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2 months 3 weeks ago

Enough of this miserable, whining life. Stop monkeying around! Why are you troubled? What's new here? What's so confounding? The one responsible? Take a good look. Or just the matter itself? Then look at that. There's nothing else to look at. And as far as the gods go, by now you could try being more straightforward and kind. It's the same, whether you've examined these things for a hundred years, or only three.

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IX. 37:205
6 months 3 weeks ago

I shall need only myself to be happy.

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As quoted in The prophetic voice, 1758-1778 by Lester G. Crocke, p. 148.
6 months 2 weeks ago

For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 30, 9.
5 months 1 week ago

Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide.

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Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 155
6 months 3 weeks ago

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

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"Slavery in Massachusetts", 1854
5 months 6 days ago

Exploitation and manipulation produce boredom and triviality; they cripple man, and all factors that make man into a psychic cripple turn him also into a sadist or a destroyer. This position will be characterized by some as "overoptimistic," "utopian," or "unrealistic." In order to appreciate the merits of such criticism a discussion of the ambiguity of hope and the nature of optimism and pessimism seems called for.

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p. 483
5 months 3 weeks ago

Arms are not yet taken up; but virtually, you are in a civil war. You are not people of differing opinions in a public council;-you are enemies, that must subdue or be subdued, on the one side or the other. If your hands are not on your swords, their knives will be at your throats. There is no medium,-there is no temperament,-there is no compromise with Jacobinism.

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Letter to William Windham (30 December 1794), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
5 months 3 weeks ago

The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

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As quoted in Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1979) by Laurence J. Peter, p. 299
6 months 4 weeks ago

... no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
6 months 3 weeks ago

He who can buy bravery is brace, though a coward. As money is not exchanged for anyone specific quality, for any one specific thing, or for any particular human essential power, but for the entire objective world of man and nature, from the standpoint of its possessor it therefore serves to exchange every property for every other, even contradictory, property and object: it is the fraternization of impossibilities. It makes contradictions embrace.

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p. 105, The Marx-Engels Reader
5 months 2 weeks ago

Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man. (7) This saying has been interpreted by some as referring to such anger as consumes a man…(rather than is consumed by him, through his reason and love), 'til that man is the lion of Anger. Other more mystical interpretations might also be found or devised that have merit.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Only thoughts that are randomly born die. The other thoughts we carry with us without knowing them. They have abandoned themselves to forgetfulness so that they can be with us all the time.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power. But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.

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1:7-8 (KJV)
5 months 3 weeks ago

Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

I know of no country, indeed, where the love of money has taken stronger hold on the affections of men, and where the profounder contempt is expressed for the theory of the permanent equality of property.

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Chapter III, Part I.
5 months 1 week ago

Music for entertainment ... seems to complement the reduction of people to silence, the dying out of speech as expression, the inability to communicate at all. It inhabits the pockets of silence that develop between people molded by anxiety, work and undemanding docility.

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p. 271
7 months 2 days ago

One must never forget to look at the aim of a matter.

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Act III, scene xi
6 months 1 week ago

When Eudæmonidas heard a philosopher arguing that only a wise man can be a good general, "This is a wonderful speech," said he; "but he that saith it never heard the sound of trumpets."

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62 Eudæmonidas
5 months 1 week ago

If space in infinite, how about the space inside man? Blake said that eternity opens from the center of an atom. My former terror vanished. Now I saw that I was mistaken in thinking of myself as an object in a dead landscape. I had been assuming that man is limited because his brain is limited, that only so much can be packed into the portmanteau. But the spaces of the mind are a new dimension. The body is a mere wall between two infinities. Space extends to infinity outwards; the mind stretches to infinity inwards.

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p. 38
5 months 3 weeks ago

Where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on the earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favor. A perfect democracy is, therefore, the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he can be made subject to punishment.

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6 months 6 days ago

Happy is that City that hath a wise man to govern it.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

It's not about telling people how to be, outside of supporting ideals that teach us what to avoid.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

We, on the contrary, now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is Just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff. " In India, our religions wIll never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian Wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

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Schopenhauer, Arthur The world as will and representation. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. New York, Dover Publications [c1969 - Volume I, & 63 p. 356-357. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008).
5 months 2 weeks ago

But Aversion wee have for things, not only which we know have hurt us; but also that we do not know whether they will hurt us, or not.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 24
7 months 2 days ago

I care not so much what I am to others as what I am to myself. I will be rich by myself, and not by borrowing.

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Book II, Ch. 16
5 months 1 week ago

The Great Beast is the only object of idolatry, the only ersatz of God, the only imitation of something which is infinitely far from me and which is I myself.

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p. 121; footnote in Gravity and Grace
2 months 2 weeks ago

If I was not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

A proposition is completely logically analyzed if its grammar is made completely clear: no matter what idiom it may be written or expressed in...

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Philosophical Remarks (1930), Part I (1)
6 months 3 weeks ago

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The fundamental political question is why do people obey a government. The answer is that they tend to enslave themselves, to let themselves be governed by tyrants. Freedom from servitude comes not from violent action, but from the refusal to serve. Tyrants fall when the people withdraw their support.

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This quote is a paraphrase of the contents of the first chapter of Discourse on Voluntary Servitude. The quote appears in an edition titled Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude edited by Murray Rothbard and Harry Kurz (1975), p. 39
7 months 1 week ago

O saving Victim, opening wideThe gate of heaven to man below,Our foes press on from every side,Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.

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Verbum Supernum Prodiens (hymn for Lauds on Corpus Christi), stanza 5 (O Salutaris Hostia)
5 months 4 weeks ago

What chiefly diverts the men of democracies from lofty ambition is not the scantiness of their fortunes, but the vehemence of the exertions they daily make to improve them.

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Book Three, Chapter XIX.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Several actual worlds without one another are not, therefore, impossible by the very concept, as Wolf hastily concluded from the notion of a complex or multiplicity which he deemed sufficient to a whole, as such, but only on condition that there exist but one necessary cause of all things. If several are admitted, several worlds without one another will be possible in the strictest metaphysical sense.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.

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p. 91e
3 months 1 week ago

Arms observe no bounds; nor can the wrath of the sword, once drawn, be easily checked or stayed; war delights in blood.

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lines 403-405; (Lycus).
5 months 1 week ago

One of the major problems of our society is that so many people are too intelligent to accept religion, but not intelligent or strong-minded enough to look for acceptable alternatives; in the same way, many people are strong-minded enough not to want to be 'organization men', but incapable of seeing beyond an act of protest. These situations produce a sense of being 'between two stools', lacking real motive; a sense of mental strain is produced that may find its outlet in violence, or in organised anti-social behaviour.

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p. 224, Crimes of Freedom -- and their cure
6 months 3 weeks ago

The trade of governing has always been monopolized by the most ignorant and the most rascally individuals of mankind.

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Earliest citation to Paine appears to be in "Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Communism Vol. XXIV". Not found in any of his works.

I have remarked very clearly that I am often of one opinion when I am lying down and of another when I am standing up.

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F 73
6 months 3 weeks ago

Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.

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Chapter IV, Section 32, p. 203
6 months 2 weeks ago

Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.

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p. 23
6 months 3 weeks ago

The child must be brought up free (that he allow others to be free). He must learn to endure the restraint to which freedom subjects itself for its own preservation (experience no subordination to his command). Thus he must be disciplined. This precedes instruction. Training must continue without interruption. He must learn to do without things and to be cheerful about it. He must not be obliged to dissimulate, he must acquire immediate horror of lies, must learn so to respect the rights of men that they become an insurmountable wall for him. His instruction must be more negative. He must not learn religion before he knows morality. He must be refined, but not spoiled (pampered). He must learn to speak frankly, and must assume no false shame. Before adolescence he must not learn fine manners ; thoroughness is the chief thing. Thus he is crude longer, but earlier useful and capable.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 3
4 months 3 weeks ago

Logos is the formal cause of the kosmos and all things, responsible for their nature and configuration.

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p. 37

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