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5 months 1 week ago

And why be scandalized by the infallibility of a man, of the Pope? What difference does it make whether it be a book that is infallible - the Bible, or a society of men - the Church, or a single man? Does it make any essential change in the rational difficulty? And since the infallibility of a book or of a society of men is not more rational than that of a single man, this supreme offense to the eyes of reason has to be postulated.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.

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5 months 4 days ago

The child shows its individual tendencies in its plays, in its questions, in its association with people and things. But it has to struggle with everlasting external interference in its world of thought and emotion. It must not express itself in harmony with its nature, with its growing personality. It must become a thing, an object. Its questions are met with narrow, conventional, ridiculous replies, mostly based on falsehoods; and, when, with large, wondering, innocent eyes, it wishes to behold the wonders of the world, those about it quickly lock the windows and doors, and keep the delicate human plant in a hothouse atmosphere, where it can neither breathe nor grow freely.

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5 months 1 week ago

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

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4 months 1 week ago

I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.

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Letter to his Niece, 15 September 1842
2 months 2 weeks ago

Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger.

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(Hays translation) XI, 18
5 months 2 weeks ago

Nature is an Æolian Harp, a musical instrument; whose tones again are keys to higher strings in us.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Empire is a very stimulating account of globalisation, but it is hopelessly wrong on two central issues. The state has not withered away. Strong states still exist-USA, China, Germany, etc-but the difference with the past is that there is now only one Empire and this is not the nebulous entity imagined by Cultural Studies, but a real, living organism and it has a name; the United States of America.

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Tariq Ali, How Bush Used 9/11 to Remap the World. CounterPunch, 8 July 2002.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.

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19:18-19 (KJV)
5 months 2 weeks ago

One grasps incomparably more things in boredom than by labor, effort being the mortal enemy of meditation.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Why did we obey? The question hardly occurred to us. We had formed the habit of deferring to our parents and teachers. All the same we knew very well that it was because they were our parents, because they were our teachers. Therefore, in our eyes, their authority came less from themselves than from their status in relation to us.

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Chapter I: Moral Obligation
6 months 3 weeks ago

Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry'd one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv'd, must also be resembling.

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Part 3, Section 16
5 months 2 weeks ago

The advantage of meditating upon life and death is being able to say anything at all about them.

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6 months 1 week ago

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera.

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Book IV, Ch. 7
6 months 2 weeks ago

Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free--nor error servile--but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.

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Vol. I, p. 60
6 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

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Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993) edited by James Carl Klagge and Alfred Nordmann
2 months 2 weeks ago

Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal.

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(Hays translation) IV, 4
5 months 1 week ago

A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.

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6 months 3 days ago

Rejoice not in another man's misfortune!

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

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Letter to M. de Menonville
2 months 2 weeks ago

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

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VI, 6
4 months 2 weeks ago

Relativity theory forced the abandonment, in principle, of absolute space and absolute time.

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p. 43
6 months 3 weeks ago

All mortals are equal; it is not their birth, But virtue itself that makes the difference.

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Ériphyle Act II, scene I (1732); these lines were also later used in Voltaire's Mahomet, Act I, scene IV (1741)
6 months 4 weeks ago

Furthermore, how will you endure the Romanists' terrible idolatries? It was not enough that they venerated the saints and praised God in them, but they actually made them into gods. They put that noble child, the mother Mary, right into the place of Christ. They fashioned Christ into a judge and thus devised a tyrant for anguished consciences, so that all comfort and confidence was transferred from Christ to Mary, and then everyone turned from Christ to his particular saint. Can anyone deny this? Is it not true?

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Luther's Works, 47:45; cf. also Anderson, Stafford & Burgess (1992), p. 29
7 months 3 weeks ago
It is not enough to prove something, one has also to seduce or elevate people to it. That is why the man of knowledge should learn how to speak his wisdom: and often in such a way that it sounds like folly!
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6 months 2 weeks ago

Criminals together. We're in hell, my little friend, and there's never any mistake there. People are not damned for nothing. 

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Act 1, sc. 5 Variant translation: Among murderers. We are in hell, my dear, there is never a mistake and people are not damned for nothing.
5 months 2 weeks ago

We must now turn to the question of how the existence of archetypes can be proved. Since archetypes are supposed to produce certain psychic forms, we must discuss how and where one can get hold of the material demonstrating these forms. The main source, then, is dreams, which have the advantage of being involuntary, spontaneous products of nature not falsified by any conscious purpose. By questioning the individual one can ascertain which of the motifs appearing in the dream are known to him... Consequently, we must look for motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer and yet behave functionally of the archetype known from historical sources.

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p. 48
6 months 3 weeks ago

Men did not make the earth... It is the value of the improvements only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property... Every proprietor owes to the community a ground rent for the land which he holds.

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Agrarian Justice
5 months 2 weeks ago

For a writer, to change languages is to write a love letter with a dictionary.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 59
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

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From speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, 1992-04-15.
3 months 1 week ago

Do I write out of love to men? No, I write because I want to procure for my thoughts an existence in the world; and, even if I foresaw that these thoughts would deprive you of your rest and your peace, even if I saw the bloodiest wars and the fall of many generations springing up from this seed of thought - I would nevertheless scatter it. Do with it what you will and can, that is your affair and does not trouble me.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 262, 263
6 months 3 weeks ago

Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.

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Principles of Mathematics (1903), p. 451
6 months 1 week ago

Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.

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Freeman (1948), p. 155
4 months 3 weeks ago

But one no longer wonders when one realizes that in the higher classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which they enjoy their privileges. The fashionable lady had certainly not reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to defend them, her husband would have no fortune, and she could not have her entertainments and her ball-dresses. And the artist certainly does not argue that he needs the capitalists and the troops to defend them, so that they may buy his pictures. But instinct, replacing reason in this instance, guides them unerringly. And it is precisely this instinct which leads all men, with few exceptions, to support all the religious, political, and economic institutions which are to their advantage.

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Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand
6 months 3 weeks ago

This miracle of analysis, this marvel of the world of ideas, an almost amphibian object between Being and Non-being that we call the imaginary number.

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Quoted in Singularités : individus et relations dans le système de Leibniz (2003) by Christiane Frémont
4 months 4 days ago

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

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p. 114
2 months 1 week ago

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect, I am not a Jew.

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Quoted in [http://books.google.com/books?id=dJMpQagbz_gC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA387#v=onepage&q&f=false Einstein: His Life and Universe] by Walter Isaacson, p. 387
4 months 1 week ago

I do not advocate burning your ship to get rid of the cockroaches.

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Said in reference to those who wished to abolish all religious teaching, rather than freeing state education from Church controls, in Critiques and Addresses (1873) p. 90
4 weeks ago

"Then we may begin by assuming that there are three classes of men—lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, lovers of gain?"
- Plato

See biography for Plato:
https://civilsimian.com/Plato

Read Plato's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/3/content

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

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Article on Government
7 months 1 week ago

I will speak in a low voice, just so as to let the judges hear me. For men are not wanting who would be glad to excite that people against me and against every eminent man; and I will not assist them and enable them to do so more easily.

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Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero; Translation by C.D. Yonge., 1856.
5 months 4 days ago

Forty years ago Germany proclaimed the slogan: "Germany above everything. Germany for the Germans, first, last and always. We want peace; therefore we must prepare for war. Only a well armed and thoroughly prepared nation can maintain peace, can command respect, can be sure of its national integrity." And Germany continued to prepare, thereby forcing the other nations to do the same. The terrible European war is only the culminating fruition of the hydra-headed gospel, military preparedness.

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10 months 3 weeks ago

In his seminar on The Ethic of Psychoanalysis, Lacan speaks of the role of the Chorus in classical tragedy: we, the spectators, came to the theatre worried, full of everyday problems, unable to adjust without reserve to the problems of the play, that is to feel the required fears and compassions - but not problem, there is a chorus, who feels the sorrow and the compassion instead of us - or, more precisely, we feel the required emotions through the medium of the chorus: 'You are then relieved of all worries, even if you do not feel anything, the Chorus will do so in your place.'

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Fear for the Other, fear for the other man's death is my fear, but is in no way an individual's taking fright.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 84
6 months 3 weeks ago

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.

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Chapter VIII.

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