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7 months 1 day ago

Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?

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p. 5
5 months 4 weeks ago

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . .

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Existential envy which is directed against the other person's very nature, is the strongest source of ressentiment. It is as if it whispers continually: "I can forgive everything, but not that you are- that you are what you are-that I am not what you are-indeed that I am not you." This form of envy strips the opponent of his very existence, for this existence as such is felt to be a "pressure," a "reproach," and an unbearable humiliation. In the lives of great men there are always critical periods of instability, in which they alternately envy and try to love those whose merits they cannot but esteem. Only gradually, one of these attitudes will predominate. Here lies the meaning of Goethe's reflection that "against another's great merits, there is no remedy but love."

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 52-53
4 months 3 weeks ago

Many Britons...feel strongly about something which was once called "the alien wedge". And surely it cannot be doubted, even by those who profess allegiance to the "multicultural society", that our society, unlike America, is not of that kind, and therefore that immigration cannot be an object of merely passive contemplation on the part of the present citizenship. There is perhaps no greater sign of the strength of liberalism (a strength which issues, not from popular consensus, but from the political power of the liberal elite) than that it has made it impossible for any but the circumlocutory to argue that the English, the Scots and the Welsh have a prior claim to the benefits of the civilization that their ancestors created, which entitles them to reserve its benefits for themselves.

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The Meaning of Conservatism: Third Edition (2001), p. 62
8 months ago

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?

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5 months 6 days ago

Our design, not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject, not manual, but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this - from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena...

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Preface
4 months 1 week ago

The mass political movements of the 20th century were vehicles for myths inherited from religion, and it is no accident that religion is reviving now that these movements have collapsed.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

I do not speak here of divine truths... because they are infinitely superior to nature: God alone can place them in the soul... I know that he has desired that they should enter from the heart into the mind, and not from the mind into the heart, to humiliate that proud power of reasoning that pretends to the right to be the judge of the things that the will chooses; and to cure this infirm will which is wholly corrupted by its filthy attachments.

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3 months 2 days ago

My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ.

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Letter to Thomas Leiper (21 January 1809).
6 months 3 days ago

The power of perpetuating our property in our families is one of the most valuable and interesting circumstances belonging to it, and that which tends most to the perpetuation of society itself. It makes our weakness subservient to our virtue; it grafts benevolence even upon avarice. The possession of family wealth and of the distinction which attends hereditary possessions (as most concerned in it,) are the natural securities for this transmission.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak with God as if men were listening.

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Line 5.
6 months 3 weeks ago

This market way of life promotes addictions to stimulation and obsessions with comfort and convenience.

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(p29)
2 months 4 weeks ago

Remember that all is opinion.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

With an ignorant man thou shouldst not become a confederate and associate.

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7 months 3 days ago

I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.

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Greek Exercises (1888); at the age of fifteen, Russell used to write down his reflections in this book, for fear that his people should find out what he was thinking.
7 months 3 days ago

Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent: All are needed by each one, Nothing is fair or good alone.

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Each and All, st. 1
6 months 3 weeks ago

Follow your desire as long as you live and do not perform more than is ordered; do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... When riches are gained, follow desire, for riches will not profit if one is sluggish.

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Maxim no. 11.
6 months 3 weeks ago

In... "The Education of Children"... Plutarch gives an anecdote of Theocritus, a sophist, as an example of athuroglossos... he is... "a giant in impudence"... strong not because of his reason, or his rhetorical ability... or his ability to pronounce the truth, but only because he is arrogant. ...His fourth trait is... "putting his confidence in bluster." He is confident in thorubos... the noise made by a strong voice, by a scream, a clamor, or uproar. ...The final characteristic ...his confidence in ..."ignorant outspokenness..." ... it lacks mathesis ...-learning or wisdom.

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Ref: Plutarch, "The Education of Children", Moralia (1927) Vol. 1, Tr. Frank Cole Babbit, p. 4, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press.

Nations are barbarian in their infancy but not savage. The barbarian is a proportional mean between the savage and the citizen. He already possesses no end of knowledge: he has habitations, some agriculture, domestic animals, laws, a cult, regular tribunals; he lacks only the sciences.

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p. 25
7 months 1 week ago

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

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Adagia, 1508
3 months 2 days ago

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe.

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Letter to James Madison (20 December 1787), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (19 Vols., 1905) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. VI, p. 392.
5 months 4 weeks ago

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

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p. 33
7 months 1 day ago

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing. 

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Act 1, sc. 5 Variant translation: Among murderers. We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Science ... commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

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"The Darwin Memorial"
7 months 3 weeks ago

It is only he who is possessed of the most complete sincerity that can exist under heaven, who can give its full development to his nature. Able to give its full development to his own nature, he can do the same to the nature of other men. Able to give its full development to the nature of other men, he can give their full development to the natures of animals and things. Able to give their full development to the natures of creatures and things, he can assist the transforming and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth. Able to assist the transforming and nourishing powers of Heaven and Earth, he may with Heaven and Earth form a ternion.

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7 months 3 days ago

Wisdom and contrivance are shown in overcoming difficulties, so there is no place for them in a Being for whom no difficulties exist.

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pages 176-177; Early Modern Texts page 16
7 months 4 days 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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7 months 1 week ago

As all those have shown who have discussed civil institutions, and as every history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity; and if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of every truth, will cause it to be discovered.

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Book 1, Ch. 3
7 months 6 days ago

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article I, p. 911.
7 months 4 days ago

Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 348
8 months 5 days ago
The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life.
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7 months 5 days ago

By a lie a man throws away and, as it were, annihilates his dignity as a man. A man who himself does not believe what he tells another ... has even less worth than if he were a mere thing. ... makes himself a mere deceptive appearance of man, not man himself.

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Doctrine of Virtue as translated by Mary J. Gregor (1964), p. 93
7 months 1 week ago

Anyone who actually admires money as the most precious thing in life, and rests his security on it to the extent of believing that as long as he possesses it he will be happy, has fashioned too many false gods for himself. Too many people put money in the place of Christ, as if it alone has the key to their happiness or unhappiness.

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p. 100
7 months 3 days ago

An atheist, like a Christian, holds that we can know whether or not there is a God. The Christian holds that we can know there is a God; the atheist, that we can know there is not. The Agnostic suspends judgment, saying that there are not sufficient grounds either for affirmation or for denial. At the same time, an Agnostic may hold that the existence of God, though not impossible, is very improbable; he may even hold it so improbable that it is not worth considering in practice. In that case, he is not far removed from atheism. His attitude may be that which a careful philosopher would have towards the gods of ancient Greece. If I were asked to prove that Zeus and Poseidon and Hera and the rest of the Olympians do not exist, I should be at a loss to find conclusive arguments. An Agnostic may think the Christian God as improbable as the Olympians; in that case, he is, for practical purposes, at one with the atheists.

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What is an Agnostic?, 1953
6 months 1 week ago

I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

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As quoted in Against the Faith (1985) by Jim Herrick, p. 75
6 months 3 weeks ago

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through great connections and race; for in the end thy trust is on thine own deeds.

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(p. 60)
7 months 2 days ago

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will-"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"-need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-until next year-that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

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Diary entry (April 30, 1870) as quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1, p. 323; Letters of William James, vol. I, p. 147.
3 months 2 days ago

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

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Thomas Jefferson Letter (23 Dec 1790) to Martha Jefferson Randolph. Collected in B.L. Rayner (ed.), Sketches of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of Thomas Jefferson (1832), 192.
7 months 3 days ago

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

Two enemies - the same man divided.

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2 months 4 weeks ago

What if someone despises me? Let me see to it. But I will see to it that I won't be found doing or saying anything contemptible. What if someone hates me? Let me see to that. But I will see to it that I'm kind and good-natured to all, and prepared to show even the hater where they went wrong. Not in a critical way, or to show off my patience, but genuinely and usefully.

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XI. 13:179
7 months 2 days ago

I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers-back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.

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describing his experiment with mescaline, p. 22
4 months 4 weeks ago

Wherever a man is, there will be a lie.

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Episodes in the Story of a Mine.
7 months 2 days ago

Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.

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"The Will to Believe" p. 205
3 months 1 week ago

Students have powerful images of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly. But deprived of literary guidance, they no longer have any image of a perfect soul, and hence do not long to have one.

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p. 67.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Assist a man in raising a burden; but do not assist him in laying it down.

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Symbol 11

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