Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 2 days ago
I should not really object to...

I should not really object to dying if it were not followed by death.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Death" (1970), p. 3 footnote.
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 weeks ago
The assertion fallacy ... is the...

The assertion fallacy ... is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 141.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
Weisinger, a couple of years ago,...

Weisinger, a couple of years ago, made up the following story: "Isaac Asimov was asked how Superman could fly faster than the speed of light, which was supposed to be an absolute limit. To this Asimov replied, 'That the speed of light is a limit is a theory; that Superman can travel faster than light is a fact.'"

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
4 weeks ago
Do you think that God will...

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
No. 35. (Usbek writing to Gemchid)
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 4 days ago
There is nothing impossible in the...

There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Genteel Tradition at Bay
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 weeks ago
"The bitterest sorrow that man can...

"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to achieve nothing"... so Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can embrace everything , or almost everything; with the will nothing, or almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness - no! not if this contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our knowledge and our power pity arises.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
Let us apply these principles to...

Let us apply these principles to adultery. The state can no more prohibit it or punish it by law than any other illegitimate satisfaction of the sexual impulse.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
P. 431
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 1 week ago
Our Traders in Men (an unnatural...

Our Traders in Men (an unnatural commodity!) must know the wickedness of that Slave-Trade, if they attend to reasoning, or the dictates of their own hearts; and such as shun and stiffle all these, wilfully sacrifice Conscience, and the character of integrity to that golden Idol.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 1 week ago
[N]o matter how abstract our theories...

[N]o matter how abstract our theories may sound or how consistent our arguments may appear, there are incidents and stories behind them which, at least for ourselves, contain as in a nutshell the full meaning of whatever we have to say.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Thinking Without a Banister: Essays in Understanding, 1953-1975
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 6 days ago
It is because of my wretchedness...

It is because of my wretchedness that I am "I." It is on account of the wretchedness of the universe that, in a sense, God is "I" (that is to say a person).

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 1 day ago
Often must you turn…

Often must you turn your pencil to erase, if you hope to write something worth a second reading.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, satire i, lines 72-3,
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
There are no solutions, only cowardice...

There are no solutions, only cowardice masquerading as such.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 2 days ago
Societies have always been shaped more...

Societies have always been shaped more by the nature of the media by which humans communicate than by the content of the communication.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
(p. 23)
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 2 days ago
When even the dictators of today...

When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 28.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
People who live in society have...

People who live in society have learned how to see themselves in mirrors as they appear to their friends. I have no friends. Is that why my flesh is so naked?

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Diary entry of Friday (2 February)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
All that is not eternal is...

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Charity"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Just now
Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages...

Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,-there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 179
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
Conformity to nature has no connection...

Conformity to nature has no connection whatever with right and wrong. The idea can never be fitly introduced into ethical discussions at all, except, occasionally and partially, into the question of degrees of culpability. To illustrate this point, let us consider the phrase by which the greatest intensity of condemnatory feeling is conveyed in connection with the idea of nature - the word "unnatural." That a thing is unnatural, in any precise meaning which can be attached to the word, is no argument for its being blamable; since the most criminal actions are to a being like man not more unnatural than most of the virtues.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
page 62; Broadview Press, page 102
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
The product of mental labor -...

The product of mental labor - science - always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Addenda, "Relative and Absolute Surplus Value" in Economic Manuscripts, 1861-63
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 6 days ago
Maybe the target nowadays is not...

Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 785
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 3 weeks ago
No one is ignorant that there...

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 weeks 6 days ago
In both positivism and Heidegger-at least...

In both positivism and Heidegger-at least in his later work-speculation is the target of attack. In both cases the thought that autonomously raises itself above the facts through interpreting them and that cannot be reclaimed by them without leaving a surplus is condemned for being empty and vain concept-mongering.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
2 months 2 weeks ago
Figure to yourself the mixture of...

Figure to yourself the mixture of surprise and delight which has this instant been poured into my mind by the sound of my name, as uttered by you, in the speech just read to me out of the Morning Herald... By one and the same man, not only Parliamentary Reform, but Law Reform advocated. Advocated? and by what man? By one who, in the vulgar sense of profit and loss, has nothing to gain by it... Yes, only from Ireland could such self-sacrifice come; nowhere else: least of all in England, cold, selfish, priest-ridden, lawyer-ridden, lord-ridden, squire-ridden, soldier-ridden England, could any approach to it be found.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Letter to Daniel O'Connell (15 July 1828) , quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. X (1843), pp. 594-595
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
5 days ago
All of us need an identity...

All of us need an identity which unites us with our neighbours, our countrymen, those people who are subject to the same rules and the same laws as us, those people with whom we might one day have to fight side by side to protect our inheritance, those people with whom we will suffer when attacked, those people whose destinies are in some way tied up with our own.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Rivers of Blood BBC2 documentary
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 days ago
The harvest truly is plenteous, but...

The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
9:37-38 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
We are told that Christ was...

We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He has disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ's death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, Chapter 4, "The Perfect Penitent"
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
Knowledge is in the end...

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
We are brought to a belief...

We are brought to a belief of God either by reason or by force. Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. Yet will they not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven if you give them a good thrust with a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness has abated and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they will easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled to the public faith and examples.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
The tendency has always been strong...

The tendency has always been strong to believe that whatever received a name must be an entity or thing, having an independent existence of its own; and if no real entity answering to the name could be found, men did not for that reason suppose that none existed, but imagined that it was something peculiarly abstruse and mysterious, too high to be an object of sense. The meaning of all general, and especially of all abstract terms, became in this way enveloped in a mystical base...

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Note to Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (1829) by James Mill, edited with additional notes by John Stuart Mill, 1869
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
The union of the mathematician with...

The union of the mathematician with the poet, fervor with measure, passion with correctness, this surely is the ideal.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 11 - Clifford's Lectures and Essays, 1879
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
What we do is to bring...

What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
§ 116
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 4 days ago
The attitude of the ruling classes...

The attitude of the ruling classes to the laborers is that of a man who has felled his adversary to the earth and holds him down, not so much because he wants to hold him down, as because he knows that if he let him go, even for a second, he would himself be stabbed, for his adversary is infuriated and has a knife in his hand. And therefore, whether their conscience is tender or the reverse, our rich men cannot enjoy the wealth they have filched from the poor as the ancients did who believed in their right to it. Their whole life and all their enjoyments are embittered either by the stings of conscience or by terror.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 2 days ago
I often asked myself the following...

I often asked myself the following question. There is no doubt that at all times for many men one of the greatest tortures of their lives has been the contact, the collision with the folly of their neighbours. And yet how is it that there has never been attempted - I think this is so - a study on this matter, an Essay on Folly? For the pages of Erasmus do not treat of this aspect of the matter.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 6 days ago
There is a certain kind of...

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"The responsibility of writers," p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
Certain forms of sex which do...

Certain forms of sex which do not lead to children are at present punished by the criminal law: this is purely superstitious, since the matter is one which affects no one except the parties directly concerned... The peculiar importance attached, at present, to adultery is quite irrational... Moral rules ought not to be such as to make instinctive happiness impossible.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
2 months 6 days ago
Technically speaking, since our complex societies...

Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Habermas (2004) in: Giovanna Borradori (2004) Philosophy in a Time of Terror: : Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
There is but one good; that...

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Be not afraid of life. Believe...

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 weeks ago
The sense in which an automatic...

The sense in which an automatic door "understands instructions" from its photoelectric cell is not at all the sense in which I understand English.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
2 weeks 5 days ago
To conclude: there are two well-known...

To conclude: there are two well-known minor ways in which language has mattered to philosophy. On the one hand there is a belief that if only we produce good definitions, often marking out different senses of words that are confused in common speech, we will avoid the conceptual traps that ensnared our forefathers. On the other hand is a belief that if only we attend sufficiently closely to our mother tongue and make explicit the distinctions there implicit, we shall avoid the conceptual traps. One or the other of these curiously contrary beliefs may nowadays be most often thought of as an answer to the question Why does language matter to philosophy? Neither seems to me enough.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ian Hacking (1975), Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?, p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Democracy is still upon its trial....

Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 weeks ago
So clearly will….

So clearly will truths kindle light for truths.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book I, line 1117 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse and M. F. Smith)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Great men are they who see...

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfillment. 

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
July 18, 1867, Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race,...

What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
And O! how the mind is...

And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition ! It is the most profitable and elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
About the Upanishads. Arthur Schopenhauer, quoted in Europe Looks At India by Mukherhi, D.P.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
What modern apologists call 'true' Christianity...

What modern apologists call 'true' Christianity is something depending upon a very selective process. It ignores much that is to be found in the Gospels: for example, the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the doctrine that the wicked will suffer eternal torment in Hell fire. It picks out certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount, though even these it often rejects in practice. It leaves the doctrine of non-resistance, for example, to be practised only by non-Christians such as Gandhi. The precepts that it particularly favours are held to embody such a lofty morality that they must have had a divine origin. And yet ... these precepts were uttered by Jews before the time of Christ.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?", in Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter, part II., 11/11/1954
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
All for ourselves, and nothing for...

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter IV, p. 448.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 days ago
Ethics is inescapable…

Ethics is inescapable.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Preface, p. xv
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
Whilst shame keeps...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 1 week ago
The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is...

The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
On Manners and Fashion
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 0 users online.

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia