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5 months 3 weeks ago

They would receive the same care and attention as those who belong to the establishment. Nor will there be any distinction made between the children of those parents who are deemed the worst, and of those who may be esteemed the best members of society: indeed I would prefer to receive the offspring of the worst, if they shall be sent at an early age; because they really require more of our care and pity and by well-training these, society will be more essentially benefited than if the like attention were paid to those whose parents are educating them in comparatively good habits. On educating children of the poor, and of neighboring communities.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

No one commits suicide for external reasons, only because of inner disequilibrium. Under similar adverse circumstances, some are indifferent, some are moved, some are driven to suicide.

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To be content with life - or to live merrily, rather - all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

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K 29
7 months 3 weeks ago

Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion.

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p. 53e
8 months ago

We see then, commodities are in love with money, but "the course of true love never did run smooth".

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Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 2, pg. 121.
8 months 1 day ago

The animals are much more content with mere existence than we are; the plants are wholly so; and man is so according to how dull and insensitive he is. The animal's life consequently contains less suffering but also less pleasure than the human's, the direct reason being that on the one hand it is free from care and anxiety and the torments that attend them, but on the other is without hope and therefore has no share in that anticipation of a happy future which, together with the enchanting products of the imagination which accompany it, is the source of most of our greatest joys and pleasures. The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.

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Vol. 2 "On the Suffering of the World" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
7 months 4 weeks ago

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito."

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3 months 3 weeks ago

The nature of the All moved to make the universe.

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VII, 75
6 months 3 weeks ago

The philosopher ... subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment - namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society.

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p. 126
6 months 2 weeks ago

Passion is like suffering, and like suffering it creates its object. It is easier for the fire to find something to burn than for something combustible to find the fire.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

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Book I, epistle iv, line 13-14
7 months 1 day ago

And having looked to Government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

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6 months 4 days ago

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

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"Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy" : Rule I
8 months 1 day ago

The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.

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Said in conversation with Mrs. Alan Wood; quoted in Alan Wood's Bertrand Russell, the Passionate Sceptic (Allen and Unwin, 1957), pp. 236-7

Always put the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a trutn-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to Jove the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness,-to love him in other's virtues.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

But what can be the attraction of getting to know such a tiny section of nature thoroughly, while one leaves everything subtler and more complex shyly and timidly alone? Does the product of such a modest effort deserve to be called by the proud name of a theory of the universe? In my belief the name is justified; for the general laws on which the structure of theoretical physics is based claim to be valid for any natural phenomenon whatsoever. With them, it ought to be possible to arrive at the description, that is to say, the theory, of every natural process, including life, by means of pure deduction, if that process of deduction were not far beyond the capacity of the human intellect. The physicist's renunciation of completeness for his cosmos is therefore not a matter of fundamental principle.

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6 months 1 week ago

In closing, I can only apologize for not having given any positive account of either mathematical truth or mathematical necessity. I can only say that I have not given such an account because I think that the search for such an account is a fundamental mistake. It is not that there is nothing special about mathematics; it is that, in my opinion, the investigation of mathematics must presuppose and not seek to account for the truth of mathematics. But this is the beginning of another paper and not the end of this one.

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"Truth and necessity in mathematics"
8 months 1 day ago

Certain forms of sex which do not lead to children are at present punished by the criminal law: this is purely superstitious, since the matter is one which affects no one except the parties directly concerned... The peculiar importance attached, at present, to adultery is quite irrational... Moral rules ought not to be such as to make instinctive happiness impossible.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.

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Goethes Gespraeche
6 months 3 weeks ago

Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.

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Vol. V, par. 438
8 months 4 weeks ago

It is all too easy to forget that there are emotional motivations in history, as well as economic ones.

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6 months 4 days ago

Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting the Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of the distance from the center.

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Letter to Edmund Halley (June 20, 1686) quoted in I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith, ed.s, The Cambridge Companion to Newton (2002) p. 204
8 months 1 week ago

M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind, and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.

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Letter to Marin Mersenne (July 27, 1638) as quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893) letter dated in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, The Correspondence (1991) ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch
6 months 3 weeks ago

We can only learn to love by loving.

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The Bell (1958), ch. 19; 2001, p. 219.
4 months ago

In forming a Terminology, words may be invented when necessary, but they cannot be conveniently borrowed from casual or arbitrary circumstances.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor.

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"On What There Is"
7 months 1 day ago

By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

What is wisdom? Always desiring the same things, and always refusing the same things.

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Line 5 Here, Seneca uses the same observation that Sallust made regarding friendship (in his historical account of the Catilinarian conspiracy, Bellum Catilinae[XX.4]) to define wisdom.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Cash Payment the sole nexus; and there are so many things which cash will not pay! Cash is a great miracle; yet it has not all power in Heaven, nor even on Earth. 'Supply and demand' we will honour also; and yet how many 'demands' are there, entirely indispensable, which have to go elsewhere than to the shops, and produce quite other than cash, before they can get their supply? On the whole, what astonishing payments does cash make in this world!

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Ch. 7, Not Laissez-Faire.

I forgot to ask the favor of you to speak to Lilly as to the treatment of the nailers. it would destroy their value in my estimation to degrade them in their own eyes by the whip. this therefore must not be resorted to but in extremities. as they will again be under my government, I would chuse they should retain the stimulus of character.

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Letter to colonel Randolph as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine,
6 months 3 weeks ago

We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle. variant: The fact that living is an extraordinary thing seeing things as they are, That this life is theoretically completely worthless, Seems extraordinary compared to the actual level, This means Live despite all adversities, Every moment becomes a kind of heroism

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.

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From speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, 1992-04-15.
8 months 4 weeks ago

No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth.

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6 months 3 days ago

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to acquire the skills of writing and speaking that make for candor, rigor, and clarity. You cannot think clearly if you cannot speak and write clearly.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

For a writer, to change languages is to write a love letter with a dictionary.

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8 months 1 day ago

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

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Ch. 1: Introductory

The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
8 months 4 days ago

If the whole of natural theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, that the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication: If it affords no inference that affects human life, or can be the source of any action or forbearance: And if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no farther than to the human intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind; if this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs, and believe that the arguments on which it is established exceed the objections which lie against it?

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part XII
3 months 3 weeks ago

You have a mind? -Yes. Well, why not use it?

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(Hays translation)
5 months 4 weeks ago

At the speed of light there is no sequence; everything happens at the same instant.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of human life is to grasp as much as we can out of the infinitude.

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Ch. 21, June 28, 1941.
6 months 1 week ago

I realize the malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well, but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only when the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a common purpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos and inequality.

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8 months 1 day ago

Reading is merely a surrogate for thinking for yourself; it means letting someone else direct your thoughts. Many books, moreover, serve merely to show how many ways there are of being wrong, and how far astray you yourself would go if you followed their guidance. You should read only when your own thoughts dry up, which will of course happen frequently enough even to the best heads; but to banish your own thoughts so as to take up a book is a sin against the holy ghost; it is like deserting untrammeled nature to look at a herbarium or engravings of landscapes.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 261
8 months 1 day ago

Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.

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"Thinking for Oneself"

Very similar were the views expressed by Raymundus of Sabunde or Sabeyde, a Spaniard of the fifteenth century, and professor at Toulouse about the year 1437. In his theologia natural is, which he handled in a speculative spirit, he dealt with the Nature of things, and with the revelation of God in Nature and in the history of the God-man. He sought to prove to unbelievers the Being, the trinity, the incarnation, the life, and the revelation of God in Nature, and in the history of the God-man, basing his arguments on Reason. From the contemplation of Nature he rises to God; and in the same way he reaches morality from; observation of man's inner nature. This purer and simpler style must be set off against the other, if we are to do justice to the Scholastic theologians in their turn.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History Vol 3 1837 translated by ES Haldane and Francis H. Simson) first translated 1896 P. 91-92

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