Skip to main content
4 months 3 weeks ago

Liberty therefore not being more fit than other words in some of the instances in which it has been used, and not so fit in others, the less the use that is made of it the better. I would no more use the word liberty in my conversation when I could get another that would answer the purpose, than I would brandy in my diet, if my physician did not order me: both cloud the understanding and inflame the passions.

0
0
Source
source
Jeremy Bentham, quoted in P. J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Oxford, 1990, p. 96
4 months 3 weeks ago

Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them when they come to be men, rather than to have their heads stuff'd with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live: and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for.

0
0
Source
source
Sec. 94
4 months 3 weeks ago

The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.

0
0
Source
source
p. 14
5 months 2 weeks ago

The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.

0
0
1 month 6 days ago

He who conquers his enemy with meekness, wins fame.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

0
0
Source
source
p. 493
4 months 2 weeks ago

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

The student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division-that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two.

0
0
Source
source
The history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard, Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story. Ch.2, p. 79
4 months 3 weeks ago

The worker's existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer, And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists.

0
0
Source
source
Wages of Labor, p. 20.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Existence would be a quite impracticable enterprise if we stopped granting importance to what has none.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks 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 4 weeks ago

But the Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing; though overcome by testimonies they yield not an inch. It is a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. If they give a prince or magistrate a thousand florins, they extort twenty thousand from the subjects in payment. We must ever keep on guard against them.

0
0
Source
source
863
4 months 3 weeks ago

I am writing to you to tell you of my decision to return to your Government the Carl von Ossietzsky medal for peace. I do so reluctantly and after two years of private approaches on behalf of Heinz Brandt, whose continued imprisonment is a barrier to coexistence, relaxation of tension and understanding between East and West... I regret not to have heard from you on this subject. I hope that you will yet find it possible to release Brandt through an amnesty which would be a boon to the cause of peace and to your country.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Walter Ulbricht, January 7, 1964.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Every other art,-as poetry, music, painting,-may be practised without the process showing forth the rules according to which it is conducted ;-but in the self-cognizant art of the philosopher, no step can be taken without declaring the grounds upon which it proceeds.

0
0
Source
source
p. 14
4 months 3 weeks ago

All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

0
0
Source
source
"Equality", 1764
3 months 4 days ago

Haikus allow the whole world to appear within things.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

I think he once told us his first short clothes were a hull made mostly or wholly of leather. We all only laughed, for it is now long ago. Thou dear father! Through what stern obstructions was thy way to manhood to be forced, and for us and for our travelling to be made smooth!

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

We do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hard-ware of England for the wines of France;and yet hard-ware is a very durable commodity, and were it not for this continual exportation, might too be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country. But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them;that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there;and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it, apart of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workman whose business it was to make them.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 471.
3 months 2 weeks ago

At this very moment, I am suffering - as we say in French, j'ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.

0
0
Source
source
Introduction, sect. 6
4 months 2 weeks ago

I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. ... One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23
2 months 3 weeks ago

The simulacrum is never what hides the truth-it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.

0
0
Source
source
- Ecclesiastes "The Precession of Simulacra," p. 1
5 months 3 weeks ago

This opinion... appears to be ancient... that the one, excess and defect, are the principles of things... It is not... probable that there are more than three principles... Essence is one certain genus of being: so that principles will differ from each other in prior and posterior alone, but not in genus, for in one genus there is always one contrariety, and all contrarieties appear to be referred to one. That there is neither one element, therefore, nor more than two or three, is evident.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

Kings and philosophers shit, and so do ladies.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 42, English translation from Hartle, Ann (2003), Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher, Cambridge University Press.
2 months 2 weeks ago

Paradox is the technique for seizing the conflicting aspects of any problem. Paradox coalesces or telescopes various facets of a complex process in a single instant.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 106)
4 weeks 1 day ago

The highest instrument of inner awakening of race is combat, and war is its highest expression. That pacifism and humanitarianism are phenomena closely linked to internationalism, democracy, cosmopolitanism and liberalism is perfectly logical - the same anti-racial instinct present in some, is reflected and confirmed in the others. The will towards sub-racial levelling inborn in internationalism finds its ally in pacifist humanitarianism, which has the function of preventing the heroic test from disrupting the game by galvanising the surviving forces of any still not completely deracinated peoples.

0
0
Source
source
p. 67
4 months 3 weeks ago

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Each the herald is who wrote His rank, and quartered his own coat. There is no king nor sovereign state That can fix a hero's rate.

0
0
Source
source
Astræa
3 months 3 weeks ago

It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

0
0
Source
source
Paradoxe sur le Comédien
3 months 4 days ago

The jingoes and war speculators are filling the air with the sentimental slogan of hypocritical nationalism, "America for Americans," "America first, last, and all the time."

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

... I once shook hands with Longfellow at a garden party in 1881; and I often saw Dr. Holmes, who was our neighbor in Beacon Street: but Emerson I never saw.

0
0
Source
source
p. 50
2 months 3 weeks ago

You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

What is now happening to the people of the East as of the West is like what happens to every individual when he passes from childhood to adolescence and from youth to manhood. He loses what had hitherto guided his life and lives without direction, not having found a new standard suitable to his age, and so he invents all sorts of occupations, cares, distractions, and stupefactions to divert his attention from the misery and senselessness of his life. Such a condition may last a long time.

0
0
Source
source
VI
4 months 3 weeks ago

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

0
0
Source
source
Greatness
3 months 4 weeks ago

To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither centre nor boundary... Thus the Earth no more than any other world is at the centre.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

People who want to do so can lose weight most safely and permanently if they realize that above all they must be patient. ... It is better to eat a little less at each meal than impulse would suggest and to do that constantly. Add to this a little more exercise or activity than impulse suggests and keep that up constantly too. A few less calories taken in each day and a few more used up will decrease weight, slowly, to be sure, but without undue misery. And with better long-range results too.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

There is no body but eats and drinks. But they are few who can distinguish flavors.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

The doctrine of the Second Coming has failed, so far as we are concerned, if it does not make us realize that at every moment of every year in our lives Donne's question "What if this present were the world's last night?" is equally relevant.

0
0
2 weeks 4 days ago

Time is a sort of river of passing events, and strong is its current; no sooner is a thing brought to sight than it is swept by and another takes its place, and this too will be swept away.

0
0
Source
source
IV, 43
4 months 2 weeks ago

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.

0
0
Source
source
Act 1, sc. 5
3 months 6 days ago

In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe.

0
0
Source
source
Religion is world-loyalty. Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

0
0
Source
source
K 13
5 months 5 days ago

Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?

0
0
Source
source
Book III, lines 938-939 (tr. Bailey)

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia