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1 month 3 weeks ago

Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.

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The Civil War in France : "The Third Address", May 1871
2 months 1 day ago

Lend yourself to others, but give yourself to yourself.

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Ch. 10. Of Managing the Will
2 months 1 day ago

God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.

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Ch. 12
2 weeks 2 days ago

The office of the sovereign, be it a monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the Author of that law, and to none but Him. But by safety here is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himself. And this is intended should be done, not by care applied to individuals, further than their protection from injuries when they shall complain; but by a general providence, contained in public instruction, both of doctrine and example; and in the making and executing of good laws to which individual persons may apply their own cases.

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The Second Part, Chapter 30: Of the Office of the Sovereign Representative
2 weeks 6 days 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
2 months 1 day ago

A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent.

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The Prince (1513), Ch. 6; translated by Luigi Ricci
2 weeks 2 days ago

Adam came from great power and great wealth, but he was not worthy of you. For had he been worthy, [he would] not [have tasted] death.

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2 weeks 5 days ago

I know that my birth is fortuitous, a laughable accident, and yet, as soon as I forget myself, I behave as if it were a capital event, indispensable to the progress and equilibrium of the world.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

Surely if a single cell may, when subjected to certain influences, become a man in the space of twenty years; there is nothing absurd in the hypothesis that under certain other influences, a cell may, in the course of millions of years, give origin to the human race.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

I am at heart more of a United-States-man than an Englishman.

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Letter to Andrew Jackson (14 June 1830), quoted in Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume 4, ed. David Maydole Matteson (1929), p. 146
2 months 3 weeks ago

It seemed to him [Euphemius] it would be a brilliant notion to call in an outside force to fight on his behalf. This same brilliant notion has occurred to participants in civil wars uncounted times in history and it has ended in catastrophe just about every time, since those called in invariably take over for themselves. Of all history's lessons, this seems to be the plainest, and the most frequently ignored.

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1 month 1 week ago

Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality.

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(trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.
1 month 3 weeks ago

How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.

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Goethe; or, The Writer
2 weeks 5 days ago

Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.

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Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

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"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
1 week 3 days ago

The devil is an angel too.

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[Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue] (1920); Two Mothers
3 weeks 2 days ago

The strides of humanity are slow, they can only be counted in centuries.

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Act II.
2 weeks 5 days ago

Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are.

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2 weeks 1 day ago

To look at a work of art in order to see how well certain rules are observed and canons conformed to impoverished perception. But to strive to note the ways in which certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the organic means by which the media is made to express and carry definite parts, or how the problem of adequate individualization is solved, sharpens esthetic perception and enriches its content.

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p. 213
5 months 4 weeks ago

In the Critique of Cynical Reasoning, a great bestseller in Germany (Sloterdijk, 1983), Peter Sloterdijk puts forward the thesis that ideology's dominant mode of functioning is cynical which renders impossible - or, more precisely, vain - the classical critical-ideological procedure. The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less still insists upon the mask.

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2 months 2 days ago

The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence: With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any man born on St. Innocents Day. I never had a bribe or reward in my eye or thought when pronouncing judgment or order. I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the King.

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(17 April 1621) Quoted by Baron John Campbell (1818), J. Murray in "The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England"
2 months 3 weeks ago

There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!! That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts.

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Journal entries (12 March 1915 and 15 March 1915) p. 41
1 month 3 weeks ago

That virtue we appreciate is as much ours as another's. We see so much only as we possess.

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June 22, 1839
4 weeks ago

A common monetary standard will be established, with the consent of the various governments, by which industrial transactions will be greatly facilitated. Three spheres made respectively of gold, silver, and platinum, and each weighing fifty grammes, would differ sufficiently in value for the purpose. The sphere should have a small flattened base, and on the great circle parallel to it the Positivist motto would be inscribed. At the pole would be the image of the immortal Charlemagne, the founder of the Western Republic, and round the image his name would be engraved, in its Latin form, Carolus; that name, respected as it is by all nations of Europe alike, would be the common appellation of the universal monetary standard.

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p. 430
2 weeks ago

God ... demands everything, in order to give everything anew to him who loves Him, after that loving has truly given up all.

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p. 45
2 months 1 week ago

The way of the superior man may be found, in its simple elements, in the intercourse of common men and women; but in its utmost reaches, it shines brightly through Heaven and Earth.

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1 month 1 week ago

The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.

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Stobaeus, iv. 29a. 19
2 months 1 week ago

Study carefully, the character of the one you recommend, lest their misconduct bring you shame.

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from Horace, Epistles I.xviii.76

If life can no longer be narrated, wisdom deteriorates, and its place is taken by problem-solving.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

It is sometimes maintained that racial mixture is biologically undesirable. There is no evidence whatever for this view. Nor is there, apparently, any reason to think that Negroes are congenitally less intelligent than white people, but as to that it will be difficult to judge until they have equal scope and equally good social conditions.

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Part II: Man and Man, Ch. 12: Racial Antagonism, p. 108
2 weeks 5 days ago

Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation.

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2 months 1 week ago

For it still seemed to me that it is not we who sin, but some other nature sinned in us. And it gratified my pride to be beyond blame, and when I did anything wrong not to have to confess that I had done wrong. I loved to excuse my soul and to accuse something else inside me (I knew not what) but which was not I. But, assuredly, it was I, and it was my impiety that had divided me against myself. That sin then was all the more incurable because I did not deem myself a sinner.

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A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 10, p. 77
2 months 3 weeks ago
Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind.
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1 week 2 days ago

What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself.

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"Le monde où l'on catche"

Few men think; yet all have opinions.

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Philonous to Hylas. The Second Dialogue. This appears in a passage first added in the third edition
1 month 1 week ago

There are two forms of knowledge, one genuine, one obscure. To the obscure belong all of the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling. The other form is the genuine, and is quite distinct from this. [And then distinguishing the genuine from the obscure, he continues:] Whenever the obscure [way of knowing] has reached the minimum sensibile of hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and when the investigation must be carried farther into that which is still finer, then arises the genuine way of knowing, which has a finer organ of thought.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.

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May 3, 1845
1 month 3 weeks ago

We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves. Introduction

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No man must encroach upon my province nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without perniciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. He may exercise a republican boldness in judging, but he must not be peremptory and imperious in prescribing. Force may never be resorted to but, in the most extraordinary and imperious emergency.

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Book II, "Of Rights"
2 months 6 days ago

Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

Stop Traveller! Near this place lieth John Locke. If you ask what kind of a man he was, he answers that he lived content with his own small fortune. Bred a scholar he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. This thou will learn from his writings, which will show thee everything else concerning him, with greater truth, than the suspect praises of an epitaph. His virtues, indeed, if he had any, were too little for him to propose as matter of praise to himself, or as an example to thee. Let his vices be buried together. As to an example of manners, if you seek that, you have it in the Gospels; of vices, to wish you have one nowhere; if mortality, certainly, (and may it profit thee), thou hast one here and everywhere.

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Epitaph, as translated from the Latin.

What, by a word lacking even in grammar, is called amorality, is a thing that does not exist. If you are unwilling to submit to any norm, you have, nolens volens, to submit to the norm of denying all morality, and this is not amoral, but immoral. It is a negative morality which preserves the empty form of the other.

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Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question
5 days ago

Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind.

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The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968), p. 61
2 months 3 weeks ago
No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it.
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3 weeks 3 days ago

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

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2 months 1 week ago

And what can be more divine than the exhalations of the earth, which affect the human soul so as to enable her to predict the future ? And could the hand of time evaporate such a virtue? Do you suppose you are talking of some kind of wine or salted meat ?

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Book I, Chapter III
2 weeks 5 days ago

Boredom is a larval anxiety; depression, a dreamy hatred.

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2 months 1 day ago

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

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Book III, Ch. 1
4 weeks ago

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

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"Will, Freedom"

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