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1 month 3 days ago

My interests drew me in different directions. On the one hand I was powerfully attracted by science, with its truths based on facts; on the other hand I was fascinated by everything to do with comparative religion. [...] In science I missed the factor of meaning; and in religion, that of empiricism.

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p. 72
2 weeks 5 days ago

The God idea is growing more impersonal and nebulous in proportion as the human mind is learning to understand natural phenomena and in the degree that science progressively correlates human and social events.

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2 months 1 week ago

Technology discloses the active relation of man towards nature, as well as the direct process of production of his very life, and thereby the process of production of his basic societal relations, of his own mentality, and his images of society, too.

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Vol. I, Ch. 13: "Machinery and Big Industry".
2 months 2 days ago

But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"

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§ 504
3 weeks 6 days ago

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
2 months 2 weeks ago

Let me mention another requirement for a better understanding of Holy Scripture. I would suggest that you read those commentators who do not stick so closely to the literal sense. The ones I would recommend most highly after St. Paul himself are Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Too many of our modern theologians are prone to a literal interpretation, which they subtly misconstrue.

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p.37
1 month 1 week ago

When we speak of the commerce with our [American] colonies, fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

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2 months 5 days ago

All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.

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Letter X
2 months 2 weeks ago

A penny saved is of more value than a penny paid out.

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What Luther Says, Section on "Life, Human," No. 2438. Rules for a Thrifty Life. 2, p. 784
2 months 5 days ago

To shoot down a European is to kill two birds with one stone, to destroy an oppressor and the man he oppresses at the same time.

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From the introduction to The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon.
1 month 2 days ago

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

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2 weeks 5 days ago

We might liken the 'two selves' to Laurel and Hardy. Ollie is the objective mind, 'you'. Stan is the subjective mind, the 'hidden you'. But Stan happens to be in control of your energy supply. So if you wake up feeling low and discouraged, you (Ollie) tend to transmit your depression to Stan, who fails to send you energy, which makes you feel lower than ever. This vicious circle is the real cause of most mental illness.

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p. 121
4 weeks 1 day ago

Desire, to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man; so that Man is distinguished, not only by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 26
2 months 1 week ago

In wildness is the preservation of the world. Every tree sends its fibers forth in search of the Wild. The city imports it at any price. Men plow and sail for it. From the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.

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1 month 1 week ago

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 338
1 week 2 days ago

Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.

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Chapter 3
2 months 1 week ago

There is no virtue they should be excited to, nor fault they should be kept from, which I do not think they may be convinced of; but it must be by such reasons as their age and understandings are capable of, and those propos'd always in very few and plain words.

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Sec. 81
1 month 2 days ago

No one has the audacity to exclaim: "I don't want to do anything!" - we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions.

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2 months 1 week ago

In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described.

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Ch. 16: Descriptions
2 months 6 days ago

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

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Reader's Digest, 1934
2 months 1 week ago

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.

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Chapter II, Part II, p. 896.
1 month 6 days ago

History is mere Empiricism; it has only facts to communicate, and all its proofs are founded upon facts alone. To attempt to rise to Primeval History on this foundation of fact, or to argue by this means how such or such a thing might have been, and then to take for granted that it has been so in reality,is to stray beyond the limits of History, and produce an a priori History; just as the Philosophy of Nature, referred to in our preceding lecture, endeavoured to find an a priori Science of Physics.

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p. 140
1 month 1 week ago

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

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No. 1, volume v, p. 331
2 months 5 days ago

And when we speak of "abandonment" - a favorite word of Heidegger - we only mean to say that God does not exist and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence to the end.

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pp. 32-33
2 weeks 5 days ago

Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?

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p. 17
1 month 3 weeks ago

Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 45
2 weeks 5 days ago

He was a man born into a world dominated by scientific materialism. His objection to this materialism was not merely intellectual, or even egotistical (the feeling 'If the world is wholly material, then I can't be very important'). It was the feeling that man is cut off from his inner powers by this superficial attitude.

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p. 166
3 weeks 1 day 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
2 months 3 weeks ago

Man has three ways of acting wisely. First, on meditation; that is the noblest. Secondly, on imitation; that is the easiest. Thirdly, on experience; that is the bitterest.

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3 weeks 6 days ago

Whoever abhors the name and fancies that he is godless - when he addresses with his whole devoted being the Thou of his life that cannot be restricted by any other, he addresses God.

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4 weeks 1 day ago

Whoever shall find the interpretation of these words shall not taste of death. (1) I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

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(John 8:49-51)
1 month 3 days ago

Sometimes I had an overwhelming urge to speak, not about that, but only to hint that there were some curious things about me which no one knew of. I wanted to find out whether other people had undergone similar experiences. I never succeeded in discovering so much as a trace of them in others. As a result, I had the feeling that I was either outlawed or elect, accursed or blessed.

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p. 41
2 months 3 weeks ago

For human beings, the measure of every action is the impression of the senses.

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Book I, ch. 28, 10
6 days ago

When the Indians complain that the English have enslaved them it is as if drunkards complained that the spirit-dealers who have settled among them have enslaved them. You tell them that they might give up drinking, but they reply that they are so accustomed to it that they cannot abstain, and that they must have alcohol to keep up their energy. Is it not the same thing with the millions of people who submit to thousands or even to hundreds, of others - of their own or other nations? If the people of India are enslaved by violence it is only because they themselves live and have lived by violence, and do not recognize the eternal law of love inherent in humanity.

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V
1 month 2 days ago

Try to be free: you will die of hunger.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Virtue (or the man of virtue) is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.

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To a Young Writer
2 weeks 5 days ago

The Outsider may be an artist, but the artist is not necessarily an Outsider.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
2 months 1 week ago

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

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"The Art of Controversy" as translated by T. Bailey Saunders
3 weeks 1 day ago

The combination of these two facts - the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it - constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality. Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.

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2 weeks 5 days ago

Every religious practice is an exercise in attention. A temple is the highest degree of attention.

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1 month 2 days ago

All morning, I did nothing but repeat: "Man is an abyss, man is an abyss." - I could not, alas, find anything better.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Do you suppose that you can do the things you do now, and yet be a philosopher? Do you suppose that you can eat in the same fashion, drink in the same fashion, give way to anger and to irritation, just as you do now?

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Book III, ch. 15, 10 (= Enchiridion 29, 10).
1 month 3 weeks ago

When the objective gaze is turned on human beings and other experiencing creatures, who are undeniably parts of the world, it can reveal only what they are like in themselves. And if the way things are for these subjects is not part of the way things are in themselves, an objective account, whatever it shows, will omit something. So reality is not just objective reality, and the pursuit of objectivity is not an equally effective method of reaching the truth about everything.

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"Subjective and Objective" (1979), pp. 212-213.
2 months 1 week ago

Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.

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E. Payne, trans., Vol. II, Ch. XVII: On Man's Need for Metaphysics
4 weeks ago

Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.

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2 months 1 week ago

I have always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

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Quoted in Alan Wood Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Skeptic: A Biography, Vol. 2 (1958), p. 233
1 month 3 weeks ago

In forming a store of good works thou shouldst be diligent, so that it may come to thy assistance among the spirits.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.

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2 months 1 week ago

Whatever concept one may hold, from a metaphysical point of view, concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment.

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Introduction

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