Skip to main content
2 months 1 week ago

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

0
0
Source
source
Book Three, Chapter XXI.

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

0
0
Source
source
O World, Thou Choosest Not

...shall we say that the difference between a vegetarian and a cannibal is just a matter of taste?

0
0
Source
source
"The Idolatry of Politics", New Republic, 1986-June-16, page 31.
3 months 1 week ago

Those who have been inspired to action by the doctrine of the class war will have acquired the habit of hatred, and will instinctively seek new enemies when the old ones have been vanquished. But in actual fact the psychology of the working man in any of the Western democracies is totally unlike that which is assumed in the Communist Manifesto. He does not by any means feel that he has nothing to lose but his chains, nor indeed is this true. The chains which bind Asia and Africa in subjection to Europe are partly riveted by him. He is himself part of a great system of tyranny and exploitation. Universal freedom would remove, not only his own chains, which are comparatively light, but the far heavier chains which he has helped to fasten upon the subject races of the world.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. VI: International Relations
1 month 3 weeks ago

In a free nation, it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision and from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effects of reasoning.

0
0
Source
source
Quoted by Thomas Erskine in the trial of Thomas Paine, 1792
1 month 4 days ago

A woman loves to be obeyed at first, although afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying.

0
0
Source
source
The Suicide Club, Story of the Physician and the Saratoga Trunk.
1 month 3 weeks ago

The march, as ever, is toward the future, and he who marches is getting there, even though he march walking backwards. And who knows if that is not the better way!...

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy.

0
0
2 months 4 weeks ago

Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.

0
0
Source
source
p. 61
3 months 1 week ago

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter II, Part II, p. 927.
1 month 3 weeks ago

Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways, that there is an affinity between us and other people as well as things.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

Apart from autograph hunters, I get... many letters from Hindus, beseeching me to adopt some form of mysticism, from young Americans, asking me where I think the line should be drawn in petting, and from Poles, urging me to admit that while all other nationalism may be bad that of Poland is wholly noble. I get letters from engineers who cannot understand Einstein, and from parsons who think that I cannot understand Genesis, from husbands whose wives have deserted them - not (they say) that that would matter, but the wives have taken the furniture with them, and what in these circumstances should an enlightened male do? ...I get letters (concerning whose genuineness I am suspicious) trying to get me to advocate abortion, and I get letters from young mothers asking my opinion of bottle-feeding.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Mr C. L. Aiken, March 19, 1930
2 months 1 week ago

People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.

0
0
Source
source
Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 76.
1 month 1 week ago

The Marxist critique is only a critique of capital, a critique coming from the heart of the middle and petit bourgeois classes, for which Marxism has served for a century as a latent ideology.... The Marxist seeks a good use of economy. Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one more step in the banalization of life toward the "good use" of the social!

0
0
Source
source
Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory 15 (1987) "When Bataille Attacked the Metaphysical Principle of Economy"
2 months 1 week ago

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

I should not be surprized at seeing a French Army conveyed by a British Navy to an attack upon this Kingdom.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to French Laurence (12 May 1797) after hearing of the mutinies in the Royal Navy, quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
3 months 2 weeks ago

The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 2
2 months 4 days ago

We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?

0
0
2 months 4 days ago

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.

0
0
1 month 5 days ago

When reason rules, money is a blessing.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 50

Astronomers... define duration in the following way: time... so defined that Newton's law and that of vis viva [or of the conservation of energy] may be verified. Newton's law is an experimental truth... only approximate... We still have only a definition by approximation.

0
0
3 months 4 weeks ago

The institutions of the Ruler are rooted in his own character and conduct, and sufficient attestation of them is given by the masses of the people. He examines them by comparison with those of the three kings, and finds them without mistake. He sets them up before Heaven and Earth, and finds nothing in them contrary to their mode of operation. He presents himself with them before spiritual beings, and no doubts about them arise. He is prepared to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, and has no misgivings. His presenting himself with his institutions before spiritual beings, without any doubts arising about them, shows that he knows Heaven. His being prepared, without any misgivings, to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, shows that he knows men.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
1 month 2 weeks ago

The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
2 months 4 days ago

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world

0
0

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

0
0
Source
source
G 30
3 months 1 week ago

Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter 6 (pp. 52-53)
2 months ago

I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.

0
0
1 month 4 weeks ago

All things in nature become identical with the phenomena they present when submitted to the practices of our laboratories, whose problems no less than their apparatus express in turn the problems and interests of society as it is. This view may be compared with that of a criminologist maintaining that trustworthy knowledge of a human being can be obtained only by the well-tested and streamlined examining methods applied to a suspect in the hands of the metropolitan police.

0
0
Source
source
describing the pragmatist view, p. 49.
3 months 3 days ago

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

0
0
Source
source
(p4)
3 months 1 week ago

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

0
0
Source
source
"Skepticism"
2 months 1 week ago

Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can.

0
0
Source
source
Book VI, Chapter 3: Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima
1 month 3 weeks ago

There is nothing truly real, save that which feels, suffers, pities, loves and desires, save consciousness. And we need God in order to save consciousness; not in order to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to know the why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it.

0
0
1 month 3 weeks ago

But now we come to the real paradox: that something as explosive as sexual excitement can nevertheless become a matter of habit, But then that applies to all our pleasures. We discover some new product in the supermarket, and become addicted to it. Then our tastebuds become accustomed to its flavour, and or interest fades. In the same way a honeymoon couple may find an excuse to hurry off to the bedroom half a dozen times a day; but after a month or so sex has taken its place among the many routines of their lives. They still enjoy it, but it no longer has quite the same power to excite the imagination. Sex, like every other pleasure, can become mechanical.

0
0
Source
source
p. 14

The pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him.

0
0
Source
source
p. 60
3 months 1 week ago

Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

0
0
1 month 4 days ago

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

0
0
Source
source
Truth of Intercourse.
1 month 3 weeks ago

Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent.

0
0

Between the Shaman of the Tungus, the European prelate who rules church and state, the Voguls, and the Puritans, on the one hand, and the man who listens to his own command of duty, on the other, the difference is not that the former make themselves slaves, while the latter is free, but that the former have their lord outside themselves, while the latter carries his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter XVI.
3 months 1 week ago

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 479.
1 month 3 weeks ago

The 'open' mind of the poet and artist can sense realities beyond the reach of our normal senses. The real problem is that our materialistic assumptions have a number of false premises built into them: it is only when we recognize this that we see there is no sharp dividing line between the everyday world and the invisible world of the clairvoyant.

0
0
Source
source
p. 294

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia