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3 months 3 weeks ago

Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one.

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8 months 1 week ago

I was once being interviewed by Barbara Walters [...] In between two of the segments she asked me [...] "But what would you do if the doctor gave you only six months to live?" I said, "Type faster." This was widely quoted, but the "six months" was changed to "six minutes," which bothered me. It's "six months."

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7 months 1 week ago

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.

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p. 56e
5 months 1 week ago

Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.

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(p. 261)
1 month 5 days ago

Bert wants you to touch grass.....

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5 months 1 week ago

If the slave-owner of our times has no slave, John, whom he can send to the cesspool, he has five shillings, of which hundreds of such Johns are in such need that the slave-owner of our times may choose any one out of hundreds of Johns and be a benefactor to him by giving him the preference, and allowing him, rather than another, to climb down into the cesspool.

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Chapter 8: Slavery Exists Among Us
5 months 4 weeks ago

"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to achieve nothing"... so Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can embrace everything , or almost everything; with the will nothing, or almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness - no! not if this contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our knowledge and our power pity arises.

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4 months 6 days ago

Yet when we speak of time... do we not unconsciously adopt this hypothesis... and put ourselves in the place of this imperfect god... Do not even the atheists put themselves in the place where god would be..?

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6 months 3 days ago

He [the "specialist"] is one who, out of all that has to be known in order to be a man of judgment, is only acquainted with one science, and even of that one only knows the small corner in which he is an active investigator. He even proclaims it as a virtue that he takes no cognisance of what lies outside the narrow territory specially cultivated by himself, and gives the name of "dilettantism" to any curiosity for the general scheme of knowledge.

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Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"
6 months 5 days ago

Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered. And as he said these things unto them, the scribes and the Pharisees began to urge him vehemently, and to provoke him to speak of many things: Laying wait for him, and seeking to catch something out of his mouth, that they might accuse him.

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11:52
6 months 1 week ago

Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.

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Ch. 6, The Biological View
3 months 1 week ago

Her green eyes fluttered swiftly twice or thrice, then glazed,her mouth gaped open, bleating, then her jaws hung looseand retched up all her soul in lumps of clotting blood.

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Death of Phida, Book VIII, line 410
3 months 1 week ago

Never spend your money before you have it.

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2 weeks ago

...but we have to give ourselves credit sometimes and let what can be known, be known.

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7 months 1 week ago

Thus, Beauty is neither an appearance nor a being, but a relationship: the transformation of being into appearance

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p. 408
7 months 3 weeks ago

But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

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Book V, lines 1117-1119 (tr. Rouse)
8 months 1 week ago

Your pride has been too much for the pride of your admirers; they were numerous and high-spirited, but they have all run away, overpowered by your superior force of character; not one of them remains. And I want you to understand the reason why you have been too much for them. You think that you have no need of them or of any other man, for you have great possessions and lack nothing, beginning with the body, and ending with the soul. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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7 months 3 days ago

Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.

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Preface
8 months ago

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.

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Commentary on the Psalms (c. 1273), Introduction
3 months 1 week ago

Our different States have differently modified their several judiciaries as to the tenure of office. Some appoint their judges for a given term of time; some continue them during good behavior, and that to be determined on by the concurring vote of two-thirds of each legislative House. In England they are removable by a majority only of each House. The last is a practicable remedy; the second is not. The combination of the friends and associates of the accused, the action of personal and party passions, and the sympathies of the human heart, will forever find means of influencing one-third of either the one or the other House, will thus secure their impunity, and establish them in fact for life. The first remedy is the best, that of appointing for a term of years only, with a capacity of reappointment if their conduct has been approved.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which is.

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Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
5 months 5 days ago

Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.

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The Sealed Treasure (1960), p. 62
6 months 5 days ago

Art like life should be free, since both are experimental.

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Ch. IX.: Justification of Art
6 months 5 days ago

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.

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A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
6 months 3 days ago

In old days the plastic arts, music, and poesy were so germane to man in his totality that his Transcendence plainly manifest in them. ... What is to-day obvious to all is a decay in the essence of art. ... the opposition to man's true nature as man.

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3 months 1 week ago

Long live the king,' cry the loving and the loyal, beside themselves with joy. 'Long live the king,' responds the republican hypocrite in dire terror. What does it matter? There is only one cry. And the king is crowned.

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Chapter IX, p. 79
3 months 1 week ago

This is our epoch, good or bad, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor - we did not choose it. This is our epoch, the air we breathe, the mud given us, the bread, the fire, the spirit! Let us accept Necessity courageously. It is our lot to have fallen on fighting times. Let us tighten our belts, let us arm our hearts, our minds, and our bodies. Let us take our place in battle!

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7 months 1 week ago

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. Poland fought for freedom as no other country did. The Czech nation was prepared to fight for its freedom in 1938; it was not lack of courage that sealed its fate. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - the work of young people with nothing to lose but their chains - triumphed and then ended in failure. ... Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things - and above all on ourselves.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

When I contemplate the green serenity of the fields or look into the depths of clear eyes through which shines a fellow-soul, my consciousness dilates, I feel the diastole of the soul and am bathed in the flood of the life that flows about me, and I believe in my future; but instantly the voice of mystery whispers to me, "Thou shalt cease to be!" the angel of Death touches me with his wing, and the systole of the soul floods the depth of my spirit with the blood of divinity.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Custom renders love attractive; for that which is struck by oft-repeated blows however lightly, yet after long course of time is overpowered and gives way. See you not too that drops of water falling on rocks after long course of time scoop a hole through these rocks?

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Book IV, lines 1283-1287 (tr. Munro)
7 months 1 week ago

It is amusing to hear the modern Christian telling you how mild and rationalistic Christianity really is and ignoring the fact that all its mildness and rationalism is due to the teaching of men who in their own day were persecuted by all orthodox Christians.

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"Sources of Intolerance"
7 months 2 weeks ago

I'd rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.

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The earliest published source for such a statement yet located is in Pat Robertson - Where He Stands (1988) by Hubert Morken, p. 42, where such a comment is attributed to Luther without citation.
8 months 2 days ago

Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of their own.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight-whereby the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given.

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(February 1888) "The Struggle for Existence: A Programme". The Nineteenth Century 23: 161-180. (quote from p. 163)
5 months 1 week ago

In the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity. When, after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and its abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom of the classics and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of the teachings of the ancient sages, and on the other hand, the incompatibility of the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they found it impossible to continue to believe the Church teaching.

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3 months 1 week ago

I believe... that every human mind feels pleasure in doing good to another.

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Letter to John Adams

I was like this when I was younger, but over time, you have to choose what ideas will win out with you...or...disorder awaits....

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing, called perpetual motion, would establish itself. It is because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being, but that of the Creator of motion. When the pretenders to Atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited.

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A Discourse, &c. &c.
8 months 1 week ago

I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.

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7 months 1 week ago

Greater intelligence, wealth and opportunity, for example, allow a person to achieve ends he could not rationally contemplate otherwise.

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Chapter II, Section 15, pg. 93
6 months 3 days ago

Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.

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p. 45
6 months 1 week ago

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

There stood Mucius, despising the enemy and despising the fire, and watched his hand as it dripped blood over the fire on his enemy's altar, until Porsenna, envying the fame of the hero whose punishment he was advocating, ordered the fire to be removed against the will of the victim.

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4 months 1 week ago

Today we have arrived at a point when the three principles [of modern resistance: 1. measure of efficacy, 2. the form of political and military organization correspond to the current forms of economic and social production, 3. democracy and freedom] coincide. The distributed network structure provides the model for an absolutely democratic organization that corresponds to the dominant forms of economic and social production and is also the most powerful weapon against the ruling power structure.

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