Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
3 weeks 6 days ago
There are two kinds of openness,...

There are two kinds of openness, the openness of indifference-promoted with the twin purposes of humbling our intellectual pride and letting us be whatever we want to be, just as long as we don't want to be knowers-and the openness that invites us to the quest for knowledge and certitude, for which history and the various cultures provide a brilliant array of examples for examination.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 41.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
To shoot down a European is...

To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
From the introduction to The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
If things are ever to move...

If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
In any race between human numbers...

In any race between human numbers and natural resources, time is against us.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 12 (p. 113)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 week ago
Beware of false prophets, which come...

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Matthew 7:15 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 week ago
The Sabbath is not simply a...

The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 91e
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Let me suggest a theme for...

Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, - returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 2 weeks ago
When we reflect on the long...

When we reflect on the long and dense night in which France and all Europe have remained plunged by their governments and their priests, we must feel less surprise than grief at the bewilderment caused by the first burst of light that dispels the darkness.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Author's Inscription: French Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
3 weeks 6 days ago
The only originality I claim is...

The only originality I claim is that for me this truth goes hand in hand with the intellectual certainty that the human spirit is capable of creating in our time a new mentality, an ethical mentality. Inspired by this certainty, I too proclaim this truth in the hope that my testimony may help to prevent its rejection as an admirable sentiment but a practical impossibility. Many a truth has lain unnoticed for a long time, ignored simply because no one perceived its potential for becoming reality.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
Hope is the dream of a...

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 3 weeks ago
The first consequence of the principle...

The first consequence of the principle of bounded rationality is that the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it. He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behavior is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world. To predict his behavior we must understand the way in which this simplified model is constructed, and its construction will certainly be related to his psychological properties as a perceiving, thinking, and learning animal.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 198; Cited in P. Slovic (1972, p. 2).
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
I look forward to a future...

I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples. All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
3 weeks 5 days ago
A new theory by the author...

A new theory by the author has been added, which draws the physical inferences consequent on the extension of the foundations of geometry beyond Reimann... and represents an attempt to derive from world-geometry not only gravitational but also electromagnetic phenomena. Even if this theory is still only in its infant stage, I feel convinced that it contains no less truth than Einstein's Theory of Gravitation-whether this amount of truth is unlimited or, what is more probable, is bounded by the Quantum Theory.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
From the Author's Preface to Third Edition
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
2 weeks 2 days ago
'Natural History' ought to form a...

'Natural History' ought to form a part of intellectual education, in order to correct certain prejudices which arise from cultivating the intellect by means of mathematics alone and in order to lead the student to see that the division of things into kinds, and the attribution and use of names, are processes susceptible of great precision.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
The life of money-making is one...

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 2 weeks ago
Till society is very differently constituted,...

Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed, because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavour to settle that power on a Divine right, which will not bear the investigation of reason.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Not without a slight shudder at...

Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, - the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, - to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, - an hypæthral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 491-2
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 days ago
If people were told: what makes...

If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself-the need for Unity, the need for God - they wouldn't believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Fine manners need the support of...

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others, and this is a gift interred only by the self.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Behavior
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
The best work is not what...

The best work is not what is most difficult for you; it is what you do best.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act 6, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 2 weeks ago
FREEDOM, the realization of freedom: who...

FREEDOM, the realization of freedom: who can deny that this is what today heads the agenda of history? ... Revolutionary propaganda is in its deepest sense the negation of the existing conditions of the State, for, with respect to its innermost nature, it has no other program than the destruction of whatever order prevails at the time.... We must not only act politically, but in our politics act religiously, religiously in the sense of freedom, of which the one true expression is justice and love. Indeed, for us alone, who are called the enemies of the Christian religion, for us alone it is reserved, and even made the highest duty ... really to exercise love, this highest commandment of Christ and this only way to true Christianity. 

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Reaction in Germany" (1842), Bakunin's first political writings, under the pseudonym "Jules Elysard"; it was not until 1860 that he began to publicly assert a stance of firm atheism and vigorous rejection of traditional religious institutions.
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 4 days ago
There are two sentences inscribed upon...

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
So far as it has gone,...

So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 463 On the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 weeks ago
Great abuses in the world are...

Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute: we speak of all things by precepts and decisions. The style at Rome was that even that which a witness deposed to having seen with his own eyes, and what a judge determined with his most certain knowledge, was couched in this form of speaking: "it seems to me." They make me hate things that are likely, when they would impose them upon me as infallible.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
A common mortal periodically selected by...

A common mortal periodically selected by his fellow-citizens to watch over their own interests, can never be supposed to possess this stupendous virtue.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book III, Chapter 9
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
In the world of today can...

In the world of today can there be peace anywhere until there is peace everywhere?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 1 week ago
Men looke not at the greatnesse...

Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 76 (Italics as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 6 days ago
Ah, Postumus! They fleet away….

Ah, Postumus! they fleet away, our years, nor piety one hour can win from wrinkles and decay, and Death's indomitable power.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, ode xiv, line 1 (trans. John Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
3 weeks 3 days ago
I feel, like all modern Americans,...

I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 407
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
If literature isn't everything, it's not...

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Interview (1960), Quoted in Susan Sontag's introduction to Barthes: Selected Writings, "Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,"
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
The Protestant churches generally hold that...

The Protestant churches generally hold that the elements of the sacrament are flesh and blood only in a tropical sense; they nourish our souls as meat and the juice of it would our bodies. But the Catholics maintain that they are literally just that; although they possess all the sensible qualities of wafer-cakes and diluted wine. But we can have no conception of wine except what may enter into a belief, either -

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Ideal Man of the eighteenth...

The Ideal Man of the eighteenth century was the Rationalist; of the seventeenth, the Christian Stoic; of the Renaissance, the Free Individual; of the Middle Ages, the Contemplative Saint. And what is our Ideal Man? On what grand and luminous mythological figure does contemporary humanity attempt to model itself? The question is embarrassing. Nobody knows. And, in spite of all the laudable efforts of the Institute for Intellectual Co-operation to fabricate an acceptable Ideal Man for the use of Ministers of Education, nobody, I suspect, will know until such time as a major poet appears upon the scene with the unmistakable revelation. Meanwhile, one must be content to go on piping up for reason and realism and a certain decency.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
They say cowardice is infectious; but...

They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 4, The Sea Chest.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 days ago
It is amusing....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
We cannot suppose that an individual's...

We cannot suppose that an individual's thinking survives bodily death, since that destroys the organization of the brain and dissipates the energy which utilized the brain tracks. God and immortality, the central dogma of the Christian religion, find no support in science. But we in the West have come to think of them as the irreducible minimum of theology. No doubt people will continue to entertain these beliefs, because they are pleasant, just as it is pleasant to think ourselves virtuous and our enemies wicked. But for my part I cannot see any grounds for either. I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove Satan is a fiction. The Christian God may exist, so might the Gods of Olympus, Ancient Egypt or Babylon; but no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other. They lie outside the region of provable knowledge and there is no reason to consider any of them.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 4 weeks ago
Upper middle-class upbringing has rooted out...

Upper middle-class upbringing has rooted out any element of what might appear to be self-assertion or egoism; good manners is to be like everyone else. So the male of the species becomes accustomed to suppress any stirring of impatience or originality. Shaw once said you can't learn to skate without making a fool of yourself; the British middle-class attitude seems to be that, in that case, you hadn't better skate at all. The result seems to be considerably more oppressive than being brought up in a Jewish ghetto or a west side slum.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 112, An integrity born of hope: Notes on Christopher Isherwood
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 1 week ago
The conscious side of woman corresponds...

The conscious side of woman corresponds to the emotional side of man, not to his "mind." Mind makes up the soul, or better, the "animus" of woman, and just as the anima of a man consists of inferior relatedness, full of affect, so the animus of woman consists of inferior judgments, or better, opinions.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Secret of the Golden Flower (1931) Commentary by C.G.Jung in CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
5 months 4 days ago
Since our leading men think themselves...

since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish-ponds that will come to hand for food, and neglect everything else, do not you think that I am doing no mean service if I secure that those who have the power, should not have the will, to do any harm?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letters to Atticus, Book II, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 weeks ago
Marriage is like a cage; one...

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book III, Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 2 weeks ago
God is the...

God is the Immanent Cause of all things, never truly transcendent from them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Part I, Prop. XVIII
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Let them have what instructions you...

Let them have what instructions you will, and ever so learned lectures of breeding daily inculcated into them, that which will most influence their carriage will be the company they converse with, and the fashion of those about them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 4 weeks ago
The emptiness of Zen Buddhism... creates...

The emptiness of Zen Buddhism... creates a neighborly nearness between things.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 1 week ago
To be an intellectual really means...

To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak. That is, it creates a vision of the world that puts into the limelight the social misery that is usually hidden or concealed by the dominant viewpoints of a society. "Intellectual" in that sense simply means those who are willing to reflect critically upon themselves as well as upon the larger society and to ascertain whether there is some possibility of amelioration and betterment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Chekhov, Coltrane, and Democracy: Interview by David Lionel Smith." in The Cornel West Reader. Basic Books. 2000. p. 551. ISBN 978-0-465-09110-2.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
If Mormonism is able to endure,...

If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
This quote originates in Thomas J. Yates, "Count Tolstoi and the 'American Religion' ", Improvement Era (February 1939)
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 weeks ago
Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined...

Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined to lasciviousness, vengeance, theft and lies.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in David Johnson, 'Representing the Cape "Hottentots"
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 6 days ago
Turn thy thoughts now to the...

Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
IX, 21
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Hatred, as well as love, renders...

Hatred, as well as love, renders its votaries credulous.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
V
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 2 weeks ago
The revolution must end and the...

The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one's own nature.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 weeks 3 days ago
All this world, all this rich,...

All this world, all this rich, endless flow of appearances is not a deception, a multicolored phantasmagoria of our mirroring mind. Nor is it absolute reality which lives and evolves freely, independent of our mind's power. It is not the resplendent robe which arrays the mystic body of God. Nor the obscurely translucent partition between man and mystery. All this world that we see, hear, and touch is that accessible to the human senses, a condensation of the two enormous powers of the Universe permeated with all of God.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 6 days ago
In the case of most pains...

In the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that the pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bear in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination…

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
VII, 64
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 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia