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3 months 4 days ago

Alexander, king of Macedon, began to study geometry; unhappy man, because he would thereby learn how puny was that earth of which he had seized but a fraction! Unhappy man, I repeat, because he was bound to understand that he was bearing a false title. For who can be "great" in that which is puny?

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

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Letter to Pierre-Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain (21 October 1769), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1882], vol. XIV, letter # 7692 (p. 478)
4 months 1 week ago

Why is it after a century of socialist disasters, and an intellectual legacy that has been time and again exploded, the left-wing position remains, as it were, the default position to which thinking people gravitate when called upon for a comprehensive philosophy? Why are "right-wingers" marginalised in the educational system, denounced in the media and regarded by our political class as untouchable, fit only to clean up after the orgies of luxurious nonsense indulged in by their moral superiors?

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6 months 2 weeks ago

I do not think it can be questioned that sympathy is a genuine motive, and that some people at some times are made somewhat uncomfortable by the sufferings of some other people. It is sympathy that has produced the many humanitarian advances of the last hundred years. We are shocked when we hear stories of the ill-treatment of lunatics, and there are now quite a number of asylums in which they are not ill-treated. Prisoners in Western countries are not supposed to be tortured, and when they are, there is an outcry if the facts are discovered. We do not approve of treating orphans as they are treated in Oliver Twist.

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One of the most striking signs of the decay of art is the intermixing of different genres.

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Propylaea (1798) Introduction
6 months 2 weeks ago

The application of algebra to geometry... far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.

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An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) as quoted in 5th ed. (1878) p. 617.
2 months 2 weeks ago

The Constitution of the United States asserts that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty.

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Letter to Justice William Johnson
2 months 2 weeks ago

It may indeed be true that in order to act we need a certain amount of self-confidence and intellectual self-assurance. It may also be true that the very form of expression, in which we clothe our thoughts, tends to impose upon them an absolute tone.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.

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6 months 1 day ago

It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.

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As quoted in The Biblical Museum: A Collection of Notes Explanatory, Homiletic, and Illustrative on the Holy Scriptures, Especially Designed for the Use of Ministers, Bible-students, and Sunday-school Teachers (1873) by James Comper Gray, Vol. V
2 months 1 week ago

The moral decline we are compelled to witness and the suffering it engenders are so oppressive that one cannot ignore them even for a moment. No matter how deeply one immerses oneself in work, a haunting feeling of inescapable tragedy persists. Still, there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being.

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Letter to Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium (9 January 1939), asking for her help in getting an elderly cousin of his out of Germany and into Belgium. Quoted in Einstein on Peace edited by Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden (1960), p. 282
2 months 1 week ago

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.

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Letter to Phyllis Wright (January 24, 1936), published in Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein's Letters to and from Children (Prometheus Books, 2002), p. 129
7 months 2 weeks ago

The truth is a trap: you can not get it without it getting you; you cannot get the truth by capturing it, only by its capturing you.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

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As quoted in The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations (1963) by Norbert Gutermam
5 months 1 week ago

Gentile himself call his doctrine 'absolute formalism': there is no; 'matter' apart from the pure 'form' of acting. 'The only matter there is in the spiritual act is the form itself, as activity.'

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P. 407
3 months 4 days ago

You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

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Book II, Ch. 1, sec. 19
3 months 4 weeks ago

Assume, provisionally at any rate, a utilitarian ethic. The abolitionist project follows naturally, in "our" parochial corner of Hilbert space at least. On its completion, if not before, we should aim to develop superintelligence to maximise the well-being of the fragment of the cosmos accessible to beneficent intervention. And when we are sure - absolutely sure - that we have done literally everything we can do to eradicate suffering elsewhere, perhaps we should forget about its very existence.

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Quantum Ethics? Suffering in the Multiverse, BLTC Research, 2008
6 months 2 weeks ago

Art is a jealous mistress.

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Wealth
5 months 3 weeks ago

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

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Essai sur le Mérite de la Vertu (1745)
2 months 2 weeks ago

Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper worldand baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes,for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies,wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.

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Book VII, line 356
5 months 2 weeks ago

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

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4 months 5 days ago

Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year, has its application to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

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"Joseph Priestley"
5 months 1 week ago

The physical change in the thickness of walls since the Middle Ages could be shown in a diagram. In the fourteenth century each house was a fortress. Man spent the major portion of his day in them, in secret and well-defended solitude. That solitude, working on the soul hour after hour, forged it, like a transcendent blacksmith, into a compact and forceful character. Under its treatment, man consolidated his individual destiny and sallied forth with impunity, never yielding to the contamination from the public. It is only in isolation that we gain, almost automatically, a certain discrimination in ideas, desires, longings, that we learn which are ours, and which are anonymous, floating in the air, falling on us like dust in the street.

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p. 168
4 months 1 week ago

The modern world gives proof at every point that it is far easier to destroy institutions than to create them. Nevertheless, few people seem to understand this truth.

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Rousseau & the origins of liberalism, The New Criterion
4 months 4 weeks ago

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

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B 44
5 months 4 days ago

He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it.Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying Him metaphysical compliments. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.

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Ch. 11: "God", pp. 250-251
6 months 2 weeks ago

The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals. Hence the present level of taxation. Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying "Look at me." "Look at me" is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. It can take innumerable forms, from buffoonery to the pursuit of posthumous fame.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

For Christ is Joy and Sweetness to a broken heart. Christ is a Lover of poor sinners, and such a Lover that He gave Himself for us. Now if this is true, and it is true, then are we never justified by our own righteousness.

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Chapter 3, verse 20
4 months 2 weeks ago

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

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Ch. 8
4 months 4 weeks ago

Basic justice is based on everything we as humans share that is the same. It extends to nature also, but, if we can't keep it straight amongst ourselves, of course we'll never have the traction to extend it to the larger context we are a part of.

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5 months 1 day ago

Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.

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5 months 5 days ago

Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all history. In it, history evaporates.

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p. 151
3 months 4 days ago

Would you know what makes men greedy for the future? It is because no one has yet found himself.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally.

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American scholar, Volume 35, 1965, p. 200

Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees.

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Act III, scene iv
5 months 2 weeks ago

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

I mistrust illuminations: what we take for a discovery is very often only a familiar thought that we have not recognized.

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p. 439
2 months 2 weeks ago

"Spirit" is matter seen in a stronger light. What else did Malebranche mean when he spoke of "seeing all things in God"? Existence is a mystery because the light of it is inexhaustible.

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Near the Brink: Observations of a Nonagenarian (1952). p. 17.
6 months 2 weeks ago

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

IF the passions and characters of man were not subject, like the material kingdoms, to distribution in series of groups, man would be out of unity with the universe; there would be duplicity of system in creation, and incoherence between the material and the passional worlds. If man would attain to social uniy, he should seek for the means in the serial order, to which God has subject all nature.

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Le nouveau monde amoureux
6 months 3 weeks ago

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

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Chapter XI, Part III, Conclusion of the Chapter, p. 292.
2 months 4 weeks ago

If every one in the world will love universally; states not attacking one another; houses not disturbing one another; thieves and robbers becoming extinct; emperor and ministers, fathers and sons, all being affectionate and filial -- if all this comes to pass the world will be orderly. Therefore, how can the wise man who has charge of governing the empire fail to restrain hate and encourage love? So, when there is universal love in the world it will be orderly, and when there is mutual hate in the world it will be disorderly.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
6 months 2 weeks ago

And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in the night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice.

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Diary entry of Saturday noon (10 February?)
7 months 2 weeks ago

He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don't believe in it at all.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

They pass peaceful lives who ignore mine and thine.

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Maxim 790

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