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1 month 4 days ago

Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all.

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"Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner
1 month 5 days ago

Catastrophic fatality abruptly switches over into salvation.

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1 month 1 week ago

He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate.

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p. 192
2 months 2 weeks ago

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

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Part Three, Panopticism
1 month 3 weeks ago

The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then declares war upon them: he is no longer sovereign; they are no longer subjects.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 459
3 weeks 1 day ago

And therefore just as a brigand caught in broad daylight in the act cannot persuade us that he did not lift his knife in order to rob his victim of his purse, and had no thought of killing him, we too, it would seem, cannot persuade ourselves or others that the soldiers and policemen around us are not to guard us, but only for defense against foreign foes, and to regulate traffic and fetes and reviews; we cannot persuade ourselves and others that we do not know that the men do not like dying of hunger, bereft of the right to gain their subsistence from the earth on which they live; that they do not like working underground, in the water, or in the stifling heat, for ten to fourteen hours a day, at night in factories to manufacture objects for our pleasure. One would imagine it impossible to deny what is so obvious. Yet it is denied.

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Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand
2 weeks 4 days ago

In particular, it is certainly wrong to condemn poor old Homo sapiens as the only species to kill his own kind, the only inheritor of the mark of Cain, and similar melodramatic charges. Whether a naturalist stresses the violence or the restraint of animal aggression depends partly on the kinds of animals he is used to watching, and partly on his evolutionary preconceptions-Lorenz is, after all, a 'good of the species' man. Even if it has been exaggerated, the gloved fist view of animal fights seems to have at least some truth. Superficially this looks like a form of altruism. The selfish gene theory must face up to the difficult task of explaining it. Why is it that animals do not go all out to kill rival members of their species at every possible opportunity?

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Ch. 5. Aggression: stability and the selfish machine
2 months 3 weeks ago

Every true thinker for himself is so far like a monarch; he is absolute, and recognises nobody above him. His judgments, like the decrees of a monarch, spring from his own sovereign power and proceed directly from himself. He takes as little notice of authority as a monarch does of a command; nothing is valid unless he has himself authorised it. On the other hand, those of vulgar minds, who are swayed by all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the people which in silence obey the law and commands.

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"Thinking for Oneself," H. Dirks, trans.
2 months 2 weeks ago

A man's thinking goes on within his consciousness in a seclusion in comparison with which any physical seclusion is an exhibition to public view.

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Pt II, p. 189
1 month 2 weeks ago

Man has ever expressed some symbolical Philosophy of his Being in his Works and Conduct; he announces himself and his Gospel of Nature; he is the Messiah of Nature.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

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One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life.

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North to the Orient (1935) Ch. 19
1 month 2 weeks ago

Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow.

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Letter 17
1 month 3 weeks ago

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Lindsay Mackay
1 month 1 week ago

No epoch is homogeneous; whatever you may have assigned as the dominant note of a considerable period, it will always be possible to produce men, and great men, belonging to the same time, who exhibit themselves as antagonistic to the tone of their age.

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Ch. 4: "The Eighteenth Century", p. 93
1 month 2 weeks ago

We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements. Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!

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"The Reaction in Germany" (1842) Often paraphrased as, "The urge to destroy is also a creative urge"
2 months 3 weeks ago

I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

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p. 484
2 months 3 weeks ago

The humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them for eternity.

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Letter XV
1 month 4 weeks ago

I believe the world grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles.

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Section 45
1 month 3 weeks ago

The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.

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Chapter I.

There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?

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Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
2 weeks 6 days ago

We are swiftly moving at present from an era where business was our culture into an era when culture will be our business. Between these poles stand the huge and ambiguous entertainment industries.

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(p. 384)
2 months 3 weeks ago

I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.

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Ch. 11, Of Democracy
2 months 1 week ago

From an ill-natured man take no loan.

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3 months 1 week ago

A wise man, who puts himself under the government of reason, will be able to receive an injury with calmness, and to treat the person who committed it with lenity; for he will rank injuries among the casual events of life, and will prudently reflect that he can no more stop the natural current of human passions, than he can curb the stormy winds.

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1 month 5 days ago

With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making.

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2 weeks 4 days ago

A woman can earn her pardon for a good year of disobedience by a single adroit submission.

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The Rajah's Diamond, Story of the Bandbox.
1 month 2 weeks ago

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.

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8:32
3 months 1 week ago

In a quarrel for earth, turn not to earth.

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First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 267
3 weeks 1 day ago

The savage recognizes life only in himself and his personal desires. His interest in life is concentrated on himself alone. The highest happiness for him is the fullest satisfaction of his desires. The motive power of his life is personal enjoyment. His religion consists in propitiating his deity and in worshiping his gods, whom he imagines as persons living only for their personal aims.

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Chapter IV, Christianity Misunderstood by Men of ScienceChapter IV, Christianity Misunderstood by Men of Science
2 months 3 weeks ago

Christianity possesses the great advantage over Judaism of being represented as coming from the mouth of the first Teacher not as a statutory but as a moral religion, and as thus entering into the closest relation with reason so that, through reason, it was able of itself, without historical learning, to be spread at all times and among all peoples with the greatest trustworthiness.

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Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, "The Christian religion as a learned religion"
1 month ago

A few years ago I had occasion to visit Peru, and I got to know a fine philosopher and a truly wonderful human being-Francisco Miro Casada. Miro Casada has been an idealist all his life, while being, at the same time, a man of great experience (a former member of several governments and a former Ambassador to France). I found him a man who represents the social democratic vision in its purest form. Talking to him, and to my other friends in Peru (who represented quite a spectrum of political opinion), I heard something that was summed up in a remark he, Miro Casada, made to me, "Whenever you have a Republican president, we get a wave of military dictatorships in Latin America".

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
3 months 1 week ago

Charity, by which God and neighbor are loved, is the most perfect friendship.

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Disputed Questions: On Charity, c. 1270
3 months 3 weeks ago

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

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Part XV - General corollary
2 months 3 weeks ago

Whatever you do, crush the infamous thing, and love those who love you.

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Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert (28 November 1762);
2 months 3 weeks ago

We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it. In the Boer war both governments began with bluff, but they couldn't stay there; the military tension was too much for them.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

When nature removes a great man, people explore the horizon for a successor; but none comes, and none will. His class is extinguished with him. In some other and quite different field the next man will appear.

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Uses of Great Men
3 weeks 5 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
2 months 3 weeks ago

Paradise on earth is where I am.

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Le Mondain, 1736
2 months 3 weeks ago

Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts.

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Chapter 5 (p. 43)
2 months 2 weeks ago

When I obey a rule, I do not choose. I obey the rule blindly.

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§ 219
3 months 2 weeks ago

The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.

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2 weeks 4 days ago

As a liberal I would hesitate to propose a blanket ban on any style of dress because of the implications for individual liberty and freedom of choice.

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As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.
2 weeks 6 days ago

By electricity we have not been driven out of our senses so much as our senses have been driven out of us.

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(p. 375)
2 months 2 weeks ago

A philosopher who is not taking part in discussions is like a boxer who never goes into the ring.

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Conversation of 1930
2 weeks 6 days ago

Gutenberg made all history available as classified data: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the gentlemen's library; the telegraph brought the entire world of the living to the workman's breakfast table.

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(p. 15)
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

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May 3, 1845

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