Skip to main content
5 months 2 weeks ago

T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
5 months 2 weeks ago

Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks are many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter VII, Part First, p. 610.
1 month 1 week ago

The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.

0
0
Source
source
IX, 1
4 months 5 days ago

And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, expecting to be repaid in full. But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back.

0
0
Source
source
Jesus on usury from the Sermon on the Mount, Luke 6:34-35
1 month 1 week ago

You're better off not giving the small things more time than they deserve.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) IV, 32
2 months 4 weeks ago

A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe.

0
0
1 month 1 week ago

Never acknowledge the limitations of man. Smash all boundaries! Deny whatever your eyes see. Die every moment, but say: "Death does not exist."

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

0
0
Source
source
Aphorism 26, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968)
1 month 1 week ago

The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.

0
0
Source
source
Imagination in Place
2 months 1 week ago

There are no conventions, no tabus, no gods, no priests, princes, fathers, or revelations which they must accept. ... The prison door is wide open. They stagger out into trackless space under a blinding sun.

0
0
Source
source
Preface
4 months 1 week ago

Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world; and this is not a woman's province in a married state. Her sphere of action is not large, and if she is not taught to look into her own heart, how trivial are her occupations and pursuits! What little arts engross and narrow her mind!

0
0
Source
source
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), "Matrimony", p. 100
4 months 1 week ago

There is philosophy, which is about conceptual analysis - about the meaning of what we say - and there is all of this ... all of life.

0
0
Source
source
Emphasizing his views on philosophy as something abstract and separate from normal life to Isaiah Berlin, in the early 1930s, as quoted in A.J. Ayer: A Life (1999) by Ben Rogers, p. 2.
5 months 2 weeks ago

To free a man from error is to give, not to take away. Knowledge that a thing is false is a truth. Error always does harm; sooner or later it will bring mischief to the man who harbors it. Then give up deceiving people; confess ignorance of what you don't know, and leave everyone to form his own articles of faith for himself. Perhaps they won't turn out so bad, especially as they'll rub one another's corners down, and mutually rectify mistakes. The existence of many views will at any rate lay a foundation of tolerance. Those who possess knowledge and capacity may betake themselves to the study of philosophy, or even in their own persons carry the history of philosophy a step further.

0
0
Source
source
"Religion: A Dialogue." Variant translation: To free a man from error does not mean to take something from him, but to give him something.
5 months 2 days ago

'Tis well to restrain the wicked, and in any case not to join him in his wrong-doing.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations", Section VII
6 months 1 day ago

It is quite clear to you that all the people see that lower kinds of creation could have been made in a different way from that in which they really are, and as they see this lower degree in many things they think that they must have been made by chance.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

0
0
Source
source
"Walter Savage Landor", from The Dial, xii, 1841
1 month 1 week ago

I learn with great satisfaction that you are about committing to the press the valuable historical and State papers you have been so long collecting. Time and accident are committing daily havoc on the originals deposited in our public offices. The late war has done the work of centuries in this business. The last cannot be recovered, but let us save what remains; not by vaults and locks which fence them from the public eye and use in consigning them to the waste of time, but by such a multiplication of copies, as shall place them beyond the reach of accident.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Mr. Hazard
5 months 3 weeks ago

It is necessary to have regard to the person whom we wish to persuade, of whom we must know the mind and the heart, what principles he acknowledges, what things he loves; and then observe in the thing in question what affinity it has with the acknowledged principles, or with the objects so delightful by the pleasure which they give him.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

0
0
Source
source
C 26
5 months 3 days ago

Anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed.

0
0
Source
source
Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p. 73
5 months 1 week ago

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

0
0
Source
source
The Method of Nature, 1841
1 month 1 week ago

Let what will be said or done, preserve your sang-froid immovably, and to every obstacle, oppose patience, perseverance, and soothing language.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to William Short
5 months 3 weeks ago

For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.

0
0
Source
source
Book IV, ch. 1, 175.
5 months 2 weeks ago

We do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hard-ware of England for the wines of France;and yet hard-ware is a very durable commodity, and were it not for this continual exportation, might too be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country. But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them;that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there;and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it, apart of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workman whose business it was to make them.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter I, p. 471.
4 months 1 week ago

Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.

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

Even when labor is subjugated by capital it always necessarily maintains its own autonomy, and this ever more clearly true today with respect to the new immaterial, cooperative and collaborative forms of labor. This relationship is not isolated to the economic terrain but, as we will argue later, spills over into the biopolitical terrain of society as a hole, including military conflicts. In any case, we should recognize here that even in asymmetrical conflicts victory in terms of complete domination is not possible. All that can be achieved is a provisional and limited maintenance of control and order that must constantly be policed and preserved. Counterinsurgency is a full-time job.

0
0
Source
source
54
1 month 1 week ago

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party - however numerous they may be - is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of "justice" but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when "freedom" becomes a special privilege.

0
0
Source
source
Chapter Six, "The Problem of Dictatorship"

Imagination is the soul, since it plays all the roles of the soul.

0
0
5 months 2 weeks ago

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

0
0
Source
source
IX
1 month 1 week ago

We cannot think with precision unless in our own minds we use words with precision.

0
0
Source
source
General Introduction
1 month 1 week ago

What is divine is full of Providence. Even chance is not divorced from nature, from the inweaving and enfolding of things governed by Providence. Everything proceeds from it.

0
0
Source
source
(Hays translation) All that is from the gods is full of Providence. II, 3
1 month 1 week ago

The government of the United States have no idea of paying their debt in a depreciated medium, and... in the final liquidation of the payments which shall have been made, due regard will be had to an equitable allowance for the circumstance of depreciation.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Jean Baptiste de Ternant, 1791. ME 8:247
5 months 2 weeks ago

When at first thought we think of a creator our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being, whose power is equal to his will.

0
0
Source
source
A Discourse, &c. &c.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Buddhism is the most colossal example in the history of applied metaphysics.

0
0
Source
source
in Verhoeven, Martin J. 2001. "Buddhism and Science: Probing the Boundaries Of Faith and Reason." Religion East and West (1): 77-97.
1 month 1 week ago

Direct thy attention to what is said. Let thy understanding enter into the things that are doing and the things which do them.

0
0
Source
source
VII, 30
3 months 1 week ago

In many ways an artistic nature unfits a man for practical existence.

0
0
Source
source
A Lodging for the Night.
5 months 1 week ago

I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental. I think that all things, in their own way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least. "Reflect" is the important word. This lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit, merely an image.

0
0
5 months 2 days ago

It is better to correct your own faults than those of another.

0
0
4 months 1 week ago

It may be confidently asserted that no man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks. And the desire of rectifying these mistakes, is the noble ambition of an enlightened understanding, the impulse of feelings that Philosophy invigorates.

0
0
Source
source
A Vindication of the Rights of Men
5 months 2 days ago

But what is lawful for all extends across wide-ruling aether and, without cease, through endless sunshine.

0
0
Source
source
fr. 135, as quoted in Aristotle's Rhetoric, 1373 b16
5 months 2 days ago

Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality.

0
0
Source
source
(trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.
3 months 3 weeks ago

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

0
0
Source
source
G 42

And why were those haughty [French] nobles destroyed with that utter destruction? Why were they scattered over the face of the earth, their titles abolished, their escutcheons defaced, their parks wasted, their palaces dismantled, their heritage given to strangers? Because they had no sympathy with the people, no discernment of the signs of their time; because, in the pride and narrowness of their hearts, they called those whose warnings might have saved them theorists and speculators; because they refused all concession till the time had arrived when no concession would avail.

0
0
Source
source
Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (20 September 1831), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 50
5 months 1 week ago

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

0
0
Source
source
p. 27

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia