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7 months 3 weeks ago

What is called politics is comparatively something so superficial and inhuman, that, practically, I have never fairly recognized that it concerns me at all. The newspapers, I perceive, devote some of their columns specially to politics or government without charge; and this, one would say, is all that saves it; but, as I love literature, and, to some extent, the truth also, I never read those columns at any rate. I do not wish to blunt my sense of right so much.

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p. 494
7 months 2 weeks ago

A nation never falls but by suicide.

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1861
7 months 2 weeks ago

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation.

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p. 65
8 months 2 weeks ago

There is merely bad luck in not being loved; there is misfortune in not loving. All of us, today, are dying of this misfortune. For violence and hatred dry up the heart itself; the long fight for justice exhausts the love that nevertheless gave birth to it.

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6 months 1 week ago

Every living creature is happy when he fulfills his destiny, that is, when he realizes himself, when he is being that which in truth he is. For this reason, Schlegel, inverting the relationship between pleasure and destiny, said, "We have a genius for what we like." Genius, man's superlative gift for doing something, always carries a look of supreme pleasure.

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pp. 16-17
7 months 2 weeks ago

In different hours, a man represents each of several of his ancestors, as if there were seven or eight of us rolled up in each man's skin, - seven or eight ancestors at least, - and they constitute the variety of notes for that new piece of music which his life is.

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Fate
6 months 1 week ago

At the parting of ways in the life-order, where the question is between the new creation or decay, that man will be decisive for new creation who is able on his own initiative to seize the helm and steer a course of his own choosing - even if that course be opposed to the will of the masses. Should the emergence of such persons become impossible a lamentable shipwreck will be inevitable.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

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Chapter XIII.
7 months 3 weeks ago

Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher's-meat. A pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher's-meat at fourpence. The small quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the freest importation.

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Chapter II
3 months 2 weeks ago

The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water. Yet it is a question of such consequences as not only to merit decision, but place also, among the fundamental principles of every government. The course of reflection in which we are immersed here on the elementary principles of society has presented this question to my mind; & that no such obligation can be so transmitted I think very capable of proof. I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self-evident, 'that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living': that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it. The portion occupied by any individual ceases to be his when himself ceases to be, & reverts to the society.

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Letter to James Madison,
8 months 2 weeks ago

In memory yet green, in joy still felt, The scenes of life rise sharply into view. We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt, And while all else is old, the world is new.

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4 months 1 week ago

It must have been in his teens, perhaps rather early, that he and his elder brother John, with William Bell (afterwards of Wylie Hill, and a noted drover) and his brother, all met in the kiln at Eelief to play cards. The corn was dried then at home. There was a fire, therefore, aud perhaps it was both heat and light. The boys had played, perhaps, often enough for trifling stakes, and always parted in good humor. One night they came to some disagreement. My father spoke out what was in him about the folly, the sinfulness, of quarreling over a perhaps sinful amusement. The earnest mind persuaded other minds. They threw the cards into the fire, and (I think the younger Bell told my brother James) no one of the four ever touched a card again through life. My father certainly never hinted at such a game since I knew him. I cannot remember that I, at that age, had any such force of belief. Which of us can?

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6 months 3 days ago

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing like a little judicious levity.

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The Wrong Box, ch. 7 (1889).
6 months 2 weeks ago

Mere imagination would indeed be mere trifling; only no imagination is mere.

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Vol. VI, par. 286
5 months 4 weeks ago

Definition of design = Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state.

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p. 130.
6 months 3 weeks ago

...no legislator, at any period of the world, has willingly placed the seat of active power in the hands of the multitude: Because there it admits of no control, no regulation; no steady direction whatsoever. The people are the natural control on authority; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and impossible.

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p. 441
3 months 2 weeks ago

But inequality of representation in both Houses of our legislature, is not the only republican heresy in this first essay of our revolutionary patriots at forming a constitution. For let it be agreed that a government is republican in proportion as every member composing it has his equal voice in the direction of its concerns (not indeed in person, which would be impracticable beyond the limits of a city, or small township, but) by representatives chosen by himself, and responsible to him at short periods, and let us bring to the test of this canon every branch of our constitution.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

If compelled to indicate my religion on an immigration blank, I might be tempted to put down the word "Taoist," to the amazement of the customs officer who probably never heard of it.

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The Wisdom of Laotse (1948), Introduction, p. 15
7 months 3 weeks ago

A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.

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Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
5 months 3 days ago

Right and wrong are the same in Palestine as anywhere else. What is peculiar about the Palestine conflict is that the world has listened to the party that has committed the offence and has turned a deaf ear to the victims.

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Foreword to The Transformation of Palestine
6 months 2 weeks ago

Big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries. It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries - revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class.

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5 months 3 days ago

The coming of Buddhism to the West may well prove to be the most important event of the Twentieth Century.

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In Lama Surya Das, Awakening the Buddha Within
7 months 2 weeks ago

We have ...as M. Ribot says, not memory so much as memories. The visual... tactile... muscular... auditory memory may all vary independently... and different individuals may have them developed in different degrees. As a rule, a man's memory is good in the departments in which his interest is strong; but those departments are apt to be those in which his discriminative sensibility is high. ...[D]ifferences in men's imagining power... the machinery of memory must be largely determined thereby.

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Ch. 16
3 months 2 weeks ago

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

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24 June 1813
8 months 1 week ago

Sobriety, as opposed to inebriety and gluttony, is of admirable use in teaching men that nature is satisfied with a little, and enabling them to content themselves with simple and frugal fare.

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5 months 2 weeks 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.
7 months 2 weeks ago

Everything which is demanded is by that fact a good.

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"The Will to Believe" p. 205
4 months 5 days ago

And we cannot change this order of things; but what we can do is to acquire stout hearts, worthy of good men, thereby courageously enduring chance and placing ourselves in harmony with Nature.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

It is a thorny undertaking, and more so than it seems, to follow a movement so wandering as that of our mind, to penetrate the opaque depths of its innermost folds, to pick out and immobilize the innumerable flutterings that agitate it.

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Ch. 6. Of Preparation, tr. E. J. Trechmann, 1927

The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

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Propylaea (1798) Introduction
7 months 3 weeks ago

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

In physical reality one cause does not produce a given effect, but a multitude of distinct causes contribute to produce it, without our having any means of discriminating the part of each of them. ...Causes which have produced a certain effect will never be reproduced except approximately.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does-or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?

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(Hays translation) IV, 20
7 months 3 weeks ago

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

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Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda
7 months 2 weeks ago

Water and navigation had that role to play. Locked in the ship from which he could not escape, the madman was handed over to the thousand-armed river, to the sea where all paths cross, and the great uncertainty that surrounds all things. A prisoner in the midst of the ultimate freedom, on the most open road of all, chained solidly to the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence, the prisoner of the passage. It is not known where he will land, and when he lands, he knows not whence he came. His truth and his home are the barren wasteland between two lands that can never be his own. One thing is certain: the link between water and madness is deeply rooted in the dream of the Western man.

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Part One: 1. Stultifera Navis
6 months 2 weeks ago

"What is truth?" is a fundamental question. But what is it compared to "How to endure life?" And even this one pales beside the next: "How to endure oneself?" - That is the crucial question in which no one is in a position to give us an answer.

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6 months 3 days ago

A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

The First thing that strikes a traveler in the United States is the innumerable multitude of those who seek to emerge from their original condition; and the second is the rarity of lofty ambition to be observed in the midst of the universally ambitious stir of society. No Americans are devoid of a yearning desire to rise, but hardly any appear to entertain hopes of great magnitude or to pursue very lofty aims. All are constantly seeking to acquire property, power, and reputation.

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Book Three, Chapter XIX.
6 months 2 weeks ago

The more you live, the less useful it seems to have lived.

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6 months 1 week ago

The world of immediate experience-the world in which we find ourselves living-must be comprehended, transformed, even subverted in order to become that which it really is.

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p. 123
7 months 1 week ago

Living virtuously is equal to living in accordance with one's experience of the actual course of nature.

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As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 182.
8 months 2 weeks ago

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Copernicus never discusses matters of religion or faith, nor does he use argument that depend in any way upon the authority of sacred writings which he might have interpreted erroneously. ... He did not ignore the Bible, but he knew very well that if his doctrine were proved, then it could not contradict the Scriptures when they were rightly understood.

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