Skip to main content

Main navigation

☰ ˟
  • Home
  • Articulation
  • Contact
  • Shop
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
4 weeks 1 day ago
We suppose, it would seem, that...

We suppose, it would seem, that concepts grow in the individual mind like leaves on a tree, and we think to discover their nature by studying their growth; we seek to define them psychologically, in terms of the human mind. But this account makes everything subjective, and if we follow it through to the end, does away with truth. What is known as the history of concepts is really a history either of our knowledge of concepts or of the meanings of words.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
Upon the progress of knowledge the...

Upon the progress of knowledge the whole progress of the human race is immediately dependent: he who retards that, hinders this also. And he who hinders this, -what character does he assume towards his age and posterity? Louder than with a thousand voices, by his actions he proclaims into the deafened ear of the world present and to come -"As long as I live at least, the men around me shall not become wiser or better; - for in their progress I too, notwithstanding all my efforts to the contrary, should be dragged forward in some direction; and this I detest I will not become more enlightened, - I will not become nobler. Darkness and perversion are my elements, and I will summon all my powers together that I may not be dislodged from them."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Αs translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 1 week ago
Life itself is but the shadow...

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
1 week 3 days ago
I do not define time, space,...

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Definitions - Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 days ago
There is no more light in...

There is no more light in a genius than in any other honest man-but he has a particular kind of lens to concentrate this light into a burning point.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 41e
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 2 days ago
Being is only Being for Dasein...

Being is only Being for Dasein.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Macquarrie & Robinson translation
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 1 week ago
One thing I have frequently observed...

One thing I have frequently observed in children, that when they have got possession of any poor creature, they are apt to use it ill: they often torment, and treat it very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This I think should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts, will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they will delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our practice takes notice of this in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
When a reasonable Soul forsaketh his...

When a reasonable Soul forsaketh his divine nature, and becometh beast-like, it dieth. For though the substance of the Soul be incorruptible: yet, lacking the use of Reason, it is reputed dead; for it loseth the Intellective Life.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 1 day ago
I focus on popular culture because...

I focus on popular culture because I focus on those areas where black humanity is most powerfully expressed, where black people have been able to articulate their sense of the world in a profound manner. And I see this primarily in popular culture. Why not in highbrow culture? Because the access has been so difficult. Why not in more academic forms? Because academic exclusion has been the rule for so long for large numbers of black people that black culture, for me, becomes a search for where black people have left their imprint and fundamentally made a difference in terms of how certain art forms are understood. This is currently in popular culture. And it has been primarily in music, religion, visual arts and fashion.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
"Cornel West interviewed by bell hooks" in Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
6 days ago
Despite the fact that the doctors...

Despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
[sometimes quoted as "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered."] Bk. XV, ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Placing your stick at the end...

Placing your stick at the end of the shadow of the pyramid, you made by the sun's rays two triangles, and so proved that the pyramid [height] was to the stick [height] as the shadow of the pyramid to the shadow of the stick.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 1 week ago
But the Quincunx of Heaven runs...

But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulnesse of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a Rose.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
In true education, anything that comes...

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk- they are all part of the curriculum.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
When we have weighed everything, and...

When we have weighed everything, and when our relations in life permit us to choose any given position, we may take that one which guarantees us the greatest dignity, which is based on ideas of whose truth we are completely convinced, which offers the largest field to work for mankind and approach the universal goal for which every position is only a means: perfection.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 6 days ago
It is the good children, Madame,...

It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Jessica, Act 3, sc. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 3 days ago
The woman is increasingly aware that...

The woman is increasingly aware that love alone can give her full stature, just as the man begins to discern that spirit alone can endow his life with its highest meaning. Fundamentally, therefore, both seek a psychic relation to the other, because love needs the spirit, and the spirit love, for their fulfillment.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 185
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
You can take better care of...

You can take better care of your secret than another can.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
1863
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 3 days ago
Our studies of sexual life, originating...

Our studies of sexual life, originating in Vienna and in England, are matched or surpassed by Hindu teachings on this subject... Psychoanalysis itself and the lines of thought to which it gives rise-surely a distinctly Western development-are only a beginner's attempt compared to what is an immemorial art in the East.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
quoted in Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, and David Frawley. - In search of the cradle of civilization _ new light on ancient India-Quest Books
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 1 week ago
Pardon me, my friends, I have...
Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my happiness on the wall.
0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 weeks 6 days ago
The philosophical anthropologist ... can know...

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 weeks 1 day ago
As for [...] Of all passions,...

As for [...] Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws is fear.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
The Second Part, Chapter 27
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
Et illa erant fercula, in quibus...

And these were the dishes wherein to me, hunger-starven for thee, they served up the sun and the moon.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
III, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
A habit of basing convictions upon...

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. But at present, in most countries, education aims at preventing the growth of such a habit, and men who refuse to profess belief in some system of unfounded dogmas are not considered suitable as teachers of the young.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
preface xxiii-xxiv
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 6 days ago
Being at one...
0
⚖0
Main Content / General
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
To turn one's eyes away from...

To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 4 days ago
Religion is more conservative than any...

Religion is more conservative than any other aspect of human life.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 3 weeks ago
A hymn is the praise of...

A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Commentary on the Psalms (c. 1273), Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 days ago
"I never believed in God before."...

"I never believed in God before." - that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
p. 53e
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 4 days ago
Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating,...

Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 weeks ago
[I]t would be a piece of...

[I]t would be a piece of ingenuousness to accuse the man of to-day of his lack of moral code. The accusation would leave him cold, or rather, would flatter him. Immoralism has become a commonplace, and anybody and everybody boasts of practising it.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 4 days ago
What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic...

What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 weeks 6 days ago
The pornographic body lacks any symbolism....

The pornographic body lacks any symbolism. The ritualized body, by contrast, is a splendid stage, with secrets and deities written into it.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 weeks 2 days ago
Do not commence your exercises in...

Do not commence your exercises in philosophy in those regions where an error can deliver you over to the executioner.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
C 16
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
If there is anything in the...

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 weeks 1 day ago
It is the most advanced industrial...

It is the most advanced industrial society which feels most directly threatened by the rebellion, because it is here that the social necessity of repression and alienation, of servitude and heteronomy is most transparently unnecessary, and unproductive in terms of human progress. Therefore the cruelty and violence mobilized in the struggle against the threat, therefore the monotonous regularity with which the people are made familiar with, and accustomed to inhuman attitudes and behavior-to wholesale killing as patriotic act.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 1 week ago
Enjoin him to play so many...

Enjoin him to play so many hours every day, and look that he do it; and you shall see he will quickly be sick of it; and willing to leave it. By this means making the recreations you dislike a business to him, he will of himself with delight betake himself to those things you would have him do, especially if they be proposed as rewards for having performed the task in that play which is commanded of him.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Sec. 129
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 1 day ago
In the Greek conception of parrhesia......

In the Greek conception of parrhesia... truth-having is guaranteed by the possession of... moral qualities... required... to know... and... convey such truth...

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
If the injustice is part of...

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 3 weeks ago
The propositions which are true and...

The propositions which are true and evident must of necessity be employed even by those who contradict them.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Book II, ch. 20, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 days ago
The mind advances only when it...

The mind advances only when it has the patience to go in circles, in other words, to deepen.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 weeks 2 days ago
If it were true what in...

If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
E 10
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
For whoever has what he has...

For whoever has what he has from the God himself clearly has it at first hand; and he who does not have it from the God himself is not a disciple. Let us assume that it is otherwise, that the contemporary generation of disciples had received the condition from the God, and that the subsequent generations were to receive it from these contemporaries, what would follow?

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
Of all the animals kept by...

Of all the animals kept by the farmer, the labourer, the instrumentum vocale, was,thenceforth, the most oppressed, the worst nourished, the most brutally treated.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 4(e), pg. 742.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 days ago
Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers,...

Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers, across of thousands of high walls, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia in the middle of the night, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
I think that yesterday was a...

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will-"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"-need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-until next year-that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Diary entry (April 30, 1870) as quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1, p. 323; Letters of William James, vol. I, p. 147.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
By the disposition of a stupendous...

By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

0
⚖0
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 month 1 week ago
We have not made the Revolution,...

We have not made the Revolution, the Revolution has made us.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
I saw a moving sight the...

I saw a moving sight the other morning before breakfast in a little hotel where I slept in the dusty fields. The young man of the house shot a little wolf called coyote in the early morning. The little heroic animal lay on the ground, with his big furry ears, and his clean white teeth, and his little cheerful body, but his little brave life was gone. It made me think how brave all living things are. Here little coyote was, without any clothes or house or books or anything, with nothing to pay his way with, and risking his life so cheerfully - and losing it - just to see if he could pick up a meal near the hotel. He was doing his coyote-business like a hero, and you must do your boy-business, and I my man-business bravely, too, or else we won't be worth as much as a little coyote.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
28-Aug-89
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Just now
We mustn't forget how quickly the...

We mustn't forget how quickly the visions of genius become the canned goods of intellectuals.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Herzog (1964) [Penguin Classics, 2003, ISBN 0-142-43729-8], p. 82
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 1 week ago
To prove cannot mean anything other...

To prove cannot mean anything other than to bring the other person to my own conviction. The truth lies only in the unification of "I" and "You." The Other of pure thought, however, is the sensuous intellect in general. In the field of philosophy, proof therefore consists only in the fact that the contradiction between sensuous intellect and pure thought is disposed, so that thought is true not only for itself but also for its opposite.

0
⚖0
▼ Source
source
Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 75
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