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2 days ago

People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties and, next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen -economics, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etc. The day's work done, they want to be entertained.

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p. 16
2 months 1 week ago

He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it.

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(pp. 49-50)
1 month 3 weeks ago

It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again.

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Frag. B 5, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Parmenides, 708
2 months 1 week ago

Whatever bitterness and hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest. If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in this from their opponents; and in the source of their inspiration they have shown themselves superior to those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the injustices and oppressions by which the existing system is preserved.

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Introduction, p. 10.
3 weeks 1 day ago

The methods of coping with crime have no doubt undergone several changes, but mainly in a theoretic sense. In practice, society has retained the primitive motive in dealing with the offender; that is, revenge.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

We indeed, who are beings of finite powers, are forced to make use of instruments. And the use of an instrument sheweth the agent to be limited by rules of another's prescription, and that he cannot obtain his end but in such a way, and by such conditions. Whence it seems a clear consequence, that the supreme unlimited agent useth no tool or instrument at all. The will of an Omnipotent Spirit is no sooner exerted than executed, without the application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the First Cause, who is Himself above all limitation or prescription whatsoever.

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Philonous to Hylas. The Second Dialogue
2 months 2 weeks ago

It was truly very good reason that we should be beholden to God only, and to the favour of his grace, for the truth of so noble a belief, since from his sole bounty we receive the fruit of immortality, which consists in the enjoyment of eternal beatitude.... The more we give and confess to owe and render to God, we do it with the greater Christianity.

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Ch. 12

No one should be judge in his own cause.

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Maxim 545
2 months ago

The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.

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Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 149

It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education & entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter.

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(1957) from "Classroom Without Walls", Explorations Vol. 7, 1957; reprinted in Explorations in Communication ed. E. Carpenter & M. McLuhan, (Boston: Beacon, 1960); and again in McLuhan: Hot and Cool ed. G. E. Stearn (NY: Dial, 1967).
1 month 3 weeks ago

So people should abstain from other animals just as they should from the human.

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4, 9, 6
1 month 1 week ago

The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.

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2 months 1 week ago

Considering the optimistic turn taken by world trade AT THIS MOMENT...it is some consolation at least that the revolution has begun in Russia, for I regard the convocation of 'notables' to Petersburg as such a beginning. ... On the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (8 October 1858), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), pp. 346-347
2 months 3 weeks ago

Rules for Demonstrations. I. Not to undertake to demonstrate any thing that is so evident of itself that nothing can be given that is clearer to prove it. II. To prove all propositions at all obscure, and to employ in their proof only very evident maxims or propositions already admitted or demonstrated. III. To always mentally substitute definitions in the place of things defined, in order not to be misled by the ambiguity of terms which have been restricted by definitions.

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1 month 4 weeks ago

To all my friends without distinction I am ready to display my opulence: come one, come all; and whosoever likes to take a share is welcome to the wealth that lies within my soul.

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iv. 35
1 month 4 weeks ago

Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.

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Preface
2 months 3 weeks ago

The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is that of the use of moral theorems, such as, "We ought not to lie;" the second is that of demonstrations, such as, "What is the origin of our obligation not to lie;" the third gives strength and articulation to the other two, such as, "What is the origin of this is a demonstration." For what is demonstration? What is consequence? What contradiction? What truth? What falsehood? The third topic, then, is necessary on the account of the second, and the second on the account of the first. But the most necessary, and that whereon we ought to rest, is the first. But we act just on the contrary. For we spend all our time on the third topic, and employ all our diligence about that, and entirely neglect the first.

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(51).
2 months 5 days ago

A confession has to be part of your new life.

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p. 18e
2 weeks 4 days ago

In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the contributions necessary to sustain it. Hence, organization objectives are constantly adapted to conform to the changing values of customers, or to secure new groups of customers in place of customers who have dropped away. The organization may also undertake special activities to induce acceptance of its objectives by customers - advertising, missionary work, and propaganda of all sorts.

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p. 114.
2 months 1 week ago

The devil...the prowde spirit...cannot endure to be mocked.

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Thomas More, quoted at the beginning of The Screwtape Letters
2 months 1 week ago

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 231
1 month 5 days ago

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

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3 months 1 week ago

You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

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F 39
2 months 1 week ago

Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.

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par. 27
1 month 1 week ago

The End of the Life of Mankind on Earth is this,-that in this Life they may order all their relations with FREEDOM according to REASON.

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p. 5
1 month ago

Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once and for all, but is a process...

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2 months 1 week ago

We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.

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Reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 225
1 month ago

In the presence of God himself man stands always like a solitary tree in the wilderness.

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p. 95
2 months 1 week ago

For nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

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Wood-notes, no. II, st. 7
2 months 1 week ago

The Theophilanthropists do not call themselves the disciples of such or such a man. They avail themselves of the wise precepts that have been transmitted by writers of all countries and in all ages.

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Introduction
2 months 1 week ago

Our island is this earth; and the most striking object we behold is the sun. As soon as we pass beyond our immediate surroundings, one or both of these must meet our eye. Thus the philosophy of most savage races is mainly directed to imaginary divisions of the earth or to the divinity of the sun.

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1 month 2 days ago

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

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Matthew 7:15 (KJV)
1 week 5 days ago

Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the caricature of seduction. It says: "I know that you want to be seduced, and I will seduce you." Nothing could be worse than betraying this secret rule. Nothing could be less seductive than a provocative smile or inciteful behaviour, since both presuppose that one cannot be seduced naturally and that one needs to be blackmailed into it, or through a declaration of intent: "Let me seduce you"

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(p. 67)
1 month 2 days ago

Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation-this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name-the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the "faithless faith" in the reality whose victims they are.

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p. 119
2 weeks 5 days ago

We're tired of trees. We should stop believing in trees, roots, and radicles. They've made us suffer too much. All of arborescent culture is founded on them, from biology to linguistics. Nothing is beautiful or loving or political aside from underground stems and aerial root, adventitious growths and rhizomes.

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from A Thousand Plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, p. 15

National loyalty is founded in the love of place, of the customs and traditions that have been inscribed in the landscape and of the desire to protect these good things through a common law and a common loyalty.

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3 weeks 1 day ago

The ideal of human kinship that would brook no injustice or social wrong agave the only meaning and purpose to my life. This ideal I found in anarchism. Not, to be sure, in the distorted image of anarchism presented in the Press and by pseudo-social economists or hounded and persecuted by the powers that be. I found anarchism the moving spirit of beauty-of social harmony-of a free and untrammeled growth of the individual. This became my inspiration and my highest goal.

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1 month 1 day ago

All metaphysical theories are inconclusively vulnerable to positivist attack.

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Ch. 9, p. 127
3 months 6 days ago

Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire.

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3 weeks 4 days ago

It is the aim of public life to arrange that all forms of power are entrusted, so far as possible, to men who effectively consent to be bound by the obligation towards all human beings which lies upon everyone, and who understand the obligation. Law is the quality of the permanent provisions for making this aim effective.

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2 months ago

Every subjective phenomenon is essentially connected with a single point of view, and it seems inevitable that an objective physical theory will abandon that point of view.

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p. 167.
1 month 2 days ago

Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

In the final, positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after Abolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the cause of phenomenon, and applies itself to the tudy of their laws, - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of the facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.

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Vol I
1 month 2 weeks ago

Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.

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Chapter V
3 months 1 week ago

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable.

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1 month 1 week ago

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

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