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Placing your stick at the end of the shadow of the pyramid, you made by the sun's rays two triangles, and so proved that the pyramid [height] was to the stick [height] as the shadow of the pyramid to the shadow of the stick.

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W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics
1 month ago

Soul, indeed, is a certain medium between an impartible essence, and an essence which is divisible about bodies. But intellect is an impartible essence alone. And qualities and material forms are divisible about bodies. Not everything which acts on another, effects that which it does effect by approximation and contact; but those natures which effect any thing by approximation and contact, use approximation accidentally.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?

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p. 5
2 weeks 3 days ago

It was not only that I could not become spiteful, I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything.

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Part 1, Chapter 1
1 month 2 weeks ago

Even atheists rebel and express, like Hardy and Housman, their rage against God although (or because) He does not, on their view, exist...

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2 months 6 days ago

Justice respects man as living in society, and is the common bond without which no society can subsist.

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2 months 2 days ago

What has the Church done to thee, that thou shouldst wish to decapitate her? Thou wouldst take away her Head, and believe in the Head alone, despising the body. Vain is thy service, and false thy devotion to the Head. For to sever it from the body is an injury to both Head and body.

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p.420
1 month 2 weeks ago

First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
1 week 6 days ago

To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

But it is clear there is a difference in the ends proposed: for in some cases they are activities, and in others results beyond the mere activities, and where there are certain ends beyond and beside the actions, the results are naturally superior to the activities. Now, as there are numerous kinds of actions and numerous arts and sciences, it follows that the ends are also various. Thus the end of the healing art is health, of ship-building ships, of strategy victory, of economy wealth.

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The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
1 month 2 weeks ago

And the final event to himself has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

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On Edmund Burke's reactions to the American and French revolutions.
1 month 2 weeks ago

He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Of all the cultural aspects of humanity, the only one which is not broken up into national or regional splinters is science. Different nations have different languages, they may have different religions, may have different dietaries, may have different holidays, different ways of thinking, but here's only one science. 

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Interview by Richard Heffner on The Open Mind (19 June 1988); video (25:31)
2 months 2 weeks ago
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
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1 month 2 weeks ago

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!

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Act 1
1 week 6 days ago

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

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Vol. V, par. 211
1 month 2 weeks ago

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

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May 25, 1843

Even those who have desired to work out a completely positive philosophy have been philosophers only to the extent that, at the same time, they have refused the right to install themselves in absolute knowledge. They taught not this knowledge, but its becoming in us, not the absolute but, at most, our absolute relation to it, as Kierkegaard said. What makes a philosopher is the movement which leads back without ceasing from knowledge to ignorance, from ignorance to knowledge, and a kind of rest in this movement.

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p. 5
1 month 2 weeks ago

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

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Chapter VIII, p. 719.
1 week 1 day ago

The difference between the artificial and the artful in the artistic lies on the surface in the former there is a split between what is overly done and what is intended. The appearance is one of cordiality; the intent is that of gaining favor. Whenever this split between what is done and its purpose exists, there is insincerity, a trick, a simulation of an act that intrinsically has another effect. When the natural and the cultivated blend into one, acts of social intercourse are works of art. The animating impulsion of genial friendship and the deed performed completely coincide without intrusion of ulterior motive. Awkwardness may prevent adequacy of expression.

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2 weeks 2 days ago

We have, indeed, in the part taken by many scientific men in this controversy of "Law versus Miracle," a good illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will take the question as next to an insult. Either he rejects the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague non-natural sense. ...Whence ...this notion of "special creations"...Why, after rejecting all the rest of the story, he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it, as though he had received it on valid authority, he would be puzzled to say.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

In short, competition has to shoulder the responsibility of explaining all the meaningless ideas of the economists, whereas it should rather be the economists who explain competition.

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Vol. III, Ch. L, Illusions Created by Competition, p. 866.
2 months 6 days ago

Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts.

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3 weeks 1 day ago

Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.

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Section 34
2 months 2 weeks ago

If it were so, as conceited sagacity, proud of not being deceived, thinks, that we should believe nothing that we cannot see with our physical eyes, then we first and foremost ought to give up believing in love. ... We can be deceived by believing what is untrue, but we certainly are also deceived by not believing what is true. ... Which deception is more dangerous?

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1 month 1 week ago

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

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Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
1 month 2 weeks ago

The humans live in time but our Enemy (God) destines them for eternity.

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Letter XV
1 month 2 weeks ago

I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in order that my volition be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for whatever might come to pass in it, I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?

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2 months 6 days ago

The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle. For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

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Race
1 month 6 days ago

Mind is infinite and self-ruled, and is mixed with nothing, but is alone itself by itself.

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Frag. B 12, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
1 week 6 days ago

I don't understand how people can believe in God, even when I myself think of him everyday.

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2 weeks 2 days ago

The supervision of the state extends to the lock upon the door, and there begins mine own. The lock is the boundary line between the power of the government and my own private power. It is the intention of locks to make possible self-protection. In my own house my person is sacred and inviolable even to the government. In civil cases government has no right to attack me in my house, but must wait till I am upon public ground.

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P. 324
1 month 2 weeks ago

But simultaneously with the development of capitalist production the credit system also develops. The money-capital which the capitalist cannot as yet employ in his own business is employed by others, who pay him interest for its use.

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Vol. II, Ch. XVII, p. 325.
2 months 1 day ago

Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.

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Book I, ch. 16,7.
1 week 6 days ago

As the mathematics are now understood, each branch - or, if you please, each problem, - is but the study of the relations of a collection of connected objects, without parts, without any distinctive characters, except their names or designating letters. These objects are commonly called points; but to remove all notion of space relations, it may be better to name them monads. The relations between these points are mere complications of two different kinds of elementary relations, which may be termed immediate connection and immediate non-connection. All the monads except as serve as intermediaries for the connections have distinctive designations.

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p. 268
2 weeks 2 days ago

This Being out of God cannot, by any means, be a limited, completed, and inert Being, since God himself is not such a dead Being, but, on the contrary, is Life; - but it can only be a Power, since only a Power is the true formal picture or Schema of Life. And indeed it can only be the Power of realising that which is contained in itself - a Schema.

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A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

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Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.

This final aim is God's purpose with the world; but God is the absolutely perfect Being, and can, therefore, will nothing but himself.

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2 days ago

There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 169
2 weeks 2 days ago

Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.

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Ch. 1, Introductory
1 week 6 days ago

The wrinkles of a nation are as visible as those of an individual.

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4 weeks ago

A solitary man is a God, or a beast.

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The bastard form of mass culture is humiliated repetition: content, ideological schema, the blurring of contradictions-these are repeated, but the superficial forms are varied: always new books, new programs, new films, news items, but always the same meaning.

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Modern, in The Pleasure of the Text
1 month 2 weeks ago

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumour, and survival a thing beyond the bounds of possibility.

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Themes and Variations, 1950
1 month 2 weeks ago

One thing I have frequently observed in children, that when they have got possession of any poor creature, they are apt to use it ill: they often torment, and treat it very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This I think should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts, will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they will delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our practice takes notice of this in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death.

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Sec. 116
1 week 6 days ago

Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing - between two fictions.

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