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7 months 6 days ago

Diogenes the Cynic, when a little before his death he fell into a slumber, and his physician rousing him out of it asked him whether anything ailed him, wisely answered, "Nothing, sir; only one brother anticipates another,-Sleep before Death."

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6 months 1 week ago

The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.

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p. 178
7 months 3 weeks ago

The day of your birth is one day's advance towards the grave.

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Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877) Cf. Dávid Baróti Szabó, Nem kímíl meg senkit halál, wr. 1786; ed. 1914
7 months 2 weeks ago

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

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Book One, Chapter XVI.
8 months 2 weeks ago

Therefore create me! You, the most esteemed, cultured public, are in possession of nervus rerum gerendarum [the moving force to accomplish something]. Just a word from you, a promise to purchase what I write, or, if it is possible, so that everything can be in order immediately, a little advance payment, and I am an author; I shall remain one as long as this favor lasts.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

In the same manner therefore as we have laid it down that the Sun holds the supremacy in the Intelligible world, having round about his own being, in one species, a vast multitude of gods (supposing him to have the same in the Sensible world), all of which move along their everlasting and most felicitous course in a circle, so do we prove him to be Leader and Lord, imparting to and filling the whole heaven, as he does, with his own splendour, likewise with infinite other blessings that be invisible to us: whilst the benefits commenced by the other deities are brought to perfection by him; nay, more, before this, these gods themselves were rendered perfect through his spontaneous and divine operation.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Those who read and rightly understand my teaching will not start an insurrection; they have not learned that from me.

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p. 65
5 months 2 weeks ago

We live invested in an electric information environment that is quite as imperceptible to us as water is to fish.

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(p. 5)
8 months 1 week ago

The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Man in the electronic age has no possible environment except the globe and no possible occupation except information-gathering.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

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"The Art of Controversy" as translated by T. Bailey Saunders
4 months 1 week ago

It would be better to be without the Shu-King than to believe every word of it.

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"Knowledge and Wisdom", no. 131 · "Celebration and Worship", no. 587
5 months 4 days ago

The question of questions for mankind-the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other-is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.

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Ch.2, p. 71
5 months 2 weeks ago

Never say, and never take seriously anyone who says, "I cannot believe that so-and-so could have evolved by gradual selection". I have dubbed this kind of fallacy "the Argument from Personal Incredulity". Time and again, it has proven the prelude to an intellectual banana-skin experience.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

I find that even Eminent Writers (such as Raymund Lully, Paracelsus, and others) do so abuse the termes they employ, that as they will now and then give divers things one name, so they will oftentimes give one thing, many Names; and some of them (perhaps) such, as do much more properly signifie some Distinct Body of another kind; nay even in Technical Words or Termes of Art, they refrain not from this Confounding Liberty; but will, as I have Observ'd call the same Substance, sometimes the Sulphur, and Sometimes the Mercury, of a Body.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution.

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6 months 1 week ago

Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Shew me the tribute money.

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22:18-19 (KJV)
7 months 2 weeks ago

My form remains one, though the matter in it changes continually. I am, in that respect, like a curve in a waterfall.

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Ch. 16: "Miracles of the New Creation"
7 months 2 weeks ago

As to [General Douglas] Macarthur, I don't feel in a position to have clear opinions about anyone I know only from newspapers. You see, whenever they deal with anyone (or anything) I know myself, I find they're always a mass of lies & misunderstandings: so I conclude they're no better in the places where I don't know.

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Letter to Mrs. Mary Van Deusen, April 30, 1951. Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, "Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy", 1950-1963. p. 114.
7 months 1 week ago

You can tell the man who rings true from the man who rings false, not by his deeds alone, but also by his desires.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

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p. 9
3 months 2 weeks ago

Only an atheist can be a good Christian.

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Atheismus im Christentum 1968, english translation: Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom 1972
6 months 1 week ago

The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick or a self-destroying or even murderous obsession. Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.

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The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) p. 76.
6 months 2 weeks ago

It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.

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Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
4 months 3 days ago

Octavia lost Marcellus, whom both his father-in-law and his uncle had begun to depend upon, and to place upon his shoulders the weight of the empire - a young man of keen intelligence and firm character, frugal and moderate in his desires to an extent which deserved especial admiration in one so young and so wealthy, strong to endure labour, averse to indulgence, and able to bear whatever burden his uncle might choose to lay, or I may say to pile upon his shoulders. Augustus had well chosen him as a foundation, for he would not have given way under any weight, however excessive.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Human knowledge increases, while human irrationality stays the same. Scientific inquiry may be an embodiment of reason, but what such inquiry demonstrates is that humans are not rational animals. The fact that humanists refuse to accept the demonstration only confirms its truth.

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An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (p. 81)
6 months 2 weeks ago

Skepticism is an exercise in defascination.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

One might think that a period which, in a space of fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings should be condemned out of hand. But its culpability must still be understood... In more ingenuous times, when the tyrant razed cities for his own greater glory, when the slave chained to the conqueror's chariot was dragged through the rejoicing streets, when enemies were thrown to the wild beasts in front of the assembled people, the mind did not reel before such unabashed crimes, and the judgment remained unclouded. But slave camps under the flag of freedom, massacres justified by philanthropy or by a taste for the superhuman, in one sense cripple judgment. On the day when crime dons the apparel of innocence, through a curious transposition peculiar to our times, it is innocence that is called upon to justify itself.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

You need to know enough philosophy so that the methods of logical analysis are available to you to be used as a tool. One of the most depressing things about educated people today is that so few of them, even among professional intellectuals, are able to follow the steps of a simple logical argument.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.

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The Dilemma of Determinism, 1884
5 months 3 weeks 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
4 months 3 days ago

That man lives badly who does not know how to die well.

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Chapter 11, Section 4
3 months 3 weeks ago

The Americans' "open-mindedness", which is sometimes cited in their favor, is the other side of their interior formlessness. The same goes for their "individualism". Individualism and personality are not the same: the one belongs to the formless world of quantity, the other to the world of quality and hierarchy. The Americans are the living refutation of the Cartesian axiom, "I think, therefore I am": Americans do not think, yet they are. The American "mind", puerile and primitive, lacks characteristic form and is therefore open to every kind of standardization.

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American "Civilization" (1945) · Excerpts
6 months 2 weeks ago

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

There can be no revolution without widespread and passionate destruction, a destruction salutary and fruitful precisely because out of it, and by means of it alone, new worlds are born and arise.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Tis evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men. Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another [...] And 'tis remarkable, that tho' almost all animals use in play the same member, and nearly the same action as in fighting; a lion, a tyger, a cat their paws; an ox his homs; a dog his teeth; a horse his heels: Yet they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho' they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the sense brutes have of each other's pain and pleasure.

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Part 2, Section 12
3 months 1 week ago

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

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4 months 1 week ago

The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.

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6 months ago

All men are in need of help and depend on one another. Human solidarity is the necessary condition for the unfolding of any one individual.

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Ch. 2
5 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing in this book is true.

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6 months 1 week ago

American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

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"The Academic Environment" p. 47 (Hathi Trust)
7 months 2 weeks ago

The happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.

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Ch. 2
7 months 1 week ago

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

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(Extracts, p. 57)

The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.

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Preface (J. B. Baillie translation), § 10

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