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4 months 1 week ago

The history of the Romanovs is an Elizabethan tragedy that lasts for three centuries. Its keynote is cruelty, a barbaric, pointless kind of cruelty that has always been common in the East, but that came to Europe only recently, in the time of Hitler.

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pp. 61-62
4 months 2 weeks ago

Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry.

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Progressive Universalpoesie (1798)
5 months 3 weeks ago

I speak for the slave when I say that I prefer the philanthropy of Captain Brown to that philanthropy which neither shoots me nor liberates me.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The aim of the book is to set a limit to thought, or rather - not to thought, but to the expression of thoughts: for in order to be able to set a limit to thought, we should have to find both sides of the limit thinkable (i.e. we should have to be able to think what cannot be thought). It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be set, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is elsewhere, and I don't know where that elsewhere is.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The real point at issue always is Turkey in Europe - the great peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities.

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The Russian Menace to Europe, From Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, edited by Paul Blackstock and Bert Hoselitz, and published by George Allen and Unwin, London, 1953
1 month 3 weeks ago

As there are many to whom the beauty and harmony of economic laws are hidden, and to whom the inspiring thought of a social order in which there should be work for all, leisure for all, and abundance for all - in which all might be at least as true, as generous and as manful as they wish to be - is shut out by the deference paid to economic authorities who have as it were given bonds not to find that for which they profess to seek, so there are many to-day to whom any belief in the spiritual element, in the existence of God and in a future life, is darkened or destroyed, not so much by difficulties they themselves find, but by what they take to be the teachings of science.

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Conclusion : The Moral of this Examination
4 months 1 week ago

You cannot conduct war with equals; you cannot have militarism with free born men; you must have slaves, automatons, machines, obedient disciplined creatures, who will move, act, shoot and kill at the command of their superiors. That is preparedness, and nothing else.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

In the darkest region of the political field the condemned man represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king.

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2 months 2 days ago

If every one in the world will love universally; states not attacking one another; houses not disturbing one another; thieves and robbers becoming extinct; emperor and ministers, fathers and sons, all being affectionate and filial -- if all this comes to pass the world will be orderly. Therefore, how can the wise man who has charge of governing the empire fail to restrain hate and encourage love? So, when there is universal love in the world it will be orderly, and when there is mutual hate in the world it will be disorderly.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
3 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
3 months 2 weeks ago

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.

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Draft Constitution for Virginia
1 month 3 weeks ago

We are all made for mutual assistance, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids, as the rows of the upper and under teeth, from whence it follows that clashing and opposition is perfectly unnatural.

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II, 1
4 months 1 week ago

With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Confession of our faults is the next thing to innocence.

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Maxim 1060
5 months 3 weeks ago

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Is it always permissible to speak of the extension of a concept, of a class? And if not, how do we recognize the exceptional cases? Can we always infer from the extension of one concept's coinciding with that of a second, that every object which falls under the first concept also falls under the second?

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Vol. 2, p. 127. Replying to Bertrand Russell's letter about Russell's Paradox; quoted in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
3 months 2 weeks ago

Moral philosophers say things like, 'What is actually wrong with cannibalism?' There are two ways of responding to that: one is to shrink back in horror and say, 'Cannibalism! Cannibalism! We can't talk about cannibalism!' The other is to say, 'Well, actually, what is wrong with cannibalism?' Then you work it out and you tease it out and you decide yes, actually, cannibalism is wrong, but for the following reasons. So I'd like to think that my moral values at least partly come from reasoning. Trying to suppress the gut reaction as much as possible.

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Interview with Sophie Elmhirst (2015),
6 months 2 days ago

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk- they are all part of the curriculum.

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The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
4 months 1 week ago

If science is not to degenerate into a medley of ad hoc hypotheses, it must become philosophical and must enter upon a thorough criticism of its own foundations.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", p. 24
4 months 3 weeks ago

Good order is the foundation of all good things.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Friend!-Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any sane man deliberately believe such a thing?

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5 months 3 weeks ago

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

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Interview (1960), Quoted in Susan Sontag's introduction to Barthes: Selected Writings, "Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,"
1 month 3 weeks ago

High up where the poor sat, the people quaked with fear:they saw the soul stretched on the ground, a votive beastbeaten by the conflicting powers of light and dark,and their minds shook, nor knew now what great god to choose,for comfort's road dropped to the right, the rough ascentrose to the left, and both roads seemed to lead to God,while at the crossroads stood the human heart, and swayed.

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Book VI, line 242
5 months 2 weeks ago

In the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance.

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Chapter One, pp. 56
2 months 5 days ago

When you tell a girl how beautiful she is, she will say, "Now isn't that just like a man! All you men think about is bodies. OK, so I'm beautiful, but I got my body from my parents and it was just luck. I prefer to be admired for myself, not my chassis." Poor little chauffeur! All she is saying is that she has lost touch with her own astonishing wisdom and ingenuity, and wants to be admired for some trivial tricks that she can perform with her conscious attention. And we are all in the same situation, having dissociated ourselves from our bodies and from the whole network of forces in which bodies can come to birth and live.

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p. 112
4 months 3 weeks ago

Whether directly or indirectly all nations are originally nothing but Indian colonies... the oriental antiquity could, if we consented to deepen it, bring us back more safely towards the divine....

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Friedrich Schlegel, Essay on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, quoted by Roger-Pol Droit in L'Oubli de I'Inde, Paris Presses Universitaires de France, 1989, p. 129.
3 months 3 days ago

All art is autobiographical; the pearl is the oyster's autobiography.

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On the autobiographical nature of his films, in The Atlantic
1 month 3 weeks ago

The equation state = politics becomes erroneous and deceptive at exactly the moment when state and society penetrate each other.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.

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2 months 5 days ago

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

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As quoted in Life magazine
5 months 3 weeks ago

Truth, Goodness, Beauty - those celestial thrins, Continually are born; e'en now the Universe, With thousand throats, and eke with greener smiles, Its joy confesses at their recent birth.

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June 14, 1838
2 months 5 days ago

If I first see a tree in the winter, I might assume that it is not a fruit-tree. But when I return in the summer to find it covered with plums, I must exclaim, 'Excuse me! You were a fruit-tree after all.' Imagine, then, that a billion years ago some beings from another part of the galaxy made a tour through the solar system in their flying saucer and found no life. They would dismiss it as 'Just a bunch of old rocks!' But if they returned today, they would have to apologize: 'Well - you were peopling rocks after all!' You may, of course, argue that there is no analogy between the two situations. The fruit-tree was at one time a seed inside a plum, but the earth - much less the solar system or the galaxy - was never a seed inside a person. But, oddly enough, you would be wrong.

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p. 74
4 months 2 weeks ago

Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?

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1 month 3 weeks ago

My primary object is to defend and advance a principle in which I see the only possible relief from much that enthralls and degrades and distorts, turning light to darkness and good to evil, rather than to gage a philosopher or weigh a philosophy. Yet the examination I propose must lead to a decisive judgment upon both.

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Introduction : The Reason for the Examination
3 months 1 day ago

If our universe is one of many, unlike others in containing observers like ourselves, there is no need to posit a designer. Most universes will be too chaotic to allow the emergence of life or mind. In that case, the fact that humans exist in this universe needs no special explanation.

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Sweet Morality (p. 222)
1 month 3 weeks ago

Art thy not content that thou hast done something conformable to thy nature, and dost thou seek to be paid for it? Just as if the eye demanded recompense for seeing, or the feet for walking. For as these members are formed for a particular purpose... so also is man formed by nature to acts of benevolence.

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IX, 42
6 months 3 weeks ago

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

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5 months 5 days ago

Tell not abroad what thou intendest to do; for if thou speed not, thou shalt be mocked!

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