Skip to main content
5 months 1 week ago

I believe that freedom is not a constant attribute that "we have" or "we don't have"; perhaps there is only one reality: the act of liberating ourselves in the process of using choices. Every step in life that heightens the maturity of man heightens his ability to choose the freeing alternative. I believe that "freedom of choice" is not always equal for all men at every moment. The man with an exclusively necrophilic orientation; who is narcissistic; or who is symbiotic-incestuous, can only make a regressive choice. The free man, freed from irrational ties, can no longer make a regressive choice.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

There is no practice of nonviolence that does not negotiate fundamental ethical and political ambiguities, which means that "nonviolence" is not an absolute principle, but the name of an ongoing struggle.

0
0
Source
source
p. 23
6 months 3 weeks ago

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1: Introductory
5 months 3 weeks ago

I write in a hurry, because the little one, who has been sleeping a long time, begins to call for me. Poor thing! when I am sad, I lament that all my affections grow on me, till they become too strong for my peace, though they all afford me snatches of exquisite enjoyment.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Gilbert Imlay
3 months 4 days ago

In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 6 Of the Causes of the actual rapid Advance of the Physical Sciences compared with their Progress at an earlier Period
6 months 4 weeks ago

When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 469.
5 months 3 days ago

Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 31.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity.

0
0
Source
source
Access, Issues 165-176, National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 1984, p. xxiii
4 months 3 weeks ago

Visual space is the space of detachment. Audile-tactile space is the space of involvement.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 194)
5 months 1 week ago

There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in the Introduction (by Siân Miles) p. 35
6 months 4 weeks ago

There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.

0
0
Source
source
Théodicée (1710)ː Préface
5 months 3 weeks ago

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Frances Burney
2 months 2 weeks ago

I see a clock, but I cannot envision the clockmaker. The human mind is unable to conceive of the four dimensions, so how can it conceive of a God, before whom a thousand years and a thousand dimensions are as one?

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

One cannot live without motives. I have no motives left, and I am living.

0
0

Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.

0
0
Source
source
In a letter accepting the 1927 Nobel Prize in literature, read by the French minister, Armand Bernard.
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is unjust to call imaginary the diseases which are, on the contrary, only too real, since they proceed from our mind, the only regulator of our equilibrium and our health.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.

0
0
Source
source
Pt II, p. 217
6 months 2 weeks ago

Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
5 months 2 weeks ago

Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so. And I say unto you, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth adultery: and whoso marrieth her which is put away doth commit adultery.

0
0
Source
source
19:8-9 (KJV)
5 months 3 weeks ago

The ego involved in responsibility is me and no one else, me with whom one whould have liked to pair up a sister soul, from whom one would have substitution and sacrifice.

0
0
Source
source
The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 116
6 months 3 weeks ago

The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

One life; a little gleam of Time between two Eternities; no second chance to us for evermore!

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

To become god is merely to be free on this earth, not to serve an immortal being.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins, Continually are born; e'en now the Universe, With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles, Its joy confesses at their recent birth.

0
0
Source
source
June 14, 1838
6 months 3 weeks ago

The tool, as we have seen, is not exterminated by the machine.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 2, pg. 422.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and "gives the whole show away." The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden.

0
0
Source
source
p. 59
7 months 2 weeks ago

Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

In the true Literary Man there is thus ever, acknowledged or not by the world, a sacredness: he is the light of the world; the world's Priest;-guiding it, like a sacred Pillar of Fire, in its dark pilgrimage through the waste of Time.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

I am dreaming ...? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me from it. I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning for immortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I really believe in it ...? And wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me, wherefore? Frankly, I do not understand the question, for it is to ask the reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of the principle.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Arthur Campbell
6 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavors. Only a god can still save us. I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline; so that we do not, simply put, die meaningless deaths, but that when we decline, we decline in the face of the absent god.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

Philosophy resembles poetry in being an art for enforcing meditation, for driving the mind inwards until it sinks into its Object.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Man is a reasoning animal.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

These terrible sociologists, who are the astrologers and alchemists of our twentieth century.

0
0
Source
source
Fanatical Skepticism
6 months 3 weeks ago

In regard to man's final end, all the higher religions are in complete agreement. The purpose of human life is the discovery of Truth, the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. The degree to which this unitive knowledge is achieved here on earth determines the degree to which it will be enjoyed in the posthumous state. Contemplation of truth is the end, action the means.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

In fact, when a nation has become free, it is extremely difficult to persuade them that their freedom is only to be preserved by perpetual and minute jealousy. They do not observe that there is a constant, perhaps an unconscious, effort on the part of their governors to diminish, and so ultimately to destroy, that freedom.

0
0
Source
source
Characters of Mr. Fox (review of Characters of the late Charles James Fox, edited by Philopatris Varvicensis, 2 vols), in The Edinburgh Review
6 months 1 week ago

As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes‎ (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 454
6 months 2 weeks ago

As money grows, care follows it and the hunger for more.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, ode xvi, line 17
4 months 1 week ago

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

0
0
Source
source
"Technical Education"
5 months 3 weeks ago

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

After death the sensation is either pleasant or there is none at all. But this should be thought on from our youth up, so that we may be indifferent to death, and without this thought no one can be in a tranquil state of mind. For it is certain that we must die, and, for aught we know, this very day. Therefore, since death threatens every hour, how can he who fears it have any steadfastness of soul?

0
0
Source
source
section 74
3 months 6 days ago

You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling. Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use-which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing-for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.

0
0
Source
source
p. 92
5 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself.

0
0
Source
source
p. 57

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia