Skip to main content
5 months 1 week ago

Sometimes I had an overwhelming urge to speak, not about that, but only to hint that there were some curious things about me which no one knew of. I wanted to find out whether other people had undergone similar experiences. I never succeeded in discovering so much as a trace of them in others. As a result, I had the feeling that I was either outlawed or elect, accursed or blessed.

0
0
Source
source
p. 41
6 months 2 weeks ago

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
2 months 2 weeks ago

No human institution can endure unless supported by the Hand which supports all; that is to say, if it is not especially consecrated to Him at its origin. The more it is penetrated with the Divine principle, the more durable it will be. How strange is the blindness of men in our age! They boast of their knowledge, and are ignorant of everything, since they are ignorant of themselves. They know not what they are, nor what they can do. An invincible pride bears them on continually to overthrow every thing which they have not made; and in order to work out new creations, they separate themselves from the source of all existence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau has, however, very well said, Little, vain man, show me thy power, and I will show thee thy weakness. It might be said, with as much truth and more profit, Little, vain man, confess to me thy weakness, and I will show thee thy strength.

0
0
Source
source
XLVI, p. 130
5 months 2 weeks ago

He had no failings which were not owing to a noble cause; to an ardent, generous, perhaps an immoderate passion for fame; a passion which is the instinct of all great souls.

0
0
Source
source
The reference is to Charles Townshend
4 months 2 weeks ago

World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.

0
0
Source
source
(p.66)
7 months 1 week ago

Autumn is a second Spring when every leaf is a flower.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.

0
0
Source
source
Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in London, March 1850
4 months 2 weeks ago

Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly.

0
0
Source
source
(p. 109)
6 months 3 weeks ago

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
3 months 2 days ago

But let the individual man lay claim to ever so many rights because Man or the concept man 'entitles' him to them, because his being man does it: what do I care for his right and his claim? If he has his right only from Man and does not have it from me, then for me he has no right. His life, for example, counts to me only for what it is worth to me. I respect neither a so-called right of property (or his claim to tangible goods) nor yet his right to the 'sanctuary of his inner nature' (or his right to have the spiritual goods and divinities, his gods, remain un-aggrieved). His goods, the sensuous as well as the spiritual, are mine, and I dispose of them as proprietor, in the measure of my - might.

0
0
Source
source
Cambridge 1995, p. 219
4 months 4 weeks ago

If love does not know how to give and take without restrictions, it is not love, but a transaction that never fails to lay stress on a plus and a minus.

0
0
3 months 1 week ago

And some others that I have seen, were perhaps among the first. There is no third rising. Time sweeps all away with it so fast at this epoch. The Scottish Church has been short-lived, and was late in reaching thither.

0
0
2 months 6 days ago

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.

0
0
Source
source
"The Acquisition of Ideas"
5 months 2 weeks ago

Every presentation of philosophy, whether oral or written, is to be taken and can only be taken in the sense of a means. Every system is only an expression or image of reason, and hence only an object of reason, an object which reason-a living power that procreates itself in new thinking beings-distinguishes from itself and posits as an object of criticism. Every system that is not recognized and appropriated as just a means, limits and warps the mind for it sets up the indirect and formal thought in the place of the direct, original and material thought.

0
0
Source
source
Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 67
4 months 1 week ago

In one way or another, all my books have been devoted to expounding and exploring the almost limitless power of the Darwinian principle-power unleashed whenever and wherever there is enough time for the consequences of primordial self-replication to unfold. Preface

0
0
5 months 3 days ago

A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.

0
0
Source
source
No. 40. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
2 months 3 weeks ago

Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought.

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Violated, dishonored, wading in blood, dripping filth - there stands bourgeois society. This is it [in reality]. Not all spic and span and moral, with pretense to culture, philosophy, ethics, order, peace, and the rule of law - but the ravening beast, the witches' sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity. Thus it reveals itself in its true, its naked form.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 1
6 months 2 weeks ago

There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority ... The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

The next simplest feature that is common to all that comes before the mind, and consequently, the second category, is the element of Struggle.

0
0
Source
source
Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.45
4 months 1 week ago

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.

0
0
Source
source
From tail to tale on the path of pilgrims in life, The Scotsman
6 months 2 weeks ago

Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. I, Part 1.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Once we know our weaknesses they cease to do us any harm.

0
0
Source
source
D 5
6 months 2 weeks ago

It was in the reign of Charles II that they obtained the noble distinction of being exempted from giving their testimony on oath in a court of justice, and being believed on their bare affirmation. On this occasion the chancellor, who was a man of wit, spoke to them as follows: "Friends, Jupiter one day ordered that all the beasts of burden should repair to be shod. The asses represented that their laws would not allow them to submit to that operation. 'Very well,' said Jupiter; 'then you shall not be shod; but the first false step you make, you may depend upon being severely drubbed.'"

0
0
2 months 1 week ago

Those hypotheses do not a little hinder the progress of Humane knowledge, that introduce Morals and Politicks into the Explications of Corporeal Nature, where all things are indeed transacted according to Laws Mechanical.

0
0
Source
source
Reflections upon the Hypothesis of Alcali and Acidum (1675) p. 33.
6 months 2 weeks ago

All styles are good except the boring kind.

0
0
Source
source
L'Enfant prodigue: comédie en vers dissillabes (1736), Preface
5 months 1 week ago

The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death.

0
0
Source
source
p. 112
5 months 2 days ago

The recognition of human wretchedness is difficult for whoever is rich and powerful because he is almost invincibly led to believe that he is something. It is equally difficult for the man in miserable circumstances because he is almost invincibly led to believe that the rich and powerful man is something.

0
0
Source
source
p. 216
3 months 1 week ago

With exceptions so rare they are regarded as miracles of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular-not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

0
0
Source
source
p. 27
5 months 1 week ago

I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours pass - which is better than trying to fill them.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.

0
0
Source
source
Power
6 months 2 weeks ago

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 2 "On Women" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
6 months 2 weeks ago

At puberty, the elements of an unsuperstitious sexual morality ought to be taught. Boys and girls should be taught that nothing can justify sexual intercourse unless there is mutual inclination... Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other's liberty; they should be made to feel that nothing gives one human being rights over another, and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love. They should be taught that to bring another human being into the world is a very serious matter, only to be undertaken when the child will have a reasonable prospect of health, good surroundings, and parental care. But they should also be taught methods of birth control, so as to insure that children shall only come when they are wanted. Finally, they should be taught the dangers of venereal disease, and the methods of prevention and cure. The increase of human happiness to be expected from sex education on these lines is immeasurable.

0
0
3 months 3 weeks ago

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation.

0
0
Source
source
"The Abolitionist Project", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007
7 months 2 weeks ago

In my fiction I am careful to make everything probable and to tie up all loose ends. Real life is not hampered by such considerations.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

Poor David Hume is dying very fast, but with great cheerfulness and good humour and with more real resignation to the necessary course of things then any whining Christian ever dyed with pretended resignation to the will of God.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Alexander Wedderburn 14 August 1776. The Correspondence of Adam Smith edited by E.C. Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross, 2nd edition, Oxford University Press 1986. The Future Hope in Adam Smith's System, Paul Oslington
6 months 2 weeks ago

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

0
0
Source
source
Part IV: America,Jesting Pilate: The Diary of a Journey, 1926
6 months 3 weeks ago

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

0
0
Source
source
On Marriage
6 months 3 weeks ago

For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?

0
0
2 months 2 weeks ago

New terms and changes of terms, which are not needed in order to express truth, are to be avoided.

0
0
2 months 3 weeks ago

The highest activities are always essentially lonely and private, and these men had a robust sense of their independence and the ultimate self-sufficiency of the mind. In this they were just like Socrates. The only change they operated was to bring philosophy out of the closet into the open, instead of seeking protection behind a little wall like men in a storm. Of course, in so doing they made philosophy, on the one hand, more vulnerable to the public if the hopes of controlling the public are not fulfilled, and, on the other, put at risk that inner intransigence which is the necessary condition of the quest for truth. Not only the rewards but the new responsibilities might prove irresistible temptations to compromise.

0
0
Source
source
"Commerce and Culture," p. 290.
7 months 1 week ago

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

0
0
6 months 2 weeks ago

I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts.

0
0
Source
source
Book 1, Ch. 3, sec. 3 Variant: The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.
5 months 1 week ago

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

0
0
Source
source
The Psychoanalysis of Fire, ch. 2, "Fire and Reverie"
5 months 2 weeks ago

The supervision of the state extends to the lock upon the door, and there begins mine own. The lock is the boundary line between the power of the government and my own private power. It is the intention of locks to make possible self-protection. In my own house my person is sacred and inviolable even to the government. In civil cases government has no right to attack me in my house, but must wait till I am upon public ground.

0
0
Source
source
P. 324

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia