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3 months 2 weeks ago

Since space is continuous, it follows that there must be an immediate community of feeling between parts of mind infinitesimally close together. Without this, I believe it would have been impossible for any co-ordination to be established in the action of the nerve-matter of one brain.

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2 weeks 2 days ago

Hence the Pythagoreans in their theology called it sometimes "universe," sometimes "heaven," sometimes "all," sometimes "Fate" and "eternity," "power" and "trust" and "Necessity," "Atlas" and "unwearying," and simply "God" and "Phanes" and "sun."They called it "universe," because all things are arranged by it both in general and in particular, and because it is the most perfect boundary of number, in the sense that "decad" is, as it were, "receptacle," just as heaven is the receptacle of all things, they called it "heaven" and, among the Muses, "Ourania."

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On the Decad
2 weeks 4 days ago

Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in the now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The world is rejuvenated, but as Heine so wittily remarked, it was rejuvenated by romanticism to such a degree that it became a baby again.

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3 months 1 week ago

Subjective reason ... is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalized mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion.

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p. 12.
3 months 2 weeks ago

To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.

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p. 20.
4 months 2 weeks ago

The world is full of conflicts; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and anti-Communism. Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire. We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.

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5 months 4 days ago

I became evil for no reason. I had no motive for my wickedness except wickedness itself. It was foul, and I loved it. I loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.

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II, 4
3 months 2 weeks ago

A heart without music is like beauty without melancholy.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.

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4 weeks 1 day ago

The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experience retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

... people only count their misfortunes; their good luck they take no account of. But if they were to take everything into account, as they should, they'd find that they had their fair share of it.

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Part 2, Chapter 6 (tr. ?)
3 months 1 week ago

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

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Luke 4:18-19 NIV
4 months 2 weeks ago

Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

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p. 216
3 months 1 week ago

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.

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A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
4 months 3 weeks ago

Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.

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Advice to a young girl, 22 June 1830
2 months 2 weeks ago

There is no single speech nor article in which it is not said that the purpose of all these orgies is the peace of Europe. At a dinner given by the representatives of French literature, all breathe of peace. M. Zola, who, a short time previously, had written that war was inevitable, and even serviceable; M. de Vogue, who more than once has stated the same in print, say, neither of them, a word as to war, but speak only of peace. The sessions of Parliament open with speeches upon the past festivities; the speakers mention that such festivities are an assurance of peace to Europe. It is as if a man should come into a peaceful company, and commence energetically to assure everyone present that he has not the least intention to knock out anyone's teeth, blacken their eyes, or break their arms, but has only the most peaceful ideas for passing the evening.

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Ch. 1
3 months 2 weeks ago

They who bow to the enemy abroad will not be of power to subdue the conspirator at home.

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p. 18
2 months 2 weeks ago

An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

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Richard Dawkins on militant atheism,
4 months 1 week ago

I will now tell you who are assembled here the wise sayings of Mazda, the praises of Ahura and the hymns of the Good Spirit, the sublime truth which I see rising out of these flames. You shall therefore harken to the Soul of Nature. Contemplate the beams of fire with a most pious mind. Every one, both men and women, ought to-day to choose his creed. Ye offspring of renowned ancestors, awake to agree with us. So preached Zoroaster, the proph of the Parsis, in one of his earliest sermons nearly 3,500 years ago.

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p. 15 (Introduction), S. A. Kapadia
4 months 2 weeks ago

I strongly suspect that most of the great knowers of Suchness paid very little attention to art.... (To a person whose transfigured and transfiguring mind can see the All in every this, the first-rateness or tenth-rateness of even a religious painting will be a matter of the most sovereign indifference.) Art, I suppose, is only for beginners, or else for those resolute dead-enders, who have made up their minds to be content with the ersatz of Suchness, with symbols rather than with what they signify, with the elegantly composed recipe in lieu of actual dinner.

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3 months 1 day ago

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

I shall keep it [the manuscript] by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and of adding malicious foot-notes.

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Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
5 months 4 days ago

A man might say, "The things that are in the world are what God has made. ... Why should I not love what God has made?" ...Suppose, my brethren, a man should make for his betrothed a ring, and she should prefer the ring given her to the betrothed who made it for her, would not her heart be convicted of infidelity? ... God has given you all these things: therefore, love him who made them.

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Second Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), pp. 275-276
3 months 1 day ago

It may seem to be a long way from Blake's innocent talk of love and copulation to De Sade's need to inflict pain. And yet both are the outcome of a sexual mysticism that strives to transcend the everyday world. Simone de Beauvoir said penetratingly of De Sade's work that 'he is trying to communicate an experience whose distinguishing characteristic is, nevertheless its will to remain incommunicable'. De Sade's perversion may have sprung from his dislike of his mother or of other women, but its basis is a kind of distorted religious emotion.

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p. 90
2 months 2 weeks ago

Honest work is much better than a mansion.

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p. 82
3 months 2 weeks ago

A man does not kill himself, as is commonly supposed, in a fit of madness but rather in a fit of unendurable lucidity, in a paroxysm which may, if so desired, be identified with madness; for an excessive perspicacity, carried to the limit and of which one longs to be rid at all costs, exceeds the context of reason.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

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Chapter I, p. 471.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

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Social Aims; sometimes condensed to "What you do speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say."
3 months 2 weeks ago

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor - hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.

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p. 91e
4 months 2 weeks ago

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

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Act 4, sc. 5
4 months 2 weeks ago

I assert(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth [i.e., verification] of a scientific hypothesis...(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', in the sense of the probability calculus.

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4 months 1 week ago

Do not repeat slander; you should not hear it, for it is the result of hot temper.

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Maxim no. 23.
4 months 2 weeks ago

The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end.

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Ch. 4
2 months 2 weeks ago

The universal hypocrisy has so entered into the flesh and blood of all classes of our modern society, it has reached such a pitch that nothing in that way can rouse indignation. Hypocrisy in the Greek means "acting," and acting-playing a part-is always possible. Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand Variant Translation: Hypocrisy with good reason means the same as acting, and anybody can pretend - act a part.

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4 months 1 week ago

The organism does not have a point of view: the person or creature does.

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"Panpsychism" (1979), p. 189.
5 months 2 weeks ago

God is not needed to create guilt or to punish. Our fellow men suffice, aided by ourselves.

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4 months 1 week ago

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.

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(p. 107-108)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Ignorance is the mother of Devotion: A maxim that is proverbial, and confirmed by general experience. Look out for a people, entirely destitute of religion: If you find them at all, be assured, that they are but few degrees removed from brutes. What so pure as some of the morals, included in some theological system? What so corrupt as some of the practices, to which these systems give rise?

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Part XV - General corollary
3 months 4 days ago

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

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p. 23
2 weeks 4 days ago

I shall within a few days divest myself of the anxieties and the labors with which I have been oppressed, and retire with inexpressible delight to my family, my friends, my farms, and books. There I may indulge at length in that tranquillity and those pursuits from which I have been divorced by the character of the times in which I have lived, and which have forced me into the line of political life under a sense of duty and against a great and constant aversion to it.

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Letter to David Baillie Warden
3 months 3 weeks ago

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

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Book One, Chapter V.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 224
2 weeks 1 day ago

The intelligence of the universe is social.

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V, 30
4 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.

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p. 183
4 months 2 weeks ago

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

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Chapter 11 (p. 104)
5 months 2 weeks ago

Fate is not in man but around him.

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