Skip to main content
7 months 3 weeks ago

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 21 "An Evaluation of the Prophecy"
7 months 3 weeks ago

I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

We may with advantage at times forget what we know.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 234
5 months 3 weeks ago

Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

0
0
Source
source
P. 77.
7 months 3 weeks ago

England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating - the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying the material foundations of Western society in Asia... When a great social revolution shall have mastered the results of the bourgeois epoch... and subjected them to the common control of the most advanced peoples, then only will human progress cease to resemble that hideous, pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain.

0
0
Source
source
"The Future Results of British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, 08 August 1853
8 months 1 week ago

Those of our pleasures which come most rarely give the greatest delight.

0
0
Source
source
Fragment 33 (Oldfather translation)
4 months 1 week ago

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerals and the decimal system.

0
0
6 months 4 weeks ago

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter III, Part I.
6 months 1 week ago

It is a paralogism to say, that the good of the individual should give way to that of the public; this can never take place, except when the government of the community, or, in other words, the liberty of the subject is concerned; this does not affect such cases as relate to private property, because the public good consists in everyone's having his property, which was given him by the civil laws, invariably preserved.

0
0
Source
source
Book XXVI, Chapter 15.
7 months 3 weeks ago

The gods we stand by are the gods we need and can use, the gods whose demands on us are reinforcements of our demands on ourselves and on one another. What I then propose to do is, briefly stated, to test saintliness by common sense, to use human standards to help us decide how far the religious life commends itself as an ideal kind of human activity . ... It is but the elimination of the humanly unfit, and the survival of the humanly fittest, applied to religious beliefs; and if we look at history candidly and without prejudice, we have to admit that no religion has ever in the long run established or proved itself in any other way. Religions have approved themselves; they have ministered to sundry vital needs which they found reigning. When they violated other needs too strongly, or when other faiths came which served the same needs better, the first religions were supplanted.

0
0
Source
source
Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
5 months 3 weeks ago

Science fiction is like other writing. It is just novels and short stories with machines.

0
0
5 months 3 weeks ago

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....

0
0
Source
source
Bk. XIV, ch. 12
8 months 1 day ago

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 26. On the Education of Children
1 month 4 weeks ago

"Nothing great has great beginnings."
- Joseph de Maistre

See biography for Joseph de Maistre:
https://civilsimian.com/Joseph-de-Maistre

Read Joseph de Maistre's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/245/content

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

Blessed are those who have no talent!

0
0
Source
source
February 1850
6 months 4 weeks ago

Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,... They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. ... Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.

0
0
Source
source
Book Two, Chapter XIII.
6 months 2 weeks ago

To live one's love and hatred, to live that which one is means defeat, resignation, and death. The crimes of society, the hell that man has made or man become unconquerable cosmic forces.

0
0
Source
source
p. 61
7 months 3 weeks ago

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

0
0
Source
source
As quoted in Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909) by James Huneker, p. 367
8 months 2 weeks ago

God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovemment which has produced that revolution.

0
0
Source
source
Mirabeau', The Edinburgh Review (July 1832), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), pp. 81-82
7 months 3 weeks ago

The Hudson's Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war, had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, Part III, p. 806.
4 months 2 weeks ago

One whose intentions and thoughts are cultivated will disregard wealth and nobility. One whose greatest concern is for the Way and righteousness will take lightly kings and dukes. It is simply that when one examines oneself on the inside, external goods carry little weight. A saying goes, "The gentleman makes things his servants. The petty man is servant to things.

0
0
Source
source
Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
7 months 3 weeks ago

The remedies for all our diseases will be discovered long after we are dead; and the world will be made a fit place to live in, after the death of most of those by whose exertions it will have been made so. It is to be hoped that those who live in those days will look back with sympathy to their known and unknown benefactors.

0
0
Source
source
Diary, April 15, 1854, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 27, p. 668
6 months 2 weeks ago

There is only this swarm of dying creatures stricken with longevity, all the more hateful in that they are so good at organizing their agony. p. 120, first American edition

0
0
Source
source
1970
5 months ago

In a traditional reading eating the apple was the original sin; but, as Gnostics understood the story, the two primordial humans were right to eat the apple. The God that commanded them not to do so was not the true God but only a demiurge, a tyrannical underling exulting in its power, while the serpent came to free them from slavery. True, when they ate the apple Adam and Eve fell from grace. This was indeed the Fall of Man - a fall into the dim world of everyday consciousness. But the Fall need not be final. Having eaten its fill from the Tree of Knowledge, humankind can then rise into a state of conscious innocence. When this happens, Herr C. declares, it will be 'the final chapter in the history of the world'.

0
0
Source
source
The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 8)
7 months 3 weeks ago

... the attempt to make heaven on earth invariably produces hell. It leads to intolerance. It leads to religious wars, and to the saving of souls through the inquisition. And it is, I believe, based on a complete misunderstanding of our moral duties. It is our duty to help those who need help; but it cannot be our duty to make others happy, since this does not depend on us, and since it would only too often mean intruding on the privacy of those towards whom we have such amiable intentions.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
1 month 1 week ago

I could take a pile of words and drop them into a word container. Then I could reach in and grab a clump of words and line them up. Then I capitalize the first letter and put a period at the end.

An observer would read it and say “It’s just a bunch of random words that look like a sentence, but it doesn’t make any sense.”

Then I say: “It only has a message for those who believe.”

Then, if they are a "believer" they will start the process of piecing words together, extracting meaning, coming to conclusions.

0
0
6 months 3 weeks ago

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

I do not carry such information in my mind since it is readily available in books. ...The value of a college education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.

0
0
7 months 3 weeks ago

According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin"
8 months 3 weeks ago
Knowledge more than a Means. Also without this passion I refer to the passion for knowledge, science would be furthered: science has hitherto increased and grown up without it. The good faith in science, the prejudice in its favour, by which States are at present dominated (it was even the Church formerly), rests fundamentally on the fact that the absolute inclination and impulse has so rarely revealed itself in it, and that science is regarded not as a passion, but as a condition and an "ethos." Indeed, amour-plaisir of knowledge (curiosity) often enough suffices, amour-vanity suffices, and habituation to it, with the afterthought of obtaining honour and bread; it even suffices for many that they do not know what to do with a surplus of leisure, except to continue reading, collecting, arranging, observing and narrating; their "scientific impulse" is their ennui.
0
0
6 months 1 week ago

Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

The recognition by one person of another's personality takes place by means to some extent identical to the means by which he is conscious of his own personality. The idea of the second personality, which is as much as to say that second personality itself, enters within the direct consciousness of the first person, and is immediately perceived as his ego, though less strongly. At the same time, the opposition between the two persons is perceived, so that the externality of the second is perceived.

0
0
8 months 1 day ago

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

0
0
Source
source
Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
6 months 1 week ago

The pursuit of mathematics is a divine madness of the human spirit.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought", p. 30

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

0
0
Source
source
K 72
7 months 3 weeks ago

Pi's face was masked, and it was understood that none could behold it and live. But piercing eyes looked out from the mask, inexorable, cold and enigmatic.

0
0
Source
source
"The Mathematician's Nightmare", Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories, 1954
7 months 3 weeks ago

Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.

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

Passing from quantity to quality of population, we come to the question of eugenics. We may perhaps assume that, if people grow less superstitious, government will acquire the right to sterilize those who are not considered desirable as parents. This power will be used, at first, to diminish imbecility, a most desirable object. But probably, in time, opposition to the government will be taken to prove imbecility, so that rebels of all kinds will be sterilized. Epileptics, consumptives, dipsomaniacs and so on will gradually be included; in the end, there will be a tendency to include all who fail to pass the usual school examinations. The result will be to increase the average intelligence; in the long run, it may be greatly increased. But probably the effect upon really exceptional intelligence will be bad. Mr. Micawber, who was Dickens's father, would hardly have been regarded as a desirable parent. How many imbeciles ought to outweigh one Dickens I do not profess to know.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

That the individual is of himself a world's history, and possesses his property in the rest of the world's history, goes beyond what is Christian. To the Christian the world's history is the higher thing, because it is the history of Christ or 'man'; to the egoist only his history has value, because he wants to develop only himself not the mankind-idea, not God's plan, not the purposes of Providence, not liberty, and the like. He does not look upon himself as a tool of the idea or a vessel of God, he recognizes no calling, he does not fancy that he exists for the further development of mankind and that he must contribute his mite to it, but he lives himself out, careless of how well or ill humanity may fare thereby.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 323
3 months 1 week ago

I do not believe in a God who maliciously or arbitrarily interferes in the personal affairs of mankind. My religion consists of a humble admiration for the vast power which manifests itself in that small part of the universe which our poor, weak minds can grasp!

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.

0
0
Source
source
"Science Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder", John Brockman, Edge.org, December 29, 1996

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
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is an article of passionate faith among "politically correct" biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway.

0
0
4 months 2 weeks ago

We have to construct the figure of a new David, the multitude as champion of asymmetrical combat, immaterial workers who became a new kind of combatants, cosmopolitan bricoleurs of resistance and cooperation.

0
0
Source
source
50
8 months 1 day ago

There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 13
8 months 1 week ago

The man of perfect virtue is cautious and slow in his speech. When a man feels the difficulty of doing, can he be other than cautious and slow in speaking?

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia