing what is learned; not being able to move towards righteousness of which a knowledge is gained; and not being able to change what is not good: these are the things which occasion me solicitude.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 4 weeks ago
These numerous points at which money...

These numerous points at which money is withdrawn from circulation and accumulated in numerous individual hoards or potential money-capitals appears as so many obstacles to circulation, because they immobilise the money and deprive it of its capacity to circulate for a certain time.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 497.
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 weeks 4 days ago
The mixture of children and men...

The mixture of children and men is precisely one of the most beautiful features of aristocratic government. All roles are distributed wisely in the world: that of the young is to do good, and that of old age is to prevent evil. The impetuosity of young men, who demand only action and creation, is very useful to the State; but they are too likely to innovate and destroy, and they would do much evil without the elderly, who are there to stop them. The latter in their turn oppose even useful reforms; they are too inflexible, they do not know how to accommodate themselves to circumstances, and sometimes a twenty-year old senator can very well be placed beside another of eighty.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 137
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
I dream of wanting - and...

I dream of wanting - and all I want seems to me worthless.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
We boil at different degrees. Eloquence

We boil at different degrees.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Eloquence
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
I was taught...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
3 weeks 3 days ago
It may possibly be true that,...

It may possibly be true that, to continue to live on and to act in a world like ours, it is vitally necessary to seek a way out of this uncertainty of multiple alternatives; and accordingly people may be led to embrace some immediate goal as if it were absolute, by which they hope to make their problems appear concrete and real. But it is not primarily the man of action who seeks the absolute and immutable, but rather it is he who wishes to induce others to hold on to the status quo because he feels comfortable and smug under conditions as they are.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 2 weeks ago
He who is not satisfied with...

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 3 weeks ago
To conceive that compulsion and punishment...

To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation, is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilisation and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea. It was once universally admitted and approved; it is now necessarily upon the decline.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. 2, bk. 7, ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 weeks ago
If you would convince a man...

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Let them see. Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 222
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Verily I say unto thee, That...

Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
26:34 (KJV) Said to Peter.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 3 weeks ago
Yet when we speak of time......

Yet when we speak of time... do we not unconsciously adopt this hypothesis... and put ourselves in the place of this imperfect god... Do not even the atheists put themselves in the place where god would be..?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 2 days ago
The power of the periodical press...

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XI.
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 5 days ago
All men and women have passions,...

All men and women have passions, natural desires and noble ambitions, and also a conscience; they have sex, hunger, fear, anger, and are subject to sickness, pain, suffering and death. Culture consists in bringing about the expression of these passions and desires in harmony.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 weeks ago
Q. You do not consider your...

Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 1 week ago
If Christianity is wine and Islam...

If Christianity is wine and Islam coffee, Buddhism is most certainly tea.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 190
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
I don't know why we are...

I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in The Beginning of the End (2004) by Peter Hershey, p. 109 Also, as quoted in "The Relentless Rise of Science as Fun", by Jeremy Burgess, in New Scientist, Volume 143, Issues 1932-1945, originally published 1994.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
Don't say: "They must have something...

Don't say: "They must have something in common, or they would not be called 'games'" but look and see whether there is anything common to all. For if you look at them, you won't see something that is common to all, but similarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
To repeat: don't think, but look! § 66
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
If life becomes hard to bear...

If life becomes hard to bear we think of improvements. But the most important and effective improvement, in our own attitude, hardly occurs to us, and we can decide on this only with the utmost difficulty.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 60e
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 3 weeks ago
The only possible way of accounting...

The only possible way of accounting for the laws of nature and for uniformity in general is to suppose them results of evolution. This supposes them not to be absolute, not to be obeyed precisely. It makes an element of indeterminacy, spontaneity, or absolute chance in nature. Just as, when we attempt to verify any physical law, we find our observations cannot be precisely satisfied by it, and rightly attribute the discrepancy to errors of observation, so we must suppose far more minute discrepancies to exist owing to the imperfect cogency of the law itself, to a certain swerving of the facts from any definite formula.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
That you may know that they...

That you may know that they whom anger possesses are not sane, look at their appearance; for as there are distinct symptoms which mark madmen, such as a bold and menacing air, a gloomy brow, a stern face

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
4 months 4 days ago
Since therefore, as well those degrees...

Since therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Philonous to Hylas. Hylas replies with, "So it seems".
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
3 weeks 3 days ago
The Christian Scholastics... might have shown...

The Christian Scholastics... might have shown that God Himself said that He had "imprinted an active principle in the elements of matter (Gen. i; Is. lxvi).

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 1 week ago
Simplicity and nonviolence are the basis...

Simplicity and nonviolence are the basis of an economy of wellbeing, and such an economy must be localised.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
There are depths in man which...

There are depths in man which go down the length of the lowest Hell, as there are heights which reach the highest Heaven; - for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery that he is?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. III, Bk. I, ch. 4. This was slightly paraphrased in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards. p. 327.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 6 days ago
Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth...

Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 3 weeks ago
Do not allow your dreams of...

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 week ago
The ideas of Freud were popularized...

The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 28, June 3, 1943.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 weeks ago
Talk of mysteries! - Think of...

Talk of mysteries! - Think of our life in nature, - daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it, - rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Maine Woods (1848)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 1 week ago
Indian thought has greatly attracted me...

Indian thought has greatly attracted me since in my youth I first became acquainted with it through reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. From the very beginning I was convinced that all thought is really concerned with the great problem of how man can attain to spiritual union with infinite Being. My attention was drawn to Indian thought because it is busied with this problem and because by its nature it is mysticism. What I liked about it also was that Indian ethics are concerned with the behaviour of man to all living beings and not merely with his attitude to his fellow-man and to human society.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface, p. vi
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
After Plotinus, says Schassler, fifteen centuries...

After Plotinus, says Schassler, fifteen centuries passed without the slightest scientific interest for the world of beauty and art. ...In reality, nothing of the kind happened. The science of aesthetics ... neither did nor could vanish, because it never existed. ... the Greeks were so little developed that goodness and beauty seemed to coincide. On that obsolete Greek view of life the science of aesthetics was invented by men of the eighteenth century, and especially shaped and mounted in Baumgarten's theory. The Greeks (as anyone may read in Bénard's book on Aristotle and Walter's work on Plato) never had a science of aesthetics.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 2 weeks ago
The philosophy of Bergson, which is...

The philosophy of Bergson, which is a spiritualist restoration, essentially mystical, medieval, Quixotesque, has been called a demi-mondaine philosophy. Leave out the demi; call it mondaine, mundane. Mundane - yes, a philosophy for the world and not for philosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone. The world desires illusion (mundus vult decipi) - either the illusion antecedent to reason, which is poetry, or the illusion subsequent to reason, which is religion. And Machiavelli has said that whosoever wishes to delude will always find someone willing to be deluded. Blessed are they who are easily befooled!

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
4 months 4 days ago
Seeing therefore they are both [heat...

Seeing therefore they are both [heat and pain] immediately perceived at the same time, and the fire affects you only with one simple, or uncompounded idea, it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived, and the pain; and consequently, that the intense heat immediately perceived, is nothing distinct from a particular sort of pain.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Philonous to Hylas
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
A paradise of inward tranquility seems...

A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lectures XI, XII, and XIII, "Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 week ago
Rationalism is an adventure in the...

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 3.
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