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3 months 1 week ago

All religions so far have been the expression of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is the stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and brings about their disappearance.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

If Mormonism is able to endure, unmodified, until it reaches the third and fourth generation, it is destined to become the greatest power the world has ever known.

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This quote originates in Thomas J. Yates, "Count Tolstoi and the 'American Religion' ", Improvement Era (February 1939)
3 weeks 5 days ago

All characteristics of material things as they are presented to us in the acts of external perception (e.g. colour) are endowed with the separateness of spatial extension, but it is only when we build up a single connected real world out of all our experiences that the spatial extension, which is a constituent of every perception, becomes a part of one and the same all-inclusive space. ... every material thing can, without changing content, equally well occupy a position in Space different from its present one. This immediately gives us the property of the homogeneity of space which is the root of the conception, Congruence.

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Introduction
3 months 3 weeks ago

Eat not the heart.

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Symbol 30
4 months 2 weeks ago

The universal propensity to believe in invisible, intelligent power, if not an original instinct, being at least a general attendant of human nature, may be considered as a kind of mark or stamp, which the divine workman has set upon his work; and nothing surely can more dignify mankind, than to be thus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bear the image or impression of the universal Creator. But consult this image, as it appears in the popular religions of the world. How is the deity disfigured in our representations of him! What caprice, absurdity, and immorality are attributed to him! How much is he degraded even below the character, which we should naturally, in common life, ascribe to a man of sense and virtue!

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Part XV - General corollary
1 month 1 day ago

But the wise man knows that all things are in store for him. Whatever happens, he says: "I knew it."

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4 months 2 weeks ago

I am condemned to be free.

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Part 4, chapter 1
1 month 2 weeks ago

There will not be one kind of community existing and one kind of life led in utopia. Utopia will consist of utopias, of many different and divergent communities in which people lead different kinds of lives under different institutions. Some kinds of communities will be more attractive to most than others; communities will wax and wane. People will leave some for others or spend their whole lives in one. Utopia is a framework for utopias, a place where people are at liberty to join together voluntarily to pursue and attempt to realize their own vision of the good life in the ideal community but where no one can impose his own utopian vision upon others.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 311
3 months 2 weeks ago

Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Since it cannot be overlooked by the Doctrine of Knowledge that Actual Knowledge does by no means present itself as a Unity, such as is assumed above but as a multiplicity, there is consequently a second task imposed upon it, - that of setting forth the ground of this apparent Multiplicity. It is of course understood that this ground is not to be derived from any outward source, but must be shown to be contained in the essential Nature of Knowledge itself as such; - and that therefore this problem, although apparently two-fold, is yet but one and the same, - namely, to set forth the essential Nature of Knowledge.

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The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

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Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 136
4 months 3 weeks ago

If a woman becomes weary and at last dead from bearing, that matters not; let her only die from bearing, she is there to do it.

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Sermon Von dem ehelichen Stande (1519), p. 41 - as quoted in The Ethic of Freethought: A Selection of Essays and Lectures (1888) by Karl Pearson
3 weeks 6 days ago

For a country to have a great writer ... is like having another government. That's why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

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Innokenty, in Ch. 57
4 months 2 weeks ago

We must plan for freedom, and not only for security, if for no other reason than that only freedom can make security secure.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 21 "An Evaluation of the Prophecy"
2 months 2 weeks ago

Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of them cared about; Anna Pávlovna observed these greetings with mournful and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious duty and did not return to her the whole evening.

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Bk. I, Ch. II
5 months 1 week ago

History is a story without an end.

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4 months 6 days ago

Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

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p. 166.
3 months 3 weeks ago

The created World is but a small Parenthesis in Eternity.

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Part III, Section XXIX
3 months 2 weeks ago

The determination to print them (his lectures), and to communicate them to the General Public, must also speak for itself; and should it not do so, any other recommendation of them would be thrown away. Thus, with respect to the appearance of this work, I have nothing further to say to the Public, than that I have nothing to say.

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Preface
2 months 2 weeks ago

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

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3 months 1 week ago

The great problems of life - sexuality, of course, among others - are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious. These images are really balancing or compensating factors which correspond with the problems life presents in actuality. This is not to be marvelled at, since these images are deposits representing the accumulated experience of thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence.

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Ch. 5, p. 271
3 months 4 weeks ago

If two right lines cut one another, they will form the angles at the vertex equal. ...This... is what the present theorem evinces, that when two right lines mutually cut each other, the vertical angles are equal. And it was first invented according to Eudemus by Thales...

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Proposition XV. Thereom VIII.
4 months 2 weeks ago

I am responsible for everything ... except for my very responsibility, for I am not the foundation of my being. Therefore everything takes place as if I were compelled to be responsible. I am abandoned in the world ... in the sense that I find myself suddenly alone and without help, engaged in a world for which I bear the whole responsibility without being able, whatever I do, to tear myself away from this responsibility for an instant.

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Part 4, Chapter 1, III
1 month 4 weeks ago

Compassion is the desire that moves the individual self to widen the scope of its self-concern to embrace the whole of the universal self.

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The Toynbee-Ikeda Dialogue: Man Himself Must Choose
4 months 1 week ago

It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself.

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p. 44e
5 months ago

Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.

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Book I, ch. 17, 1.
2 weeks 2 days ago

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.

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2 months 1 week ago

Take any aspect of the Western inheritance of which our ancestors were proud, and you will find university courses devoted to deconstructing it. Take any positive feature of our political and cultural inheritance, and you will find concerted efforts in both the media and the academy to place it in quotation marks, and make it look like an imposture or a deceit.

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(p. 40)
3 months 1 week ago

Time with its continuity logically involves some other kind of continuity than its own. Time, as the universal form of change, cannot exist unless there is something to undergo change, and to undergo a change continuous in time, there must be a continuity of changeable qualities.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

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A 11
2 months 3 weeks ago

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

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F 69
4 months 2 weeks ago

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of the morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

When a person is haughty, he distances himself from other people and thereby deprives himself of one of life's biggest pleasures-open, joyful communication with everyone.

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p. 108
3 months 2 weeks ago

No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do. Variant: What is not yet done is only what we have not yet attempted to do.

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Chapter XVIII.
4 months 2 weeks ago

By 'arguing...' I mean... criticizing... inviting... criticism; and trying to learn from it.

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3 months 1 week ago

The rights and duties of man thus simplified, it seems almost impertinent to attempt to illustrate truths that appear so incontrovertible: yet such deeply rooted prejudices have clouded reason, and such spurious qualities have assumed the name of virtues, that it is necessary to pursue the course of reason as it has been perplexed and involved in error, by various adventitious circumstances, comparing the simple axiom with casual deviations.Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they cannot trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves. Yet the imperfect conclusions thus drawn, are frequently very plausible, because they are built on partial experience, on just, though narrow, views.

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Ch. 1
3 months 2 weeks ago

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)", Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #54
3 months 1 week ago

Pure mathematics is religion.

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2 weeks 1 day ago

The intelligence required for the solving of social problems is not a thing of the mere intellect. It must be animated with the religious sentiment and warm with sympathy for human suffering. It must stretch out beyond self-interest, whether it be the self-interest of the few or of the many. It must seek justice. For at the bottom of every social problem we will find a social wrong.

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Ch. 1 : The Increasing Importance of Social Questions
4 months 2 weeks ago

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

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Book IV, Chapter VI, §2
4 months 2 weeks ago

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

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As quoted in The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1989) edited by Robert Andrews, p. 114
4 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
3 weeks 6 days ago

Macbeth's self-justifications were feeble - and his conscience devoured him. Yes, even Iago was a little lamb too. The imagination and the spiritual strength of Shakespeare's evildoers stopped short at a dozen corpses. Because they had no ideology.

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The Gulag Archipelago
2 months 2 weeks ago

Lives matter in the sense that they assume physical form within the sphere of appearance; lives matter because they are to be valued equally.

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p. 12
1 month 3 weeks ago

It is easy to romanticise, say, tigers or lions and cats. We admire their magnificent beauty, strength and agility. But we would regard their notional human counterparts as wanton psychopaths of the worst kind.

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1.10 On the Misguided Romanticisation of Feline Psychopaths

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