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1 month 5 days ago

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.

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Bk. II, ch. 4.
1 month ago

Everything over which I have might that cannot be torn from me remains my property; well, then let might decide about property, and I will expect everything from my might! Alien might, might that I leave to another, makes me an owned slave: then let my own might make me an owner. Let me then withdraw the might that I have conceded to others out of ignorance regarding the strength of my own might! Let me say to myself, what my might reaches to is my property; and let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as far as I entitle, that is, empower, myself to take.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 227, 228
1 week 4 days ago

For a man can lose neither the past nor the future; for how can one take from him that which is not his? So remember these two points: first, that each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle, and that it signifies not whether a man shall look upon the same things for a hundred years or two hundred, or for an infinity of time; second, that the longest lived and the shortest lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

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II, 14
1 month 1 week ago

While Trump is not going to be president, Trumpism is going to survive. ...The Democrats need to look very very carefully at those election results because ...the Republicans did well not necessarily because people love what they represent, but because they don't like what the Democrats represent... Unless they sort out what that is, they are going to continue to lose elections.

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28:52:00
4 months 1 week ago

Amy Kofman: Have you read all the books in here?Derrida: No, only four of them. But I read those very, very carefully.

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Derrida (2003 documentary), referring to his personal library
3 months 1 week ago

Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour.

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4 months 1 day ago

You must learn all things, both the unshaken heart of persuasive truth, and the opinions of mortals in which there is no true warranty.

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Frag B 1.28-30, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3
1 week 2 days ago

It's not about telling people how to be, outside of supporting ideals that teach us what to avoid.

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1 month 5 days ago

All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.

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3 months 1 week ago

Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Every great study is not only an end in itself, but also a means of creating and sustaining a lofty habit of mind.

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Ch. 4: The Study of Mathematics
3 months 1 week ago

Of all that makes us suffer, nothing - so much as disappointment - gives us the sensation of at last touching Truth.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

With a higher moral nature will come a restriction on the multiplication of the inferior.

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The Principles of Biology, Vol. II (1867), Part VI: Laws of Multiplication, ch. 8: Human Population in the Future
5 months 1 week ago

There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.

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3 months 1 week ago

What an incitation to hilarity, hearing the word goal while following a funeral procession!

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4 months 2 weeks ago

I conceive that the description so often given of a Benthamite, as a mere reasoning machine, though extremely inapplicable to most of those who have been designated by that title, was during two or three years of my life not altogether untrue of me. ...There is nothing very extraordinary in this fact: no youth of the age I then was, can be expected to be more than one thing, and this was the thing I happened to be. Ambition and desire of distinction, I had in abundance; and zeal for what I thought the good of mankind was my strongest sentiment, mixing with and colouring all others. But my zeal was as yet little else, at that period of my life, than zeal for speculative opinions. It had not its root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with mankind; though these qualities held their due place in my ethical standard. Nor was it connected with any high enthusiasm for ideal nobleness.

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(pp. 109-110)
4 months 1 week ago

What we do is to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use.

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§ 116
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 163
3 months 1 week ago

Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.

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Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
5 months 4 days ago

To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge. To practice with vigor is to be near to magnanimity. To possess the feeling of shame is to be near to energy.

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3 months 1 day ago

Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to discourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics how to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be hypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be pedantry of logic, or of esthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

The trial that begins Awards to him who wins The fairest prize to-day. And lo, the hour is here And summons you. Appear! Ye may no more delay. Come hear the herald's call Ye princes one and all. Many tribes of men Submissive to you then! How keen in war your swords! But now 'tis wisdom's turn; Now let your rivals learn How keen can be your words.

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1 week 4 days ago

When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can't tell good from evil. (Hays translation) Say to yourself in the early morning: I shall meet today inquisitive, ungrateful, violent, treacherous, envious, uncharitable men. All these things have come upon them through ignorance of real good and ill.

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II, 1

I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another, for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.

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Letter to Elbridge Gerry (26 January 1799); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 10, p. 78
2 months 3 weeks ago

These men traveling down to the City in the morning, reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for corn-plasters, Elliot's lines: We are the hollow men

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4 months 4 days ago

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.

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(trans. Durant 1939), Ch. XVI, §II, p. 353; citing C. Bakewell, Sourcebook in Ancient Philosophy, New York, 1909, "Fragment O" (Diels), p. 60
3 months 1 week ago

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.

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3 months 1 week ago

All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another and will again be resolved into their own roots, because the nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its nature alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.

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Letter to William Canby
4 months 2 weeks ago

Some modern philosophers have gone so far as to say that words should never be confronted with facts but should live in a pure, autonomous world where they are compared only with other words. When you say, 'the cat is a carnivorous animal,' you do not mean that actual cats eat actual meat, but only that in zoology books the cat is classified among carnivora. These authors tell us that the attempt to confront language with fact is 'metaphysics' and is on this ground to be condemned. This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.

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p. 110
2 months 3 weeks ago

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

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B 30
4 months 3 weeks ago

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

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Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
2 months 3 days ago

If...we look at the essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may consider each of them as the representative of a great principle, essential to the welfare of nations. One is, in an especial manner, the guardian of liberty, and the other, of order. One is the moving power, and the other the steadying power of the state. One is the sail, without which society would make no progress, the other the ballast, without which there would be small safety in a tempest.

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The Earl of Chatham', The Edinburgh Review (October 1844), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review: A New Edition (1852), p. 725
3 months 2 weeks ago

And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry.

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4 months 1 week ago

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason.

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1 week 6 days ago

What remains is the remarkable and, for many, certainly disquieting diagnosis that all genuine political theories presuppose man to be evil, i.e., by no means an unproblematic but a dangerous and dynamic being.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

The savage recognizes life only in himself and his personal desires. His interest in life is concentrated on himself alone. The highest happiness for him is the fullest satisfaction of his desires. The motive power of his life is personal enjoyment. His religion consists in propitiating his deity and in worshiping his gods, whom he imagines as persons living only for their personal aims.

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Chapter IV, Christianity Misunderstood by Men of ScienceChapter IV, Christianity Misunderstood by Men of Science

Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

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Ch.2, p. 74
3 months 1 week ago

Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?

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3 months 3 weeks ago

In the pursuit of truth we must beware of being misled by terms which we do not rightly understand. That is the chief point. Almost all philosophers utter the caution; few observe it.

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Paragraph 1
4 months 1 week ago

We will freedom for freedom's sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

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p. 52
1 month 3 weeks ago

True hedonic engineering, as distinct from mindless hedonism or reckless personal experimentation, can be profoundly good for our character. Character-building technologies can benefit utilitarians and non-utilitarians alike. Potentially, we can use a convergence of biotech, nanorobotics and information technology to gain control over our emotions and become better (post-)human beings, to cultivate the virtues, strength of character, decency, to become kinder, friendlier, more compassionate: to become the type of (post)human beings that we might aspire to be, but aren't, and biologically couldn't be, with the neural machinery of unenriched minds. Given our Darwinian biology, too many forms of admirable behaviour simply aren't rewarding enough for us to practise them consistently: our second-order desires to live better lives as better people are often feeble echoes of our baser passions.

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Utopian Neuroscience, BLTC Research, 2019
3 months 1 week ago

To have grazed every form of failure, including success.

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