Skip to main content
8 months 1 week ago

Who lives longer? the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or a man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes 'till 95? One passes his 24 months in eternity. All the years of the beefeater are lived only in time.

0
0
Source
source
The Shortcut: 20 Stories To Get You From Here To There (2006) by Kevin A Fabiano, p. 179
7 months 2 weeks ago

It is manifest that every soul has a certain continuity with the soul of the Universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity. The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the Universe. It is not mixed, yet is there in some presence.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

But though there be naturally a wide difference in point of delicacy between one person and another, nothing tends further to encrease and improve this talent, than practice in a particular art, and the frequent survey or contemplation of a particular species of beauty.

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.

0
0
Source
source
Introductory Epistle
9 months 1 week ago

Modesty is an unnatural attitude, and one which is only with difficulty taught to children.

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

For love of bustle is not industry - it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.

0
0
Source
source
Line 5.
7 months 1 week ago

What is the use of all knowledge, if one does not act in accordance with it? This remark implies that knowledge is regarded as a means to action, and the latter as the real end. One could put the question the other way round and ask: How can we possibly act well without knowing what the Good is? This way of expressing it would regard knowledge as conditioning action. But both expressions are one-sided, and the truth is that both, knowledge as well as action, are in the same way inseparable elements of rational life.

0
0
Source
source
Consequences of the Difference p. 75
7 months 5 days ago

I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture. The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

0
0
Source
source
10:9-11
5 months 4 days ago

Of America it would ill beseem any Englishman, and me perhaps as little as another, to speak unkindly, to speak unpatriotically, if any of us even felt so. Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglosaxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy... But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said... Their Constitution, such as it may be, was made here, not there... Cease to brag to me of America, and its model institutions and constitutions.

0
0
Source
source
Latter Day Pamphlets, No. 1., p. 23, 24.
4 months 1 week ago

Today, local economies are being destroyed by the "pluralistic," displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place.

0
0
Source
source
Interview in New Perspectives Quarterly (1992), quoted in his Profile at The Poetry Foundation
7 months 5 days ago

The ideal of strictly scientific method in mathematics which I have tried to realise here, and which perhaps might be named after Euclid I should like to describe in the following way... The novelty of this book does not lie in the content of the theorems but in the development of the proofs and the foundations on which they are based... With this book I accomplish an object which I had in view in my Begriffsschrift of 1879 and which I announced in my Grundlagen der Arithmetik. I am here trying to prove the opinion on the concept of number that I expressed in the book last mentioned.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. 1. pp. 137-140, as cited in: Ralph H. Johnson (2012), Manifest Rationality: A Pragmatic Theory of Argument, p. 87
6 months 6 days ago

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

0
0
Source
source
The Jefferson Lectures (1977), p. 139
6 months 6 days ago

What is imposed on us by birth and environment is what we are called upon to overcome.

0
0
Source
source
Part I, p. 28
7 months 1 week ago

If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". ... The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.

0
0
Source
source
p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454
9 months 1 week ago

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?

0
0
3 months 2 weeks ago

Let people write in arguments without the ridiculous gatekeeping...

0
0
4 months 4 weeks ago

No one ever saw Cato change, no matter how often the state changed: he kept himself the same in all circumstances-in the praetorship, in defeat, under accusation, in his province, on the platform, in the army, in death.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters - that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.

0
0
Source
source
Vol. V, par. 438
6 months 1 week ago

When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.

0
0
Source
source
Maxim 338

First law being that a robot cannot harm a human.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

Actions may be laudable or blameable; but they cannot be reasonable: Laudable or blameable, therefore, are not the same with reasonable or unreasonable. The merit and demerit of actions frequently contradict, and sometimes controul our natural propensities. But reason has no such influence. Moral distinctions, therefore, are not the offspring of reason. Reason is wholly inactive, and can never be the source of so active a principle as conscience, or a sense of morals.

0
0
Source
source
Part 1, Section 1
7 months 1 week ago

Mathematical and physiological researches have shown that the space of experience is simply an actual case of many conceivable cases, about whose peculiar properties experience alone can instruct us.

0
0
Source
source
p. 205; On the space of experience.
8 months 2 weeks ago

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

0
0
Source
source
Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière, 28 February 1778
4 months 4 weeks ago

Don't ask for what you'll wish you hadn't got.

0
0
Source
source
Line 1 Seneca himself states that he is quoting a 'common saying' here.
8 months 2 weeks ago

Ever since the war began, I have felt that I could no longer go on being a pacifist, but I have hesitated to say so, because of the responsibility involved. If I were young enough to fight myself, I should do so, but it is more difficult to urge others. Now, however, I feel that I ought to announce that I have changed my mind.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Kingsley Martin (June 1940), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207
8 months 3 weeks ago

Every habit and faculty is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions, that of walking by walking, that of running by running.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, ch. 18, 1
6 months 4 weeks ago

It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation. Law is the quality of the permanent provisions for making this aim effective.

0
0
9 months 1 week ago

Music directly represents the passion of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.

0
0
7 months 1 week ago

What distinct meaning can attach to saying that an idea in the past in any way affects an idea in the future, from which it is completely detached?

0
0
8 months 3 days ago

Ah, Postumus! they fleet away, our years, nor piety one hour can win from wrinkles and decay, and Death's indomitable power.

0
0
Source
source
Book II, ode xiv, line 1 (trans. John Conington)
7 months 5 days ago

Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

0
0
Source
source
26:26-29 (KJV)
6 months 1 week ago

Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously.

0
0
4 months 3 weeks ago

As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.

0
0
8 months 1 week ago

Without some redistribution of wealth and power, downward mobility and debilitating poverty will continue to drive people into desperate channels. And without principled opposition to xenophobias from above and below, these desperate channels will produce a cold-hearted and mean-spirited America no longer worth fighting for or living in.

0
0
Source
source
(p79)
4 months 3 weeks ago

In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

0
0
9 months 2 weeks ago

My doubt goes like this: How could the Loving One have the heart to let human beings become so guilty that they got his murder on their consciences?

0
0
7 months 2 weeks ago

I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us.

0
0
Source
source
Section 40
7 months 1 week ago

How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.

0
0
8 months 2 weeks ago

All passions that suffer themselves to be relished and digested are but moderate.

0
0
Source
source
Ch. 2. Of Sorrow, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
8 months 2 weeks ago

I do like clarity and exact thinking and I believe that very important to mankind because when you allow yourself to think inexactly your prejudices, your bias, your self interest comes in in ways you don't notice and you do bad things without knowing that you are doing them: self deception is very easy. So that I do think clear thinking immensely important.

0
0
Source
source
Television interview ("On clarity and exact thinking" - available on youtube)
9 months 1 week ago

May not we then confidently pronounce that man happy who realizes complete goodness in action, and is adequately furnished with external goods? Or should we add, that he must also be destined to go on living not for any casual period but throughout a complete lifetime in the same manner, and to die accordingly, because the future is hidden from us, and we conceive happiness as an end, something utterly and absolutely final and complete? If this is so, we shall pronounce those of the living who possess and are destined to go on possessing the good things we have specified to be supremely blessed, though on the human scale of bliss.

0
0
5 months 1 week ago

Woman is degraded and made to believe that nature destined her exclusively to menial domestic labors, which in the combined order will be so abridged as to be performed without oppression to either sex.

0
0
Source
source
The Theory of Social Organization
8 months 2 weeks ago

People are said to believe in God, or to disbelieve in Adam and Eve. But in such cases what is believed or disbelieved is that there is an entity answering a certain description. This, which can be believed or disbelieved is quite different from the actual entity (if any) which does answer the description. Thus the matter of belief is, in all cases, different in kind from the matter of sensation or presentation, and error is in no way analogous to hallucination. A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

0
0
Source
source
On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism, 1914
8 months 2 weeks ago

Men tend to have the beliefs that suit their passions. Cruel men believe in a cruel God, and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly God, and they would be kindly in any case.

0
0
Source
source
In London Calling (1947), p. 18
8 months 2 weeks ago

Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!

0
0
Source
source
Thrasymachus, in On the Indestructibility of our Essential Being by Death, in Essays and Aphorisms (1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale, p. 76
8 months 1 week ago

The position of the revolutionary party in Germany is certainly difficult at the moment, but, with some critical analysis of the circumstances, clear nevertheless. As to the "governments," it is obvious from every point of view, if only for the sake of Germany's existence, that the demand must be put to them not to remain neutral, but, as you rightly say, to be patriotic. But the revolutionary point is to be given to the affair simply by emphasising the antagonism to Russia more strongly than the antagonism against Boustrapa.

0
0
Source
source
Letter to Friedrich Engels (18 May 1859), quoted in Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Selected Correspondence, 1846-1895 (1943), p. 122
7 months 1 week ago

All those countless battles-those endless, and... for the greater part, useless wars, of which... fills up for so many thousand years... are but little atoms compared with the great whole of human destiny.

0
0

CivilSimian.com created by AxiomaticPanic, CivilSimian, Kalokagathia