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1 month 1 week ago

Enough of this miserable, whining life. Stop monkeying around! Why are you troubled? What's new here? What's so confounding? The one responsible? Take a good look. Or just the matter itself? Then look at that. There's nothing else to look at. And as far as the gods go, by now you could try being more straightforward and kind. It's the same, whether you've examined these things for a hundred years, or only three.

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IX. 37:205
5 months 2 weeks ago

For truth itself has not the privilege to be spoken at all times and in all sorts.

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Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
4 months 2 weeks ago

To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither centre nor boundary... Thus the Earth no more than any other world is at the centre.

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4 months 1 week ago

Murder begins where self-defense ends.

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Act I.
5 months 1 week ago

He was often, and much beyond reason, provoked by my failures in cases where success could not have been expected; but in the main his method was right, and it succeeded. I do not believe that any scientific teaching ever was more thorough, or better fitted for training the faculties, than the mode in which logic and political economy were taught to me by my father. Striving, even in an exaggerated degree, to call forth the activity of my faculties, by making me find out everything for myself, he gave his explanations not before, but after, I had felt the full force of the difficulties; and not only gave me an accurate knowledge of these two great subjects, as far as they were then understood, but made me a thinker on both.

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(pp. 28-29)
1 month 2 days ago

In America, more than anywhere else, the individual is lost in the achievements of the many. America is beginning to be the world leader in a scientific investigation. American scholarship is both patient and inspiring. The Americans show an unselfish devotion to science, which is the very opposite of the conventional European view of your countrymen. Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves. It is not true that the dollar is an American fetish. The American student is not interested in dollars, not even in success as such, but in his task, the object of the search. It is his painstaking application to the study of the infinitely little and the infinitely large which accounts for his success in astronomy.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.

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G 29
6 months 1 week ago

The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives - past and present and to come - forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?

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3 months 6 days ago

My life was not useless; I gave important truths to the world, and it was only for want of understanding that they were disregarded. I have been ahead of my time.

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Deathbed statement (November 1858), in response to a church minister who asked if he regretted wasting his life on fruitless projects; as quoted in Harold Hill : A People's History
4 months 3 weeks ago

Time is the soul of this world.

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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
1 month 3 weeks ago

I too am not one to despise myths, and I am far from rejecting those that have the right tendency; indeed I am of the same opinion as you and your admired, or rather the universally admired, Plato. He also often conveyed a serious lesson in his myths.

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1 month 1 week ago

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation. The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

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Letter from the commissioners (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson) to John Jay, 28 March 1786, in Thomas Jefferson Travels: Selected Writings, 1784-1789, by Anthony Brandt, pp. 104-105
1 month 3 weeks ago

The one loves to do good, the other to do harm; the one to help even strangers, the other to attack even its dearest friends.

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1 month 1 week ago

What is our task in the question of peace? It does not consist merely in vigorously demonstrating at all times the love of peace of the Social Democrats; but first and foremost our task is to make clear to the masses of people the nature of militarism and sharply and clearly to bring out the differences in principle between the standpoint of the Social Democrats and that of the bourgeois peace enthusiasts.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Psychological disorders are symptoms of a blocked story... The patient is cured the moment she narrates herself free.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.

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Ch. 1
3 months 2 weeks ago

Being>identity. Existence>essence.

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5 months 1 week ago

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

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Old Age
5 months 4 weeks ago

Now, justification in this life is given to us according to these three things: first by the laver of regeneration by which all sins are forgiven; then, by a struggle with the faults from whose guilt we have been absolved; the third, when our prayer is heard, in which we say: Forgive us our debts, because however bravely we fight against our faults, we are men; but the grace of God so aids as we fight in this corruptible body that there is reason for His hearing us as we ask forgiveness.

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Against Julian, Book II, ch. 8, 22. In The Fathers of the Church, Matthew A. Schumacher, tr., 1957, ISBN 0813214009 ISBN 9780813214009 pp. 83-84.
1 month 1 week ago

Our profound human duty is not to interpret or to cast light on the rhythm of God's arch, but to adjust, as much as we can, the rhythm of our small and fleeting life to his. Only thus may we mortals succeed in achieving something immortal, because then we collaborate with One who is Deathless. Only thus may we conquer mortal sin, the concentration on details, the narrowness of our brains; only thus may we transubstantiate into freedom the slavery of earthen matter given us to mold.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

Progress usually comes from the barbarian, and there is nothing more stagnant than the philosophy of the philosophers and the theology of the theologians.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The interest of the dealers, however, in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public. To widen the market and to narrow the competition, is always the interest of the dealers.

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Chapter XI, Part III, Conclusion of the Chapter, p. 292.
1 month 2 weeks ago

The world I believe is far too serious, and being far too serious, is it has need of a wise and merry philosophy.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 13
1 month 1 week ago

Burke said with a depth that it is impossible to admire enough that art is man's nature: yes, undoubtedly, man with all his affections, all his knowledge, all his arts, is truly the man of nature, and the weaver's web is as natural as the spider's.

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p. 52
1 month 3 weeks ago

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

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Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
4 months 5 days ago

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble, it must remain rare, if common, it must become mean.

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Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal
6 months 1 week ago

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

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5 months 1 week ago

I am not asking anyone to accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of the evidence is against it.

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Book III, Chapter 11, "Faith"
5 months 2 weeks ago

As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world.

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5 months 1 week ago

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something that he can understand.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

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Chapter I
4 months 3 weeks ago

Incorporeal hypostases, in descending, are distributed into parts, and multiplied about individuals with a diminution of power; but when they ascend by their energies beyond bodies, they become united, and proceed into a simultaneous subsistence, through exuberance of power.

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4 months 1 week ago

To ignore the true God is in fact only half an evil; atheism is worth more than the piety bestowed on mythical gods.

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A Religion for Adults
5 months 2 weeks ago

That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 810.
5 months 3 weeks ago

The world thought well of my schoolmaster guardian, because he was neither a liar, nor a scamp, nor a gambler; but he was coarse, avaricious, and ignorant; he knew nothing beyond the confused lessons which he taught to his classes. He imagined that in forcing a youth to become a monk he would be offering a sacrifice acceptable to God. He used to boast of the many victims which he devoted annually to Dominic and Francis and Benedict.

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As quoted in Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 (1899) by James Anthony Froude
4 months 3 days ago

The species with eyes appears suddenly, capriciously as it were, and it is this species which changes the environment by creating its visible aspect. The eye does not come into being because it is needed. Just the contrary; because the eye appears it can henceforth be applied as a serviceable instrument. Each species builds up its stock of useful habits by selecting among, and taking advantage of, the innumerable useless actions which a living being performs out of sheer exuberance.

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p. 17
2 months 1 week ago

The modern man who has ceased to believe, without ceasing to be credulous, hangs, as it were, between heaven and earth, and is at rest nowhere.

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Ch. I: "The Problem of Unbelief", §2, p. 9.
4 months 5 days ago

It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.

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21:13 (KJV)
4 months 5 days ago

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

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Ch. VI: Free Society
3 months 1 week ago

The bias of each medium of communication is far more distorting than the deliberate lie.

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JQ. Journalism quarterly, Volume 50, Association for Education in Journalism, 1973, p. 145
2 months 3 weeks ago

Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims.

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Foreword to The Transformation of Palestine
5 months 2 weeks ago

Such then is the human condition, that to wish greatness for one's country is to wish harm to one's neighbors.

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"Fatherland", 1764
5 months 2 weeks ago

So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice; as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

States as great engines move slowly.

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Book II
3 months 4 weeks ago

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.

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5 months 1 week ago

Power may be defined as the production of intended effects.

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Ch. 3: The Forms of Power
1 month 2 weeks ago

I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless.

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As quoted in a letter written from J. Kalckar to John A. Wheeler dated June 10, 1977, which appears in Wheeler's "Law Without Law," pg 207.
1 month 2 weeks ago

The presence of a proletarian aspect in Nazism is undeniable, as in the figure of Hitler himself, who had none of the traits of a 'gentleman,' of an aristocratic type di razza. This proletarian aspect and even vulgarity of National Socialism was often noticed, especially in Austria after its annexation to the Reich and after the phase of a rash 'national' infatuation of Austrians for 'Greater Germany.'

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p. 43
5 months 2 weeks ago

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

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Book II, Ch. 1, sec. 19

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