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8 months 4 days ago

Never read any book that is not a year old.

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Books
4 months 2 weeks ago

There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

If we ignore the prior work of attention and notice only the emptiness of the moment of choice we are likely to identify freedom with the outward movement since there is nothing else to identify it with. But if we consider what the work of attention is like, how continuously it goes on, and how imperceptibly it builds up structures of value round about us, we shall not be surprised that at crucial moments of choice most of the business of choosing is already over.

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The Sovereignty of Good (1970) p. 36.
4 months 2 days ago

Why so many laws? Because there is no legislator. What have these so-called legislators done in six years? Nothing, for to destroy is not to make.

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7 months 4 days ago

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

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Vol. 3, Ch. IX, State-Tamperings with Money and Banks
8 months 1 week ago

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

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Chapter VII, Part Second, p. 619.
4 months 2 weeks ago

"You will have less money." Yes, and less trouble. "Less influence." Yes, and less envy.

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7 months 4 days ago

Evil perpetually tends to disappear.

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Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 2
8 months 4 days ago

If a man walk in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer; but if he spends his whole day as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making earth bald before her time, he is esteemed an industrious and enterprising citizen. As if a town had no interest in its forests but to cut them down!

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p. 485
7 months 3 weeks ago

Themistocles being asked whether he would rather be Achilles or Homer, said, "Which would you rather be,-a conqueror in the Olympic games, or the crier that proclaims who are conquerors?"

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48 Themistocles

India has always been an object of yearning, a realm of wonder, a world of magic... India is the land of dreams. India had always dreamt - more of the Bliss that is man's final goal. And this has helped India to be more creative in history than any other nation. Hence the effervescence of myths and legends, religious and philosophies, music, and dances and the different styles of architecture." ...

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quoted in Patri, Umesh Hindu scriptures and American transcendentalists 1st ed. quoted from Londhe, S. (2008).
7 months 3 weeks ago

Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.

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Freeman (1948), p. 161
6 months 6 days ago

Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.

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6 months 2 days ago

Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly.

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(p. 109)
8 months 1 week ago

The statesman who should attempt to direct people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

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Chapter II
6 months 2 weeks ago

If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.

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p. 63
4 months 1 day ago

Soon you'll be ashes or bones. A mere name at most-and even that is just a sound, an echo. The things we want in life are empty, stale, trivial.

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V. 33, trans. Gregory Hays
6 months 3 weeks ago

All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

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Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271
6 months 3 weeks ago

Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail.

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Democracy and Human Nature, Freedom and Culture
8 months 1 week ago

...it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives...

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Aphorism 46
4 months 1 week ago

What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood? I have said elsewhere that the loyalty to Uncle Sam is the loyalty to doughnuts and ham and sweet potatoes and the loyalty to the German Vaterland is the loyalty to Pfannkuchen and Christmas Stollen. As for international understanding, I feel that macaroni has done more for our appreciation of Italy than Mussolini... in food, as in death, we feel the essential brotherhood of mankind.

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Ch. IV : On Having A Stomach, p. 46
7 months 1 week ago

We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.

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Section 12
6 months 2 weeks ago

It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline.

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Introductory Essay, p. xx
5 months 3 weeks ago

Writers, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers, political thinkers, to name only a few of the categories affected, must woo their readers, viewers, listeners, from distraction. To this we must add, for simple realism demands it, that these same writers, painters, etc., are themselves the children of distraction. As such, they are peculiarly qualified to approach the distracted multitudes. They will have experienced the seductions as well as the destructiveness of the forces we have been considering here. This is the destructive element in which we do not need to be summoned to immerse ourselves, for we were born to it.

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The Distracted Public (1990), p. 167
7 months 2 weeks ago

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The young generations of the world, who had in them the freshness of young children, and yet the depth of earnest men, who did not think that they had finished off all things in Heaven and Earth by merely giving them scientific names, but had to gaze direct at them there, with awe and wonder: they felt better what of divinity is in man and Nature; they, without being mad, could worship Nature, and man more than anything else in Nature.

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6 months 1 week ago

Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting the Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of the distance from the center.

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Letter to Edmund Halley (June 20, 1686) quoted in I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith, ed.s, The Cambridge Companion to Newton (2002) p. 204
4 months 4 weeks ago

What's interesting about the world today is that the fundamental division is... a... sociological one between people that have better educations, that live in big urban agglomerations, that then can then benefit from... a global economy, versus people who live in... smaller cities and towns, or in the countryside... with more traditional values. That division exists almost universally, in Turkey... Hungary... the United States, in Britain... It does reflect different economic opportunities, but more fundamentally... it reflects a... way of life, that in the urban case is... liberal and open, but in some cases... people would say a little... too open and too tolerant of... people that want to break traditional norms that are still maintained by... other parts of the population. So it's really that cultural fight... that's at the center of populism, related to,.. but certainly not fundamentally driven by economic inequality.

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52:39:00
6 months 4 days ago

To say that the activity of science and art helps humanity's progress, if by that activity we mean the activity which now calls itself by those names, is as though one said that the clumsy, obstructive splashing of oars in a boat moving down stream assists the boat's progress. It only hinders it... The proof of this is seen in the confession made by men of science that the achievements of the arts and sciences are inaccessible to the labouring masses on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Every rock in the ocean where a cormorant can perch is occupied by our troops - has a governor, deputy-governor, storekeeper, and deputy-storekeeper - and will soon have an archdeacon and a bishop. Military colleges, with thirty-four professors, educating seventeen ensigns per annum, being half an ensign for each professor, with every species of nonsense, athletic, sartorial, and plumigerous.

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Catholics, published in The Edinburgh Review (1827). See The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith. 2. 1859. p. 123.
9 months 6 days ago
Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations...
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4 months 3 weeks ago

The only method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.

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Polybius. The Histories of Polybius, trans. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. London, New York: Macmillan and Co., 1889. Book I, Chapter 1
6 months 3 weeks ago

The open society is one that is deemed in principle to embrace all humanity.

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Chapter IV
4 months 1 week ago

If the rulers sincerely desire the empire to be wealthy and dislike to have it poor, desire to have it orderly and dislike to have it chaotic, they should bring about universal love and mutual aid. This is the way of the sage-kings and the way to order for the world, and it should not be neglected.

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Book 4; Universal Love II
5 months 2 weeks ago

Whether we take these characters then, or such minor ones as those which are derivable from the proportional length of the spines in the cervical vertebrae, and the like, there is no doubt whatsoever as to the marked difference between Man and the Gorilla; but there is as little, that equally marked differences, of the very same order, obtain between the Gorilla and the lower apes.

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Ch.2, p. 92
4 months 2 weeks ago

If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;-"Damn the solar system! bad light - planets too distant - pestered with comets - feeble contriviance; - could make a better with great ease."

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Vol. II, letter to Lord Jeffrey (1806), p. 23 Discussed in David A. Kent, D. R. Ewen, "Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831", The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 44, No. 175, (1993), pp. 430-432

One might call habit a moral friction: something that prevents the mind from gliding over things but connects it with them and makes it hard for it to free itself from them.

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A 10
9 months 1 day ago

Straightforward preaching spoils the effectiveness of a story. If you can't resist the impulse to improve your fellow human beings, do it subtly.

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8 months 4 days ago

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

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1 week 6 days ago

Progress can be slow, but one can kill another in a matter of seconds....

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7 months 1 day ago

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

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Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1
8 months 4 days ago

Rational and kindly behavior tends to produce good results and these results remain good even when the behavior which produced them was itself produced by a pill.

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"Brave New World Revisited" (1956), in Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1977), p. 99
8 months 3 days ago

A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.

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King Aegistheus, Act 2
4 months 2 weeks ago

Unjust dominion cannot be eternal.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

Now, as the Word of God is the Son of God, so the love of God is the Holy Spirit.

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Art. 8
7 months ago

Always to have lived with the nostalgia to coincide with something, but not really knowing with what - it is easy to shift from unbelief to belief, or conversely. But what is there to convert to, and what is there to abjure, in a state of chronic lucidity?

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