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8 months 1 week ago

This is the ideal world, a perfect world of equality, fraternity, harmony, welfare, and justice.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 140
7 months 2 weeks ago

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 21 "An Evaluation of the Prophecy"
7 months 2 weeks ago

For Genet, reflective states of mind are the rule. And although they are of an unstable nature in everyone, in him...reflection is always contrary to the reflected feeling.

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p. 278
8 months 1 week ago

The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.

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"The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy, tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 123
3 months 4 weeks ago

The visible world has, as I have said, subsisted around him from all eternity: and the Light also which surrounds the world has also its place from all eternity, not intermittently, nor in different degrees at different times, but constantly and in an equable manner. But whosoever will attempt to estimate, as far as thought goes, this external Nature, by the measure of Time, he will very easily discover respecting the Sun, Sovereign of all things, of how many blessings he is, from all eternity, the author to the world.

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8 months 1 week ago

An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

It is almost impossible to bear the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing somebody's beard.

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4 Variant translations: It is almost impossible to carry the torch of wisdom through a crowd without singeing someone's beard. It is virtually impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd, without singeing someone's beard
5 months 2 weeks ago

To be overwise is to ossify; and the scruple-monger ends by standing stockstill.

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314
1 month 2 weeks ago

But, this is not mutually exclusive. For instance, I focus on universality because if people can't understand justice, they'll never be fair and good to each other. If they're not fair and good, they're rapacious and opportunistic.

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4 months 1 week ago

Literature, the strange entity so called,-that indeed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature.

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7 months 1 week ago

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

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(Extracts, p. 57)
5 months 2 days ago

I want to write - I want to write - I want to write and never never never will. I know it and I am so unhappy and it seems as though nothing else mattered. Whatever I'm doing, it's always there, an ultimate longing there saying, "Write this - write that - write -" and I can't. Lack ability, time, strength, and duration of vision. I wish someone would tell me brutally, "You can never write anything. Take up home gardening!"

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7 months 3 weeks ago

They should always be heard, and fairly and kindly answer'd, when they ask after any thing they would know, and desire to be informed about. Curiosity should be as carefully cherish'd in children, as other appetites suppress'd.

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Sec. 108
7 months 3 weeks ago

Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 27, § 369

Here, lads, we live by the law of the taiga. But even here people manage to live. D'you know who are the ones the camps finish off? Those who lick other men's left-overs, those who set store by the doctors, and those who peach on their mates.

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Kuziomin, in the Ralph Parker translation (1963).
6 months 2 weeks ago

We know as little of a supreme being as of Matter. But there is as little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality, and experiential fact. We only don't understand it.

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Letter to Morton Kelsey (1958) as quoted by Morton Kelsey, Myth, History & Faith: The Mysteries of Christian Myth & Imagination (1974) Ch.VIII
3 months 1 week ago

Our experience hitherto justifies us in trusting that nature is the realization of the simplest that is mathematically conceivable. I am convinced that purely mathematical construction enables us to find those concepts and those lawlike connections between them that provide the key to the understanding of natural phenomena. Useful mathematical concepts may well be suggested by experience, but in no way can they be derived from it. Experience naturally remains the sole criterion of the usefulness of a mathematical construction for physics. But the actual creative principle lies in mathematics. Thus, in a certain sense, I take it to be true that pure thought can grasp the real, as the ancients had dreamed.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

From the comparison of theism and idolatry, we may form some other observations, which will also confirm the vulgar observation that the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

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Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
7 months 2 weeks ago

Maybe the target nowadays is not to discover what we are but to refuse what we are.

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p. 785
4 months 1 week ago

If we study the history of science we see happen two inverse phenomena... Sometimes simplicity hides under complex appearances; sometimes it is the simplicity which is apparent, and which disguises extremely complicated realities....No doubt, if our means of investigation should become more and more penetrating, we should discover the simple under the complex, then the complex under the simple, then again the simple under the complex, and so on, without our being able to foresee what will be the last term. We must stop somewhere, and that science may be possible, we must stop when we have found simplicity. This is the only ground on which we can rear the edifice of our generalizations.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.

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§ 2.17 : Of Benevolence, Pt. 2
7 months 3 weeks ago

Religion is not 'doctrinal knowledge,' but wisdom born of personal experience.

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Holborn, Hajo; A HISTORY OF MODERN GERMANY: The Reformation; 1959/1982 Princeton university Press
3 months 1 week ago

I was sitting in a chair in the patent office at Bern when all of sudden a thought occurred to me: If a person falls freely he will not feel his own weight. I was startled. This simple thought made a deep impression on me. It impelled me toward a theory of gravitation.

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6 months 1 week ago

Art expresses, it does not state; it is concerned with existences in their perceived qualities, not with conceptions symbolized in terms.

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p. 139
6 months 2 weeks ago

The future use and the whole effect, if not the very existence, of the process of an impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanors before the peers of this kingdom upon the charge of the Commons will very much be decided by your judgment in this cause... For we must not deceive ourselves: whatever does not stand with credit cannot stand long. And if the Constitution should be deprived, I do not mean in form, but virtually, of this resource, it is virtually deprived of everything else that is valuable in it. For this process is the cement which binds the whole together; this is the individuating principle that makes England what England is.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (15 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 332
4 months 4 days ago

1) Preserve Life
2) State of war (opportunism)
3) Relativism
4) Confusion

Civilization, goodness, justice, fairness all contained inside the first option. Under # 1 (Universal Humanism):


1) Survive.
2) Don't prevent another from surviving.
3) Help the less fortunate.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

The object of all true Philosophy is to frame a system which shall comprehend human life under every aspect, social as well as individual. It embraces, therefore, the three kinds of phenomena of which our life consists, Thoughts, Feelings, and Actions.

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p. 9
6 months 2 days ago

The huge laugh is a most extreme expression of freedom.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

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Chapter XIII.
5 months 1 week ago

Wherever literature consoles sorrow, or assuages pain,-wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep,-there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.

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p. 179
7 months 2 weeks ago

Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth,it buys as long as it has the means to buy.

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Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 449.
7 months 1 week ago

Once when Phocion had delivered an opinion which pleased the people,... he turned to his friend and said, "Have I not unawares spoken some mischievous thing or other?"

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55 Phocion
6 months 1 week ago

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.

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16:2-4 (KJV)
7 months 2 weeks ago

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

In an age of multiple and massive innovations, obsolescence becomes the major obsession.

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"Innovation is obsolete", Evergreen review, Volume 15, Issues 86-94, Grove Press, 1971, p. 64
3 months 3 weeks ago

The occult war is a battle that is waged imperceptibly by the forces of global subversion, with means and in circumstances ignored by current historiography. The notion of occult war belongs to a three-dimensional view of history: this view does not regard as essential the two superficial dimensions of time and space (which include causes, facts, and visible leaders) but rather emphasizes the dimension of depth, or the "subterranean" dimension in which forces and influences often act in a decisive manner, and which, more often not than not, cannot be reduced to what is merely human, whether at an individual or a collective level"

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7 months 4 weeks ago

It might be wiser for me to avoid Camarina and say nothing of theologians. They are a proud, susceptible race. They will smother me under six hundred dogmas. They will call me heretic and bring thunderbolts out of their arsenals, where they keep whole magazines of them for their enemies. Still they are Folly's servants, though they disown their mistress. They live in the third heaven, adoring their own persons and disdaining the poor crawlers upon earth. They are surrounded with a bodyguard of definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit, and propositions implicit. ...They will tell you how the world was created. They will show you the crack where Sin crept in and corrupted mankind.

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as quoted by James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4
5 months 2 weeks ago

Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.

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Ch. II
7 months 2 weeks ago

"Everything is both a trap and a display; the secret reality of the object is what the Other makes of it."

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6 months 1 week ago

I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

There is no chastisement that does not purify; there is no disorder that ETERNAL LOVE does not turn against the principle of evil.

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Chapter III, p. 31
7 months 2 weeks ago

Pi's face was masked, and it was understood that none could behold it and live. But piercing eyes looked out from the mask, inexorable, cold and enigmatic.

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"The Mathematician's Nightmare", Nightmares of Eminent Persons and Other Stories, 1954
5 months 2 weeks ago

Penitence follows hasty decisions.

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Maxim 961
6 months 5 days ago

Dadaism and surrealism ... represented the intoxication of total license, the intoxication in which the mind wallows when it has made a clean sweep of value and surrendered to the immediate. The good is the pole towards which the human spirit is necessarily oriented, not only in action but in every effort, including the effort of pure intelligence. The surrealists have set up non-oriented thought as a model; they have chosen the total absence of value as their supreme value. Men have always been intoxicated by license, which is why, throughout history, towns have been sacked. But there has not always been a literary equivalent for the sacking of towns. Surrealism is such an equivalent.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 167
4 months 4 days ago

I do not know whether I shall make progress; but I should prefer to lack success rather than to lack faith.

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