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5 months 1 week ago

It is as if thinking itself had been reduced to the level of industrial processes, subjected to a close schedule-in short, made part and parcel of production.

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p. 21.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

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Part I, Essay 4: Of The First Principles of Government
4 months 2 weeks ago

You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.

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Maxim 262
7 months 2 weeks ago

As you hope to prove your own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain at once to absolute power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall be the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my own great value to you. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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2 weeks 5 days ago

You'd think things would change in a connected world.....at least for the moment....nothing has changed...

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5 months 1 week ago

There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude...we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

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No. 104. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
5 months 4 weeks ago

How can even the lowest mind, if he reflects at all the marvels of this earth and sky, the brilliant fashioning of plants and animals, remain blind to the fact that this wonderful world with its settled order must have a maker to design, determine and direct it?

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Tibawi, A.L. (ed. and tr.). (1965) Al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle) "Al-Ghazali's Tract on Dogmatic Theology". In: The Islamic Quarterly, 9:3-4 (1965), 3-4.
6 months 3 weeks ago

I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.

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Letter to Thomas Carlyle, 30 October 1841
2 months 2 weeks ago

That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.

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IV, 8

That man should think of God as nothingness must at first sight seem astonishing, must appear to us a most peculiar idea. But, considered more closely, this determination means that God is absolutely nothing determined. He is the Undetermined; no determinateness of any kind pertains to God; He is the Infinite. This is equivalent to saying that God is the negation of all particularity.

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Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, Lectures on the philosophy of religion, together with a work on the proofs of the existence of God. Vol 2 Translated from the 2d German ed. 1895 Ebenezer Brown Speirs 1854-1900, and J Burdon Sanderson p. 51

A philosophy without heart and a faith without intellect are abstractions from the true life of knowledge and faith. The man whom philosophy leaves cold, and the man whom real faith does not illuminate, may be assured that the fault lies in them, not in knowledge and faith. The former is still an alien to philosophy, the latter an alien to faith.

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3 months 1 week ago

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed to the haphazard (lukewarm) characterizes piety.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 127
4 months 3 weeks ago

The more is given the less the people will work for themselves, and the less they work the more their poverty will increase.

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Help for the Starving, Pt. III
6 months 3 weeks ago

Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.

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p. 219
5 months 2 weeks ago

We always love . . . despite; and that "despite" covers an infinity.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Now a man need not be very conversant in the writings of Chymists to observe, in how Laxe, Indefinite, and almost Arbitrary Senses they employ the Terms of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; of which I could never find that they were agreed upon any certain Definitions or setled Notions; not onely differing Authors, but not unfrequently one and the same, and perhaps in the same Book, employing them in very differing senses.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

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The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4
7 months 1 week ago

Hence, as Narcissus, by catching at the shadow, plunged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who is captivated by beautiful bodies, and does not depart from their embrace, is precipitated, not with his body, but with his soul, into a darkness profound and repugnant to intellect (the higher soul), through which, remaining blind both here and in Hades, he associates with shadows.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The spirits that I summoned up, I now can't rid myself of.

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Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
5 months 5 days ago

This provides us with our first major clue to the solutions of the problem. Even if the left cannot see the world as full of potentiality, it can hold on to the moments of insight and refuse to let go of them. If I know that present difficulties will end in triumph, I am un-discourageable; I merely have to know it intellectually. And if I can 'know' that reality actually has a third dimension, I shall never fall into the mistake of complaining that there is nothing new under the sun and that life is futile.

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p. 13
7 months 2 weeks ago

The rest of the story, to Grand's thinking, was very simple. The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love.

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5 months 1 week ago

The conflicts that tear society apart resemble the distinction between the concept and the particular facts subordinated to it. ... Whatever refuses to abide by the unity imposed by the principle of dominion manifests itself not as something indifferent to that principle, but as an infringement of logic: as a contradiction.

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p. 169
6 months 4 days ago

Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.

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As reported by Heraclides, son of Sarapion, and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 7, in the translation of C. D. Yonge
5 months 1 week 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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7 months 3 weeks ago

Evils draw men together.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

The even larger difference between rich and poor makes the latter even worse off, and this violates the principle of mutual advantage.

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Chapter II, Section 13, pg. 79
6 months 3 weeks ago

The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.

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Lectures XI, XII, AND XIII : "Saintliness"
5 months 1 week ago

Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. "It is only on the march and it time of war," says Robertson Smith in The Prophets of Israel, "that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a central authority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of national organization, centering in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thought of mainly as a host of Jehovah. the very name of Israel is martial, and means 'God (El) fighteth,' and Jehovah in the Old Testament is Iahwé Cebāôth - the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on the battlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but in primitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge in time of peace."

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3 months 1 week ago

If you find many people who are hard and indifferent to you in a world that you consider to be unhospitable and cruel-as often, indeed, happens to a tender-hearted, stirring young creature-you will also find there are noble hearts who will look kindly on you, and their help will be precious to you beyond price.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation.

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p. 57
5 months 2 weeks ago

One of the biggest paradoxes of our world: memories vanish when we want to remember, but fix themselves permanently in the mind when we want to forget.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

When public opinion changes, it is with the rapidity of thought.

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Letter to Colonel Charles Yancey (6 January 1816) ME 14:384
6 months 3 weeks ago

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 2
6 months 3 weeks ago

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
5 months 4 days ago

Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed. When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind - with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

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6 months 3 weeks ago

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

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Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
7 months 1 week ago

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.

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Opuscule II, De Regno On Kingship, c. 1267
5 months 2 weeks ago

Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

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17:11-12 (KJV)
6 months 3 weeks ago

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. (All that technology may say about ends is whether they are compatible with each other or realizable.)

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The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 22 The Unholy Alliance with Utopianism
5 months 3 weeks ago

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

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7 months 1 week ago

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them - that does not occur to them.

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p. 36e

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