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8 months 2 days ago

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

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Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.
8 months 2 days ago

The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything... Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. he has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one... How can he be so nearly right, and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman.

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8 months 4 days ago

The law will never make men free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

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"Slavery in Massachusetts", 1854
6 months 2 weeks ago

The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
4 months ago

To-day, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Only this socially disorganized intellectual situation makes possible the insight, hidden until now by a generally stable social structure and the practicability of certain traditional norms, that every point of view is particular to a social situation.

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4 months 1 week ago

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.

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p. 162
6 months 3 weeks ago

When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.

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p. 28.
8 months 3 weeks ago

Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of their own.

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7 months 1 week ago

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Lindsay Mackay
4 months 1 week ago

When one says, for example, that superiority and inferiority is a formation to be found in every human association, though the proposition certainly involves very profound insight into the essence of human nature and human relationship, yet the assertion is so general that it affords little knowledge of particular societary formations. In order to reach such particular knowledge we must study separate types of superiority and inferiority, and we must master the special features of their formation, which in proportion to their definiteness of course lose generality of application.

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p. 169
6 months 3 weeks ago

Montaigne puts not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

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Signs, trans. R. McCleary (Evanston: 1964), p. 203
9 months 4 days ago

A Roman emperor sitting at the table surrounded by his bodyguard is a magnificent sight, but when the reason is fear, the magnificence pales. So also when the individual does not dare stand taciturnly by his word, does not stand freely and confidently on the pedestal of a conscious act, but is surrounded by a host of deliberations before and after that render him incapable of getting his eye on the action.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

These two states which it is necessary to know together in order to see the whole truth, being known separately, lead necessarily to one of these two vices, pride or indolence, in which all men are invariably led before grace, since if they do not remain in their disorders through laxity, they forsake them through vanity, so true is that which you have just repeated to me from St. Augustine, and which I find to a great extent; for in fact homage is rendered to them in many ways.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last, and the living one, and I became dead, but look! I am living forever and ever, and I have the keys of death and of the Grave.

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Revelation 1:17-18, NWT
8 months 3 days ago

One unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions.

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Ch. 14, p. 316 [2012 reprint]
4 months ago

Does the light of a lamp shine and keep its glow until its fuel is spent? Why shouldn't your truth, justice, and self-control shine until you are extinguished?

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XII. 15:294
4 months 3 weeks ago

The seeing eye! It is this that discloses the inner harmony of things; what Nature meant, what musical idea Nature has wrapped up in these often rough embodiments. Something she did mean. To the seeing eye that something were discernible. Are they base, miserable things? You can laugh over them, you can weep over them; you can in some way or other genially relate yourself to them; - you can, at lowest, hold your peace about them, turn away your own and others' face from them, till the hour come for practically exterminating and extinguishing them!

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6 months 1 day ago

The discarnate TV user lives in a world between fantasy and dream, and is in a typically hypnotic state, which is the ultimate form and level of participation.

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"A Last Look at the Tube." New York Magazine, 17 March 1978, p. 45-48
6 months 3 days ago

It will be said, "Patriotism has welded mankind into states, and maintains the unity of states." But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one's own state, when this produces terrible evils for all states and nations? For this same patriotism which welded mankind into states is now destroying those same states. If there were but one patriotism say of the English only then it were possible to regard that as conciliatory, or beneficent. But when, as now, there is American patriotism, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, in this event, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites.

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Patriotism and Government
4 months 2 days ago

The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

This Europe, which in its ruinous blindness is forever on the point of cutting its own throat, lies today in a great pincers, squeezed between Russia on one side and America on the other. From a metaphysical point of view, Russia and America are the same: the same dreary technological frenzy, the same unrestricted organization of the average man...

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4 months 2 weeks ago

All vices sink into our whole being, if we do not crush them before they gain a footing; and in like manner these sad, pitiable, and discordant feelings end by feeding upon their own bitterness, until the unhappy mind takes a sort of morbid delight in grief... In like manner, wounds heal easily when the blood is fresh upon them: they can then be cleared out and brought to the surface, and admit of being probed by the finger: when disease has turned them into malignant ulcers, their cure is more difficult.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Do you think that God will punish them for not practicing a religion which he did not reveal to them?

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No. 35. (Usbek writing to Gemchid)
8 months 4 days ago

A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous.

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Attributed to Russell at the end of Isaac Asimov's short story Franchise with no specific source given.
6 months 4 weeks ago

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Rather, power is most powerful, most stable, where it creates a feeling of freedom and where it does not need to resort to violence.

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7 months 1 week ago

Since I have spread my wings to purpose high, The more beneath my feet the clouds I see, The more I give the winds my pinions free, Spurning the earth and soaring to the sky.

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As quoted in "Giordano Bruno" by Thomas Davidson, in The Index Vol. VI. No. 36 (4 March 1886), p. 429
4 months 2 weeks ago

I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good.

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Alternate translation: I shall never be ashamed to go to a bad author for a good quotation. Chapter 11, Section 8
4 months 3 days ago

Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.

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Letter to Spencer Roane, 9 March 1821
4 months 3 weeks ago

Mencius went to see King Huei of Liang. The king said, "Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a distance of a thousand li, may I presume that you are provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?" Mencius replied, "Why must your Majesty use that word "profit"? What I am provided with, are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics.

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Book 1, part 1, as translated by James Legge in The Life and Works of Mencius (1875), p. 124
7 months 2 weeks ago

Love is a God, who cooperates in securing the safety of the city.

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As quoted in Deipnosophists by Athenaeus, xiii. 561c.
4 months ago

If mind is common to us, then also the reason, whereby we are reasoning beings, is common. If this be so, then also the reason which enjoins what is to be done or left undone is common. If this be so, law also is common; if this be so, we are citizens; if this be so, we are partakers in one constitution; if this be so, the Universe is a kind of Commonwealth.

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IV, 4 (as translated by ASL Farquharson)
9 months ago

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

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III, 126, 3
7 months 4 weeks ago

The man described for us, whom we are invited to free, is already in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself. A 'soul' inhabits him and brings him to existence...the soul is the effect and instrument of political anatomy; the soul is the prison of the body.

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6 months 1 week ago

Philosophers today are as fond as ever of apriori arguments with ethical conclusions. One reason such arguments are always unsatisfying is that they always prove too much; when a philosopher 'solves' an ethical problem for one, one feels as if one had asked for a subway token and been given a passenger ticket valid for the first interplanetary passenger-carrying space ship instead.

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
4 months 4 days ago

Pain is not the only essence of our God, nor is hope in a future life or a life on this earth, neither joy nor victory. Every religion that holds up to worship one of these primordial aspects of God narrows our hearts and our minds. The essence of our God is STRUGGLE. Pain, joy, and hope unfold and labor within this struggle, world without end.

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8 months 1 week ago

Animals only follow their natural instincts; but man, unless he has experienced the influence of learning and philosophy, is at the mercy of impulses that are worse than those of a wild beast. There is no beast more savage and dangerous than a human being who is swept along by the passions of ambition, greed, anger, envy, extravagance, and sensuality.

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Translated by Beert C. Verstraete as On Education for Children, in The Erasmus Reader (University of Toronto Press: 1990), p. 73
8 months 4 days ago

Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.

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p. 4
8 months 1 week ago

Rejoice in the things that are present; all else is beyond thee.

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8 months 5 days ago

"How then shall they have the play-games you allow them, if none must be bought for them?" I answer, they should make them themselves, or at least endeavour it, and set themselves about it. ...And if you help them where they are at a stand, it will more endear you to them than any chargeable toys that you shall buy for them.

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Sec. 130
6 months 1 day ago

Obsolescence is the moment of superabundance.

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Yeats studies, Issue 2, Irish University Press, 1972, p. 135
8 months 4 days ago

I hear many condemn these men because they were so few. When were the good and the brave ever in a majority? Would you have had him wait till that time came? - till you and I came over to him? The very fact that he had no rabble or troop of hirelings about him would alone distinguish him from ordinary heroes. His company was small indeed, because few could be found worthy to pass muster. Each one who there laid down his life for the poor and oppressed was a picked man, culled out of many thousands, if not millions; apparently a man of principle, of rare courage, and devoted humanity; ready to sacrifice his life at any moment for the benefit of his fellow-man.

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8 months 4 days ago

...it is possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.

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Part I, Ch. 5: Communism and the Soviet Constitution
7 months 4 days ago

The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.

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Part 1, Chapter 8 (tr. David Magarshack, 1950) The best definition of man is: a biped, ungrateful.
4 months 3 weeks ago

All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble ... A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.

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Bk. III, ch. 4.

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