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6 months 1 week ago

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

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6 months 1 week ago

Is this fight against history part of the fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal faculties and forces might develop-faculties and forces that might hinder the total coordination of the individual with the society? Remembrance of the Fast may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory. Remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, a mode of "mediation" which breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again.

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p. 98
7 months 2 weeks ago

Rhodora! if the sages ask thee why This charm is wasted on the earth and sky, Tell them, dear, that, if eyes were made for seeing, Then beauty is its own excuse for Being.

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The Rhodora
7 months 3 days ago

But Hermotimus, the Colophonian, rendered more abundant what was formerly published by Eudoxus and Theætetus, and invented a multitude of elements, and wrote concerning some geometrical places. But Philippus the Mendæan, a disciple of Plato, and by him inflamed in the mathematical disciplines, both composed questions, according to the institutions of Plato, and proposed as the object of his enquiry whatever he thought conduced to the Platonic philosophy.

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Ch. IV.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination.

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7 months 1 day ago

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23-24, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 370
6 months 3 weeks ago

The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.

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Section 51
7 months 2 weeks ago

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

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3 months 1 week ago

We are inclined to overemphasize the material influences in history. The Russians especially make this mistake. Intellectual values and ethnic influences, tradition and emotional factors are equally important. If this were not the case, Europe would today be a federated state, not a madhouse of nationalism.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

I believe that the early success and reputation of Carlyle's French Revolution, were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it in the Review. Immediately on its publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to preoccupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote and published a review of the book, hailing it as one of those productions of genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves.

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(p. 217)
5 months 3 weeks ago

The philosophy of physics is continuous with physics itself. Just as certain issues in the Foundations of Mathematics have been discussed by both mathematicians and by philosophers of mathematics, so certain issues in the philosophy of physics have been discussed by both physicists and by philosophers of physics. And just as there are issues of a more epistemological kind that tend to concern philosophers of mathematics more than they do working mathematicians, so there are issues that concern philosophers of physics more than they do working physicists.

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Philosophy of physics
6 months 1 week ago

In the state of nature, Profit is the measure of Right.

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De Cive
4 months 2 weeks ago

Therefore tolerance of diversity, of people that don't believe the same thing that you do, has always been at the core of this pragmatic project to enable diverse populations to live with one another.

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9:00
5 months 4 weeks ago

Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.

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K 13
7 months 3 weeks ago

The best is the enemy of the good.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Final causes or intentions are the torment of modern philosophy, which neglects nothing to get rid of them. From this, among other things, comes its great axiom: nature creates only individuals. Indeed, since all classification supposes order, this philosophy has denied classes to deny order. In order to establish this marvellous reasoning, it fixes its suspicious eyes on the differences between beings to dispense itself from turning them to their similarities. It does not want to recognize that nuances between classes and individuals constitute another order, and that diversity in resemblance supposes intention more visibly than mere resemblance.

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6 months 4 days ago

In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed creativity; and [[God] is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed The Absolute. In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 2.
3 months 1 week ago

Exactly. Paradox of tolerance. This is why culture itself is not above universal judgement.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Scientific writing is abhorrently stylized and places a premium on poor quality.

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6 months 2 days ago

Station, power, wealth-how inadequate they have proved! How useless and insecure!

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7 months 2 weeks ago

I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.

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Act 11, sc. 2
7 months 1 week ago

When my ability to reason shows me that the suffering of another being is very similar to my own suffering and matters just as much to that other being as my own suffering matters to me, then my reason is showing me something that is undeniably true. ... The perspective on ourselves that we get when we take the point of view of the universe also yields as much objectivity as we need if we are to find a cause that is worthwhile in a way that is independent of our own desires. The most obvious such cause is the reduction of pain and suffering, wherever it is to be found.

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p. 238
4 months 4 weeks ago

So what is the alternative to traditional anthropocentric ethics? Antispeciesism is not the claim that "All Animals Are Equal", or that all species are of equal value, or that a human or a pig is equivalent to a mosquito. Rather the antispeciesist claims that, other things being equal, equally strong interests should count equally. Experiences that are subjectively negative or positive in hedonic tone to the same degree must count for the same.

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"The Antispeciesist Revolution", Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 26 Jul. 2013
8 months 2 weeks ago

But it is clear there is a difference in the ends proposed: for in some cases they are activities, and in others results beyond the mere activities, and where there are certain ends beyond and beside the actions, the results are naturally superior to the activities. Now, as there are numerous kinds of actions and numerous arts and sciences, it follows that the ends are also various. Thus the end of the healing art is health, of ship-building ships, of strategy victory, of economy wealth.

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6 months 1 week ago

Freedom of thought and of expression are not mere rights to be claimed. They have their roots deep in the existence of individuals as developing careers in time. Their denial and abrogation is an abdication of individuality and a virtual rejection of time as opportunity.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Love is a severe critic. Hate can pardon more than love.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 159
7 months 2 weeks ago

A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.

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Quotation and Originality
7 months 2 weeks ago

Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

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Merlin's Song, II
5 months 3 weeks ago

But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions: since the Comets range over all parts of the heavens, in very eccentric orbits. For by that kind of motion they pass easily through the orbs of the Planets, and with great rapidity; and in their aphelions, where they move the slowest, and are detain'd the longest, they recede to the greatest distances from each other, and thence suffer the least disturbance from their mutual attractions.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Inuring children gently to suffer some degrees of pain without shrinking, is a way to gain firmness to their minds, and lay a foundation for courage and resolution in the future part of their lives.

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Sec. 115
3 months 2 weeks ago

The bank mania is one of the most threatening of these imitations. It is raising up a moneyed aristocracy in our country which has already set the government at defiance, and although forced at length to yield a little on this first essay of their strength, their principles are unyielded and unyielding. These have taken deep root in the hearts of that class from which our legislators are drawn, and the sop to Cerberus from fable has become history. Their principles lay hold of the good, their pelf of the bad, and thus those whom the Constitution had placed as guards to its portals, are sophisticated or suborned from their duties.

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Letter to Josephus B. Stuart (May 10, 1817) ME 15:112; reported in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Andrew A. Lipscomb (1904), vol. 15, p. 112
8 months 2 days ago

Five rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error.

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8 months 1 week ago

The cautious seldom err.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Freedom is only necessity understood.

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The Dilemma of Determinism, 1884
6 months 1 week ago

The Thou encounters me by grace - it cannot be found by seeking. But that I speak the basic word to it is a deed of my whole being, is my essential deed.

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6 months 1 week ago

The historical world, in so far as it is built, organized, and shaped by the conscious activity of thinking subjects, is a realm of mind. But the mind is fully realized and exists in its true form only when it indulges in its proper activity, namely, in art, religion, and philosophy.

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P. 87
5 months 4 weeks ago

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

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E 11
4 months 4 days ago

... the only contestant who can confidently enter the lists is the man who has seen his own blood, who has felt his teeth rattle beneath his opponent's fist, who has been tripped and felt the full force of his adversary's charge, who has been downed in body but not in spirit, one who, as often as he falls, rises again with greater defiance than ever.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?

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Crabbed Age and Youth.
6 months 5 days ago

If philosophy is still necessary, it is so only in the way it has been from time immemorial: as critique, as resistance to the expanding heteronomy, even if only as thought's powerless attempt to remain its own master and to convict of untruth, by their own criteria, both a fabricated mythology and a conniving, resigned acquiescence. ... It is incumbent upon philosophy ... to provide a refuge for freedom. Not that there is any hope that it could break the political tendencies that are throttling freedom throughout the world both from within and without and whose violence permeates the very fabric of philosophical argumentation.

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p. 10
6 months 3 weeks ago

General ideas are no proof of the strength, but rather of the insufficiency of the human intellect.

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Book One, Chapter III.
4 months 2 weeks ago

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ...Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.

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International Press Institute Association, London
6 months 1 week ago

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.

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p. 97

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