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6 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?

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8 months ago

Let not that which in the case of another is contrary to nature become an evil for you; for you are born not to be humiliated along with others, nor to share in their misfortunes, but to share in their good fortune. If, however, someone is unfortunate, remember that his misfortune concerns himself. For God made all mankind to be happy, to be serene.

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Book III, ch. 24, 1
6 months 2 weeks ago

Freedom and whores are the most cosmopolitan items under the sun. .

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Act IV
5 months 1 week ago

The role of the artist is to create an Anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment.

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(p. 31)
8 months 2 weeks ago

The natural way of doing this [seeking scientific knowledge or explanation of fact] is to start from the things which are more knowable and obvious to us and proceed towards those which are clearer and more knowable by nature; for the same things are not 'knowable relatively to us' and 'knowable' without qualification. So in the present inquiry we must follow this method and advance from what is more obscure by nature, but clearer to us, towards what is more clear and more knowable by nature. Now what is to us plain and obvious at first is rather confused masses, the elements and principles of which became known to us by later analysis...

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5 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.

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4 months 6 days ago

I think he once told us his first short clothes were a hull made mostly or wholly of leather. We all only laughed, for it is now long ago. Thou dear father! Through what stern obstructions was thy way to manhood to be forced, and for us and for our travelling to be made smooth!

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
6 months 1 week ago

Operational analysis ... cannot raise the decisive question whether the consent itself was not the work of manipulation-a question for which the actual state of affairs provides ample justification. The analysis cannot raise it because it would transcend its terms toward transitive meaning-toward a concept of democracy which would reveal the democratic election as a rather limited democratic process. Precisely such a non-operational concept is the one rejected by the authors as "unrealistic" because it defines democracy on too articulate a level as the clear-cut control of representation by the electorate-popular control as popular sovereignty.

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p. 116
7 months 2 weeks ago

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

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Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda
6 months 1 week ago

The bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen."

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3 months 2 weeks ago

I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new Constitution by nine States. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights.

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Letter to James Madison (July 31, 1788); reported in Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volumes 1-2 (1829), p. 343
5 months 4 weeks ago

Those who devote themselves to rituals must ignore themselves. Rituals produce a distance from the self, a self-transcendence.

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5 months 1 week ago

Patience is a remedy for every sorrow.

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Maxim 170
7 months 3 weeks ago

The first law that ever God gave to man was a law of pure obedience; it was a commandment naked and simple, wherein man had nothing to inquire after, nor to dispute; forasmuch as to obey is the proper office of a rational soul, acknowledging a heavenly superior and benefactor.

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Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, 1685
7 months 1 week ago

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.

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The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon)
4 months 6 days ago

We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.

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Goethe.
5 months 1 week ago

Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources but strives to enhance them and pass them on.

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Stand up for the real meaning of freedom, The Spectator
5 months 1 week ago

Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

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Maxim 633
7 months 2 weeks ago

First, what do we mean by anguish? The existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as follows-When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind-in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility.

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p. 30
7 months 2 weeks ago

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

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Quotation and Originality

Meanwhile, hold fast to this thought, and grip it close: yield not to adversity; trust not to prosperity; keep before your eyes the full scope of Fortune's power, as if she would surely do whatever is in her power to do.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

We believe that the very beginning and end of salvation, and the sum of Christianity, consists of faith in Christ, who by His blood alone, and not by any works of ours, has put away sin, and destroyed the power of death.

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p. 224
3 months 3 weeks ago

Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.

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Intellectual Yoga
3 months 1 week ago

The phaenomena afforded by trades, are a part of the history of nature, and therefore may both challenge the naturalist's curiosity and add to his knowledge, Nor will it suffice to justify learned men in the neglect and contempt of this part of natural history, that the men, from whom it must be learned, are illiterate mechanicks... is indeed childish, and too unworthy of a philosopher, to be worthy of an honest answer.

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"That the Goods of Mankind May be Much Increased by the Naturalist's Insight into Trades" in the Works of Robert Boyle, (1772) Vol.3 as quoted in Clifford D. Conner,
6 months 1 week ago

Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

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11:4-6 (KJV)
3 months 1 week ago

In order to be transmuted into knowledge, every perception is and must be ordered and organized into categories. The extent, however, to which we can organize and express our experience in such conceptual forms is, in turn, dependent upon the frames of reference which happen to be available at a given historical moment. The concepts which we have and the universe of discourse in which we move, together with the directions in which they tend to elaborate themselves, are dependent largely upon the historical-social situation of the intellectually active and responsible members of the group.

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6 months 1 week ago

I long to be free - desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.

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6 months 1 day ago

The number 2 thought of by one man cannot be added to the number 2 thought of by another man so as to make up the number 4.

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Oppression and Liberty (1958), p. 82
8 months 5 days ago

I am not bothered by the fact that I am not understood. I am bothered when I do not know others.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

If you try to imagine, as nearly as you can, what an amount of misery, pain and suffering of every kind the sun shines upon in its course, you will admit that it would be much better if, on the earth as little as on the moon, the sun were able to call forth the phenomena of life; and if, here as there, the surface were still in a crystalline state.

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
6 months 1 week ago

The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.

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8:20 (KJV)
5 months 3 weeks ago

Before we can establish any immutable 'principles' of administration, we must be able to describe, in words, exactly how an administrative organization looks and exactly how it works.

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p. xiv.
7 months 2 weeks ago

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.

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Act 1
7 months 2 weeks ago

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

We must not suppose any corporeal conjunction or marriage in the case - all which are merely the sportive fables of Poetry; but must hold the father and the producer of that Being as something most divine and super-eminent. Of such a nature is He who is above all things, around whom, and by reason of whom, all things do subsist. But Homer calls him by his father's name, "Hyperion," in order to show that he is independent, and not subjected to any constraint.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 210
7 months 2 weeks ago

The process is so complicated that it offers ever so many occasions for running abnormally.

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Vol. II, Ch. XXI, p. 500.
5 months 4 weeks ago

...I pray to God to make me free of God.

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6 months 1 week ago

Never to have occasion to take a position, to make up one's mind, or to define oneself - there is no wish I make more often.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

The will is not free to strive toward whatever is declared good.

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Thesis 10
3 months 5 days ago

No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

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"Equality", 1764
6 months 3 weeks ago

A good Soul hath neither too great joy, nor too great sorrow: for it rejoiceth in goodness; and it sorroweth in wickedness. By the means whereof, when it beholdeth all things, and seeth the good and bad so mingled together, it can neither rejoice greatly; nor be grieved with over much sorrow.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Dialogue never ends not for lack of time or opportunity but for essential reasons.

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Chapter 7, Vigilance and Interruption, p. 121
6 months 2 weeks ago

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 59
5 months 1 week ago

To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.

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Maxim 113
5 months 4 weeks ago

There is no such thing as data-driven thinking.

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