Skip to main content
7 months 1 week ago

Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

I must plunge into the water of doubt again and again.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
9 months 3 days ago

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

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

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter Two, pp.. 79
7 months 1 week ago

The entire universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted in Essays in Zoosemiotics (1990) by Thomas A. Sebeok
5 months 3 weeks ago

A few centuries from now, if involuntary suffering still exists in the world, the explanation for its persistence won't be that we've run out of computational resources to phase out its biological signature, but rather that rational agents - for reasons unknown - will have chosen to preserve it.

0
0
Source
source
The Radical Plan to Phase out Earth's Predatory Species, io9, 30 Jul. 2014
6 months 1 week ago

What! all of us, Christians, not only profess to love one another, but do actually live one common life; we whose social existence beats with one common pulse-we aid one another, learn from one another, draw ever closer to one another to our mutual happiness, and find in this closeness the whole meaning of life!-and to-morrow some crazy ruler will say some stupidity, and another will answer in the same spirit, and then I must go expose myself to being murdered, and murder men-who have done me no harm-and more than that, whom I love. And this is not a remote contingency, but the very thing we are all preparing for, which is not only probable, but an inevitable certainty.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
7 months 1 week ago

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

Every one knows that there are no real forests in England. The deer in the parks of the great are demurely domestic cattle, fat as London alderman.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 27, pg. 803.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Distinctive signs, full signs, never seduce us.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 59)
9 months 3 days ago

The flesh receives as unlimited the limits of pleasure; and to provide it requires unlimited time. But the mind, intellectually grasping what the end and limit of the flesh is, and banishing the terrors of the future, procures a complete and perfect life, and we have no longer any need of unlimited time. Nevertheless the mind does not shun pleasure, and even when circumstances make death imminent, the mind does not lack enjoyment of the best life.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected. Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "Voices of the New Time" as translated by C. C. Shackford in The Radical Vol. 7 (1870), p. 329
8 months 2 weeks ago

A physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.

0
0
Source
source
BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God, Russell vs. Copleston, 1948
8 months 4 days ago

When the individual finds in her conscience beliefs that are relevant to public policy but incapable of the defense on the basis of beliefs common to her fellow citizens, she must sacrifice her conscience on the altar of public expediency.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

No tears are shed, when an enemy dies.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 376
4 months 4 weeks ago

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

0
0
8 months 3 weeks ago

For the inquisition of Final Causes is barren, and like a virgin consecrated to God produces nothing.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, viii
4 months 4 weeks ago

Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much of a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is all the same; you will not be, and you were not. Neither of these periods of time belongs to you.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1 : The Foundations of Liberal Policy § 11 : The Limits of Governmental Activity
8 months 3 weeks ago

To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 2
9 months 3 days ago

When a man at forty is the object of dislike, he will always continue what he is.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

The coverage is the war. If there were no coverage, there'd be no war. Yes, the newsmen and the mediamen around the world are actually the fighters, not the soldiers anymore.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing tends to materialize man and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind more than the extreme division of labor.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XVIII.
8 months 1 week ago

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

0
0
Source
source
p. 212
4 months 1 week ago

It is not given to a cylinder to move everywhere by its own motion, nor yet to water nor to fire nor to anything else which is governed by nature or an irrational soul, for the things which check them and stand in the way are many. But intelligence and reason are able to go through everything that opposes them, and in such manner as they are formed by nature and as they choose. Place before thy eyes this facility with which the reason will be carried through all things, as fire upwards, as a stone downwards, as a cylinder down an inclined surface, and seek for nothing further. For all other obstacles either affect the body only, which is a dead thing; or, except for opinion and the yielding of reason itself, they do not crush nor do any harm of any kind; for if they did, he who felt it would immediately become bad.

0
0
Source
source
X, 33
7 months 2 weeks ago

Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.

0
0
Source
source
"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 130
6 months 1 week ago

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

0
0
6 months 1 week ago

Primitivism has become the vulgar cliche of much modern art and speculation.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 77)
6 months 3 days ago

Those who cannot find moral clarity are likely to settle for the far more dangerous simplicity, or purity, instead.

0
0
9 months 2 days ago

Music is associated not only with speculation but with morality. When rhythms and modes reach an intellect through the ear, they doubtless affect and reshape that mind according to their particular character.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

0
0
Source
source
Commonly attributed to Mere Christianity, where it is not found. Earliest reference seems to be an unsourced attribution to George MacDonald in an 1892 issue of the Quaker periodical The British Friend.
6 months 2 days ago

It is now time for us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (2 March 1831), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 8
4 months 2 weeks ago

This ultimate stage of our spiritual exercise is called Silence. Not because its contents are the ultimate inexpressible despair or the ultimate inexpressible joy and hope. Nor because it is the ultimate knowledge which does not condescend to speak, or the ultimate ignorance which cannot. Silence means: Every person, after completing his service in all labors, reaches finally the highest summit of endeavor, beyond every labor, where he no longer struggles or shouts, where he ripens fully in silence, indestructibly, eternally, with the entire Universe.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

0
0
7 months 3 days ago

If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate-in short, emancipation of fear-then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.

0
0
4 months 3 days ago

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to his son Eduard (5 February 1930), as quoted in Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), p. 367
5 months 1 week ago

The man who says that the world is a machine has really advanced no further than to say that he is so well satisfied with the analogy that he is through with searching any further.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VI: "The Drama of Destiny", §5, p. 130.
8 months 2 weeks ago

If I had had more time, this letter would have been shorter.

0
0
Source
source
Written by Voltaire in an over-long letter to a friend, quoted to A. P. Martinich in Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, Note to the Second Edition, 1996
8 months 1 week ago

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

0
0
Source
source
Correspondence with Helen Keller, 1908, in The Correspondence of William James: April 1908-August 1910, Vol. 12
5 months 1 week ago

Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered people.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. IV: "The Golden Rule and After", p. 105.
8 months 2 weeks ago

A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter IX, p. 111.
7 months ago

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

0
0
Source
source
No. 46. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
7 months 1 week ago

Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

The main importance of Francis Bacon's influence does not lie in any peculiar theory of inductive reasoning which he happened to express, but in the revolt against second-hand information of which he was a leader.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia