Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 4 days ago
Any man more right than his...

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 5 days ago
Philosophy of religion ... really amounts...

Philosophy of religion ... really amounts to ... philosophizing on certain favorite assumptions that are not confirmed at all.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 143
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 3 days ago
In principle and in practice...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 weeks 4 days ago
Thus the universe is to be...

Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the opposites are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of God is the way in which we understand this incredible fact that what cannot be, yet is.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 1 week ago
Leave the ass burdened with laws...

Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the mountain.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 2, Verse 14
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 days 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
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 4 weeks ago
We do not "have" a body;...

We do not "have" a body; rather, we "are" bodily.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 weeks 2 days ago
When we subordinate rest to work,...

When we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 weeks 4 days ago
Buddhism is the most colossal example...

Buddhism is the most colossal example in the history of applied metaphysics.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
in Verhoeven, Martin J. 2001. "Buddhism and Science: Probing the Boundaries Of Faith and Reason." Religion East and West (1): 77-97.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 weeks 3 days ago
In old days the plastic arts,...

In old days the plastic arts, music, and poesy were so germane to man in his totality that his Transcendence plainly manifest in them. ... What is to-day obvious to all is a decay in the essence of art. ... the opposition to man's true nature as man.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 days ago
The attitude of the ruling classes...

The attitude of the ruling classes to the laborers is that of a man who has felled his adversary to the earth and holds him down, not so much because he wants to hold him down, as because he knows that if he let him go, even for a second, he would himself be stabbed, for his adversary is infuriated and has a knife in his hand. And therefore, whether their conscience is tender or the reverse, our rich men cannot enjoy the wealth they have filched from the poor as the ancients did who believed in their right to it. Their whole life and all their enjoyments are embittered either by the stings of conscience or by terror.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Men in their prayers beg the...

Men in their prayers beg the gods for health, not knowing that this is a thing they have in their own power. Through their incontinence undermining it, they themselves become, because of their passions, the betrayers of their own health.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months ago
Maman used to say that you...

Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 days ago
If this life be not a...

If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
5 days ago
Violence as a tool is already...

Violence as a tool is already operating in the world before anyone takes it up: that fact alone neither justifies nor discounts the use of the tool. What seems most important, however, is that the tool is already part of a practice, presupposing a world conducive to its use; that the use of the tool builds or rebuilds a specific kind of world, activating a sedimented legacy of use. When any of us commit acts of violence, we are, in and through those acts, building a more violent world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
1 week 6 days ago
There's no need to fear or...

There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
from Postscript on the Societies of Control
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 4 days ago
The concessions of the weak are...

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 weeks 1 day ago
Were we to undertake an exhaustive...

Were we to undertake an exhaustive self-scrutiny, disgust would paralyze us, we would be doomed to a thankless existence.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 weeks 5 days ago
The operations of understanding thus divide...

The operations of understanding thus divide the world into numberless polarities, and Hegel uses the expression 'isolated reflection' (isolierte Reflection) to characterize the manner in which understanding forms and connects its polar concepts. The rise and spread of this kind of thinking Hegel connects with the origin and prevalence of crucial relationships in human life. The antagonisms of 'isolated reflections' express real antagonisms. .... Isolation and opposition are not, however, the final state of affairs. The world must not remain a complex of fixed disparates. The unity that underlies the antagonisms must be grasped and realized by reason, which has the task of reconciling the opposites and 'sublimating' them in a true unity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 weeks 3 days ago
It is the highest service to...

It is the highest service to submit the evil impulse to God through the power of love.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 2 weeks ago
The first-beginnings…

The first-beginnings of things cannot be seen by the eyes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, line 268 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 4 days ago
There are some simple maxims [...]...

There are some simple maxims [...] which I think might be commanded to writers of expository prose. First: never use a long word if a short word will do. Second: if you want to make a statement with a great many qualifications, put some of the qualifications in separate sentences. Third: do not let the beginning of your sentence lead the reader to an expectation which is contradicted by the end.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"How I Write", The Writer, September 1954
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 weeks 5 days ago
We are really no longer ourselves...

We are really no longer ourselves a part of nature at the moment when we notice, when we recognize, that we are a part of nature.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Probleme der Moralphilosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996), p. 154; as quoted in Andrew Bowie, Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 4 days ago
Indignation is a submission of our...

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 2 weeks ago
In matters that are so obscure...

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
I, xviii, 37. Modern translation by J.H. Taylor
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 weeks 4 days ago
The chief error in philosophy is...

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
Thus the labour of a manufacture...

Thus the labour of a manufacture adds, generally, to the value of the materials which he works upon, that of his own maintenance, and of his masters profits. The labour of a menial servant, on the contrary, adds to the value of nothing.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter III, p. 364 (see Proverbs 14-23 KJV).
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is not among extraordinary and...

It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 2 days ago
The essence of totalitarian government, and...

The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanise them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today's political times
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 4 days ago
Who is to blame but her...

Who is to blame but her and the third factor, from whence no one knows, which moved me with its stimulus and transformed me? After all, what I have done is praised in others.-Or is becoming a poet my compensation? I reject all compensation, I demand my rights-that is, my honor. I did not ask to become one, I will not buy it at this price. – Or if I am guilty, then I certainly should be able to repent of my guilt and make it good again. Tell me how. On top of that, must I perhaps repent that the world plays with me as a child plays with a beetle?-Or is it perhaps best to forget the whole thing? Forget-indeed, I shall have ceased to be if I forget it. Or what kind of life would it be if along with my beloved I have lost honor and pride and lost them in such a way that no one knows how it happened, for which reason I can never retrieve them again? Shall I allow myself to be shoved out in this manner? Why, then, was I shoved in?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 weeks 1 day ago
His concept of the anal character...

His concept of the anal character as one that has not reached maturity is in fact a sharp criticism of bourgeois society of the nineteenth century, in which the qualities of the anal character constituted the norm for moral behavior.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
To Have or to Be? (2005) p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
From fanaticism to barbarism is only...

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Essai sur le Mérite de la Vertu (1745)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 3 weeks ago
I am not concerned that I...

I am not concerned that I have no place; I am concerned how I may fit myself for one. I am not concerned that I am not known; I seek to be worthy to be known.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 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
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 weeks 4 days ago
The three qualities of space and...

The three qualities of space and time reciprocally affect and qualify one another in experience. Space is inane save as occupied with active volumes. Pauses are holes when they do not accentuate masses and define figures as individuals. Extension sprawls and finally benumbs if it does not interact with place so as to assume intelligible distribution. Mass is nothing fixed. It contracts and expands, asserts and yields, according to its relations to other spatial and enduring things.... these are then the common properties of the matter of arts because there are general conditions without which an experience is not possible. As we saw earlier, the basic condition is felt relationship between doing and undergoing as the organism and environment interact.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 220-21
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 4 days ago
Technology discloses the active relation of...

Technology discloses the active relation of man towards nature, as well as the direct process of production of his very life, and thereby the process of production of his basic societal relations, of his own mentality, and his images of society, too.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 13: "Machinery and Big Industry".
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 weeks 1 day ago
Saints live in flames...

Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
Among civilized and thriving nations, on...

Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 6 days ago
All true metaphysics is taken from...

All true metaphysics is taken from the essential nature of the thinking faculty itself, and therefore in nowise invented, since it is not borrowed from experience, but contains the pure operations of thought, that is, conceptions and principles à priori, which the manifold of empirical presentations first of all brings into legitimate connection, by which it can become empirical knowledge, i.e. experience. ...mathematical physicists were thus quite unable to dispense with such metaphysical principles...

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface, Tr. Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 weeks 1 day ago
If the individual realizes his self...

If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 7, p. 262-3
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 days ago
Some people talk as if meeting...

Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger-according to the way you react to it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 weeks 5 days ago
The concept of labor is not...

The concept of labor is not peripheral in Hegel's system, but is the central notion through which he conceives the development of society. Driven by the insight that opened this dimension to him, Hegel describes the mode of integration prevailing in a commodity-producing society in terms that clearly fore-shadow Marx's critical approach.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 78
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 weeks 5 days ago
And Jesus answered and said unto...

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
10:41-42 (King James Version| KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 4 days ago
The first thing to realize, if...

The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man's, so that they cannot both be right. People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"How to Become a Philosopher" (1942), in The Art of Philosophizing, and Other Essays (New York: Philosophical Library, 1968), p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 weeks 6 days ago
I am the center of my...

I am the center of my universe, the center of the universe, and in my supreme anguish I cry with Michelet, "Mon moi, ils m'arrachent mon moi!" What is a man profited if he shall gain the world and lose his own soul? (Matt. xvi. 26).

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 day ago
It is all too easy to...

It is all too easy to forget that there are emotional motivations in history, as well as economic ones.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 days ago
The dreamer must contaminate the others...

The dreamer must contaminate the others by his dream, he must make them fall into it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 399
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 weeks 5 days ago
The pint would call the quart...

The pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 weeks 6 days ago
One must give one power a...

One must give one power a ballast, so to speak, to put it in a position to resist another.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book V, Chapter 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 1 week ago
Once we have tasted the sweetness...

Once we have tasted the sweetness of what is spiritual, the pleasures of the world will have no attraction for us. If we disregard the shadows of things, then we will penetrate their inner substance.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • 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 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia