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1 week 6 days ago

I do not believe that woman will make politics worse; nor can I believe that she could make it better. If, then, she cannot improve on man's mistakes, why perpetrate the latter?

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2 months 1 day ago

It is the character of the British people, or at least of the higher and middle classes who pass muster for the British people, that to induce them to approve of any change, it is necessary that they should look upon it as a middle course: they think every proposal extreme and violent unless they hear of some other proposal going still farther, upon which their antipathy to extreme views may discharge itself. So it proved in the present instance; my proposal was condemned, but any scheme for Irish Land reform, short of mine, came to be thought moderate by comparison.

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(pp. 294-295)
2 months 2 weeks 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

All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed - that is, divinized. The history of religion, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

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17:11-12 (KJV)
2 months 1 week ago

If we allow them any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of evil, heresies and blasphemies.

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Marthin Luther, Comment, ad Galat., 310. As cited by Rev. Msgr. Patrick F. O'Hare (1916), The Facts about Luther, p. 119. OCLC 4200594.
3 weeks 2 days ago

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

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22:18-19 (KJV)
1 month 3 weeks ago

The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to find the common element in all its applications has shackled philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him understand the usage of the general term.

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p. 19
3 months 1 day ago

Once in his early youth a man allowed himself to be so far carried away in an overwrought irresponsible state as to visit a prostitute. It is all forgotten. Now he wants to get married. Then anxiety stirs. He is tortured day and night with the thought that he might possibly be a father, that somewhere in the world there could be a created being who owed his life to him. He cannot share his secret with anyone; he does not even have any reliable knowledge of the fact. –For this reason the incident must have involved a prostitute and taken place in the wantonness of youth; had it been a little infatuated or an actual seduction, it would be hard to imagine that he could know nothing about it, but now this this very ignorance is the basis of his agitated torment. On the other hand, precisely because of the rashness of the whole affair, his misgivings do not really start until he actually falls in love.

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The breath of an aristocrat is the death rattle of freedom.

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Act I.
2 months 3 weeks ago

In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

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2 months 1 day ago

I believe that the abolition of private ownership of land and capital is a necessary step toward any world in which the nations are to live at peace with one another.

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Ch. VI: International relations, p. 99
1 month 4 weeks ago

I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voice. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the offices of a thoroughly nasty business concern.

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1961 Preface
1 month 3 weeks ago

A philosopher is a man who has to cure many intellectual diseases in himself before he can arrive at the notions of common sense.

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p. 44e
1 month 2 weeks ago

What is to prevent one from telling truth as he laughs, even as teachers sometimes give cookies to children to coax them into learning their A B C?

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Book I, satire i, line 24 (translation by H. Fairclough)
2 months 2 weeks ago

A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.

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1 week 5 days ago

Immature love says: "I love you because I need you." Mature love says: "I need you because I love you."

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Ch. 2
1 month 1 week ago

Despise all those things which when liberated from the body you will not want; invoke the Gods to become your helpers.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
1 month 1 day ago

The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.

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"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5
2 months 4 weeks ago

It is all too easy to forget that there are emotional motivations in history, as well as economic ones.

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2 weeks 3 days ago

Your own philosophy condemns you and supports us.

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Salbatore Mitxelena (1958): Unamuno eta Abendats, Baiona: Darracq
2 weeks 3 days ago

Our longing to save consciousness, to give personal and human finality to the Universe and to existence, is such that even in the midst of a supreme, an agonizing and lacerating sacrifice, we should still hear the voice that assured us that if our consciousness disappears, it is that the infinite and eternal Consciousness may be enriched thereby, that our souls may serve as a nutriment to the Universal soul.

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2 months 1 week ago

I am firmly convinced, therefore, that to set up a republic which is to last a long time, the way to set about it is to constitute it as Sparta and Venice were constituted; to place it in a strong position, and so to fortify it that no one will dream of taking it by a sudden assault; and, on the other hand, not to make it so large as to appear formidable to its neighbors. It should in this way be able to enjoy its form of government for a long time. For war is made on a commonwealth for two reasons: to subjugate it, and for fear of being subjugated by it.

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Book 1, Ch. 6 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
2 months 1 week ago

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

For already, sometime, I have been a boy and a girl, a shrub, a bird, and a silent fish in the sea.

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fr. 117
3 weeks 2 days ago

The source of every Crime, is some defect of the Understanding; or some error in Reasoning, or some sudden force of the Passions. Defect in the Understanding, is Ignorance; in Reasoning, Erroneous Opinion.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 152
1 month 1 day ago

Slavery they can have anywhere. It is a weed that grows in every soil.

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Life, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama. ... The primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole of biology is quite definitely only a chapter in certain biographies, it is what biologists do in the portion of their lives open to biography.

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Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
3 months 3 days ago
We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows not even God.
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It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.

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Uses of Great Men
3 weeks 5 days ago

The fear of your own solitude, of its vast surface and its infinity... Remorse is the voice of solitude. And what does this whispering voice say? Everything in us that is not human anymore.

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2 months 1 week ago

In my opinion, all things in nature occur mathematically.

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Sources: Correspondence with Mersenne note for line 7 (1640), page 36, Die Wiener Zeit page 532 (2008); StackExchange Math Q/A Where did Descartes write...
2 months 2 weeks ago

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

As in the presence of the Master, the Servants are equall, and without any honour at all; So are the Subjects, in the presence of the Soveraign. And though they shine some more, some lesse, when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more than the Starres in presence of the Sun.

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The Second Part, Chapter 18, p. 93
2 months 1 day ago

I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing - the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.

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Ch. 1
1 month 2 weeks ago

All who delight in the pleasures of the belly, exceeding all measure in eating and drinking and love, find that the pleasures are brief and last but a short while-only so long as they are eating and drinking-but the pains that come after are many and endure. The longing for the same things keeps ever returning, and whenever the objects of one's desire are realized forthwith the pleasure vanishes, and one has no further use for them. The pleasure is brief, and once more the need for the same things returns.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

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Ch. 3, P. 57
2 months 1 day ago

In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur.

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Vol. II, Ch. XVI, p. 319.
3 weeks 5 days ago

Saints live in flames; wise men, next to them.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler.

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The God of Suffering? Project Syndicate, 2008
2 months 1 week ago

I would advise no one to send his child where the Holy Scriptures are not supreme. Every institution that does not unceasingly pursue the study of God's word becomes corrupt. Because of this we can see what kind of people they become in the universities and what they are like now. Nobody is to blame for this except the pope, the bishops, and the prelates, who are all charged with training young people. The universities only ought to turn out men who are experts in the Holy Scriptures, men who can become bishops and priests, and stand in the front line against heretics, the devil, and all the world. But where do you find that? I greatly fear that the universities, unless they teach the Holy Scriptures diligently and impress them on the young students, are wide gates to hell.

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To the Christian Nobility of the German States (1520), translated by Charles M. Jacobs, reported in rev. James Atkinson, The Christian in Society, I (Luther's Works, ed. James Atkinson, vol. 44), p. 207
1 month 6 days ago

Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

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Section 11
2 months ago

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

The lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers.

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Luke 12:46 (KJV)
1 week 5 days ago

Jesus Christ raised women above the condition of mere slaves, mere ministers to the passions of the man, raised them by His sympathy, to be Ministers of God. He gave them moral activity. But the Age, the World, Humanity, must give them the means to exercise this moral activity, must give them intellectual cultivation, spheres of action.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

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Ch. III: Industry, Government, the peasants
2 weeks 3 days ago

Feeling does not succeed in converting consolation into truth, nor does reason succeed in converting truth into consolation.

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3 weeks ago

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?'"

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Tales of the Hasidim (1947), 1991 Ebook edition, p.251, as quoted in Jewish Currents.
2 months 1 week ago

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

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Aphorism 97
2 months 1 week ago

The Law continues to exist and to function. But it no longer exists for me.

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Chapter 2, Verse 19

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