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6 months 3 weeks ago

Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion.

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4 months 1 week ago

Adorn thyself with simplicity and with indifference towards the things which lie between virtue and vice. Love mankind. Follow God. The poet says that Law rules all. And it is enough to remember that law rules all.

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VII, 31
4 months 3 weeks ago

Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

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Variant translation, as quoted in TIME
8 months 2 weeks ago

TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Thus the habit of loving someone is nothing other than BENEVOLENCE by which we want the good of others, not for the profit that we gain from it, but because it is agreeable to us in itself. CHARITY is a general benevolence. And JUSTICE is charity in accordance with wisdom. ... so that one does not do harm to someone without necessity, and that one does as much good as one can, but especially where it is best employed.

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"A Dialogue" (after 1695), as quoted in The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 170
7 months 1 week ago

The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries.

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Act II.
4 months 1 week ago

We necessarily perceive bodies as 'without' us: the Idea of 'Externality' is one of the conditions of perception.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

If, being duke and peer, you would not be contented with my standing uncovered before you, but should also wish that I should esteem you, I should ask you to show me the qualities that merit my esteem. If you did this, you would gain it, and I could not refuse it to you with justice; but if you did not do it, you would be unjust to demand it of me; and assuredly you would not succeed, were you the greatest prince in the world.

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8 months 1 week ago

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

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A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 281
7 months 4 days ago

I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way beset with those that contend, on one side for too great Liberty, and on the other side for too much Authority, 'tis hard to passe between the points of both unwounded.

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The Epistle Dedicatory, Paris, April 15-25, 1651
6 months 1 week ago

The Churches as Churches-as institutions affirming their own infallibility-are anti-Christian institutions. Between the Churches as such and Christianity, not only is there nothing in common except the name, but they are two quite opposite and opposing principles. The one represents pride, violence, self-assertion, immobility and death: the other humility, penitence, meekness, progress, and life.

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Chapter III, Christianity Misunderstood by Believers
4 months 3 weeks ago

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

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Vol. II, letter to Lord Murray (29 September 1843), p. 501
7 months 1 week ago

Thus far, gentlemen, I have been insisting very strenuously upon what the most vulgar common sense has every disposition to assent to and only ingenious philosophers have been able to deceive themselves about. But now I come to a category which only a more refined form of common sense is prepared willingly to allow, the category which of the three is the chief burden of Hegel's song, a category toward which the studies of the new logico-mathematicians, Georg Cantor and the like, are steadily pointing, but to which no modern writer of any stripe, unless it be some obscure student like myself, has ever done anything approaching to justice.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.59
7 months 2 weeks ago

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.

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Chapter XIV.
4 months 1 week ago

All large political questions are at bottom economic questions.

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General Introduction
7 months 4 days ago

The present stage redefines the possibilities of man and nature in accordance with the new means available for their realization.

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p. 65
9 months 1 day ago

The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills. The wise are active; the virtuous are tranquil. The wise are joyful; the virtuous are long-lived.

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8 months 1 week ago

Some of your hurts you have cured, And the sharpest you still have survived, But what torments of grief you endured From evils which never arrived!

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Borrowing From the French
8 months 1 week ago

Every man is a new method.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 28
5 months 2 days ago

Let the modern eye look earnestly on that old midnight hour in St. Edmundsbury Church, shining yet on us, ruddy-bright, through the depths of seven hundred years; and consider mournfully what our Hero-worship once was, and what it now is!

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8 months 1 week ago

The plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments. Religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to religion's account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoretic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
4 months 1 week ago

Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does-or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?

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(Hays translation) IV, 20
7 months 1 week ago

If you were to destroy in mankind the belief in immortality, not only love but every living force maintaining the life of the world would at once be dried up. Moreover, nothing then would be immoral, everything would be lawful, even cannibalism.

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Book II, ch. 6 (trans. Constance Garnett) Pyotr Miusov, summarizing an argument made by Ivan at a social gathering
8 months 1 week ago

Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.

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Sec. 110
7 months 4 days ago

Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast. No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

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9:15-17 (KJV)
6 months 3 weeks ago

Ritual society is a society of rules. It is based not on virtues but on a passion for rules.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering.

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2.7 Why Be Negative?
8 months 1 week ago

Jupiter: I committed the first crime by creating men as mortals. After that, what more could you do, you the murderers?

Aegisteus: Come on; they already had death in them: at most you simply hastened things a little.

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Act 2
8 months 3 weeks ago

Thou hast made us for Thyself, and the heart never resteth till it findeth rest in Thee.

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p. 515
6 months 3 weeks ago

Once the good man was dead, one wore his hat and another his sword as he had worn them, a third had himself barbered as he had, a fourth walked as he did, but the honest man that he was - nobody any longer wanted to be that.

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C 36
8 months 1 week ago

Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right.

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Heroism
8 months 2 weeks ago

Never any good came out of female domination. God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoiled it all.

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-- Table Talk, quoted in Luther On "Woman"
8 months 1 week ago

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

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8 months 1 week ago

Listen to me: a family man is never a real family man. An assassin is never entirely assassin. They play a role, you understand. While a dead man, he is really dead. To be or not to be, right?

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Hugo, Act 4, sc. 6
6 months 1 week ago

Every person I met believes if there is any disagreement between the Koran and science, then the Koran wins. It's just utterly deplorable. These are now British children who are having their minds stuffed with alien rubbish. Occasionally, my colleagues lecturing in universities lament having undergraduate students walk out of their classes when they talk about evolution. This is almost entirely Muslims.

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Dawkins attacks 'alien rubbish' taught in Muslim faith schools, Daily Mail
7 months 4 days ago

The transition from Hegel to Marx is, in all respects, a transition to an essentially different order of truth, no to be interpreted in terms of philosophy. We shall see that all the philosophical concepts of Marxian theory are social and economic categories, whereas Hegel's social and economic categories are all philosophical concepts.

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P. 258
7 months 1 week ago

The world is chaos. Nothingness is the yet-to-be-born god of the world.

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Act IV
8 months 1 week ago

I have no need for good souls: an accomplice is what I wanted.

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Electra to her brother Orestes, Act 2
6 months 3 weeks ago

Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.

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p. 109
7 months 2 weeks ago

We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

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"Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot"
6 months 2 weeks ago

Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

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Laws of Motion, I
7 months 1 week ago

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

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7 months 1 week ago

Government was intended to suppress injustice, but it offers new occasions and temptations for the commission of it.

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"Summary of Principles" 2.4
6 months 1 week ago

The new media are not bridges between man and nature: they are nature.

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(p. 14)
6 months 3 weeks ago

As a black woman interested in feminist movement, I am often asked whether being black is more important than being a woman; whether feminist struggle to end sexist oppression is more important than the struggle to racism or vice versa. All such questions are rooted in competitive either/or thinking, the belief that the self is formed in opposition to an other. ... Most people are socialized to think in terms of opposition rather than compatibility. Rather than seeing anti-racist work as totally compatible with working to end sexist oppression, they often see them as two movements competing for first place.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Sometimes they do things wrong repeatedly and initiate the apology at their convenience....or not....sometimes just silence....

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7 months 1 week ago

Having always lived in fear of being surprised by the worst, I have tried in every circumstance to get a head start, flinging myself into misfortune long before it occurred.

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