Skip to main content
1 month 1 week ago

A great step towards independence is a good-humored stomach, one that is willing to endure rough treatment.

0
0
Source
source
Line 3.
3 months 5 days ago

One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.

0
0
Source
source
p. 309
2 months 1 week ago

In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them, that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

0
0

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

0
0
Source
source
D 97
4 months 3 weeks ago

Although the whole of this life were said to be nothing but a dream and the physical world nothing but a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough, if, using reason well, we were never deceived by it.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in The World of Mathematics (1956) by J. R. Newman, p. 1832
5 months 1 day ago

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 97
1 month 1 week ago

Those who try to include all life when trying to determine justice: Should a man be executed for killing a fly? No? The fly has a short life span? The fly is small? All these rationalizations can be applied to you, by a creature that lives longer, is bigger, etc. #philosophy 

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 149
5 months 3 weeks ago
To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
0
0

Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

0
0
Source
source
F 149

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 25
2 weeks 5 days ago

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

0
0
Source
source
II, 17
4 months 3 weeks ago

It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.

0
0
Source
source
Preamble, paragraph 3.
1 month 1 week ago

God has given to all things their course and decided how high and how far they may go, not higher, not lower.

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

It is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 9)
3 months 1 week ago

The would-be climber must be able to make himself liked ... please his superiors - avoid showing independence except in those matters wherein independence is expected of him by his chiefs... the winners in the race have qualities which disincline them to allow others to be their true selves. Hence the winners snub all those who aim at adequate self-expression, speaking of them as pretentious, eccentric, biased, unpractical, and measuring their achievements by insincere standards.

0
0

God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12
2 months 3 weeks ago

It seems to me obvious that infants and many animals that do not in any ordinary sense have a language or perform speech acts nonetheless have Intentional states. Only someone in the grip of a philosophical theory would deny that small babies can literally be said to want milk and that dogs want to be let out or believe that their master is at the door.

0
0
Source
source
P. 5.
3 months ago

Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 3, Opinion, p. 28.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Have no fear, little flock, for your Father has approved of giving you the Kingdom.

0
0
Source
source
12:32
4 months 3 weeks ago

I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 186)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

0
0
Source
source
Act 10, sc. 2
4 months 3 weeks ago

He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

0
0
Source
source
Maxima debetur pueris reverentia [The greatest respect is owed to the children]. Sec. 71; Note: Here Locke quotes Juvenal
3 months ago

When land and its tillage are the basis of taxation, one need not care exactly how many people there are.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 12, Political Arithmetic, p. 103.
3 months 5 days ago

The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. ... The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

To one that promised to give him hardy cocks that would die fighting, "Prithee," said Cleomenes, "give me cocks that will kill fighting."

0
0
Source
source
61 Cleomenes
5 months 1 week ago

Those who were best able to provide themselves with the means of security against their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee, passed the most agreeable life in each other's society; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy was such that, if one of them died before his time, the survivors did not mourn his death as if it called for sympathy.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

The word "God," so "capitalised" (as we Americans say), is the definable proper name, signifying Ens necessarium; in my belief Really creator of all three Universes of Experience. I, Ens necessarium is a latin expression which signifies "Necessary being, necessary entity"

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.

0
0
Source
source
p. 52e
1 month 4 weeks ago

In the world as we find it, even the barest requirements of a life worth living cannot all be always met in full. Toppling a tyranny may trigger civil war. Protecting a broad range of liberal freedoms may result in the regime that guarantees them being short lived. At the same time, supporting a strong state as a bulwark against anarchy may worsen the abuse of power. Wise policy can temper these conflicts. It cannot hope to overcome them.

0
0
Source
source
'Modus Vivendi' (p.28)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

0
0
Source
source
To Carl Stumpf, 1 January 1886
2 months 5 days ago

I ... understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has primarily to do with distractions ... Women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life or saintly life.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2
3 months 1 week ago

To-day the Enlightenment ideal has been changed into a reality; not only in legislation, which is the mere framework of public life, but in the heart of every individual, whatever his ideas may be, and even if he be a reactionary in his ideas, that is to say, even when he attacks and castigates institutions by which those rights are sanctioned.... The sovereignty of the unqualified individual, of the human being as such, generically, has now passed from being a juridical idea or ideal to be a psychological state inherent in the average man. And note this, that when what was before an ideal becomes a component part of reality, it inevitably ceases to be an ideal. The prestige and the magic that are attributes of the ideal are volatilised.

0
0
Source
source
Chap.II: The Rise Of The Historic Level
3 months 2 weeks ago

From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.

0
0
Source
source
The Second Part, Chapter 19, p. 97
3 months 5 days ago

If space in infinite, how about the space inside man? Blake said that eternity opens from the center of an atom. My former terror vanished. Now I saw that I was mistaken in thinking of myself as an object in a dead landscape. I had been assuming that man is limited because his brain is limited, that only so much can be packed into the portmanteau. But the spaces of the mind are a new dimension. The body is a mere wall between two infinities. Space extends to infinity outwards; the mind stretches to infinity inwards.

0
0
Source
source
p. 38
1 month 2 weeks ago

When the general population no longer constitutes the armed forces, when the army is no longer the people in arms, then empires fall. Today all armies are again tending to become mercenary armies.

0
0
Source
source
49
4 months 3 weeks ago

The supreme enjoyment is in satisfaction with oneself ; it is in order to deserve this satisfaction that we are placed on earth and endowed with freedom.

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Dreamer of Democracy by James Miller and Jim Miller, p. 194.
4 months 3 weeks ago

The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 1, § 1
1 month 1 week ago

There are depths in man which go down the length of the lowest Hell, as there are heights which reach the highest Heaven; - for are not both Heaven and Hell made out of him, everlasting Miracle and Mystery that he is?

0
0
Source
source
Pt. III, Bk. I, ch. 4. This was slightly paraphrased in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards. p. 327.
5 months 5 days ago

There are some men who expose themselves to damnation so foolishly by avarice, by brutality, by debauches, by violence, by excesses, by blasphemies! ...it is always a great folly for a man to expose himself to damnation... He must despise desire and its kingdom, and aspire to that kingdom of love in which all the subjects breathe nothing but love, and desire nothing but the benefits of love.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.

0
0
Source
source
p. 9
2 weeks 5 days ago

Would not all we mean by "communication between mind and mind" be provided for if we suppose that common knowledge comes about, not from our explaining things to one another, but from things explaining themselves in the same terms to us all? Accepting the object as its own interpreter, as its own "medium of communication," do we not begin to understand what is utterly dark on any other view, how it comes to pass that the resulting knowledge is a common possession?

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters - that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare it is simply disgraceful.

0
0
Source
source
Do What You Will, 1929
4 months 3 weeks ago

Thus it may be said that not only the soul, the mirror of an indestructible universe, is indestructible, but also the animal itself, though its mechanism may often perish in part and take off or put on an organic slough.

0
0
Source
source
La monadologie (77). Sometimes paraphrased as: The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Who am I? Subject and object in one - contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am.

0
0
Source
source
Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 71

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia