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The body has to survive first.....some think they are never surviving well enough...some think things are stable enough and pursue an explanation....

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2 months 6 days ago

Yet the hour of emancipation is advancing, in the march of time. It will come.

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5 months 2 days ago

Espousing the melancholy of ancient symbols, I would have freed myself.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

If rational thought thinks itself out to a conclusion, it arrives at something non-rational which, nevertheless, is a necessity of thought. This is the paradox which dominates our spiritual life. If we try to get on without this non-rational element, there result views of the world and of life which have neither vitality nor value.

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6 months 1 day ago

A sovereign shows himself to be a tyrant if he disregards his honest advisors, or punishes them for what they have said.

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5 months 1 week ago

If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.

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Book II, Chapter 3 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to a devout widow afraid of death
6 months 2 days ago

I am showing my pupils details of an immense landscape which they cannot possibly know their way around.

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p. 56e
6 months 3 weeks ago

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

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Book I, ch. 27, § 1.
6 months 6 days ago

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

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Shakespeare; or, The Poet
2 months 3 weeks ago

As we find a place in the economic world the rebellion of youth subsides; we disapprove of earthquakes when our feet are on the earth. We forget then the radicalism then in a gentle liberalism - which is radicalism softened with the consciousness of a bank account.

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Ch. 3 : On Middle Age
6 months 1 week ago

Whatever bitterness and hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest. If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in this from their opponents; and in the source of their inspiration they have shown themselves superior to those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the injustices and oppressions by which the existing system is preserved.

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Introduction, p. 10.
6 months 5 days ago

But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?

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p. 89
4 months 2 weeks ago

(Gardner) writes about various kinds of cranks with the conscious superiority of the scientist, and in most cases one can share his sense of the victory of reason. But after half a dozen chapters this non-stop superiority begins to irritate; you begin to wonder about the standards that make him so certain he is always right. He asserts that the scientist, unlike the crank, does his best to remain open-minded. So how can he be so sure that no sane person has ever seen a flying saucer, or used a dowsing rod to locate water? And that all the people he disagrees with are unbalanced fanatics? A colleague of the positivist philosopher A. J. Ayer once remarked wryly "I wish I was as certain of anything as he seems to be about everything." Martin Gardner produces the same feeling.

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pp. 2-3
2 months 6 days ago

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past, - so good night!

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Letter to John Adams
3 months 3 weeks ago

I finished the Iliad to-day... I never admired the old fellow so much, or was so strongly moved by him. What a privilege genius like his enjoys! I could not tear myself away. I read the last five books at a stretch during my walk to-day, and was at last forced to turn into a bypath, lest the parties of walkers should see me blubbering for imaginary beings, the creations of a ballad-maker who has been dead two thousand seven hundred years. What is the power and glory of Caesar and Alexander to that? Think what it would be to be assured that the inhabitants of Monomotapa would weep over one's writings.

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Anno Domini 4551! Letter to his niece Margaret (August 1851), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), pp. 186-187
6 months 2 weeks ago

Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.

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Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works, Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
6 months 2 weeks ago

This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

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5 months 3 days ago

It is only natural that I should constantly have revolved in my mind the question of the relationship of the symbolism of the unconscious to Christianity as well as to other religions. Not only do I leave the door open for the Christian message, but I consider it of central importance for Western man. It needs, however, to be seen in a new light, in accordance with the changes wrought by the contemporary spirit.

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6 months 1 week ago

Monotheistic religions alone furnish the spectacle of religious wars, religious persecutions, heretical tribunals, that breaking of idols and destruction of images of the gods, that razing of Indian temples and Egyptian colossi, which had looked on the sun 3,000 years: just because a jealous god had said, 'Thou shalt make no graven image.'

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Man is certainly crazy. He could not make a mite, and he makes gods by the dozen.

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Ch. 12
4 months 4 weeks ago

The tangible source of exploitation disappears behind the façade of objective rationality.

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p. 32
5 months 3 weeks ago

Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 27, 14.
5 months 2 days ago

A person who wakes up after a night of unbroken sleep has the illusion of beginning something new. When one instead remains awake the whole night long, nothing new begins.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

If things are deprived of memory, they become information or commodities. They are pushed into a time-free, ahistorical place.

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6 months 1 week ago

I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or boycotts. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that morality counts for nothing when it clashes with selfinterest, as the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it.

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Ch. 6: Speciesism Today
5 months 4 days ago

The ideal of Morality has no more dangerous rival than the ideal of highest Strength, of most powerful life; which also has been named (very falsely as it was there meant) the ideal of poetic greatness. It is the maximum of the savage; and has, in these times, gained, precisely among the greatest weaklings, very many proselytes. By this ideal, man becomes a Beast-Spirit, a Mixture; whose brutal wit has, for weaklings, a brutal power of attraction.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The first task of administrative theory is to develop a set of concepts that will permit the description, in terms relevant to the theory, of administrative situations. These concepts, to be scientifically useful, must be operational; that is, their meanings must correspond to empirically observable facts or situations.

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p. 43.
3 months 1 week ago

The repression of liberty that took place in the countries in which Communist regimes were established cannot be adequately explained as a product of backwardness, or of errors in the application of Marxian theory. It was the result of a resolute attempt to realize an Enlightenment utopia - a condition of society in which no serious form of conflict any longer exists.

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'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.99)
6 months 6 days ago

As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.

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Ch. 9
6 months 1 week ago

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

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Dialogue 14, Le Chapon et la Poularde (1766); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed., 1919
1 month 3 weeks ago

Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Now civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.

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Ch. 8: Civilization on Trial
3 months 2 days ago

The regular rhythms of factory production and its clear divisions of work time and nonwork time tend to decline in the realm of immaterial labor. Think how at the high end of labor market companies like Microsoft try to make the office more like home, offering free meals and exercise programs to keep employees in the office as many of their waking hours as possible. At the low end of the labor market workers have to juggle several job to make ends meet. Such practices always existed, but today, with the passage from Fordism to post-Fordism, the increased flexibility and mobility imposed on workers, and the decline of the stable, long-term employment typical of factory work, this tends to become the norm. At both the high end and low ends or labor market the new paradigm undermines the division between work time and the time of life.

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145
5 months 3 weeks ago

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

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Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
2 months 3 days ago

Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.

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IV, 5
4 months 3 weeks ago

The would-be climber must be able to make himself liked ... please his superiors - avoid showing independence except in those matters wherein independence is expected of him by his chiefs... the winners in the race have qualities which disincline them to allow others to be their true selves. Hence the winners snub all those who aim at adequate self-expression, speaking of them as pretentious, eccentric, biased, unpractical, and measuring their achievements by insincere standards.

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6 months 6 days ago

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

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Wage Labour and Capital (December 1847), in Marx Engels Selected Works, Volume I, p. 163.
6 months 5 days ago

The difference principle, for example, requires that the higher expectations of the more advantaged contribute to the prospects of the least advantaged.

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Chapter II, Section 16, pg. 95
6 months 1 week ago

The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of an universally stigmatized injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.

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Ch. 5
7 months 1 week ago
Are designations congruent with things? Is language the adequate expression of all realities? It is only by means of forgetfulness that man can ever reach the point of fancying himself to possess a "truth" of the grade just indicated. If he will not be satisfied with truth in the form of tautology, that is to say, if he will not be content with empty husks, then he will always exchange truths for illusions.
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6 months 1 week ago

It must not be supposed that the subjective elements are any less 'real' than the objective elements; they are only less important... because they do not point to anything beyond ourselves...

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
4 months 3 weeks ago

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
5 months 2 days ago

I forsook the company and the dinner-parties, the port-wine and champagne of the middle-classes, and devoted my leisure-hours almost exclusively to the intercourse with plain working men; I am both glad and proud of having done so. Glad, because thus I was induced to spend many a happy hour in obtaining a knowledge of the realities of life-many an hour, which else would have been wasted in fashionable talk and tiresome etiquette; proud, because thus I got an opportunity of doing justice to an oppressed and calumniated class of men who with all their faults and under all the disadvantages of their situation, yet command the respect of every one but an English money-monger.

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p. 27
4 months 2 days ago

I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism. Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. Whether from the growth of experience or the decline of animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain other faults; and it follows, of course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying towards the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these forms and sources of error.

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Crabbed Age and Youth.
2 months 3 days ago

Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.

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(Long translation) All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them. (trans. Meric Casaubon). VIII, 59
6 months 3 weeks ago

All things are nourished together without their injuring one another. The courses of the seasons, and of the sun and moon, are pursued without any collision among them. The smaller energies are like river currents; the greater energies are seen in mighty transformations. It is this which makes heaven and earth so great.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

What happens in the movement of art is emergence of new materials of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving in their expression new forms and techniques.

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p. 148
4 months 3 weeks ago

The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth.

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p. 146

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