Skip to main content
3 months 3 days ago

Life is a System of Vital Forces ; and the conception of such Forces involves a peculiar Fundamental Idea.

0
0
7 months 2 days ago

He came in sight of a pass guarded by armed men. 'you cannot pass ... Do you not know that all this country belongs to the Spirit of the Age? ... Here Enlightenment, take this fugitive to our Master.'

0
0
Source
source
Pilgrim's Regress 44-45
7 months 2 days ago

I do not believe in what is often called... 'exact terminology'... or in definitions... they do not... add to exactness... I especially dislike pretentious terminology and... pseudo-exactness concerned with it.

0
0
5 months 4 weeks ago

Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

He has now a second far greater success to gain: to seek out his real superiors, whom not the Tailor but the Almighty God has made superior to him, and see a little what he will do with these! Rebel against these also? Pass by with minatory eagle-glance, with calm-sniffing mockery, or even without any mockery or sniff, when these present themselves? The lion-hearted will never dream of such a thing. Forever far be it from him! His minatory eagle-glance will veil itself in softness of the dove: his lion- heart will become a lamb's; all is just indignation changed into just reverence, dissolved in blessed floods of noble humble love, how much heavenlier than any pride, nay, if you will, how much prouder!

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

Are ye also yet without understanding? Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught? But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man: but to eat with unwashen hands defileth not a man.

0
0
Source
source
15:16-20 (KJV)
6 months ago

Nothing can be of more importance than to separate prejudice and mistake on the one hand from reason and demonstration on the other.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch.1
3 months 3 weeks ago

There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 30, part 1, p. 652
3 months 2 weeks ago

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life - it is bad to damage and destroy life. And this ethic, profound and universal, has the significance of a religion. It is religion.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Albert Schweitzer : The Man and His Mind (1947) by George Seaver, p. 366
6 months ago

We are on a mission: we are called to the cultivation of the earth.

0
0
Source
source
Fragment No. 32

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

0
0
Source
source
E 11
5 months 2 weeks ago

No art can be judged by purely aesthetic standards, although a painting or a piece of music may appear to give a purely aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic enjoyment is an intensification of the vital response, and this response forms the basis of all value judgements. The existentialist contends that all values are connected with the problems of human existence, the stature of man, the purpose of life. These values are inherent in all works of art, in addition to their aesthetic values, and are closely connected with them.

0
0
Source
source
The Chicago Review, Volume 13, no. 2, 1959, p. 152-181
5 months 3 weeks ago

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

0
0
Source
source
11:25-30 (KJV)
3 months 3 weeks ago

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

0
0
Source
source
Article on Biography.
7 months 3 days ago

By quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of confederating, Germans and Scandinavians, both of them belonging to the same great race, only prepare the way for their hereditary enemy, the Slav. 

0
0
Source
source
The Eastern Question: A Reprint of Letters written 1853 -1856 dealing with the events of the Crimean War, edit., Eleanor Marx Aveling, London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co. (1897) p. 90
5 months 1 day ago

Renaissance Italy became a kind of Hollywood collection of sets of antiquity, and the new visual antiquarianism of the Renaissance provided an avenue to power for men of any class.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 136)
6 months 3 weeks ago

Usually, when we are told that X is Y we know how it is supposed to be true, but that depends on a conceptual or theoretical background and is not conveyed by the 'is' alone. ... But when the two terms of the identification are very disparate it may not be so clear how it could be true ... and a theoretical framework may have to be supplied to enable us to understand this. Without the framework, an air of mysticism surrounds the identification.This explains the magical flavor of popular presentations of fundamental scientific discoveries, given out as propositions to which one must subscribe without really understanding them. For example, people are now told at an early age that all matter is really energy. But despite the fact that they know what 'is' means, most of them never form a conception of what makes this claim true, because they lack the theoretical background.

0
0
Source
source
pp. 176-177.
7 months 4 days ago

The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda
7 months 5 days ago

It is the nature and intention of a constitution to prevent governing by party, by establishing a common principle that shall limit and control the power and impulse of party, and that says to all parties, thus far shalt thou go and no further. But in the absence of a constitution, men look entirely to party; and instead of principle governing party, party governs principle.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

As Christ had recommended peace during the whole of his life, mark with what anxiety he enforces it at the approach of his dissolution. Love one another, says he; as I have loved you, so love one another; and again, my peace I give unto you, my peace I leave you. Do you observe the legacy he leaves to those whom he loves? Is it a pompous retinue, a large estate, or empire? Nothing of this kind. What is it then? Peace he giveth, his peace he leaveth; peace, not only with our near connections, but with enemies and strangers!

0
0
5 months 4 weeks ago

I feel effective, competent, likely to do something positive only when I lie down and abandon myself to an interrogation without object or end.

0
0
7 months 4 days ago

Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance.

0
0
Source
source
The Analysis of Mind (1921), Lecture I: Recent Criticisms of "Consciousness"
7 months 1 week ago

When I am attacked by gloomy thoughts, nothing helps me so much as running to my books. They quickly absorb me and banish the clouds from my mind.

0
0
7 months 2 days ago

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.
7 months 3 days ago

Did you not read our articles about the June revolution, and was not the essence of the June revolution the essence of our paper? Why then your hypocritical phrases, your attempt to find an impossible pretext? We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.

0
0
Source
source
The final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (18 May 1849)''Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, Vol. VI, p. 503
3 months 2 days ago

Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.

0
0
Source
source
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front in Farming: A Hand Book
4 months 1 week ago

Darwinist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are militant opponents of Christianity. Yet their atheism and humanism are versions of Christian concepts. As a defender of Darwinism, Dawkins is committed to the view that humans are like other animal species in being 'gene machines' ruled by the laws of natural selection. He asserts nevertheless that humans, uniquely, can defy these natural laws: 'We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.' In affirming human uniqueness in this way, Dawkins relies on a Christian world-view.

0
0
Source
source
Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 265-6)
7 months 3 days ago

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

0
0
Source
source
The Criticism of the Gotha Program (1875) Variant translation: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
7 months 4 days ago

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2
5 months 3 weeks ago

If you have money, don't lend it at interest. Rather, give it to someone from whom you won't get it back.

0
0
6 months 4 days ago

...the French business is no light or trivial thing, or such as has commonly occurd in the course of political Events. At present the whole political State of Europe hinges upon it. On the Continent there is little doubt; every thing will take is future shape and colour from the good or ill success of the Duke of Brunswick. In my opinion, it is the most important crisis that ever existed in the World. ... My poor opinion is, that these principles...cannot possibly be realized in practice in France, without an absolute certainty and that at no remote period, of overturning the whole fabrick of the British Constitution.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville (19 September 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792-August 1794 (1968), pp. 218-219
7 months 4 days ago

Why in any case, this glorification of man? How about lions and tigers? They destroy fewer animals or human lives than we do, and they are much more beautiful than we are. How about ants? They manage the Corporate State much better than any Fascist. Would not a world of nightingales and larks and deer be better than our human world of cruelty and injustice and war? The believers in Cosmic Purpose make much of our supposed intelligence, but their writings make one doubt it. If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.

0
0
Source
source
Religion and Science, 1935
3 months 2 weeks ago

He maintained this attitude up to the very end, and no man ever saw Socrates too much elated or too much depressed. Amid all the disturbance of Fortune, he was undisturbed.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The mind enamored with deceptive things, declines things better.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, satire ii, line 6
8 months 4 days ago

The immediacy of falling in love recognizes but one immediacy that is ebenburtig (of equal standing), and this is a religious immediacy; falling in love is too virginal to recognize any confidant other than God. But the religious is a new immediacy, has reflection in between-otherwise, paganism would actually be religious and Christianity not. That the religious is a new immediacy every person easily understands who is satisfied with following the honest path of ordinary common sense. And although I imagine I have but few readers, I confess nevertheless that I do imagine my readers to be among these, since I am far from wanting to instruct the admired ones, who make systematic discoveries a la Niels Klim, who have left their good skin in order to put on the “real appearance.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

The regeneration of the inferior or bastard races by the superior ones is consistent with God's plans for humanity. The man of the people, in our countries, is always a fallen aristocrat; his hands are made to handle the sword rather than the laborer's tools. He prefers warring to working, that is, he returns to his original calling.

0
0
Source
source
93, as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), 147
5 months 3 weeks ago

The species with eyes appears suddenly, capriciously as it were, and it is this species which changes the environment by creating its visible aspect. The eye does not come into being because it is needed. Just the contrary; because the eye appears it can henceforth be applied as a serviceable instrument. Each species builds up its stock of useful habits by selecting among, and taking advantage of, the innumerable useless actions which a living being performs out of sheer exuberance.

0
0
Source
source
p. 17
3 months 3 weeks ago

He that has a secret should not only hide it, but hide that he has it to hide.

0
0
Source
source
Pt. II, Bk. I, ch. 7.
5 months 3 weeks ago

In solitude it is possible to love mankind; in the world, for one who knows the world, there can be nothing but secret or open war.

0
0
5 months 1 day ago

Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.

0
0
Source
source
Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557
1 month 3 weeks ago

So much of Ancient Greek philosophy is like this. The form of the idea is a work of art from thousands of years ago. We can appreciate it from that perspective.

See biography for Socrates:
https://civilsimian.com/Socrates

Read Socrates's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/408/content

#philosophy #quotes #CivilSimian #UniversalHumanism

0
0
7 months 5 days ago

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Ch. 1, sec. 19
7 months 5 days ago

There cannot be a greater rudeness, than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse... To which, if there be added, as is usual, a correcting of any mistake, or a contradiction of what has been said, it is a mark of yet greater pride and self-conceitedness, when we thus intrude our selves for teachers, and take upon us either to set another right in his story, or shew the mistakes of his judgement.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 145

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia