Skip to main content
Image removed.

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 1 week ago
The concept of space, therefore, is...

The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 3 weeks ago
Action is the pointer...

Action is the pointer which shows the balance. We must not touch the pointer but the weight.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
3 months 3 days ago
Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent...

Writers are greatly respected. The intelligent public is wonderfully patient with them, continues to read them, and endures disappointment after disappointment, waiting to hear from art what it does not hear from theology, philosophy, social theory, and what it cannot hear from pure science. Out of the struggle at the center has come an immense, painful longing for a broader, more flexible, fuller, more coherent, more comprehensive account of what we human beings are, who we are and what this life is for.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Nobel Prize lecture
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
Most of us, shrinking from the...

Most of us, shrinking from the difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker after original answers to these riddles, are contented to ignore them altogether, or to smother the investigating spirit under the featherbed of respected and respectable tradition. But, in every age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that constructive genius, which can only build on a secure foundation, or cursed with the mere spirit of scepticism, are unable to follow in the well-worn and comfortable track of their forefathers and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their own.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch.2, p. 71
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months ago
Throw moderation to the winds, and...

Throw moderation to the winds, and the greatest pleasures bring the greatest pains.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 2 weeks ago
There were honest people long before...

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
L 16
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 6 days ago
Unless man have a natural bent...

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IV
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
Needless to say, I am not...

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
When governments fear the people, there...

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. It first appears in 1914, in Barnhill, John Basil (1914). "Indictment of Socialism No. 3" (PDF). Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism. Saint Louis, Missouri: National Rip-Saw Publishing. pp. p. 34. Retrieved on 2008-10-16.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 1 week ago
Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle...

Thus poetry, regarded as a vehicle of thought, is especially impressive partly because it obeys all the laws of effective speech, and partly because in so doing it imitates the natural utterances of excitement.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Pt. I, sec. 6, "The Effect of Poetry Explained"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 5 days ago
Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When...

Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. (2) As Plutarch notes... you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1 month 3 weeks ago
Literature that is not the breath...

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society, that does not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers - such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a façade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers' Congress (16 May 1967) "The Struggle Intensifies," Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record, ed. Leopold Labedz
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 1 week ago
Everything considered, a determined soul will...

Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 months 1 day ago
The State is always, whatever be...

The State is always, whatever be its form - primitive, ancient, medieval, modern - an invitation issued by one group of men to other human groups to carry out some enterprise in common. That enterprise, be its intermediate processes what they may, consists in the long run in the organisation of a certain type of common life. ... [As Renan says,] "To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to wish to do greater; these are the essential conditions which make up a people.... In the past, an inheritance of glories and regrets; in the future, one and the same programme to carry out.... The existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
Don't ask for what….

Don't ask for what you'll wish you hadn't got.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Line 1 Seneca himself states that he is quoting a 'common saying' here.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 1 week ago
It is the privilege…

It is the privilege of true genius, and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Siècle de Louis XIV," ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation," Criticism of the Kantian philosophy, 1818
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 3 days ago
Sudden Glory, is the passion which...

Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 27 (italics and spelling as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
Good bye, proud world! I'm going...

Good bye, proud world! I'm going home; Thou art not my friend; I am not thine.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Good-bye, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
4 months 1 day ago
Instead of defining the word, let...

Instead of defining the word, let us briefly characterize or describe the phenomenon. Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such, are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 3 weeks ago
War prosperity is like the prosperity...

War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p 186
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 1 week ago
This is the Supreme Duty of...

This is the Supreme Duty of the man who struggles - to set out for the lofty peak which Christ, the first-born sone of salvation, attained. How can we begin? If we are to follow him we must have a profound knowledge of his conflict, we must relive his anguish: his victory over the blossoming snares of the earth, his sacrifice of the great and small joys of men and his ascent from sacrifice to sacrifice, exploit to exploit, to martyrdom's summit, the Cross.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 1 week ago
To love truth for truth's sake...

To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Anthony Collins, 29 October 1703
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
The commodities of Europe were almost...

The commodities of Europe were almost all new to America, and many of those of America were new to Europe. A new set of exchanges, therefore, began..and which should naturally have proved as advantageous to the new, as it certainly did to the old continent. The savage injustice of the Europeans rendered an event, which ought to have been beneficial to all, ruinous and destructive to several of those unfortunate countries.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I, p. 481.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
Not to feel exasperated or defeated...

Not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human-however imperfectly-and fully embrace the pursuit you've embarked on.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
V. 9, trans. Gregory Hays
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
Seek, therefore, thyself! But in finding...

Seek, therefore, thyself! But in finding oneself, does not one find one's own nothingness? ...Carlyle answers (Past and Present, book iii, chap. xi.). "The latest Gospel in the world is, Know thy work and do it. Know thyself: long enough has that poor self of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to know it, I believe! Think it thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like Hercules. That will be thine better plan." ...and what is my work? - without thinking about myself, is to love God. ...And on the other hand, in loving God in myself, am I not loving myself more than God, am I not loving myself in God?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 1 week ago
Divorce is probably….

Divorce is probably of nearly the same age as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Divorce", 1771
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 3 weeks ago
When contemporary feminist movement first began,...

When contemporary feminist movement first began, feminist writings and scholarship by black women was groundbreaking. The writings of black women like Cellestine Ware, Toni Cade Bambara, Michele Wallace, Barbara Smith, and Angela Davis, to name a few, were all works that sought to articulate, define, speak to and against the glaring omissions in feminist work, the erasure of black female presence.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
I read no newspaper now but...

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisments, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Nathaniel Macon
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 3 weeks ago
Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers...

Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 week ago
Every intrusion of the spirit that...

Every intrusion of the spirit that says, "I'm as good as you" into our personal and spiritual life is to be resisted just as jealously as every intrusion of bureaucracy or privilege into our politics. Hierarchy within can alone preserve egalitarianism without. Romantic attacks on democracy will come again. We shall never be safe unless we already understand in our hearts all that the anti-democrats can say, and have provided for it better than they. Human nature will not permanently endure flat equality if it is extended from its proper political field into the more real, more concrete fields within. Let us wear equality; but let us undress every night.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
It is man's….

It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VII, 22
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 1 week ago
It will be easy for us...

It will be easy for us once we receive the ball of yarn from Ariadne (love) and then go through all the mazes of the labyrinth (life) and kill the monster. But how many are there who plunge into life (the labyrinth) without taking that precaution?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 2 weeks ago
Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and...

Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and without sin. He had no need from his labor in the garden to be made righteous and acceptable to God. Rather, the Lord gave Adam work in order to cultivate and protect the garden. This would have been the freest of all works because they were done simply to please God and not to obtain righteousness. ... The works of the person who trusts God are to be understood in a similar manner. Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 73-74
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 1 week ago
The loss which is unknown is...

The loss which is unknown is no loss at all.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Maxim 38
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
Though the principles of the banking...

Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from these rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter I, Part III, p. 820.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
Quite often a man....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 3 weeks ago
To desire friendship is a great...

To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 3 weeks ago
Men and women meet now to...

Men and women meet now to be idle. Is it extraordinary that they do not know each other, and that, in their mutual ignorance, they form no surer friendships? Did they meet to do something together, then indeed they might form some real tie. But, as it is, they are not there, it is only a mask which is there - a mouth-piece of ready-made sentences about the "topics of the day"; and then people rail against men for choosing a woman "for her face" - why, what else do they see?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
Every man I meet is in...

Every man I meet is in some way my superior, and in that, I can learn of him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Think, Vol. 4-5 (1938), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months 2 weeks ago
Now, moral philosophers generally prefer to...

Now, moral philosophers generally prefer to talk about virtues, or about (specific) duties, rights, and so on, rather than about moral images of the world. There are obvious reasons for this; nevertheless, I think that it is a mistake, and that Kant is profoundly right. What we require in moral philosophy is, first and foremost, a moral image of the world, or rather--since, here again, I am more of a pluralist than Kant--a number of complementary moral images of the world.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lecture III: Equality and Our Moral Image of the World
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
In capitalist society spare time is...

In capitalist society spare time is acquired for one class by converting the whole life-time of the masses into labour-time.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 17, Section IV, pg. 581.
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 3 weeks ago
I do not believe that sheer...

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and can lead to rebirth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929-1932 (1973), p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 2 weeks ago
We must therefore glean up our...

We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science, which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months ago
If names be not correct,...

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. Paraphrased as a chinese proverb stating "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name."

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 1 week ago
The chief objection I have to...

The chief objection I have to Pantheism is that it says nothing. To call the world "God" is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym for the word "world".

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On Pantheism as quoted in Faiths of Famous Men in Their Own Words (1900) by John Kenyon Kilbourn; also in Religion: A Dialogue and Other Essays (2007), p. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 1 week ago
Liars ... when they speak the...

Liars ... when they speak the truth they are not believed.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 5 days ago
The paradox of race in America...

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p4)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 week ago
I recognize the necessity of animal...

I recognize the necessity of animal experiments with my mind but not with my heart.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
5 months 1 week ago
The offender...

The offender never forgives.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Émile et Sophie, ou Les Solitaires, "Lettre Première", 1781
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 weeks ago
If you know that "I", in...

If you know that "I", in the sense of the person, the front, the ego, it really doesn't exist. Then...it won't go to your head too badly, if you wake up and discover that you're God.

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

  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed
  • Slavoj Žižek

Who's online

There are currently 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia