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6 months 2 weeks ago

The purpose of the State is, as we have already shown in our last lecture, no other than that of the Human Race itself:-to order all its relations according to the Laws of Reason. It is only after the Age of Reason as Science shall have been traversed, and we shall have arrived at the Age of Reason as Art, that the State can reflect upon this purpose with clear consciousness. Till then it constantly promotes this purpose, but without its own knowledge, or free pre meditated design; prompted thereto by the natural law of the development of our Race, even while it has a totally different purpose in view;-with which purpose of its own, Nature has indissolubly bound up the purpose of the whole Race.

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p. 168
3 months 1 week ago

If any man can convince me and bring home to me that I do not think or act aright, gladly will I change; for I search after truth, by which man never yet was harmed. But he is harmed who abideth on still in his deception and ignorance. Variant translation: If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one ever was truly harmed. Harmed is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance.

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VI, 21
4 months 3 weeks ago

Instead of enabling humans to improve their lot, science degrades the natural environment in which humans must live. Instead of enabling death to be overcome, it produces ever more powerful technologies of mass destruction. None of this is the fault of science; what it shows is that science is not sorcery. The growth of knowledge enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are.

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Sweet Morality (p. 235)

All vices sink into our whole being, if we do not crush them before they gain a footing; and in like manner these sad, pitiable, and discordant feelings end by feeding upon their own bitterness, until the unhappy mind takes a sort of morbid delight in grief... In like manner, wounds heal easily when the blood is fresh upon them: they can then be cleared out and brought to the surface, and admit of being probed by the finger: when disease has turned them into malignant ulcers, their cure is more difficult.

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3 months 1 week ago

Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.

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X, 16
3 months 1 week ago

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

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7 months 2 weeks ago

We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 37
5 months 4 weeks ago

What most people in our culture mean by being lovable is essentially a mixture between being popular and having sex appeal.

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Ch. 1
7 months 2 weeks ago

For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Again, defenders of utility often find themselves called upon to reply to such objections as this-that there is not time, previous to action, for calculating and weighing the effects of any line of conduct on the general happiness. This is exactly as if any one were to say that it is impossible to guide our conduct by Christianity, because there is not time, on every occasion on which anything has to be done, to read through the Old and New Testaments. The answer to the objection is, that there has been ample time, namely, the whole past duration of the human species. During all that time mankind have been learning by experience the tendencies of actions.

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Ch. 2
6 months 3 weeks ago

How can even the lowest mind, if he reflects at all the marvels of this earth and sky, the brilliant fashioning of plants and animals, remain blind to the fact that this wonderful world with its settled order must have a maker to design, determine and direct it?

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Tibawi, A.L. (ed. and tr.). (1965) Al-Risala al-Qudsiyya (The Jerusalem Epistle) "Al-Ghazali's Tract on Dogmatic Theology". In: The Islamic Quarterly, 9:3-4 (1965), 3-4.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add "within the limits of the law" because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

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Letter to Isaac H. Tiffany
7 months 6 days ago

If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?

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Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 5
3 months 2 weeks ago

To prevent government from becoming corrupt and tyrannous, its organization and methods should be as simple as possible, its functions be restricted to those necessary to the common welfare, and in all its parts it should be kept as close to the people and as directly within their control as may be.

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Ch. 17 : The Functions of Government
7 months 2 weeks ago

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

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Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
7 months 2 weeks ago

Another thing wherein they shew their love of dominion, is, their desire to have things to be theirs: They would have propriety and possession, pleasing themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right that they thereby have, to dispose of them as they please. He that has not observ's these two humours working very betimes in children, has taken little notice of their actions: And he who thinks that these two roots of almost all the injustice and contention that so disturb human life, are not early to be weeded out, and contrary habits introduc'd, neglects the proper season to lay the foundations of a good and worthy man.

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Sec. 105
7 months 2 weeks ago

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

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Old Age
7 months 3 days ago

Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous.

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Aemilius Paulus 26 (Tr. Stewart and Long)
6 months 1 week ago

We can only learn to love by loving.

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The Bell (1958), ch. 19; 2001, p. 219.
6 months 1 week ago

Utopia is a mixture of childish rationalism and secularized angelism.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

How can anyone see the only way the world can be saved and not be forced to weep?

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6 months 1 week ago

Freedom is the absolute right of every human being to seek no other sanction for his actions but his own conscience, to determine these actions solely by his own will, and consequently to owe his first responsibility to himself alone.

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As quoted in Anarchism: From Theory to Practice, Daniel Guérin, New York: NY, Monthly Review Press (1970) p. 31
6 months 1 week ago

Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

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21:27-42 and 44 (KJV)
1 month 1 week ago

I'm not sure where this answer falls, but ethics, productive morality, justice, fairness and goodness are balanced measures of human life. No doubt this is truth.

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6 months 6 days ago

Man's being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it.

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"Man has no nature"
7 months 2 weeks ago

Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

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p. 216
3 months 3 weeks ago

Know all ye mortals who have entered this contest, that according to our laws and decrees the victor is allowed to exult but the vanquished must not complain. Depart then wherever you please, and in future live every one of you under the guidance of the gods. Let every man choose his own guardian and guide.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

History is a bath of blood.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

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"Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme, 1738
6 months 2 weeks ago

Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies - unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand - unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.

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Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation
7 months 2 weeks ago

The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief.

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Ch. 1: Introductory
8 months 1 week ago

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Attractions take place between bodies, affinities between the particles of a body. The former may be compared to the alliances of states, the latter to the ties of family.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.

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The New Yorker
5 months 4 weeks ago

I found Randi likable and plausible; the only thing that bothered me was the sweeping and intense nature of his skepticism. He was obviously working from the premise that all paranormal phenomena, without exception, are fakes or delusions. He seemed to take to take it for granted that all of us - there were also two women present - shared his opinions, and he made jovial, disparaging remarks about psychics and other such weirdos. I began to get the uncomfortable feeling of a Jew who has accidentally walked into a Nazi meeting, or a Jehovah's Witness at a convention of militant atheists. As a supposedly scientific psychic investigator, Randi struck me as being oddly fixed in his opinions.

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pp. 39-40
7 months 1 week ago

The world is all that is the case.

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(1) Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
3 months 3 weeks ago

If the rulers sincerely desire the empire to be wealthy and dislike to have it poor, desire to have it orderly and dislike to have it chaotic, they should bring about universal love and mutual aid. This is the way of the sage-kings and the way to order for the world, and it should not be neglected.

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Book 4; Universal Love II
8 months 1 week ago

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

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4 months 5 days ago

It is life that educates, and perhaps love more than anything else in life.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
6 months 1 week ago

I feel effective, competent, likely to do something positive only when I lie down and abandon myself to an interrogation without object or end.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Anyone who actually admires money as the most precious thing in life, and rests his security on it to the extent of believing that as long as he possesses it he will be happy, has fashioned too many false gods for himself. Too many people put money in the place of Christ, as if it alone has the key to their happiness or unhappiness.

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p. 100
7 months 3 weeks ago

Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.

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Aphorism 95
3 months 6 days ago

I lie on the beach like a crocodile and let myself be roasted by the sun. I never see a newspaper and don't give a damn for what is called the world.

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Letter to Max Born, 1918, from The Born-Einstein Letters: Friendship, Politics and Physics in Uncertain Times, Macmillan (2005 edition), pg 7.
1 month 2 weeks ago

Paradox of choice, but I think we would all prefer MORE options. At least then it's on us.....

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6 months 1 week ago

Ye fools, did not he that made that which is without make that which is within also?

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11:40 (KJV)

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