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7 months 2 weeks ago

Is it surprising that prisons resemble factories, schools, barracks, hospitals, which all resemble prisons?

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Discipline and Punish (1977) as translated by Alan Sheridan, p. 228
3 months 2 weeks ago

A little time, and thou shalt close thy eyes; and him who has attended thee to thy grave, another soon will lament.

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X, 34
6 months 3 weeks ago

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

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6 months 5 days ago

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

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Ch. 32, January 13, 1944.
2 months 1 week ago

I love me some Zizek...

"Psychoanalysis will be entirely discredited one of these days, no doubt about it. Which will not keep it from destroying our last vestiges of naivete. After psychoanalysis, we can never again be innocent."
- Emil Cioran

See biography for Emil Cioran:
https://civilsimian.com/EmilCioran

Read Emil Cioran's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/133/content

#philosophy #quotes #CivilSimian #UniversalHumanism

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may 'conquer' them.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of-throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.

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Book IV, Chapter 9, "Counting the Cost"
7 months 3 weeks ago

The necessity of speaking, the predicament of having nothing to say, and the desire for tact are three things that can turn the greatest man into a laughingstock.

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4 months 5 days ago

The customs of that most criminal nation have gained such strength that they have now been received in all lands. The conquered have given laws to the conquerors.

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Apostle Paul: A Polite Bribe by Robert Orlando; p. 108
3 months 2 weeks ago

We have now but to prove a third attribute: I mean the faculty of feeling which the philosophers of all centuries have found in this same substance. ...The Cartesians have made, in vain, to rob matter of this faculty. But in order to avoid insurmountable difficulties, they have flung themselves into a labyrinth from which they have thought to escape by this absurd system "that animals are pure machines."An opinion so absurd has never gained admittance among philosophers... Experience gives us no less proof of the faculty of feeling in animals than of feeling in men.

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Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
7 months 3 weeks ago

Let them have what instructions you will, and ever so learned lectures of breeding daily inculcated into them, that which will most influence their carriage will be the company they converse with, and the fashion of those about them.

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Sec. 67
6 months 1 week ago

But fantasy kills imagination, pornography is death to art.

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The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 43.
7 months 3 weeks ago

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe - "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

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4 months 5 days ago

When we leave you and assemble together by ourselves, we talk freely about his sayings and doings, treating them with the respect which they deserve: in your presence deep silence is observed about him, and thus you lose that greatest of pleasures, the hearing the praises of your son, which I doubt not you would be willing to hand down to all future ages, had you the means of so doing, even at the cost of your own life.

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6 months 6 days ago

We cannot stem linguistic change, but we can drag our feet. If each of us were to defy Alexander Pope and be the last to lay the old aside, it might not be a better world, but it would be a lovelier language.

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Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary (1987), p. 231
6 months 1 week ago

It is the highest service to submit the evil impulse to God through the power of love.

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p. 45
7 months 3 weeks ago

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

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Our Relation to Others, § 23
7 months 3 weeks ago

It is not enough to be industrious; so are the ants. What are you industrious about?

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Letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
3 months 2 weeks ago

A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.

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IX, 5
3 months 2 weeks ago

We never repent of having eaten too little.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

POLITICAL economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.

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Introduction, p. 459.
7 months 2 weeks ago

The live dead-man is dead as a producer and alive insofar as he consumes.

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p. 139
8 months 2 weeks ago

Parmenides: If the one is not, nothing is. Then, and we may add, whether the one is or is not, the one and the others in relation to themselves and to each other all in every way are and are not and appear and do not appear.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

What's crazy to me is that the situation for basic education has become so bad it's not even necessary for you create something new, help develop a new direction and so forth....just posting the great ideas of the past alone is fighting the fight that has to be won, the battle against brain eroding anti-intellectualism.

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8 months 6 days ago

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.

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1:28:29 English Latin Latin: Sed cum omnibus prodesse non possis, his potissimum consulendum est, qui pro locorum et temporum vel quarumlibet rerum opportunitatibus constrictius tibi quasi quadam sorte iunguntur.
1 month 2 weeks ago

This could be a reply to the previous post: Be gentle to all and stern with yourself. -Teresa of Avila

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3 months 2 weeks ago

I sincerely rejoice at the acceptance of our new Constitution by nine States. It is a good canvas, on which some strokes only want retouching. What these are, I think are sufficiently manifested by the general voice from north to south, which calls for a bill of rights.

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Letter to James Madison (July 31, 1788); reported in Memoir, correspondence, and miscellanies from the papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volumes 1-2 (1829), p. 343
1 month 3 weeks ago

😁...but what about YOU Emil, if that's your real name.....

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7 months 2 weeks ago

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. The foe long since in silence slept; Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; And Time the ruined bridge has swept Down the dark stream which seaward creeps. On this green bank, by this soft stream, We set to-day a votive stone; That memory may their deed redeem, When, like our sires, our sons are gone. Spirit, that made those heroes dare, To die, and leave their children free, Bid Time and Nature gently spare The shaft we raise to them and thee.

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Concord Hymn, 1837
7 months 3 weeks ago

China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.

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Chapter VIII, p. 86.
1 month 4 weeks ago

Philosophy has single handedly propped up religion through absolute skepticism....

 

https://axiomaticpanic.substack.com/p/philosophers-should-stand-behind

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6 months 1 week ago

We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, ... the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.

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p. 9
7 months 3 weeks ago

The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 531.
7 months 3 weeks ago

The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.

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January 5, 1856

What the history of Philosophy shows us is a succession of noble minds, a gallery of heroes of thought, who, by the power of reason, have penetrated into the being of things, of nature and of spirit, into the Being of God, and have won for us by their labours the highest treasure, the treasure of reasoned knowledge.

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Introduction p. 1 Lectures on the history of philosophy, Translated from German by E. S. Haldane in Three Volumes (1892-96) full text
5 months 6 days ago

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,-with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.

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Address on the opening of the Eton Library (1833) as quoted in A History of Inventions, Discoveries and Origins (1846) by John Beckmann, Tr. William Johnston, Vol. 1, frontispiece.
3 months 1 week ago

But to return to the Jewish question. Other groups and nations cultivate their individual traditions. There is no reason why we should sacrifice ours. Standardization robs life of its spice. To deprive every ethnic group of its special traditions is to convert the world into a huge Ford plant. I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

Even though the model referred to satisfies the theory, etc., it is 'unintended'; and we recognize that it is unintended from the description through which it is given (as in the intuitionist case). Models are not lost noumenal waifs looking for someone to name them; they are constructions within our theory itself. and they have names from birth.

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Models and Reality
7 months 1 week ago

Being asked what learning is the most necessary, he replied, "How to get rid of having anything to unlearn.

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" § 7
8 months 6 days ago

We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God.

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1:14 Latin: Serpentis sapientia decepti sumus, Dei stultitia liberamur.
7 months 2 weeks ago

Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else.

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As quoted by David Macey, The lives of Michel Foucault (1993) p. 177. Citing 'Les Intellectuels et le Pouvoir', Le'Arc 49, 1972, pp. 3-10.
3 months 3 weeks ago

You are not a miserable and momentary body; behind your fleeting mask of clay, a thousand-year-old face lies in ambush. Your passions and your thoughts are older than your heart or brain.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.

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Chapter 5
6 months 3 weeks ago

Paper, they say, does not blush, but I assure you it's not true and that it's blushing just as I am now, all over.

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6 months 6 days ago

It is within science itself, and not in some prior philosophy, that reality is to be identified and described.

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Theories and Things, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981

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