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4 months 5 days ago

Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think.

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Book III, Ch. 4
2 months 6 days ago

The behaviour of individuals is the tool with which the organisation achieves its targets.

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p. 108.
3 months 2 days ago

The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.

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Chapter I.
4 months 1 day ago

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

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Chapter XI, Part II, p. 202 (See also Thorstein Veblen).
1 month 3 weeks ago

The new media are not bridges between man and nature - they are nature...The new media are not ways of relating us to the old world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will.

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Media as the New Nature, 1969, p. 14
1 month 4 weeks ago

You learn about life by the accidents you have, over and over again, and your father is always in your head when that stuff happens. Writing, most of the time, for most people, is an accident and your father is there for that, too. You know, I taught writing for a while and whenever somebody would tell me they were going to write about their dad, I would tell them they might as well go write about killing puppies because neither story was going to work. It just doesn't work. Your father won't let it happen.

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Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous", McSweeny's
1 month 4 days ago

Like other human freedoms, the freedoms embodied in market institutions are justified inasmuch as they meet human needs. Insofar as they fail to do this they can reasonably be altered. This is true not only of the rights that are involved in market institutions. It is true of all human rights.

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'Modus Vivendi' (p.36)
2 months 1 week ago

Ritual society is a society of rules. It is based not on virtues but on a passion for rules.

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4 months 1 week ago

When the Head and members are despised, then the whole Christ is despised, for the whole Christ, Head and body, is that just man against whom deceitful lips speak iniquity (Ps. 30:19).

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p.425
1 week 5 days ago

This is the worst trait of minds rendered arrogant by prosperity, they hate those whom they have injured.

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De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 33, line 6
3 months 1 week ago

Use examples; that such as thou teachest may understand thee the better!

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2 months 1 week ago

I believe in the possible realization of a world in which man can be much, even if he has little; a world in which the dominant motivation of existence is not consumption; a world in which "man" is the end, first and last; a world in which man can find the way of giving a purpose to his life as well as the strength to live free and without illusions.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.

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p. 86
4 months 5 days ago

The end of the republic is to enervate and to weaken all other bodies so as to increase its own body.

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Book 2, Ch. 3 (translation by Mansfield and Tarcov)
3 months 2 weeks ago

We should infer in the case of a beautiful dwelling-place that it was built for its owners and not for mice; we ought, therefore, in the same way to regard the universe as the dwelling-place of the gods.

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As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, iii. 10.
2 months 3 weeks ago

There can be no revolution without widespread and passionate destruction, a destruction salutary and fruitful precisely because out of it, and by means of it alone, new worlds are born and arise.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.

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Attributed to Russell in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists (2007), p. 346
2 months 4 weeks ago

I gave up caring about anything, and all the problems disappeared. And it was after that that I found out the truth. I learnt the truth last November - on the third of November, to be precise - and I remember every instant since.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not: For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect. But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things. But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.

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13:21-27 (KJV)
5 days ago

Not being able to ban sexuality altogether, Catholicism has tried to reduce it to a mere biological fact, allowing its use in marriage only for procreation. Unlike certain ancient traditions, Catholicism has recognized no higher value, not even a potential one, in the sexual experience taken in itself. There is lacking any basis for its transformation in the interests of a more intense life, to integrate and elevate the inner tension of two beings of different sexes, whereas it is in exactly these terms that one should conceive of a concrete "sacralization" of the union and the effect of a higher influence involved in the rite.

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p. 190
1 week 5 days ago

One crime has to be concealed by another.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.

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Great Jewish Short Stories, introduction to the Dell paperback edition
4 months 3 weeks ago

Economics is on the side of humanity now.

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2 weeks 6 days ago

We sometimes imagine, under the influence of Spenglerian philosophy or some other kind of "historical morphology," that we live in a similar age [to the Romans], the last witnesses of a condemned civilization. But condemned by whom? Not by God, but by some supposed "historical laws." For although we do not know any historical laws, we are in fact able of inventing them quite freely, and such laws, once invented, can then be realized in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies.

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Looking for the Barbarians
2 months 3 weeks ago

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

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Ch. 13: Freedom in Society
3 months 4 weeks ago

Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell. What is a Christian?

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1927
4 months 1 week ago

The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others.

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Patrologia Latina, vol. 37, p. 1922
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is not by genius, it is by suffering, and suffering alone, that one ceases to be a marionette.

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There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

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K 72
1 week 5 days ago

The object of preaching is, constantly to remind mankind of what mankind are constantly forgetting; not to supply the defects of human intelligence, but to fortify the feebleness of human resolutions.

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"The Judge That Smites Contrary to the Law: A Sermon Preached...March 28, 1824", in The Works of the Rev. Sydney Smith (1860) p. 428
3 months 4 weeks ago

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

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2 months 4 weeks ago

France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

The possibility of associating two or three hundred families in agricultural and manufacturing industry depends upon a system so entirely different from what now exists, that it will open to the reader a new social world. He must consequently, in the study which opens before him, follow the guide with confidence, bearing constantly in min the gigantic results which will flow from association. Such results are well worth the sacrifice of a few prejudices. Every sensible reader will be of this opinion, and will concur to follow the advice which I shall constantly give, namely, to neglect the form and style of presentation, and occupy himself solely with the substance of the theory, seeking to determine whether the process of association is really discovered or not.

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The Theory of Social Organization. Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier, p. 5.
3 months 3 days ago

That children dream not the first half year, that men dream not in some countries, with many more, are unto me sick men's dreams, dreams out of the Ivory gate, and visions before midnight.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

To found a family. I think it would have been easier for me to found an empire.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness. . . . I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory. . . . Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.

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3 months 3 weeks 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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1 week 1 day ago

To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it. It is to be able to use it as an instrument instead of being used by it.

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p. 11
5 days ago

What is the purpose of houses? It is to protect us from the wind and cold of winter, the heat and rain of summer, and to keep out robbers and thieves. Once these ends have been secured, that is all. Whatever does not contribute to these ends should be eliminated.

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Ch 20, as quoted in Van Norden, Bryan W. (2011). Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-60384-468-0.
1 month 3 weeks ago

The ways of thinking implanted by electronic culture are very different from those fostered by print culture. Since the Renaissance most methods and procedures have strongly tended towards stress on the visual organization of knowledge.

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1 month 1 week ago

Don't judge the future of a person based on his present conditions, because time has the power to change black coal to shiny diamond.

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1 week 6 days ago

The difficulty in our education up till now lies, for the most part, in the fact that knowledge did not refine itself into will, to application of itself, to pure practice. The realists felt the need and supplied it, though in a most miserable way, by cultivating idea-less and fettered "practical men." Most college students are living examples of this sad turn of events. Trained in the most excellent manner, they go on training; drilled they continue drilling.

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p. 25
1 week 1 day ago

Altogether, Jesus never behaves like a man wandering in a system of delusions. He reacts in absolutely normal fashion to what is said to Him, and to the events that concern Him. He is never out of touch with reality.

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Ch. 12 : Literary Work During My Medical Course, p. 133.
7 months 3 weeks ago

Anybody can become angry, that is easy, but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time, and for the right purpose, and in the right way, that is not within everybody's power and it is not easy.

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Affectation is a very good word when someone does not wish to confess to what he would none the less like to believe of himself.

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F 149
2 months 2 weeks ago

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.

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Jesus, Mark 16:16-18
3 months 3 days ago

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it.

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Chapter V

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