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6 months 3 weeks ago

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

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8 months 4 days ago

The highest compact we can make with our fellow, is, - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore".

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Behavior
4 months 2 weeks ago

If religion has put forward the proposition that we are all of us sinners, I set another against it: we are all of us perfect! Because, in each moment, we are all we can be, and never need to be more.

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Landstreicher, p. 226
8 months 3 days ago

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

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Act 11, sc. 2
7 months 1 week ago

No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do. Variant: What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.

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Chapter XVIII.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Now who are the individuals who are the greatest benefactors of the living generation of mankind? I should say: Confucius and Lao-Tse; the Buddha; the Prophets of Israel and Judah; Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad; and Socrates.

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Ch. 8: Civilization on Trial
6 months 3 weeks ago

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'"

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Tales of the Hasidim (1947), 1991 Ebook edition, p.251, as quoted in Jewish Currents.
6 months ago

The attitude that living things are placed here for our benefit still dominates our culture, even where its underpinnings have disappeared. We now need, for purposes of scientific understanding, to find a less human-centered view of the natural world.

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Chapter 8, "Pollen Grains and Magic Bullets" (p. 258)
9 months 2 days ago

No multitude is able to acquire any art whatsoever. Then if there is a kingly art, neither the collective body of the wealthy nor the whole people could ever acquire this science of statesmanship.

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7 months 1 week ago

Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man - it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.

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"On Women" (1772), as translated in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
6 months 3 weeks ago

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

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The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62
4 months 5 days ago

With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind. The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets. The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment.

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8 months 5 days ago

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

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Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
8 months 5 days ago

Belief in eternal hell fire was an essential item of Christian belief until pretty recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override Their Graces and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell. What is a Christian?

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1927
4 months 1 week ago

One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, "It was a good show," when the curtain falls.

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p. 23-24
8 months 5 days ago

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion - even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: "Some people think the earth is round, and others think it is flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion." Instead of this we say: "The earth is round." By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds.

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Ch. 17: The Ethics of Power
7 months 1 day ago

We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.

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The Symbolic Life (1953); also in Man and His Symbols
1 year 5 days ago

I found there, on the central square (Václavské náměstí), a café that miraculously worked through this emergency. I remember they had wonderful strawberry cakes, and I was sitting there eating strawberry cakes and watching Russian tanks against demonstrators. It was perfect.

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8 months 5 days ago

...it is possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.

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Part I, Ch. 5: Communism and the Soviet Constitution
7 months ago

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

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8 months 1 week ago

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

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Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II.
6 months 2 days ago

Interface, of the resonant interval as 'where the action is', whether chemical, psychic or social, involves touch.

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p. 102
8 months 3 days ago

I am sorry that my convictions do not allow me to repeat my friend's offer, said one of the others. But I have had to abandon the humanitarian and egalitarian fancies. His name was Mr. Neo-Classical.

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Pilgrim's Regress 89
4 months 2 weeks ago

If you see a man who is unterrified in the midst of dangers, untouched by desires, happy in adversity, peaceful amid the storm, who looks down upon men from a higher plane, and views the gods on a footing of equality, will not a feeling of reverence for him steal over you, will you not say: "This quality is too great and too lofty to be regarded as resembling this petty body in which it dwells? A divine power has descended upon that man."

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8 months 2 weeks ago

The verdict of the world is conclusive.

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III, 24
8 months 1 week ago

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

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Book III, Ch. 1
8 months 1 week ago

Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

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Stobaeus, iv. 31c. 88
7 months 3 weeks ago

When the individual finds in her conscience beliefs that are relevant to public policy but incapable of the defense on the basis of beliefs common to her fellow citizens, she must sacrifice her conscience on the altar of public expediency.

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8 months 1 week ago

Man's greatest concern is to know how he shall properly fill his place in the universe and correctly understand what he must be in order to be a man.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 53
6 months 6 days ago

1. Find a subject you care about.2. Do not ramble, though.3. Keep it simple.4. Have the guts to cut.5. Sound like yourself.6. Say what you mean to say.7. Pity the readers.

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As quoted in Science Fictionisms (1995), compiled by William Rotsler
7 months 1 week ago

How old the world is! I walk between two eternities... What is my fleeting existence in comparison with that decaying rock, that valley digging its channel ever deeper, that forest that is tottering and those great masses above my head about to fall? I see the marble of tombs crumbling into dust; and yet I don't want to die!

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Salon of 1767 (1798), Oeuvres esthétiques
7 months ago

No one should forget: Eros alone can fulfill life; knowledge, never. Only Eros makes sense; knowledge is empty infinity; - for thoughts, there is always time; life has its time; there is no thought that comes too late; any desire can become a regret.

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8 months 1 week ago

No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

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Ch. 13
5 months 3 weeks ago

We believe it to be a rule without an exception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovemment which has produced that revolution.

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Mirabeau', The Edinburgh Review (July 1832), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), pp. 81-82
7 months ago

Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". ... The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.

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p. 23, as quoted in Lenin as Philosopher: A Critical Examination of the Philosophical Basis of Leninism (1948) by Anton Pannekoek, p. 454

The, diverse states of the soul are always correlative with those of the body.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

There may be a rationalist who has never wavered in his conviction of the mortality of the soul, and there may be a vitalist who has never wavered in his faith in immortality; but at the most this would prove that just as there are natural monstrosities, so there are those who are stupid as regards heart and feeling, however great their intelligence, and those who are stupid intellectually, however great their virtue. But, in normal cases, I cannot believe those who assure me that never, not in a fleeting moment, not in the hours of direst loneliness and grief, has this murmur of uncertainty breathed upon their consciousness.

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8 months 4 days ago

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

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Beauty
7 months 2 weeks ago

Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.

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As reported by Heraclides, son of Sarapion, and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 7, in the translation of C. D. Yonge
7 months 3 weeks ago

The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler.

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The God of Suffering? Project Syndicate, 2008
6 months 6 days ago

The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

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Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous", McSweeny's
6 months 3 weeks ago

By freedom he meant a condition in which men were not prevented from choosing both the object and the manner of their worship. For him only a society in which this condition was realised could be called fully human. Its realisation was an ideal which Mill regarded as more precious than life itself.

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