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3 months 1 day ago

So the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes and ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. They did not believe in the Church doctrine, for they saw its insolvency; but neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Kelchitsky, and most of the sectarians in acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ, for that undermined their social position. And so these people remained without any religious view of life. And, having none, they could have no standard with which to estimate what was good and what was bad art, but that of personal enjoyment.

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1 month 2 days ago

I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

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18:14 NIV
4 months 3 weeks ago

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

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§ 217
3 months 3 weeks ago

The fake love of ressentiment man offers no real help, since for his perverted sense of values, evils like "sickness" and "poverty" have become goods.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 92
1 month 1 day ago

The Sensations are the 'Objective', the Ideas the 'Subjective' part of every act of perception or knowledge.

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4 months 2 days ago

All law relations are determined by this principle: each one must restrict his freedom by the possibility of the freedom of the other. ... My freedom is limited by the freedom of the other only on condition that he limits his freedom by the conception of mine. Otherwise he is lawless. Hence, if a law-relation is to result from my cognition of the other, the cognition and the consequent limitation of freedom must have been mutual. All law-relation between persons is, therefore, conditioned by their mutual cognition of each other, and is, at the same time, completely determined thereby.

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P. 173-175
1 month 3 weeks ago

Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science...

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5 months 2 days ago

What do you think of the aspect of the money market? ... This time, by the by, the thing has assumed European dimensions such as have never been seen before, and I don't suppose we'll be able to spend much longer here merely as spectators. The very fact that I've at last got round to setting up house again and sending for my books seems to me to prove that the 'mobilisation' of our persons is AT HAND.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (26 September 1856), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), pp. 71-72
1 month 2 weeks ago

For no man is free who is a slave to his body.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

The pessimist has to invent new reasons to exist every day: he is a victim of the "meaning" of life.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

What is not supposed to be my concern! First and foremost, the Good Cause, then God's cause, the cause of mankind, of truth, of freedom, of humanity, of justice; further, the cause of my people, my prince, my fatherland; finally, even the cause of Mind, and a thousand other causes. Only my cause is never to be my concern. "Shame on the egoist who thinks only of himself!"

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Cambridge 1995, p. 5
5 months 3 days ago

I am ashamed of belonging to the species Homo Sapiens...You & I may be thankful to have lived in happier times - you more than I, because you have no children.

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Letter to Lucy Donnelly, 6/23/1946
3 months 3 weeks ago

I was still "at the church door". Yet in belief, in the clarification of my philosophy, I had taken an important step. I no longer wavered between alternative views of the world, to be put on or taken off like alternative plays at the theatre. I now saw that there was only one possible play, the actual history of nature and of mankind, although there might well be ghosts among the characters and soliloquies among the speeches. Religions, all religions, and idealistic philosophies, all idealistic philosophies, were the soliloquies and the ghosts. They might be eloquent and profound. Like Hamlet's soliloquy they might be excellent reflective criticisms of the play as a whole. Nevertheless they were only parts of it, and their value as criticisms lay entirely in their fidelity to the facts, and to the sentiments which those facts aroused in the critic.

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p. 169
3 months 2 weeks ago

Considered as a whole, Hesse's achievement can hardly be matched in modern literature; it is the continually rising trajectory of an idea, the fundamentally religious idea of how to 'live more abundantly'. Hesse has little imagination in the sense that Shakespeare or Tolstoy can be said to have imagination, but his ideas have a vitality that more than makes up for it. Before all, he is a novelist who used the novel to explore the problem: What should we do with our lives? The man who is interested to know how he should live instead of merely taking life as it comes, is automatically an Outsider.

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p. 77

If you're looking for good men.....best I can do is, not terrible.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.

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p. 9
5 months 1 week ago

To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.

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Ch. 25
3 months 4 weeks ago

The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.

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5 months 1 week ago

There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.

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As quoted in Thomas More and Erasmus (1965) by Ernest Edwin Reynolds, p. 248 [citation needed]
4 months 3 weeks ago

Aim at being loved without being admired.

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p. 38e
1 month 3 weeks ago

Aesop's Fly, sitting on the axle of the chariot, has been much laughed at for exclaiming: What a dust I do raise!

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2 months 5 days ago

Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320
5 months 2 days ago

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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November 11, 1842
5 months 6 days ago

Extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme ignorance of self.

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Part IV, Prop. LV
2 months 3 weeks ago

The wine is bottled poetry.

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Pt. I, ch. II
4 months 3 weeks ago

The Democratic Party is beyond redemption at this point when it comes to seriously speaking to the needs of poor and working people... The neofascism that's escalating is predicated on the rottenness of a system in which the Democratic Party facilitates that frustration and desperation because it can't present an alternative... If America is unable to present an alternative to the Democratic Party, then we're going fascist.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

What I hold fast to is not one proposition but a nest of propositions.

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3 months 4 days ago

You need to know at least one foreign language well enough so that you can read the best literature that that language has produced in the original, and so you carry on a reasonable conversation and have dreams in that language. There are several reasons why this is crucial, but the most important is perhaps this: you can never understand one language until you understand at least two.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

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p. 7
3 months 2 weeks ago

The moment we choose to love we begin to move against domination, against oppression. The moment we choose to love we begin to move towards freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

It is characteristic of theistic "tolerance" that no one really cares what the people believe in, just so they believe or pretend to believe.

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4 weeks 1 day ago

What matter and opportunity [for thy activity] art thou avoiding? For what else are all these things, except exercises for the reason, when it has viewed carefully and by examination into their nature the things which happen in life? Persevere then until thou shalt have made these things thy own, as the stomach which is strengthened makes all things its own, as the blazing fire makes flame and brightness out of everything that is thrown into it.

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X, 31
5 months 4 weeks ago

It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.

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5 months 3 days ago

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a lover.

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5 months 6 days ago

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 530.
1 month 3 weeks ago

There is in our souls some native seed of reason, which, if nourished by good counsel and training, flowers into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted.

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Part 2
5 months 4 days ago

Truly, if the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him lies, were every one's persuasion, as indeed it is every one's duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politicks and morality by, the world would be much quieter, and better natur'd than it is.

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Sec. 116
1 month 1 week ago

There are two threats to reason, the opinion that one knows the truth about the most important things and the opinion that there is no truth about them. Both of these opinions are fatal to philosophy; the first asserts that the quest for truth is unnecessary, while the second asserts that it is impossible. The Socratic knowledge of ignorance, which I take to be the beginning point of all philosophy, defines the sensible middle ground between two extremes.

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"Western Civ," p. 18.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad, the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.

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p. 55
3 months 2 weeks ago

The English never abolish anything. They put it in cold storage.

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Ch. 36, January 19, 1945.
3 months 2 weeks ago

When I read the catechism of the Council of Trent, it seems as though I had nothing in common with the religion there set forth.

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6 months 3 days ago

Christ speaks of two debtors, one of whom owed much and the other little, and who both found forgiveness. He asks: Which of these two ought to love more? The answer: The one who has forgiven much. When you love much, you are forgiven much-and when you are forgiven much, you love much. See here the blessed recurrence of salvation in love!

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from another than from himself at different times.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Tentative efforts lead to tentative outcomes. Therefore, give yourself fully to your endeavors. Decide to construct your character through excellent actions, and determine to pay the price for a worthy goal. The trials you encounter will introduce you to your strengths. Remain steadfast... and one day you will build something that endures, something worthy of your potential.

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4 weeks 1 day ago

The nature of the universe is the nature of things that are. Now, things that are have kinship with things that are from the beginning. Further, this nature is styled Truth; and it is the first cause of all that is true.

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IX, 1
5 months 4 days ago

It is the duty of every patriot to protect his country from its government.

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Edward Abbey, "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government." as written in "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness" (Vox Clamantis en Deserto): Notes from a Secret Journal (1990), ISBN 0312064888
3 months 2 weeks ago

This, I feel, is missing a vital point: that the sceptic is often a totally honest person who, for perfectly good, sound reasons, simply cannot see a case for belief. In fact many -- like Courty Bryan -- admit that they would like to be convinced, but find it impossible.

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p. 77
5 months 1 day ago

I wanted for the moments in my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. It would be just as well to try to catch time by the tail.

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