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3 months 3 weeks ago

No one will deny that the soul of Pythagoras was sent to mankind from Apollo's domain, having either been one of his attendants, or more intimate associates, which may be inferred both from his birth, and his versatile wisdom.

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Ch. 2 : Youth, Education, Travels
8 months 3 weeks ago

Self-preservation has frequently knuckled under to that tremendous yearning to get even.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

The mere word 'design' by itself has no consequences and explains nothing. It is the barrenest of principles. The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer - and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.

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Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
7 months 3 weeks ago

The camera is as subjective as we are.

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
8 months 3 weeks ago

Generals are usually a conservative force who can be relied on to oppose social change.

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6 months 1 week ago

Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. ... It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

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"The Importance of Critical Discussion" in On the Barricades: Religion and Free Inquiry in Conflict (1989) by Robert Basil
7 months 3 weeks ago

We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

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Introduction
7 months 3 weeks ago

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

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Uses of Great Men
3 months ago

After years of study, consolidation, destruction, rebuilding, shifting, redefining….it eventually stops, I promise. It doesn’t go on forever, for all intents and purposes. Functionally we don’t have to know everything to know enough. We can know what is good, simply by knowing enough.

Studying objective reality, watching the consequences of subjectively driven beings setting certain principles but failing to evaluate the consequences of their insistence drove me to investigate to understand.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane.

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Grey Eminence, 1940
3 months 3 weeks ago

All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.

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Draft Constitution for Virginia
8 months 1 week ago

No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

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Book I, ch. 15, 7.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Speech is a mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

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Maxim 1073
7 months 3 weeks ago

"They have an engine called the Press whereby the people are deceived."

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Ch. 13 : They Have Pulled Down Deep Heaven on Their Heads
3 months 3 weeks ago

'Form' or 'figure' is space limited by boundaries. Space has necessarily 'three' dimensions, length, breadth, depth; and no ethers which cannot be resolved into these.

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7 months 3 days ago

Before anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything that always is or will ever be. He is the Eternal and embraces all times. He knows profoundly all events and He himself is everything. He creates everything beyond any beginning of time and beyond any limit of place and space. He is not subject to any numerical law, or to any law of measure or order. He himself is law, number, measure, limit without limit, end without end, act without form.

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VIII 2, as quoted in The Acentric Labyrinth (1995) by Ramon Mendoza
3 months 3 weeks ago

Why then dost thou choose to act in the same way? and why dost thou not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature, to those who cause them and those who are moved by them? And why art thou not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of things which happen to thee? for then thou wilt use them well, and they will be material for thee. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest; and remember...

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VII, 58
7 months 3 weeks ago

We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a 'state of grace.' All our actions must be directed, in the last analysis, to making ourselves passive in relation to the activity and the being of divine reality. We are, as it were, aeolian harps, endowed with the power either to expose themselves to the wind of the Spirit or to shut themselves away from it.

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7 months 1 day ago

Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations... In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.

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Book Two, Chapter V.
8 months 3 weeks ago

If the very essence of knowledge changes, at the moment of the change to another essence of knowledge there would be no knowledge, and if it is always changing, there will always be no knowledge, and by this reasoning there will be neither anyone to know nor anything to be known. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known if the beautiful, the good, and all the other verities exist I do not see how there is any likeness between these conditions of which I am now speaking and flux or motion.

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8 months 1 week ago

Rules for Axioms. I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admittied, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Do not ask who I am and do not ask me to remain the same: leave it to our bureaucrats and our police to see that our papers are in order. At least spare us their morality when we write.

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The Archaeology of Knowledge (1972), tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon)
6 months 1 week ago

Capitalism has brought about the emancipation of collective humanity with respect to nature. But this collective humanity has itself taken on with respect to the individual the oppressive function formerly exercised by nature.

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p. 140
7 months 4 weeks ago

To Americans. That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The friendship of one wise man is better than the friendship of a host of fools.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

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Him with His Foot in His Mouth, from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4], p. 11
7 months 3 weeks ago

I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

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"The Emotional Factor"
7 months 3 weeks ago

Only the skilled can judge the skilfulness, but that is not the same as judging the value of the result.

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A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942), Chapter 2: "Is Criticism Possible?"
7 months 3 weeks ago

Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange,because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 93.
1 month 4 days ago

I feel so lucky to have gone from birth to death (almost....lol) never having been caught in or drafted into a war. As a student of history, and even the present.... I feel so lucky.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal constitution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities, of citizens of the United States; and, in the mean time, they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.

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Louisiana Treaty of Cession, Art. III
7 months 3 weeks ago

There are two laws discrete Not reconciled, Law for man, and law for thing.

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Ode: Inscribed to W. H. Channing, st. 9
6 months 1 week ago

The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the "chosen people".

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Section 2
8 months 4 days ago

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.

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Book III, Ch. 12. Of Physiognomy
6 months 1 week ago

Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making man a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion.

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6 months 1 week ago

Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

I have no faith in precision: ...simplicity and clarity are values in themselves, but not... [of] precision or exactness...

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6 months 3 weeks ago

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary principles as would have disgraced boys at school; but this declaration of rights was worse than trifling and pedantic in them; as by their name and authority they systematically destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration they subverted the state; and brought on such calamities as no country, without a long war, has ever been known to suffer, and which may in the end produce such a war, and perhaps, many such.

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Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1790), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 358
3 months 3 weeks ago

Do not listen to the reasoners; there has been too much reasoning in France, and reasoning has banished reason. Put aside your fears and reservations, and trust the infallible instinct of your conscience. Do you want to redeem yourselves in your own eyes? Do you want to acquire the right of self-esteem? Do you want to accomplish a sovereign act? . . . Recall your sovereign.

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Chapter VIII, p. 76
3 months 3 weeks ago

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

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1 month 1 day ago

The more an ideology (religion) avoids reality or adds its own context the more masturbatory and opportunistic it becomes. Spend one minute to discipline yourself and you'll come up with basic justice every time. That basic justice transcends identity particulars (religion).

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6 months 1 week ago

What would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage-workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

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6 months 5 days ago

In the process of decision those alternatives are chosen which are considered to be appropriate means of reaching desired ends. Ends themselves, however, are often merely instrumental to more final objectives. We are thus led to the conception of a series, or hierarchy, of ends. Rationality has to do with the construction of means-ends chains of this kind.

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p. 62.
6 months 3 weeks ago

It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

By 1204, the only place where the entire body of Greek learning existed, still intact, was Constantinople. As a result of the crusaders' conquest, however, Constantinople was ruthlessly pillaged and destroyed and almost all the great treasures of ancient Greek learning were lost forever. It is because of that sack, for instance, that we have only seven plays left out of the better than one hundred written by Sophocles. The tragedy of 1204 can never be undone and for all of time, only bits and pieces of the marvelous Greek world can be known to us.

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