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2 months 3 days ago

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain; and there is no good theory of disease which does not at once suggest a cure.

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p. 212

Great ages of innovation are the ages in which entire cultures are junked or scrapped.

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(p. 309)
3 weeks 4 days ago

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

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Ch. 4
1 month ago

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

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Motto
2 months 4 days ago

There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.

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Last Essay: "1967"
3 weeks 2 days ago

The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

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p. 34.
2 weeks 1 day ago

Perhaps it is not true to speak of God as a judge at all, or of his judgements. There does not seem to be really any evidence that His worlds are places of trial but rather schools, place of training, or that He is a judge but rather a Teacher, a Trainer, not in the imperfect sense in which men are teachers, but in the sense of His contriving and adapting His whole universe for one purpose of training every intelligent being to be perfect. ... I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge, in the sense that the evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians impute judgement to him. ... Our business is, I think, to understand, not to judge. What He does, as far as we know, to rule by law down to the most infinitesimally small portion of His universe, not to judge.

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As quoted in Florence Nightingale's Theology: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (2002) by Lynn McDonald, pps. 177-179
2 days ago

Feelings, the most diverse, very strong and very weak, very significant and very worthless, very bad and very good, if only they infect the reader, the spectator, the listener, constitute the subject of art.

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Man in the electronic age has no possible environment except the globe and no possible occupation except information-gathering.

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3 weeks 3 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
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is soft, smooth and shining like intelligence. Its edges seem sharp but do not cut like justice. It hangs down to the ground like humility. When struck, it gives a clear, ringing sound like music. The strains in it are not hidden and add to its beauty like truthfulness.' What imagination! Confucius extolled Jade's virtues this way.

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3 months ago

Certain success evicts one from the paradise of winning against the odds.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

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p. 148
2 months 2 days ago

Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal.... As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

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Letter VIII

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in providence, than to see their real import or value.

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3 weeks 4 days ago

Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

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Revelation
2 months 4 days ago

If you're certain, you're certainly wrong, because nothing deserves certainty.

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Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (1960), p. 14 (video)
2 months 3 days ago

I saw men go up and down, In the country and the town, With this tablet on their neck,- 'Judgement and a judge we seek.' Not to monarchs they repair, Nor to learned jurist's chair; But they hurry to their peers, To their kinsfolk and their dears; Louder than with speech they pray,- 'What am I? companion, say.'

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Astræa
2 months 1 week ago

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

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Chapter IX
1 month 3 weeks ago

Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and regret may not reach thee from thine own actions.

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3 weeks 4 days ago

If you know these things, happy you are if you do them.

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13:17, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

[Variation of the same quote:] When it became obvious what a dumb and cruel and spiritually and financially and militarily ruinous mistake our war in Vietnam was, every artist worth a damn in this country, every serious writer, painter, stand-up comedian, musician, actor and actress, you name it, came out against the thing. We formed what might be described as a laser beam of protest, with everybody aimed in the same direction, focused and intense. This weapon proved to have the power of a banana-cream pie three feet in diameter when dropped from a stepladder five-feet high.

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Kurt Vonnegut vs. the !&#*!@ Interview with Joel Bleifuss, In These Times
1 week 4 days ago

In closing, I can only apologize for not having given any positive account of either mathematical truth or mathematical necessity. I can only say that I have not given such an account because I think that the search for such an account is a fundamental mistake. It is not that there is nothing special about mathematics; it is that, in my opinion, the investigation of mathematics must presuppose and not seek to account for the truth of mathematics. But this is the beginning of another paper and not the end of this one.

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"Truth and necessity in mathematics"
2 weeks 1 day ago

The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.

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2 months 5 days ago

Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.

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Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762);
2 months 3 days ago

Wherever the want of clothing forced them to it, the human race made clothes for thousands of years, without a single man becoming a tailor.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 2, pg. 49.
2 days ago

The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.

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Chapter VI, Attitude of Men of the Present Day to War Variant translation: Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
2 months 1 week 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
2 months 6 days ago

Young man! Deny yourself satisfaction (of amusement, of debauchery, of love, etc.), not with the Stoical intention of complete abstinence, but with the refined Epicurean intention of having in view an ever-growing pleasure. This stinginess with the cash of your vital urge makes you definitely richer through the postponement of pleasure, even if you should, for the most part, renounce the indulgence of it until the end of your life. The awareness of having pleasure under your control is, like everything idealistic, more fruitful and more abundant than everything that satisfies the sense through indulgence because it is thereby simultaneously consumed and consequently lost from the aggregate of totality.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 54.
1 month 1 week ago

Every central government worships uniformity: uniformity relieves it from inquiry into an infinity of details.

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Book Four, Chapter III.
2 months 1 week ago

Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous than in those three which were unknown to the ancients; namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. For these three have changed the appearance and state of the whole world; first in literature, then in warfare, and lastly in navigation: and innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs than these mechanical discoveries.

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Aphorism 129
3 weeks 3 days ago

No one is guiltless...But no one is beyond the pale of human existence, provided he pays for his guilt.

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3 weeks 3 days ago

Equally there is no rhythm when variations are not placed. There is a wealth of suggestions in the phrase "takes place". The change not only comes but it belongs; it had its definite place in a larger whole.

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p. 160
2 months 2 weeks ago

So it is more useful to watch a man in times of peril, and in adversity to discern what kind of man he is; for then at last words of truth are drawn from the depths of his heart, and the mask is torn off, reality remains.

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Book III, lines 55-58 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations)
1 month 3 days ago

The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

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2 days ago

The compassionate are not rich; therefore, the rich are not compassionate.

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p. 89
2 months 1 week ago

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

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Ch. 10. Of Managing the Will
2 months 2 days ago

In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. [...] under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.

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3 weeks 4 days ago

Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and he followeth not us: and we forbad him, because he followeth not us. But Jesus said, Forbid him not: for there is no man which shall do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me. For he that is not against us is on our part.

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Mark 9:38-40 (KJV)
1 month 2 weeks ago

Above and before all things, worship GOD!

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As quoted in The Sayings of the Wise: Or, Food for Thought: A Book of Moral Wisdom, Gathered from the Ancient Philosophers (1555) by William Baldwin [1908 edition]
3 months 4 days ago

There is no one at the Communion table who retains against you even the least of your sins, no one, unless you yourself do it. So cast them away from yourself, and the recollection of them, lest in it your retain them; and cast the recollection of your having cast your sins away, lest in it you retain them.

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1 month 3 days ago

They say in the grave there is peace, and peace and the grave are one and the same.

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Act I.

Manuscript culture is conversational if only because the writer and his audience are physically related by the form of publication as performance.

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(p. 96)

The destiny of the spiritual World, and, - since this is the substantial World, while the physical remains subordinate to it, or, in the language of speculation, has no truth as against the spiritual, - the final cause of the World at large, we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit, and ipso facto, the reality of that freedom.

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2 months 1 week ago

Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.

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Spinoza, Correspondence, 146, Letter xix
2 weeks 3 days ago

There continue to be complex debates about what Nietzsche understood truth to be. Quite certainly, he did not think, in pragmatist spirit, that beliefs are true if they serve our interests or welfare: we have just seen some of his repeated denials of this idea. The more recently fashionable view is that he was the first of the deniers, thinking that there is no such thing as truth, or that truth is what anyone thinks it is, or that it is a boring category that we can do without. This is also wrong, and more deeply so. Nietzsche did not think that the ideal of truthfulness went into retirement when its metaphysical origins were discovered, and he did not suppose, either, that truthfulness could be detached from a concern for the truth. Truthfulness as an ideal retains its power, and so far from his seeing truth as dispensable or malleable, his main question is how it can be made bearable.

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p. 16

It is the medium that shapes and controls the scale and form of human association and action.

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(p. 9)
4 weeks 1 day ago

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.

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