Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 3 days ago
As for him who neither possesses...

As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod: He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person). But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months ago
The public has yet to see...

The public has yet to see TV as TV. Broadcasters have no awareness of its potential. The movie people are just beginning to get a grasp on film.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
quoted in "Marshall McLuhan, Author, Dies; Declared 'Medium Is the Message'" by Alden Whitman, The New York Times, January 1, 1981
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
When the Great Dao (Tao, perfect...

When the Great Dao (Tao, perfect order) prevails, the world is like a Commonwealth State shared by all, not a dictatorship.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 4 weeks ago
The erotic instinct is something questionable,...

The erotic instinct is something questionable, and will always be so whatever a future set of laws may have to say on the matter. It belongs, on the one hand, to the original animal nature of man, which will exist as long as man has an animal body. On the other hand, it is connected with the highest forms of the spirit. But it blooms only when the spirit and instinct are in true harmony. If one or the other aspect is missing, then an injury occurs, or at least there is a one-sided lack of balance which easily slips into the pathological. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 days ago
The Communists disdain to conceal their...

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Section 4, paragraph 11 (last paragraph) Variant translation: Workers of the world, unite!
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless...

Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 week 6 days ago
Religion is always falling apart. Buddhism,...

Religion is always falling apart. Buddhism, the Religion of No-Religion.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
As the few adepts in such...

As the few adepts in such things well know, universal morality is to be found in little everyday penny-events just as much as in great ones. There is so much goodness and ingenuity in a raindrop that an apothecary wouldn't let it go for less than half-a-crown.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
B 33
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 3 weeks ago
With the abolition of otium and...

With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. ... Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 39.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
Many politicians of our time are...

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed have to wait forever.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 42
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
To know something....
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 days ago
The application of algebra to geometry......

The application of algebra to geometry... far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) as quoted in 5th ed. (1878) p. 617.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
books are only what we want...

books are only what we want them to be; rather, what we read into them.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months ago
Ten years on the moon could...

Ten years on the moon could tell us more about the universe than a thousand years on the earth might be able to.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
3 months 3 weeks ago
As it has long been….

As it has long been and shall be, not ever, I think, will unfathomable time be emptied of either. This quote refers to Love and Strife, the fundamental opposing and ordering forces in Empedocles' model of the cosmos.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
fr. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 2 weeks ago
The importance of the culture industry...

The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation for reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 days ago
Thus heaven I've forfeited, I know...

Thus heaven I've forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for hell.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The Pale Maiden" (1837) ballad
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
It is almost impossible to bear...

It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard. G 4 Variant translations: It is almost impossible to carry the torch of wisdom through a crowd without singeing someone's beard. It is virtually impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd, without singeing someone's beard

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
The feeling of being ten thousand...

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 weeks ago
If things are deprived of memory,...

If things are deprived of memory, they become information or commodities. They are pushed into a time-free, ahistorical place.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 day ago
If we cannot "practice the presence...

If we cannot "practice the presence of God," it is something to practice the absence of God, to become increasingly aware of our unawareness till we feel like man who should stand beside a great cataract and hear no noise, or like a man in a story who looks in a mirror and finds no face there, or a man in a dream who stretches his hand to visible objects and gets no sensation of touch. To know that one is dreaming is to no longer be perfectly asleep. Bur for news of the fully waking world you must go to my betters.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Charity"
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 weeks ago
God is nothingness: He is 'beyond...

God is nothingness: He is 'beyond all speech.'

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
Isolation is the worst possible counselor....

Isolation is the worst possible counselor.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Civilization is Civilism
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
Crime is naught but misdirected energy....

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 2 weeks ago
These philosophers of the world place...

These philosophers of the world place contrarieties in the same subject; for the one attributed greatness to nature and the other weakness to this same nature, which could not subsist; whilst faith teaches us to place them in different subjects: all that is infirm belonging to nature, all that is powerful belonging to grace. Such is the marvelous and novel union which God alone could teach, and which he alone could make, and which is only a type and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the single person of a Man-God.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is not among extraordinary and...

It is not among extraordinary and fantastic things that excellence is to be found, of whatever kind it may be. We rise to attain it and become removed from it: it is oftenest necessary to stoop for it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely...

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature - whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation - Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification. On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1866
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 5 days ago
We produce these representations in and...
We produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
The art of progress is to...

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 3 weeks ago
Equally there is no rhythm when...

Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase "takes place". The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 160
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
2 months 3 weeks ago
Childhood lasts all through life. It...

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
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 days ago
The history of all hitherto existing...

The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (1848), p.2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
Who will not commend the wit...

Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Commonplace notebooks, Part I
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
Our minds are finite, and yet...

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 21, June 28, 1941.
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 2 weeks ago
Perhaps it is not true to...

Perhaps it is not true to speak of God as a judge at all, or of his judgements. There does not seem to be really any evidence that His worlds are places of trial but rather schools, place of training, or that He is a judge but rather a Teacher, a Trainer, not in the imperfect sense in which men are teachers, but in the sense of His contriving and adapting His whole universe for one purpose of training every intelligent being to be perfect. ... I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge, in the sense that the evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians impute judgement to him. ... Our business is, I think, to understand, not to judge. What He does, as far as we know, to rule by law down to the most infinitesimally small portion of His universe, not to judge.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
As quoted in Florence Nightingale's Theology: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (2002) by Lynn McDonald, pps. 177-179
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 1 week ago
Exclusion....

You're either excluding the right people or including the wrong people.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
ComfortDragon
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 days ago
A genuine first-hand religious experience like...

A genuine first-hand religious experience like this is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then still prove contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness it may foster, can be henceforth counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
1 week 6 days ago
The old view was that delicacy...

The old view was that delicacy of language was part of the nature, the sacred nature, of eros and that to speak about it in any other way would be to misunderstand it. What has disappeared is the risk and the hope of human connectedness embedded in eros. Ours is a language that reduces the longing for an other to the need for individual, private satisfaction and safety.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
pp. 13-14.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
We replace God as best we...

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . .

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
4 weeks ago
Some economists also use the terms...

Some economists also use the terms Fordism and pos-Fordism to mark the shift from an economy characterized by the stable-long-term employment typical of factory workers to one marked by flexible, mobile, and precarious labor relations: flexible because workers have to adapt to different tasks, mobile because workers have to move frequently between jobs, and precarious because no contracts guarantee stable, long-term employment. Whereas economic modernization, which developed Fordist labor relations, centered on the conomies of scale and larga systems of production and exchange, economic postmodernization, with its post-Fordist labor relations, develops smaller-scale, flexible systems.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
112
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 month 3 weeks ago
The advantage of pure, and the...

The advantage of pure, and the disadvantage of impure air are experienced each time we breathe, and all who understand the causes of disease know that an impure atmosphere is most unfavourable to the enjoyment of health, and an efficient cause to shorten human existence within the natural life of man. It is therefore most desirable that decisive measures should be devised and generally adopted to ensure to all a pure atmosphere, in which to live during their lives.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
3rd Part
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 days ago
Act as if what you do...

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
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 week 3 days ago
The creative imagination of the Hindus...

The creative imagination of the Hindus has conceived no loftier and holier character than Sita; the literature of the world has not produced a higher ideal of womanly love, womanly truth, and womanly devotion.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Wisdom Of China And India by ) Lin Yutang
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology...

The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
Man is a masterpiece of creation...

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
J 249
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 days ago
The propagandist's purpose is to make...

The propagandist's purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Words and Behaviour", The Olive Tree, 1936
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
3 weeks 3 days ago
Never has there been one possessed...

Never has there been one possessed of complete sincerity who did not move others. Never has there been one who had not sincerity who was able to move others.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Discipline and Character, no. 55
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 weeks ago
If we love God while thinking...

If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 260
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 days ago
We measure the earth, sun, stars,...

We measure the earth, sun, stars, and ocean depths. We burrow into the depths of the earth for gold. We search for rivers and mountains on the moon. We discover new stars and know their magnitudes. We sound the depths of gorges and build clever machines. Each day brings a new invention. What don't we think of! What can't we do! But there is something else, the most important thing of all, that we are missing. We do not know exactly what it is. We are like a small child who knows he does not feel well but cannot explain why. We are uneasy, because we know a lot of superfluous facts; but we do not know what is really important-ourselves.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
Not without reason did he who...

Not without reason did he who had the right to do so speak of the foolishness of the cross. Foolishness, without a doubt, foolishness. And the American humorist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, was not altogether wide of the mark in making one of the characters in his ingenious conversations say that he thought better of those who were confined in a lunatic asylum on account of religious mania than of those who, while professing the same religious principles, kept their wits and appeared to enjoy life very well outside the asylums. But those who are at large, are they not really, thanks to God, mad too? Are there not mild madnesses, which not only permit us to mix with our neighbors without danger to society, but which rather enable us to do so, for by means of them we are able to attribute a meaning and finality to life and society?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
  • Load More

User login

  • Create new account
  • Reset your password

Social

☰ ˟
  • Main Feed
  • Philosophical Maxims

Civic

☰ ˟
  • Propositions
  • Issue / Solution

Who's new

  • Søren Kierkegaard
  • Jesus
  • Friedrich Nietzsche
  • VeXed
  • Slavoj Žižek

Who's online

There are currently 1 users online.
  • comfortdragon

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia