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4 months 1 day ago

Unlike previous environmental changes, the electric media constitutes a total and near-instanteous transformation of culture, values and attitudes.

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6 months 2 days ago

If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.

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6 months 4 days ago

Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange,because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 93.

A good prescription is still more profitable than an absolution.

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As quoted by Friedrich Albert Lange, History of Materialism and Critique of its Present Importance Tr. Ernest Chester Thomas (1882) 2nd edition, Vol. 2, p. 55.
2 months 1 week ago

I had imagined that the prelates of the Galilaeans were under greater obligations to me than to my predecessor. For in his reign many of them were banished, persecuted, and imprisoned, and many of the so-called heretics were executed ... all of this has been reversed in my reign; the banished are allowed to return, and confiscated goods have been returned to the owners. But such is their folly and madness that, just because they can no longer be despots, ... or carry out their designs first against their brethren, and then against us, the worshippers of the gods, they are inflamed with fury and stop at nothing in their unprincipled attempts to alarm and enrage the people.

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Edict to the people of Bostra, reported in Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church
3 months 1 week ago

When I was 15 years old, or 16, I carried around on the streets of Brooklyn a paperback copy of Plato's Republic, front cover facing outward. I had read only some of it and understood less, but I was excited by it and knew it was something wonderful.

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The Examined Life
3 months 2 weeks ago

Properties perceived in nature will depend on how one looks and how one looks depends on the economic interest one has in the resources of nature. The value of profit maximization is thus linked to reductionist systems, while the value of life and the maintenance of life is linked to holistic and ecological systems.

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Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development
4 months 4 weeks ago

A heart without music is like beauty without melancholy.

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There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

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L 16
2 months 3 weeks ago

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

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On History.
7 months 4 days ago

Since... nature is a principle of motion and mutation... it is necessary that we should not be ignorant of what motion is... But motion appears to belong to things continuous; and the infinite first presents itself to the view in that which is continuous. ...Frequently ...those who define the continuous, employ the nature or the infinite, as if that which is divisible to infinity is continuous.

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5 months 1 week ago

There is the world for you. Beauty, true beauty, is intangible. It is in the eye of the beholder. Something that we can lose at any moment, and the more you examine it, the more illusive it becomes. True happiness is virtue, and virtue is predicated on knowledge and righteous conduct.

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The Alchemy of Happiness
2 months 3 weeks ago

I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.

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4 months 6 days ago

Watergate was thus nothing but a lure held out by the system to catch its adversaries-a simulation of scandal for regenerative ends.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 16
6 months 3 weeks ago

Virtuous, worthy, wise and capable people are chosen as leaders.

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6 months 3 days ago

A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

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Art
2 months ago

The intelligence of the universe is social.

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V, 30
6 months 1 week ago

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

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Book II, Ch. 16
4 months 3 weeks ago

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

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(Mark 3:28-29) (KJV)
6 months 1 week ago

Let me mention another requirement for a better understanding of Holy Scripture. I would suggest that you read those commentators who do not stick so closely to the literal sense. The ones I would recommend most highly after St. Paul himself are Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Too many of our modern theologians are prone to a literal interpretation, which they subtly misconstrue.

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p.37
6 months 3 days ago

United States! the ages plead, - Present and Past in under-song, - Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

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Ode, st. 5
2 months 4 weeks ago

A specter haunts the world and it is the specter of migration.

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213
4 months 4 weeks ago

What will be the influence of communist society on the family? It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage - the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.

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7 months 4 days ago

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

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1 month ago

I used to support Jesus because he's a universalist...sometimes. But I revisited the writings attributed to him and I realized he does a lot of demanding obedience and threatening the other. So, now I give no ground to Christians on it. Jesus, as written was 50% a good example, and 50% totalitarian dictator. THAT is not what humanity needs.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

They certainly demonstrate that Seth, whether an aspect of Jane Robert's unconscious mind or a genuine "spirit," was of a high level of intelligence. Yet when Jane Roberts produced a book that purported to be the after-death journal of the philosopher William James, it was difficult to take it seriously. James's works are noted for their vigour and clarity of style; Jane Robert's "communicator" writes like an undergraduate . . . there is a clumsiness here that is quite unlike James's swift-moving, colloquial prose.

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p. 390
3 months 4 weeks ago

Another force driving progressive evolution is the so-called "arms-race." Prey animals evolve faster running speeds because predators do. Consequently predators have to evolve even faster running speeds, and so on, in an escalating spiral. Such arms races probably account for the spectacularly advanced engineering of eyes, ears, brains, bat "radar" and all the other high-tech weaponry that animals display.

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2 months ago

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before. Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in thy error.

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(Long translation) VIII, 16
4 months 2 weeks ago

Eros conquers depression.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

An evil and foolish and intemperate and irreligious life should not be called a bad life, but rather, dying long drawn out.

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6 months 1 week ago

There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.

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Théodicée (1710)ː Préface
2 months 1 week ago

I have observed that even the barbarians across the Rhine sing savage songs composed in language not unlike the croaking of harsh-voiced birds, and that they delight in such songs. For I think it is always the case that inferior musicians, though they annoy their audiences, give very great pleasure to themselves.

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On the songs of the early Germans, in his Mispogon, 337-338
4 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
2 months 3 days ago

It has always been denied by the republican party in this country, that the Constitution had given the power of incorporation to Congress. On the establishment of the Bank of the United States, this was the great ground on which that establishment was combated; and the party prevailing supported it only on the argument of its being an incident to the power given them for raising money.

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Letter to Dr. Maese, 1809. ME 12:231
6 months 5 days ago

Since the great foundation of fear is pain, the way to harden and fortify children against fear and danger is to accustom them to suffer pain. This 'tis possible will be thought, by kind parents, a very unnatural thing towards their children; and by most, unreasonable...

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Sec. 115
2 months 2 days ago

Only the actual participants can correctly recognize, understand, and judge the concrete situation and settle the extreme case of conflict.

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6 months 1 week ago

A merchant, it has been said very properly, is not necessarily the citizen of any particular country.

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Chapter IV, p. 456.
2 months ago

Rememberest the gods, and that they wish not to be flattered, but wish all reasonable beings to be made like themselves; and... rememberest that what does the work of a fig-tree is a fig-tree, and that what does the work of a dog is a dog, and that what does the work of a bee is a bee, and that what does the work of a man is a man.

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X, 8
6 months 2 weeks ago

Though absent from our eyes, Christ our Head is bound to us by love. Since the whole Christ is Head and body, let us so listen to the voice of the Head that we may also hear the body speak.He no more wished to speak alone than He wished to exist alone, since He says: Behold, I am with you all days, unto the consummation of the world (Matt. 28:20). If He is with us, then He speaks in us, He speaks of us, and He speaks through us; and we too speak in Him.

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pp. 420-421
4 months 3 weeks ago

Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will even rise up against their parents and have them put to death.

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10:21 (HCSB) Said to his disciples.
2 months 4 days ago

But we, O blockhead, with dogged spite and armored loveshall force those deaf dark powers to grow ears and hear us!I know that God is earless, eyeless, and heartless too,a brainless Dragon Worm that crawls on earth and hopesin anguish and then in secret that we'll give him soul,for then he, too, may sprout ears, eyes, to match his growth,but God is clay in my ten fingers, and I mould him!

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Odysseus to Kentaur, Book VIII, line 829
4 months 3 days ago

I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps -- what more can the heart of man desire?

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Part 1, Chapter V
3 months 4 weeks ago

A faculty for idleness implies a catholic appetite and a strong sense of personal identity.

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An Apology for Idlers.
4 months 1 day ago

His own character is the arbiter of every one's fortune.

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Maxim 283
4 months 1 week ago

Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.

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Chapter 12, Political Arithmetic, p. 102.
5 months ago

This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.

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5 months 4 days ago

In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the great labours of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by the legislator; and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honourable, which is only an introduction to tyranny... In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them; and made them exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. His conduct is the most perfect model for those employed in the unhappy, but sometimes necessary, task of subduing a rude and free people.

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An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763)
2 months 2 weeks ago

May the men who hold the destiny of peoples in their hands, studiously avoid anything that might cause the present situation to deteriorate and become even more dangerous. May they take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." These words are valid not only for individuals, but for nations as well. May these nations, in their efforts to maintain peace, do their utmost to give the spirit time to grow and to act.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

When we rise out of the night into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which - of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.

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p. 15

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