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3 months 2 weeks ago

The soul active sees absolute truth; and utters truth, or creates.

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par. 17
3 months 2 weeks ago

What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 95
2 months 2 days ago

The greater part of Eastern teachers of the Church, from Clement of Alexandria to Maximus the Confessor, were supporters of Apokatastasis, of universal salvation and resurrection. And this is characteristic of (contemporary) Russian religious thought. Orthodox thought has never been suppressed by the idea of Divine justice and it never forgot the idea of Divine love. Chiefly - it did not define man from the point of view of Divine justice but from the idea of transfiguration and Deification of man and cosmos.

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"The Truth of Orthodoxy" as translated in Vestnik of the Russian West European Patriarchal Exarchate
3 months 2 weeks ago

Life is just a notebook with blank pages. Every time we make a mistake, the pages get stained and living in it becomes impossible.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

...no Monarchy limited or unlimited, nor any of the old Republics, can possibly be safe as long as this strange, nameless, wild, enthusiastic thing is established in the Center of Europe.

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Letter to John Trevor (January 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 218
4 months 1 day 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
1 week ago

We must now ask how changes of this sort can come about, considering first discoveries, or novelties of fact, and then inventions, or novelties of theory. That distinction between discovery and invention or between fact and theory will, however, immediately prove to be exceedingly artificial.

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p. 52
3 months 2 weeks ago

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

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Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
2 months 1 week ago

The same, without such opinion, DESPAIRE.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 25
1 month 2 weeks ago

My car and my adding machine understand nothing: they are not in that line of business.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

In this life it is necessary that we be on our guard. To begin with we must be constantly aware of the fact that life here below is best described as being a type of continual warfare. This is a fact that Job, that undefeated soldier of vast experience, tells us so plainly. Yet in this matter the great majority of mankind is often deceived, for the world, like some deceitful magician, captivates their minds with seductive blandishments, and as a result most individuals behave as if there had been a cessation of hostilities.

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p.61
3 months 2 weeks ago

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

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2 months 6 days ago

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

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p. 44
3 months 2 weeks ago

That the human mind has a certain order of possible progress, in which some things must precede others, an order which governments and public instructors can modify to some, but not to an unlimited extent: that all questions of political institutions are relative, not absolute, and that different stages of human progress not only will have, but ought to have, different institutions: That government is always either in the hands, or passing into the hands, of whatever is the strongest power in society, and that what this power is, does not depend on institutions, but institutions on it: That any general theory or philosophy of politics supposes a previous theory of human progress, and that this is the same thing with a philosophy of history.

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(p. 162)
2 months 1 week ago

The universal view melts things into a blur.

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1 week 5 days ago

The self-evident truth which makes men invincible is that inalienably they are inviolate persons.

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Ch. XVII: "On This Rock", §2, p. 375
2 months 3 days ago

We must needs believe in the other life, in the eternal life beyond the grave. ...And we must needs believe in that other life, perhaps, in order that we may deserve it, in order that we may obtain it, for it may be that he neither deserves it nor will obtain it who does not passionately desire it above reason and, if need be, against reason.

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3 months 1 week ago

"For many, abstract thinking is toil; for me, on good days, it is feast and frenzy." (XIV, 24) Abstract thinking a feast? The highest form of human existence? ... "The feast implies: pride, exuberance, frivolity; mockery of all earnestness and respectability; a divine affirmation of oneself, out of animal plenitude and perfection-all obviously states to which the Christian may not honestly say Yes. The feast is paganism par excellence." (WM, 916). For that reason, we might add that thinking never takes place in Christianity. That is to say, there is no Christian philosophy. There is no true philosophy that could be determined anywhere else than from within itself.

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p. 5

Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy; and, with the axe and plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer kind of implements, are triumphantly clearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for the future history of the world; doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Environments are invisible. Their groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.

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Fate
4 months 2 weeks ago
With all great deceivers there is a noteworthy occurrence to which they owe their power. In the actual act of deception... they are overcome by belief in themselves. It is this which then speaks so miraculously and compellingly to those who surround them.
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3 months 3 weeks ago

The Mass is the greatest blasphemy of God, and the highest idolatry upon earth, an abomination the like of which has never been in Christendom since the time of the Apostles.

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171
1 week 5 days ago

I do not admire myself as a person. My successes do not override my shortcomings.

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Journal of Humanistic Psychology (Spring 1991) Vol. 31 No. 2, p. 112
3 months 1 week ago

There is hardly a philosophy which has not invoked something like the will or desire to know, the love of truth, etcetera. But, in truth, very few philosophers-apart, perhaps, from Spinoza and Schopenhauer-have accorded it more than a marginal status; as if there was no need for philosophy to say first of all what the name that it bears actually refers to. As if placing at the head of its discourse the desire to know, which it repeats in its name, was enough to justify its own existence and show-at a stroke-that it is necessary and natural: All men desire to know. Who, then, is not a philosopher, and how could philosophy not be the most necessary thing in the world?

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pp. 4-5
4 months 1 week ago

The attempt to separate everything from everything else is not only not in good taste but also shows that a man is utterly uncultivated and unphilosophical. The complete separation of each thing from all is the utterly final obliteration of all discourse. For our power of discourse is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one another.

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2 months 2 days ago

If a captive mind is unaware of being in prison, it is living in error. If it has recognized the fact, even for the tenth of a second, and then quickly forgotten it in order to avoid suffering, it is living in falsehood. Men of the most brilliant intelligence can be born, live and die in error and falsehood. In them, intelligence is neither a good, nor even an asset. The difference between more or less intelligent men is like the difference between criminals condemned to life imprisonment in smaller or larger cells. The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.

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p. 69
3 months 2 weeks ago

The Guide sang: The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought, And fools crying, Because it has begun It will continue as it has begun! The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run Faster for ever. The old age is done, We have new lights and see without the sun. (Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea, Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)

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Pilgrim's Regress 186-187
1 month 4 weeks ago

Being precedes identity. 
Existence precedes essence. 

Contingent identity subgroups are never more important than the deterministic universal evolution. 

"Precedence Culture" builds a culture around being, before choice, rather than identity particularity that is contingent and after choice. Identity particularity can't even exist without deterministic emergence. Respect life first.

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3 months 1 week ago

In philosophy the race is to the one who can run slowest-the one who crosses the finish line last.

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p. 40e
4 months 1 week ago

What, then, of human activities? Is humankind itself hastening its own end? Man has, for instance, been burning carbon-containing fuel — wood, coal, oil, gas — at a steadily accelerating rate. All these fuels form carbon dioxide. Some is absorbed by plants and the oceans but not as fast as it is produced. This means the carbon dioxide content of the air is going up — slightly but nevertheless up. Carbon dioxide retains heat, and even a small rise means a warming of the Earth's atmosphere. This may result in the melting of the polar ice caps with unusual speed, flooding the world before we have learned climate control. In reverse, our industrial civilization is making our atmosphere dustier so that it reflects more sunlight away and cools the Earth slightly — thus making possible a glacial advance in a few centuries, also before we have learned climate control.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

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Attributed to Russell in Prochnow's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132
2 months 1 week ago

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

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The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 14, p. 127. Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.
2 months 1 week ago

“What man among you with 100 sheep, on losing one of them, will not leave the 99 behind in the wilderness and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he has found it, he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he gets home, he calls his friends and his neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous ones who have no need of repentance.

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Luke 15: 4-7
3 months 2 weeks ago

False and doubtful positions, relied upon as unquestionable maxims, keep those who build on them in the dark from truth. Such are usually the prejudices imbibed from education, party, reverence, fashion, interest, et cetera.

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Book IV, Ch. 7
3 months 2 weeks ago

It is the duty of every man, so far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.

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The Theophilanthropist: Containing Critical, Moral, Theological and Literary Essays, in Monthly Numbers, p. 387
2 months 2 weeks ago

The best doctor is the one you run for and can't find.

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As quoted in Selected Thoughts from the French: XV Century - XX Century, with English Translations (1913) by James Raymond Solly, p. 67
3 months 2 weeks ago

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

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Book I, Chapter 1, "The Law of Human Nature"
1 week 5 days ago

With exceptions so rare they are regarded as miracles of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular-not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

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p. 27
2 months 2 weeks ago

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

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No. 16
3 months 2 weeks ago

...happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds.

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Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics (1785), Second Section.

He maintained this attitude up to the very end, and no man ever saw Socrates too much elated or too much depressed. Amid all the disturbance of Fortune, he was undisturbed.

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My father's education was altogether of the worst and most limited. I believe he was never more than three months at any school. What he learned there showed what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting - these, with other limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive for more.

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4 months ago

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

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Book I, ch. 14, 13, 14.

To do the opposite of something is also a form of imitation, namely an imitation of its opposite.

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D 96 Variant translation: To do just the opposite is also a form of imitation.
2 months 1 week ago

The woman who fights against her father still has the possibility of leading an instinctive, feminine existence, because she rejects only what is alien to her. But when she fights against the mother she may, at the risk of injury to her instincts, attain to greater consciousness, because in repudiating the mother she repudiates all that is obscure, instinctive, ambiguous, and unconscious in her own nature.

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"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 186
3 months 6 days ago

Some of Singer's critics call him a Nazi and compare his proposals to Hitler's schemes for eliminating the unwanted, the unfit and the disabled. But...Singer is no Hitler. He doesn't want state-sponsored killings. Rather, he wants the decision to kill to be made by you and me. Instead of government-conducted genocide, Singer favors free-market homicide.

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Dinesh D'Souza, "Atheism and Child Murder," in Townhall (12 May 2008).
3 months 1 week ago

The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual. It belongs, even in minor cases, to the ceremonies by which power is manifested.

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Chapter One, The body of the condemned

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