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6 months 4 weeks ago

Why don't I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.

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8 months 4 days ago

It takes two to speak the truth, - one to speak, and another to hear.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.

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8 months 4 days ago

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha, or Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their churches. It is necessary not to be Christian to appreciate the beauty and significance of the life of Christ. I know that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that I am willing they should love their Christ more than my Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I like him too.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

Come the Day of Judgment, some believe that the body will be different from our present body. This is only transient, that will be eternal. For this also there are religious arguments.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble, it must remain rare, if common, it must become mean.

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Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal
9 months 1 day ago

It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.

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1 year 4 days ago

What is at stake here is precisely the problem of the fulfillment of desire: when we encounter in reality an object which has all the properties of the fantasized object of desire, we are nevertheless necessarily somewhat disappointed; we experience a certain this is not it; it becomes evident that the finally found real object is not the reference of desire even though it possesses all the required properties.

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8 months 5 days ago

If you feel irritated by the absurd remarks of two people whose conversation you happen to overhear, you should imagine that you are listening to a dialogue of two fools in a comedy.

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T. B. Saunders, trans., § 38
6 months 4 weeks ago

Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.

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7 months ago

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

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p. 33
8 months 2 days ago

You are never too old to set another goal, or to dream a new dream. Unknown, but also attributed to Les Brown, a motivational speaker. Commonly attributed to C.S. Lewis, but never with a primary source listed.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

To be old is a glorious thing when one has not unlearned what it means to begin, this old man had perhaps first learned it thoroughly in old age.

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p. 6
8 months 2 days ago

No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.

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Chapter II, Section 17, pg. 102
6 months 1 day ago

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

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Maxim 401
6 months 3 weeks ago

I think that the philosopher must, for his own purposes, carry methodological strictness to an extreme when he is investigating and pursuing his truths, but when he is ready to enunciate them and give them out, he ought to avoid the cynical skill with which some scientists, like a Hercules at the fair, amuse themselves by displaying to the public the biceps of their technique.

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pp. 19-20
6 months 3 weeks ago

The apparatus defeats its own purpose if its purpose is to create a humane existence on the basis of a humanized nature.

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pp. 145-146
8 months 2 days ago

You can put this another way by saying that while in other sciences the instruments you use are things external to yourself (things like microscopes and telescopes), the instrument through which you see God is your whole self. And if a man's self is not kept clean and bright, his glimpse of God will be blurred-like the Moon seen through a dirty telescope. That is why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.

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Book IV, Chapter 2, "The Three-personal God"
4 months 4 days ago

I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies;though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fedby that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels.I like to name that flame which burns within me God!

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Odysseus, Book XI, line 840
7 months 3 weeks ago

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!

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Book I, epistle ii, lines 40-41
6 months 6 days ago

"The Precession of Simulacra,"

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p. 6
8 months 3 weeks ago

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

The need to devour oneself absolves one of the need to believe.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

If you know that "I", in the sense of the person, the front, the ego, it really doesn't exist. Then...it won't go to your head too badly, if you wake up and discover that you're God.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The deepest thinking is humble. It is only concerned that the flame of truth which it keeps alive should burn with the strongest and purest heat; it does not trouble about the distance to which its brightness penetrates.

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Ch. XVI : Looking Backward and Forward, p. 257
4 months 2 days ago

The equal right of all men to the use of land is as clear as their equal right to breathe the air - it is a right proclaimed by the fact of their existence. For we cannot suppose that some men have a right to be in this world, and others no right.

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Book VII, Ch. 1
6 months 5 days ago

I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy - because we're experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that's what's going on now.

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Interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
3 months 1 week ago

Let people write in arguments without the ridiculous gatekeeping...

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7 months ago

It is sometimes difficult to avoid the impression that there is a sort of foreknowledge of the coming series of events.

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p. 94
4 months 2 weeks ago

I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.

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The Two Hands of God : The Myths of Polarity (1963), p. 29
8 months 1 week ago

In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.

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Section II, Chap. III.
7 months 1 week ago

The Indian knew how to live without wants, to suffer without complaint, and to die singing.

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Chapter I.
8 months 2 weeks ago

As soon as the soul has been made to perceive that a thing can conduct it to that which it loves supremely, it must inevitably embrace it with joy.

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9 months ago

For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.

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8 months 1 week ago

Of how much more passion than reason has Jupiter composed us? putting in, as one would say, "scarce half an ounce to a pound."

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6 months 6 days ago

For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all of the real, coincide with their simulation models.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," pp. 1-2
8 months 3 days ago

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

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A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science, 1892
4 months 1 day ago

The wiser nations are, the more public spirit they possess, the more perfect their political constitution, the fewer constitutional laws they have, for these laws are only props, and a building only needs props when it has become out of plumb or when it has been violently shaken by an external force. The most perfect constitution of antiquity was without contradiction that of Sparta, and Sparta has not left us a single line of its public law. It justly boasted of having written its laws only in the hearts of its children.

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p. 84
6 months 6 days ago

One day, we shall stand up and our backsides will remain attached to our seats.

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8 months 1 week ago

This return of Republics back to their principles also results from the simple virtue of one man, without depending on any law that excites him to any execution: none the less, they are of such influence and example that good men desire to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life contrary to those examples.

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Book 3, Ch. 1
6 months 4 weeks ago

There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

Fear for the Other, fear for the other man's death is my fear, but is in no way an individual's taking fright.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 84
8 months 3 days ago

There can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere - no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen.

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Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means
8 months 6 days ago

When the man governed by self-interest, the god of this world, does not renounce it but merely refines it by the use of reason and extends it beyond the constricting boundary of the present, he is represented (Luke XVI, 3-9) as one who, in his very person [as servant], defrauds his master [self- interest] and wins from him sacrifices in behalf of "duty."

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Book IV, Part 1, Section 2, "The Christian religion as a natural religion"
8 months 1 week ago

Time, which is the author of authors.

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Book I, iv, 12

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