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4 months 6 days ago

Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.

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Maxim 63 Variant translation: "Valour grows by daring, fear by holding back."
5 months 1 week ago

Life is writing. The sole purpose of mankind is to engrave the thoughts of divinity onto the tablets of nature.

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"On Philosophy: To Dorothea," in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 420
2 months 1 week ago

During the last three centuries, there has been, by virtue of the Inquisition, a greater enjoyment of peace, and happiness, in Spain, than in the other nations of Europe.

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p. 57
5 months 1 week ago

That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual being is so evolved-who knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a Zoophyte or of a Man";-for him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable.

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Spencer here references William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Comparative Physiology see p. 473
4 months 1 week ago

Particularly in the case of all professional of press-images which testify of the real events. In making reality, even the most violent, emerge to the visible, it makes the real substance disappear. It is like the Myth of Eurydice : when Orpheus turns around to look at her, she vanishes and returns to hell. That is why, the more exponential the marketing of images is growing the more fantastically grows the indifference towards the real world. Finally, the real world becomes a useless function, a collection of phantom shapes and ghost events. We are not far from the silhouettes on the walls of the cave of Plato.

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2 months 1 week ago

Never spend your money before you have it.

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2 months 1 week ago

The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management. Try by this, as a tally, every provision of our constitution, and see if it hangs directly on the will of the people. Reduce your legislature to a convenient number for full, but orderly discussion. Let every man who fights or pays, exercise his just and equal right in their election.

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7 months 1 week ago

If the love of money is the root of all evil, the need of money is most certainly the root of all despair.

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6 months 1 week ago

If you punish him for what he sees you practise yourself, he... will be apt to interpret it the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father, who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasure he takes himself.

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Sec. 71
6 months 1 week ago

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

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Quotation and Originality
6 months 3 weeks ago

All who say the same things do not possess them in the same manner; and hence the incomparable author of the Art of Conversation pauses with so much care to make it understood that we must not judge of the capacity of a man by the excellence of a happy remark that we heard him make. ...let us penetrate, says he, the mind from which it proceeds... it will oftenest be seen that he will be made to disavow it on the spot, and will be drawn very far from this better thought in which he does not believe, to plunge himself into another, quite base and ridiculous.

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Montaigne, Essais, liv. III, chap. viii.-Faugère
4 months 5 days ago

This is still the strangest thing in all man's travelling, that he should carry about with him incongruous memories.

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Pt. II, ch. III.
6 months 1 week ago

Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society.

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Chapter III, Section 26, pg. 151
5 months ago

No one is guiltless...But no one is beyond the pale of human existence, provided he pays for his guilt.

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6 months 1 week ago

As geological time goes, it is but a moment since the human race began and only the twinkling of an eye since the arts of civilization were first invented. In spite of some alarmists, it is hardly likely that our species will completely exterminate itself. And so long as man continues to exist, we may be pretty sure that, whatever he may suffer for a time, and whatever brightness may be eclipsed, he will emerge sooner or later, perhaps strengthened and reinvigorated by a period of mental sleep. The universe is vast and men are but tiny specks on an insignificant planet. But the more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.

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"If We are to Survive this Dark Time", The New York Times Magazine, 9/3/1950
6 months 4 weeks ago

What Heaven has conferred is called The Nature; an accordance with this nature is called The Path of duty; the regulation of this path is called Instruction. The path may not be left for an instant. If it could be left, it would not be the path. On this account, the superior man does not wait till he sees things, to be cautious, nor till he hears things, to be apprehensive.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

A man who chooses between drinking a glass of milk and a glass of a solution of potassium cyanide does not choose between two beverages; he chooses between life and death. A society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems; it chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism; it is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings.

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1963 edition, p. 680
2 months 6 days ago

As thou thyself art a component part of a social system, so let every act of thine be a component part of social life. Whatever act of thine that has no reference, either immediately or remotely, to a social end, this tears asunder thy life, and does not allow it to be one, and it is of the nature of a mutiny, just as when in a popular assembly a man acting by himself stands apart from the general agreement.

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IX, 23
2 months 6 days ago

Speech is insufficient to utter the last things; and this troubles it not, because the last things may be heard speaking for themselves. At last, after long delay the wondering soul gives form to that which is stirring within it and produces its works art and song and mighty deeds.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker.

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Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute. Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 61
6 months 1 week ago

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

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Ch. 6: Machines and the Emotions
6 months 4 weeks ago

If the Superior Man is not serious, then he will not inspire awe in others. If he is not learned, then he will not be on firm ground. He takes loyalty and good faith to be of primary importance, and has no friends who are not of equal (moral) caliber. When he makes a mistake, he doesn't hesitate to correct it.

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2 months 1 week ago

The system of banking we have both equally and ever reprobated. I contemplate it as a blot left in all our Constitutions, which, if not covered, will end in their destruction, which is already hit by the gamblers in corruption, and is sweeping away in its progress the fortunes and morals of our citizens. Funding I consider as limited, rightfully, to a redemption of the debt within the lives of a majority of the generation contracting it; every generation coming equally, by the laws of the Creator of the world, to the free possession of the earth he made for their subsistence, unincumbered by their predecessors, who, like them, were but tenants for life.

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Letter to John Taylor (28 May 1816) ME 15:18: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 15, p. 18
6 months 1 week ago

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

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1839
5 months 5 days ago

Self-knowledge - the bitterest knowledge of all and also the kind we cultivate least: what is the use of catching ourselves out, morning to night, in the act of illusion, pitilessly tracing each act back to its root, and losing case after case before our own tribunal?

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2 weeks 4 days ago

"We now live in a technologically prepared environment that blankets the earth itself. The humanly contrived environment of electric information and power has begun to take precedence over the old environment of "nature." Nature, as it were, begins to be the content of our technology."
- Marshall McLuhan

See biography for Marshall McLuhan:
https://civilsimian.com/MarshallMcLuhan

Read Marshall McLuhan's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/179/content

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6 months 1 week ago

I am against a League war in present circumstances, because the anti-League powers are strong. The analogy is not King v. Barons, but the War of the Roses. If the League were strong enough I should favour sanctions, because the effect would suffice, or the war would be short and small. The whole question is quantitative.

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Letter to Kingsley Martin shortly before the Italo-Abyssinian War (7 August 1935), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207
4 months 3 weeks ago

A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.

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5 months 1 week ago

A gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Forty years ago Germany proclaimed the slogan: "Germany above everything. Germany for the Germans, first, last and always. We want peace; therefore we must prepare for war. Only a well armed and thoroughly prepared nation can maintain peace, can command respect, can be sure of its national integrity." And Germany continued to prepare, thereby forcing the other nations to do the same. The terrible European war is only the culminating fruition of the hydra-headed gospel, military preparedness.

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5 months 1 week ago

Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world. It is a crime to bear it, when it can be rationally shaken off. Nothing but absolute impotence can justify men in not resisting it to the utmost of their ability.

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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. 458
4 months 1 week ago

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

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Cited in Rules for methodizing the Apocalypse, Rule 9, from a manuscript published in The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974) by Frank E. Manuel, p. 120
6 months 4 days ago

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. 

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(5.6) Variant translations: The limits of my language stand for the limits of my world. The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for.
5 months 6 days ago

There is but one Temple in the World; and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body. Variant translation: There is but one temple in the Universe and that is the Body of Man.

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As inscribed on the Library of Congress, quoted in Handbook of the New Library of Congress (1897) by Herbert Small, p. 53
1 month 6 days 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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5 months 5 days ago

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

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Vol. V, par. 265
3 months 3 weeks ago

I now propose briefly to... set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute world must be based: I shall then indicate the one immediate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by those facts, and I shall finally discuss the bearing of that conclusion upon the hypotheses which have been entertained respecting the Origin of Man.

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Ch.2, p. 74
4 months 4 weeks ago

Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.

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p. 9.
5 months 1 week ago

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

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3 months 3 days ago

I think I have already said somewhere that mathematics is the art of giving the same name to different things.

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Part I. Ch. 2 : The Future of Mathematics, p. 31
5 months 6 days ago

True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of all existing institutions she raises her glorious head, as the new foundress of the world.

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English translation as quoted in The Dublin Review Vol. III (July-October 1837)
6 months 1 week ago

In order to make himself thoroughly undesirable, he will speak.

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p. 463
2 months 2 weeks ago

Recognition of the subjectivity of the qualities of sense is found in Galilei (and also in Descartes and Hobbes) in a form closely related to the principle underlying the constructive mathematical method of our modern physics which repudiates" qualities".

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Introduction
7 months 5 days ago

Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.

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6 months 4 days ago

Make sure that your religion is a matter between you and God only.

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Comment to Maurice O'Connor Drury, as quoted in Wittgenstein Reads Freud : The Myth of the Unconscious (1996) by Jacques Bouveresse, as translated by Carol Cosman, p. 14
6 months 1 week ago

By means of ever more effective methods of mind-manip­ulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms- elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest-will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of non-violent totalitari­anism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slo­gans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial-but democracy and free­dom in a strictly Pickwickian sense. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of sol­diers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.

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Chapter 3, p. 25
6 months 2 weeks ago

There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies.

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Aphorism 43
6 months 4 days ago

This is not for me, I want an entirely rural spot.

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C 1920, expressing displeasure at a village that had a park with a fountain.

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