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6 months 2 weeks ago

You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

What is the purpose of houses? It is to protect us from the wind and cold of winter, the heat and rain of summer, and to keep out robbers and thieves. Once these ends have been secured, that is all. Whatever does not contribute to these ends should be eliminated.

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Ch 20, as quoted in Van Norden, Bryan W. (2011). Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-60384-468-0.
6 months 3 weeks ago

If the importance of science does not lie in its constituting the whole of human knowledge, even less does it lie, in my view, in its technological applications. Science at the best is a way of coming to know, and hopefully a way of acquiring some reverence for, the wonders of nature. The philosophical study of science, at the best, has always been a way of coming to understand both some of the nature and some of the limitations of human reason. These seem to me to be sufficient grounds for taking science and philosophy of science seriously; they do not justify science worship.

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"Introduction: Science as approximation to truth"
4 months 1 week ago

No thefts of free will reported.

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(Hays translation) XI, 36
7 months 1 week ago

The dynamic principle of fantasy is play, a characteristic also of the child, and as such it appears inconsistent with the principle of serious work. But without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable. It is therefore short-sighted to treat fantasy, on account of its risky or unacceptable nature, as a thing of little worth.

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Ch. 1, p. 82
8 months 2 weeks ago

He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God. This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Eros? What other name may we give that impetus which becomes enchanted as soon as it casts its glance on matter and then longs to impress its features upon it? It confronts the body and longs to pass beyond it, to merge with the other erotic cry hidden in that body, to become one till both may vanish and become deathless by begetting sons. It approaches the soul and wishes to merge with it inseparably so that "you" and "I" may no longer exist; it blows on the mass of man - kind and wishes, by smashing the resistances of mind and body, to merge all breaths into one violent gale that may lift the earth! In moments of crisis this Erotic Love swoops down on men and joins them together by force - friends and foes, good and evil. It is a breath superior to all of them, independent of their desires and deeds. It is the spirit, the breathing of God on earth. It descends on men in whatever form it wishes - as dance, as eros, as hunger, as religion, as slaughter. It does not ask our permission.

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5 months 1 week ago

Empire is emerging today as the center that supports the globalization of productive networks and casts its widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within its world order - and yet at the same time it deploys a powerful police function against the new barbarians and the rebellious slaves who threaten its order.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

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As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 299
8 months 2 weeks ago

Man exists for his own sake and not to add a laborer to the state.

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November 15, 1839
4 months 2 weeks ago

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rainsnew flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

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Book XI, line 652
5 months 5 days ago

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea!

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8 months 4 days ago

And what he fears he cannot make attractive with his touch he abandons.

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Line 149 (tr. H. R. Fairclough)
6 months 3 weeks ago

Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?

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E 32
6 months 3 weeks ago

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie, concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.

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p. 483
9 months 1 week ago

No matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

Economic reforms based on the idea of limitless growth in a limited world, can only be maintained by the powerful grabbing the resources of the vulnerable. The resource grab that is essential for "growth" creates a culture of rape-the rape of the earth, of local self-reliant economies, and of women.

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On economic reforms in India and rape in India, from "Vandana Shiva: Our Violent Economy is Hurting Women " article in Yes Magazine
7 months 2 weeks ago

All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

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No. 1, volume v, p. 286
7 months 1 week ago

What an incitation to hilarity, hearing the word goal while following a funeral procession!

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8 months 1 week ago

If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.

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Conversation of 1930
6 months 1 week ago

Happily for poor traduced and degraded human nature, the principle for which we now content will speedily divest it of all the ridiculous and absurd mystery with which it has been hitherto enveloped by the ignorance of preceding times: and all the ''complicated'' and ''counteracting'' motives for good conduct, which have been multiplied almost to infinity, will be reduced to ''one single principle of action'', which, by its evident operation and sufficiency, shall render this intricate system ''unnecessary'', and ultimately supersede it in all parts of the earth. That principle is THE HAPPINESS OF SELF CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD AND UNIFORMLY PRACTICED; WHICH CAN ONLY BE ATTAINED BY CONDUCT THAT MUST PROMOTE THE HAPPINESS OF THE COMMUNITY.

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Essay First, The Formation of Human Character.
7 months 5 days ago

Man must be free of it all, of his bad conscience and of the bad salvation from this conscience in order to become in truth the way. Now, he no longer promises others the fulfillment of his duties, but promises himself the fulfillment of man.

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p. 178
4 months 3 weeks ago

A vague uncritical idealism always lends itself to ridicule and too much of it might be a danger to mankind, leading it round in a futile wild-goose chase for imaginary ideals.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 4
8 months 2 weeks ago

The believing we do something when we do nothing is the first illusion of tobacco.

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1859
7 months 1 week ago

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

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9 months 1 week ago

There is more to a science fiction story than the science it contains.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

Don't ask for what you'll wish you hadn't got.

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Line 1 Seneca himself states that he is quoting a 'common saying' here.
4 months 3 weeks ago

How many of us are able to distinguish between the odors of noon and midnight, or of winter and summer, or of a windy spell and a still one? If man is so generally less happy in the cities than in the country, it is because all these variations and nuances of sight and smell and sound are less clearly marked and lost in the general monotony of gray walls and cement pavements.

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p. 129
6 months 3 weeks ago

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

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G 42
4 months 3 weeks ago

Did Romeo and Juliet have a ... "relationship"? The term "relationship" ... betokens a chaste egalitarianism leveling different ranks and degrees of attachment.

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p. 14.
8 months 2 weeks ago

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Brahma, st. 1 Composed in July 1856 this poem is derived from a major passage of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most popular of Hindu scriptures, and portions of it were likely a paraphrase of an existing translation. Though titled "Brahma" its expressions are actually more indicative of the Hindu concept "Brahman"

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing but the most exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article III, p. 874.
7 months 1 week ago

It has never been in my power to study anything, - mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic.

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Letter to Victoria
4 months 2 weeks ago

A Natural Group is steadily fixed, though not precisely limited; it is given in position, though not circumscribed; it is determined, not by a boundary without, but by a central point within; -not by what it strictly excludes, but by what it eminently includes; - by a Type, not by a Definition.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.

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P. 45.
5 months 3 weeks ago

The belief that there is some hidden cabal directing the course of events is a type of anthropomorphism - a way of finding agency in the entropy of history.

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In the Puppet Theatre: Puppetry, Conspiracy and Ouija Boards (p. 133)
8 months 1 week ago

This is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche's conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who "enjoy" and "experience" it.That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): "Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of 'what is beautiful.' In all philosophy to date the artist is missing." Philosophy of art means "aesthetics" for Nietzsche too-but masculine aesthetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.

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p. 70
4 months 3 weeks ago

The mistake made by all previous systems of ethics has been the failure to recognize that life as such is the mysterious value with which they have to deal. All spiritual life meets us within natural life. Reverence for life, therefore, is applied to natural life and spiritual life alike. In the parable of Jesus, the shepherd saves not merely the soul of the lost sheep but the whole animal. The stronger the reverence for natural life, the stronger grows also that for spiritual life.

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p. 264
8 months 2 weeks ago

Revolutions never go backwards.

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p. 214
8 months 2 weeks ago

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.

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5 months 1 week ago

We need a good alternative to Trumpism. There is a majority in favor of that, but... the other party is really not providing that alternative in a very clear way.

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46:46:00
4 months 4 weeks ago

What is more affectionate to others than man? Yet what is more savage against them than anger?

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Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill-founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism.

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"Two dogmas of Empiricism"
7 months 2 weeks ago

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

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If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

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Earliest attribution found in Who Said That?: More than 2,500 Usable Quotes and Illustrations (1995) by George Sweeting. Online sources always attribute the quote to Augustine, but never specify in which of his works it is to be found.
7 months 1 week ago

To say, therefore, that thought cannot happen in an instant, but requires a time, is but another way of saying that every thought must be interpreted in another, or that all thought is in signs.

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Vol. V, par. 254

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