64 ideas
| 21405 | Cicero sees wisdom in terms of knowledge, but earlier Stoics saw it as moral [Cicero, by Long] |
| Full Idea: Cicero (drawing on Panaetius) treats wisdom as if its province were primarily a disinterested pursuit of knowledge. But earlier Stoics gave purely moral definitions of wisdom. | |
| From: report of M. Tullius Cicero (On Duties ('De Officiis') [c.44 BCE], 1.11-20) by A.A. Long - Hellenistic Philosophy 5 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that after long discussion most ancient (and even modern) philosophers would conclude that it is both. The 'intellectualism' of Socrates hovers in the background, implying that healthy knowledge produces virtue. |
| 20871 | Unfortunately we choose a way of life before we are old enough to think clearly [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: At the beginning of adolescence when our deliberative capacities are weak we decide on the way of life that we find attractive. So one gets entangled in a definite manner and pattern of life before one is able to judge which one is best. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Duties ('De Officiis') [c.44 BCE], 1.117) | |
| A reaction: Hence it is important to have lots of means for bailing out of education courses, jobs, and even marriage. At least university postpones the key life choices till the early twenties. |
| 5893 | A wise man has integrity, firmness of will, nobility, consistency, sobriety, patience [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The wise man does nothing of which he can repent, nothing against his will, does everything nobly, consistently, soberly, rightly, not looking forward to anything as bound to come, is not astonished at any novel occurrence, abides by his own decisions. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], V.xxviii) | |
| A reaction: Notice that the wise man never exhibits weakness of will (an Aristotelian virtue), and is consistent (as Kant proposed), and is patient (as the Stoics proposed). But Cicero doesn't think he should busy himself maximising happiness. |
| 22864 | Philosophy is the study and criticsm of cultural beliefs, to achieve new possibilities [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is criticism of the influential beliefs that underlie culture, tracking them to their generating conditions and results, and considering their mutual compatibility. This terminates in a new perspective, which leads to new possibilities. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 6:19), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey Intro | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This would make quite a good manifesto for French thinkers of the 1960s. Foucault could hardly disagree. An excellent idea. |
| 5891 | Philosophy is the collection of rational arguments [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy consists in the collection of rational arguments. [Philosophia ex rationum collatione constet] | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], IV.xxxviii.84) | |
| A reaction: A nice epigraph for this database. Philosophy is, I trust, a little more than that, because you don't just hide them away in a drawer. But if you arrange them nicely in a museum (a website, for example), not a lot more can be done. |
| 2661 | Dialectic is speech cast in the form of logical argument [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic is speech cast in the form of logical argument. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], I.viii.32) |
| 2653 | If the parts of the universe are subject to the law of nature, the whole universe must also be subject to it [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If the parts of the universe are subject to the law of nature, then the universe itself must be subject to this law. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.86) |
| 2673 | There cannot be more than one truth [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be more than one truth. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xlviii.147) |
| 22873 | Liberalism should improve the system, and not just ameliorate it [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism must become radical in the sense that, instead of using social power to ameliorate the evil consequences of the existing system, it shall use social power to change the system. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:287), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
| A reaction: Conservative liberals ask what people want, and try to give it to them. Radical liberals ask what people actually need, and try to make it possible. The latter is bound to be a bit paternalistic, but will probably create a better world. |
| 21677 | How can the not-true fail to be false, or the not-false fail to be true? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: How can something that is not true not be false, or how can something that is not false not be true? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Fate ('De fato') [c.44 BCE], 16.38) | |
| A reaction: We must at least distinguish between whether the contrary thing is not actually true, or whether we are prepared to assert that it is not true. The disjunction may seem to be a false dichotomy. 'He isn't good' may not entail 'he is evil'. |
| 2669 | Dialectic assumes that all statements are either true or false, but self-referential paradoxes are a big problem [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: It is a fundamental principle of dialectic that every statement is either true or false. So is this a true proposition or a false one: "If you say that you are lying and say it truly, you lie"? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xxix.95) |
| 22869 | Knowledge is either the product of competent enquiry, or it is meaningless [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent enquiries. Apart from this relation, its meaning is so empty that any content or filling may be arbitrarily poured into it. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
| A reaction: What is the criterion of 'competent'? Danger of tautology, if competent enquiry is what produces knowledge. |
| 22868 | The value and truth of knowledge are measured by success in activity [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: What measures knowledge's value, its correctness and truth, is the degree of its availability for conducting to a successful issue the activities of living beings. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Middle Works (15 vols, ed Boydston) [1910], 4:180), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Critique' | |
| A reaction: Note that this is the measure of truth, not the nature of truth (which James seemed to believe). Dewey gives us a clear and perfect statement of the pragmatic view of knowledge. I don't agree with it. |
| 21516 | We want certainty in order achieve secure results for action [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate ground of the quest for cognitive certainty is the need for security in the results for action. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Quest for Certainty [1929], p.39), quoted by Erik J. Olsson - Against Coherence 10.5 | |
| A reaction: Just what a pragmatist should say. This may be true within an evolutionary account of human nature, but seems unlikely when doing a sudoku. The 'ground' of the quest may not be the same as its 'source'. |
| 22867 | The quest for certainty aims for peace, and avoidance of the stress of action [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The quest for certainty is a quest for a peace which is assured, an object which is unqualified by risk and the shadow of fear which action costs. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 4:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: This is a characteristic pragmatist account. I think Dewey and Peirce offer us the correct attitude to certainty. It is just not available to us, and can only be a delusion. That doesn't mean we don't know anything, however! |
| 22870 | No belief can be so settled that it is not subject to further inquiry [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The attainment of settled beliefs is a progressive matter; there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
| A reaction: A nice pragmatist mantra, but no scientists gets a research grant to prove facts which have been securely established for a very long time. It is neurotic to keep returning to check that you have locked your front door. Dewey introduced 'warranted'. |
| 2664 | If we have complete healthy senses, what more could the gods give us? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If human nature were interrogated by some god as to whether it was content with its own senses in a sound and undamaged state or demanded something better, I cannot see what more it could ask for. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.vii.19) |
| 2665 | How can there be a memory of what is false? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: How can there possibly be a memory of what is false? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.vii.22) |
| 20800 | Every true presentation can have a false one of the same quality [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: [The sceptical Academics say] what is false cannot be perceived, but every true presentation is such that there can be a false presentation of the same quality. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.40) | |
| A reaction: It was the stoics who focused the discussion on 'presentations'. This claim is purely theoretical; no one has ever experienced a false presentation of talking to a family member that was as vivid as the real thing. |
| 22866 | Mind is never isolated, but only exists in its interactions [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Mind is primarily a verb. ...Mind never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from the world of persons and things, but is always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 10:267), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 1 'emerge' | |
| A reaction: I strongly agree with the idea that mind is a process, not a thing. Certain types of solitary introspection don't seem to quite fit his account, but in general he is right. |
| 5879 | The soul is the heart, or blood in the heart, or part of the brain, of something living in heart or brain, or breath [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Some think the soul is the heart; Empedocles holds that the soul is blood in the heart; others said one part of the brain claimed the primacy of soul; others say the heart or brain are habitations of the soul; while others identify soul and breath. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.ix.17-19) | |
| A reaction: A nice survey of views. Note that many of them identify the psuché/anima with physical parts of the body; only the fourth option seems to be dualist. This is despite the contemptuous response to Democritus' atomist theory of soul. |
| 5884 | How can one mind perceive so many dissimilar sensations? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Why is it that, using the same mind, we have perception of things so utterly unlike as colour, taste, heat, smell and sound? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xx.47) | |
| A reaction: This leaves us with the 'binding problem', of how the dissimilar sensations are pulled together into one field of experience. It is a nice simple objection, though, to anyone who simplistically claims that the mind is self-evidently unified. |
| 5887 | The soul has a single nature, so it cannot be divided, and hence it cannot perish [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: In souls there is no mingling of ingredients, nothing of two-fold nature, so it is impossible for the soul to be divided; impossible, therefore, for it to perish either; for perishing is like the separation of parts which were maintained in union. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xxix.71) | |
| A reaction: Cicero knows he is pushing his luck in asserting that perishing is a sort of division. Why can't something be there one moment and gone the next? He appears to be in close agreement with Descartes about being a 'thinking thing'. |
| 22865 | Habits constitute the self [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: All habits are demands for certain kinds of activity; and they constitute the self. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Middle Works (15 vols, ed Boydston) [1910], 14:22), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 1 'Acts' | |
| A reaction: Not an idea I have encountered elsewhere. He emphasises that habits are not repeated actions, but are dispositions. I'm not clear whether these habits must be conscious. |
| 5886 | Like the eye, the soul has no power to see itself, but sees other things [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The soul has not the power of itself to see itself, but, like the eye, the soul, though it does not see itself, yet discerns other things. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xxvii) | |
| A reaction: The soul is a complex item which contributes many layers of interpretation to what it sees, so there is scope for parts of the soul seeing other parts. Somewhere in the middle Cicero seems to be right - there is an elusive something we can't get at. |
| 6029 | Whoever knows future causes knows everything that will be [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Whoever grasps the causes of future things must necessarily grasp all that will be. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Divination ('De divinatione') [c.46 BCE], 1.127) | |
| A reaction: Laplace stated this idea in terms of Newtonian physics (Idea 3441), but the key idea is stated more simply and clearly here. God can know the future in this way, without actually seeing it happen now. I can't think why it should not be true. |
| 2628 | Why would mind mix with matter if it didn't need it? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If the gods have no need of the sensible world, why mix up mind with water and water with mind, if mind can exist by itself without any need of matter? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.24) | |
| A reaction: This question migrates into our puzzles about why a separate mental substance would be produced by evolution. If it is device physical systems use to promote themselves, mental substance is reduced to an inferior and dependent role. |
| 5885 | Souls contain no properties of elements, and elements contain no properties of souls [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: No beginnings of souls can be found on earth; there is no combination in souls that could be born from earth, nothing that partakes of moist or airy or fiery; for in those elements there is nothing to possess the power of memory, thought, or reflection. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], I.xxvi.66) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but I think magnetism is an instructive analogy, which has weird properties which we never perceive in elements (though it is there, buried deep - suggesting panpsychism). Cicero would be disconcerted to find that fire isn't an element. |
| 21667 | Oratory and philosophy are closely allied; orators borrow from philosophy, and ornament it [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: There is a close alliance between the orator and the philosophical system of which I am a follower, since the orator borrows subtlely from the Academy, and repays the loan by giving to it a copious and flowing style and rhetorical ornament. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Fate ('De fato') [c.44 BCE], 02.03) | |
| A reaction: It is a misundertanding to think that rhetoric and philosophy are seen as in necessary opposition. Philosophers just seemed to think that oratory works a lot better if it is truthful. |
| 20814 | Eloquence educates, exhorts, comforts, distracts and unites us, and raises us from savagery [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: How wonderful is the power of eloquence! It enables us to learn and to teach. We use it to exhort and persuade, to comfort the unfortunate, to distract the timid and calm the passionate. It unites us in law and society, and raises us from savagery. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], 2.147) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Cicero would have been well aware of the doubts about rhetoric felt by Socrates (and possibly Plato). Cicero was probably the greatest Roman orator. |
| 8478 | Dewey argued long before Wittgenstein that there could not seriously be a private language [Dewey, by Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: Dewey argued in the twenties that there could not be, in any serious sense, a private language. Wittgenstein also, years later, came to appreciate this point. | |
| From: report of John Dewey (works [1926]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: A nice historical footnote to perhaps the most famous argument in twentieth century philosophy. Can anyone send me the Dewey reference? |
| 21678 | If desire is not in our power then neither are choices, so we should not be praised or punished [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If the cause of desire is not situated within us, even desire itself is also not in our power. ...It follows that neither assent nor action is in our power. Hence there is no justice in either praise or blame, either honours or punishments. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Fate ('De fato') [c.44 BCE], 17.40) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of 'old philosophers', but I'm unsure which ones. Cicero spurns this view. It is obvious that the causes of our desires are largely out of our control. Responsibility seems to concern what we do about our desires. |
| 2672 | Virtues must be very detached, to avoid being motivated by pleasure [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: None of the virtues can exist unless they are disinterested, for virtue driven to duty by pleasure as a sort of pay is not virtue at all but a deceptive sham and pretence of virtue. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xlvi.140) |
| 22871 | The good people are those who improve; the bad are those who deteriorate [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The bad man is the man who no matter how good he has been is beginning to deteriorate, to grow less good. The good man is the man who no matter how morally unworthy he has been is moving to become better. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Middle Works (15 vols, ed Boydston) [1910], 12:181), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 3 'Reconstruct' | |
| A reaction: Although a slightly improving rat doesn't sound as good as a slightly deteriorating saint, I have some sympathy with this thought. The desire to improve seems to be right at the heart of what makes good character. |
| 5890 | We should not share the distress of others, but simply try to relieve it [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: We ought not to share distresses ourselves for the sake of others, but we ought to relieve others of their distress if we can. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], IV.xxvi.56) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a sensible and balanced attitude. Some people, particularly in a Christian culture, urge that feeling strong and painful compassion for others is an intrinsic good, but the commonsense view is that that just increases human suffering. |
| 5894 | All men except philosophers fear poverty [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: All men are afraid of poverty, but not a single philosopher is so. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], V.xxxi.88) | |
| A reaction: Not a thought which is encountered very often in modern philosophy journals. If a person is to be 'philosophical' in the way they live, calm endurance of the vicissitudes and hardships of life has to be a key prerequisite. |
| 6031 | The essence of propriety is consistency [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: The whole essence of propriety is quite certainly consistency. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Duties ('De Officiis') [c.44 BCE], 1.110) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me the key intuition on which Kant built his deontological ethical theory. However, opponents say the consistency requires principles, and these are the enemies of truly good human behaviour, which involves Aristotle's 'particulars'. |
| 22876 | Democracy is the development of human nature when it shares in the running of communal activities [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Democracy is but a name for the fact that human nature is developed only when its elements take part in directing things which are common, things for the sake of which men and women form groups. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Middle Works (15 vols, ed Boydston) [1910], 12:199), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Democracy' | |
| A reaction: It is hard to prove that human nature develops when it particpates in groups. If people are excluded from power, their loyalty tends to switch to sub-groups, such as friends in a pub, or a football team. Powerless nationalists baffle me. |
| 22875 | Democracy is not just a form of government; it is a mode of shared living [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: A democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience | |
| From: John Dewey (The Middle Works (15 vols, ed Boydston) [1910], 9:93), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Democracy' | |
| A reaction: This precisely pinpoints the heart of the culture wars in 2021. A huge swathe of western populations believe in Dewey's idea, but a core of wealthy right-wingers and their servants only see democracy as the mechanism for obtaining power. |
| 5895 | If one despises illiterate mechanics individually, they are not worth more collectively [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Can anything be more foolish than to suppose that those, whom individually one despises as illiterate mechanics, are worth anything collectively? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Tusculan Disputations [c.44 BCE], V.xxxvi.104) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle disagrees (Idea 2823). In 1906 a huge number of people guessed the weight of a cow at a fair, and the average was within one pound of the truth. In our world the healthy workings of the group are warped by the mass media. |
| 22872 | Liberals aim to allow individuals to realise their capacities [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism is committed to …the liberation of individuals so that realisation of their capacities may be the law of their life. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:41), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
| A reaction: Capacity expression as the main aim of politics is precisely the idea developed more fully in modern times by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. It strikes me as an excellent proposal. Does it need liberalism, or socialism? |
| 22874 | Individuality is only developed within groups [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: Only in social groups does a person have a chance to develop individuality. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Middle Works (15 vols, ed Boydston) [1910], 15:176), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Individuals' | |
| A reaction: This is a criticism of both Rawls and Nozick. Rawls's initial choosers don't consult, or have much social background. Nozick's property owners ignore everything except contracts. |
| 22880 | The things in civilisation we prize are the products of other members of our community [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: The things in civilisation we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:57), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Reconstruct' | |
| A reaction: Dewey defends liberalism, but he has strong communitarian tendencies. What is the significance of an enduring community losing touch with its own achievements? |
| 2640 | We have the death penalty, but still have thousands of robbers [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: We have robbers by the thousand, although they have the penalty of death before their eyes. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.86) |
| 2652 | Some regard nature simply as an irrational force that imparts movement [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Some regard nature as an irrational force which merely imparts a mechanical motion to material bodies. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.81) |
| 22879 | 'God' is an imaginative unity of ideal values [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: 'God' represents a unification of ideal values that is essentially imaginative in origin. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:29), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
| A reaction: This seems to have happened when a flawed God like Zeus is elevated to be the only God, and is given supreme power and wisdom. |
| 2645 | Why shouldn't the gods fear their own destruction? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Why should the gods not be apprehensive of their own possible dissolution? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.114) |
| 2627 | I wonder whether loss of reverence for the gods would mean the end of all virtue [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: I do not know whether, if our reverence for the gods were lost, we should not also see the end of good faith, of human brotherhood, and even of justice itself, which is the keystone of all the virtues. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.3) |
| 2651 | God doesn't obey the laws of nature; they are subject to the law of God [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: God is not subject to obey the laws of nature. It is nature that is subject to the laws of God. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.77) |
| 2634 | It seems clear to me that we have an innate idea of the divine [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Let us take it as agreed that we have a preconception or "an innate idea" (as I have called it) or a prior knowledge of the divine. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.44) |
| 2636 | Many primitive people know nothing of the gods [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: There must be many wild and primitive peoples who have no idea of the gods at all. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.62) |
| 2650 | If a person cannot feel the power of God when looking at the stars, they are probably incapable of feeling [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If any man cannot feel the power of God when he looks upon the stars, then I doubt whether he is capable of any feeling at all. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.55) |
| 2655 | If the barbarians of Britain saw a complex machine, they would be baffled, but would know it was designed [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If someone were to take the celestial globe of Posidonius and show it to the people of Britain, would a single one of those barbarians fail to see that it was the product of a conscious intelligence? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.88) |
| 2656 | Chance is no more likely to create the world than spilling lots of letters is likely to create a famous poem [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If someone thinks chance made the world, he should also think that if an infinite number of the letters of the alphabet were shaken together and poured out on the ground it would be possible for them to spell out the whole 'Annals' of Ennius. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.93) |
| 2647 | It is obvious from order that someone is in charge, as when we visit a gymnasium [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If one comes into a gymnasium and sees everything properly arranged and carried on in order, one does not imagine these arrangements to be accidental, but infers that there is someone in command whose orders are obeyed. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], II.15) |
| 2657 | If everything with regular movement and order is divine, then recurrent illnesses must be divine [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Are we to find a divinity in every regular movement and in everything which happens in a constant order? If so, we shall have to say that tertian and quartan agues are divine because their course and recurrence is absolutely uniform. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], III.24) |
| 2638 | Either the gods are identical, or one is more beautiful than another [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Are the gods all exactly the same? If not, then one must be more beautiful than another. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.80) |
| 2635 | The gods are happy, so virtuous, so rational, so must have human shape [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: We agree the gods are happy, and no happiness is possible without virtue: there is no virtue without reason: and reason is associated only with the human form: then it must follow that the gods themselves have human shape. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.48) |
| 3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stilpo asked a man whether Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and when he said yes, said,"But this statue of Athena by Phidias is the child of Phidias, so it is not a god." | |
| From: report of Stilpo (fragments/reports [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.10.5 |
| 2641 | Why believe in gods if you have never seen them? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Did you ever actually see a god? Then why do you believe that gods exist? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], I.88) |
| 22877 | We should try attaching the intensity of religious devotion to intelligent social action [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: One of the few experiments in the attachment of emotion to ends that mankind has not tried is that of devotion (so intense as to be religious) to intelligence as a force in social action. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:53), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: An interesting thought that religious emotions such as devotion are so distinctive that they can be treated as valuable, even in the absence of belief. He seems to be advocating Technocracy. |
| 22878 | Religions are so shockingly diverse that they have no common element [Dewey] |
| Full Idea: There is only a multitude of religions …and the differences between them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless. | |
| From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
| A reaction: Religion is for Dewey what a game was for Wittgenstein, as an anti-essentialist example. I would have thought that they all involved some commitment to a realm of transcendent existence. |
| 2659 | The lists of good men who have suffered and bad men who have prospered are endless [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Time would fail me if I tried to list all the good men for whom things have turned out badly. So it would if I tried to mention all the wicked who have prospered. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], III.80) |
| 2658 | The gods blame men for having vices, but they could have given us enough reason to avoid them [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: You gods say that the fault lies in the vices of mankind. But you could have endowed men with reason in a form which would exclude all vice and crime. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') [c.44 BCE], III.76) |