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1 month 2 weeks ago

I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.

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Section 3
1 month 6 days ago

A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.

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Quoted in The Times (6 July 1989).
2 months 1 week ago

Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.

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Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 52
2 months 1 week ago

When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything... And all rites are of this kind.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
1 month 5 days ago

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

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p. 150.
2 months 1 week ago

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

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Act 10, sc. 2
2 months 2 weeks ago

It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets, from the want of necessaries.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
2 months 2 weeks ago

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part XI
1 month 1 week ago

When you get over an infatuation, to fall for someone ever again seems so inconceivable that you imagine no one, not even a bug, that is not mired in disappointment.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

In particular, at this point also urge governing authorities and parents to rule well and to send their children to school. Point out how they are obliged to do so and what a damnable sin they commit if they do not, for thereby, as the worst enemies of God and humanity, they overthrow and lay waste both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. Explain very clearly what kind of horrible damage they do when they do not help to train children as pastors, preachers, civil servants, etc., and tell them that God will punish them dreadfully for this. For in our day and age it is necessary to preach about these things. The extent to which parents and governing authorities are now sinning in these matters defies description. The devil, too, intends to do something horrible in all this.

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Foreword to the small catechismus, as quoted in the Preface, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (2000) by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, p. 19
1 month 1 week ago

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is not by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

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Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 6
2 months 2 weeks ago

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

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Ch. 1: The Impulse to Power
2 weeks 2 days ago

Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.

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Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
2 months 1 week ago

God can make good use of all that happens, but the loss is real.

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1 month 1 week ago

The poem of the understanding is philosophy.

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"Logological Fragments," Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #24
2 months 2 weeks ago

There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).

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Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, "The Christian religion as a natural religion"
2 months 2 weeks ago

There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious. If glad, it must not grin or snicker; if sad, it must not scream or curse. It is precisely as being solemn experiences that I wish to interest you in religious experiences. ... The divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest.

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Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
2 months 3 weeks ago

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life. Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there is no journey but hath its end. And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you, does not all the world go the self-same way?

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2 months 2 weeks ago

A man who is so exceedingly civil that for the sake of quietude and a peaceable name will silently see the community imposed upon, or their rights invaded, may, in his principles, be a good man, but cannot be stiled a useful one, neither does he come up to the full mark of his duty; for silence becomes a kind of crime when it operates as a cover or an encouragement to the guilty. 

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"To the People of America", Pennsylvania Packet, January 23, 1779
1 month 5 days ago

The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
1 month 1 week ago

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

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The Transcendent Function ("Die Transzendente Funktion") (1916) Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung
3 weeks 2 days ago

Since my world picture approximates reality only crudely, I cannot aspire to optimize anything; at most, I can aim at satisficing. Searching for the best can only dissipate scarce cognitive resources; the best is the enemy of the good.

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(p.361) p. 361; As cited in Ronald J. Baker (2010) Implementing Value Pricing: A Revolutionary Business Model for Professional Firms. p. 122.
2 months 2 weeks ago

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.

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The Rhodora
3 months 1 week ago

The machine is only a tool after all, which can help humanity progress faster by taking some of the burdens of calculations and interpretations off its back. The task of the human brain remains what it has always been; that of discovering new data to be analyzed, and of devising new concepts to be tested.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

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No. 1, volume v, p. 331
1 month 5 days ago

Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos.

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2 months 4 days ago

As iron is eaten away by rust, so the envious are consumed by their own passion.

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§ 5
1 week 5 days ago

We are swiftly moving at present from an era where business was our culture into an era when culture will be our business. Between these poles stand the huge and ambiguous entertainment industries.

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(p. 384)
2 months 2 weeks ago

Each piece of money is a mere coin, or means of circulation, only so long as it actually circulates.

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Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 2(c), pg. 145.

If there is something more excellent than the truth, then that is God; if not, then truth itself is God.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

It is an article of faith that Mary is Mother of the Lord and still a Virgin.

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 11, 319-320
2 months 2 weeks ago

Whatever concept one may hold, from a metaphysical point of view, concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment.

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Introduction
2 months 2 weeks ago

It may indeed be doubted, whether butcher's meat is any where a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butcher's meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet.

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Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II.
1 month 2 weeks ago

There is, however, a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), volume i, p. 273
3 months 1 week ago

In memory yet green, in joy still felt, The scenes of life rise sharply into view. We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt, And while all else is old, the world is new.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.

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1859
1 month 1 week ago

It is impossible for any man, when the most favourable circumstances concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted with uncontrolled power; how then must they be violated when his very elevation is an insuperable bar to the attainment of either wisdom or virtue; when all the feelings of a man are stifled by flattery, and reflection shut out by pleasure! Surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him NECESSARILY below the meanest of his subjects! But one power should not be thrown down to exalt another--for all power intoxicates weak man; and its abuse proves, that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

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Ch. 1
1 month 2 weeks ago

I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.

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Preface to Second Edition
2 weeks ago

Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?

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Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum, c.1651
1 month 3 weeks ago

Above all things reverence thy Self.

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Variant translations: Respect yourself above all. As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook. (1999) ISBN 0-9653774-5-8
2 months 2 weeks ago

Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.

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p. 243
3 weeks 6 days ago

Every daring attempt to make a great change in existing conditions, every lofty vision of new possibilities for the human race, has been labelled Utopian.

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"Socialism: Caught in the Political Trap", a lecture (c. 1912), published in Red Emma Speaks, Part 1 (1972) edited by Alix Kates Shulman
1 month 1 week ago

Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

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15:3-9 (KJV)
1 month 1 week ago

When you know that every problem is only a false problem, you are dangerously close to salvation.

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1 month 1 week ago

Whenever I happen to be in a city of any size, I marvel that riots do not break out everyday: Massacres, unspeakable carnage, a doomsday chaos. How can so many human beings coexist in a space so confined without hating each other to death?

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose.

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1 month ago

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

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"Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"
2 months 1 week ago

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

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§ 112

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