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2 months 3 weeks ago

You have your brush, you have your colours, you paint paradise, then, in you go.

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As quoted in Journal of Modern Literature Vol. 2, No. 2, Nikos Kazantzakis
3 months 2 weeks ago

We do not have and cannot have any means of discovering whether or not we are carried along in a uniform motion of translation.

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L'état actuel et l'avenir de la physique mathematique
5 months 1 week ago

We have seen that language is something precious because it allows us to express ourselves; but it is fatal when one allows oneself to be completely led astray by it, because then it prevents one from expressing oneself. Language is the source of the prejudices and haste which Descartes thought of as the sources of error.

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p. 76
5 months 1 day ago

Philosophers today are as fond as ever of apriori arguments with ethical conclusions. One reason such arguments are always unsatisfying is that they always prove too much; when a philosopher 'solves' an ethical problem for one, one feels as if one had asked for a subway token and been given a passenger ticket valid for the first interplanetary passenger-carrying space ship instead.

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
7 months 1 week ago

It is characteristic of the most entire sincerity to be able to foreknow. When a nation or family is about to flourish, there are sure to be happy omens; and when it is about to perish, there are sure to be unlucky omens.

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5 months 1 week ago

When at the beginning of the so-called modern age, at the Renaissance, the pagan sense of religion came to life again, it took the concrete form in the knightly ideal with its codes of conduct of love and honor. But it was a paganism Christianized, baptized. "Woman - la donna - was the divinity enshrined within those savage breasts. Whosoever will investigate the memorials of primitive times will find this ideal of woman in its full force and purity; the Universe is woman.

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3 months 1 week ago

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

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Line 1
3 months 2 weeks ago

Literature, the strange entity so called,-that indeed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature.

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5 months 6 days ago

In the end, I am moved by causes and ideas that I can actually choose to support because they conform to values and principles that I believe in.

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p. 88
2 months 2 weeks ago

A brilliant man is his own best company, unless he can find other company of the same sort.

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5 months 2 days ago

In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the contributions necessary to sustain it. Hence, organization objectives are constantly adapted to conform to the changing values of customers, or to secure new groups of customers in place of customers who have dropped away. The organization may also undertake special activities to induce acceptance of its objectives by customers - advertising, missionary work, and propaganda of all sorts.

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p. 114.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.

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p. 107
6 months 5 days ago

It is not proper either to have a blunt sword or to use freedom of speech ineffectually. Neither is the sun to be taken from the world, nor freedom of speech from erudition.

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As quoted in the translation of Thomas Taylor
5 months 1 week ago

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

A free press is not a privilege but an organic necessity in a great society. ...Without criticism and reliable and intelligent reporting, the government cannot govern. For there is no adequate way in which it can keep itself informed about what the people of the country are thinking and doing and wanting.

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International Press Institute Association, London
2 months 1 week ago

Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

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7 months 2 days ago

He that gives quickly gives twice.

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Adagia, 1508
3 months 2 weeks ago

Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

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p. 52
3 months 2 days ago

No wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another.

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Reported in Ammianus, Res gestae, bk. 22, ch. 5, sec. 4
4 months 3 weeks ago

When we invent a new technology, we become cannibals. We eat ourselves alive since these technologies are merely extensions of ourselves. The new environment shaped by electric technology is a cannibalistic one that eats people. To survive one must study the habits of cannibals.

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(p. 261)
3 months 2 weeks ago

Sure enough, America is a great, and in many respects a blessed and hopeful phenomenon. Sure enough, these hardy millions of Anglo-Saxon men prove themselves worthy of their genealogy; and, with the axe and plough and hammer, if not yet with any much finer kind of implements, are triumphantly clearing out wide spaces, seedfields for the sustenance and refuge of mankind, arenas for the future history of the world; doing, in their day and generation, a creditable and cheering feat under the sun. But as to a Model Republic, or a model anything, the wise among themselves know too well that there is nothing to be said.

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7 months 1 week ago

The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe.

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q. 1, art. 2, ad 4
4 months 2 weeks ago

In particular, it is certainly wrong to condemn poor old Homo sapiens as the only species to kill his own kind, the only inheritor of the mark of Cain, and similar melodramatic charges. Whether a naturalist stresses the violence or the restraint of animal aggression depends partly on the kinds of animals he is used to watching, and partly on his evolutionary preconceptions-Lorenz is, after all, a 'good of the species' man. Even if it has been exaggerated, the gloved fist view of animal fights seems to have at least some truth. Superficially this looks like a form of altruism. The selfish gene theory must face up to the difficult task of explaining it. Why is it that animals do not go all out to kill rival members of their species at every possible opportunity?

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Ch. 5. Aggression: stability and the selfish machine
7 months 1 week ago

To become like God is the ultimate end of all.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

For a long time - always, in fact - I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn't able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Of corruption, the principal and direct use is, to engage the representatives of the people to betray their trust, and sell themselves and the people to the universal corrupter-the monarch, in his capacity of corrupter-general.

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Constitutional Code (written between 1820 and 1832), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. XVII (1841), p. 76
5 months 2 weeks ago

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

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14:06

The true is the whole.

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Preface
7 months 1 day ago

A man must be a little mad if he does not want to be even more stupid.

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Ch. 9
2 weeks 2 days ago

Bert wants you to touch grass.....

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As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

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E 52
6 months 3 weeks ago

Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

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Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
6 months 1 week ago

There are two sentences inscribed upon the Delphic oracle, hugely accommodated to the usages of man's life: "Know thyself," and "Nothing too much;" and upon these all other precepts depend.

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3 months 1 week ago

My idea of heaven is, eating pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumpets.

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View ascribed by Smith to his friend Henry Luttrell; reported in Hesketh Pearson, The Smith of Smiths (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), p. 236
7 months 3 weeks ago
To what extent can truth endure incorporation? That is the question; that is the experiment.
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5 months 1 week ago

Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", p. 6
6 months 1 week ago

Anger is a momentary madness so control your passion or it will control you.

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Book I, epistle ii, line 62
1 month 1 week ago

"There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life."
- Robert Louis Stevenson

See biography for Robert Louis Stevenson:
https://civilsimian.com/RobertLouisStevenson

Read Robert Louis Stevenson's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/182/content

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.

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Chapter XI, Part I, p. 174.
7 months 1 week ago

Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?

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Book III, lines 938-939 (tr. Bailey)
3 months 1 day ago

The highest instrument of inner awakening of race is combat, and war is its highest expression. That pacifism and humanitarianism are phenomena closely linked to internationalism, democracy, cosmopolitanism and liberalism is perfectly logical - the same anti-racial instinct present in some, is reflected and confirmed in the others. The will towards sub-racial levelling inborn in internationalism finds its ally in pacifist humanitarianism, which has the function of preventing the heroic test from disrupting the game by galvanising the surviving forces of any still not completely deracinated peoples.

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p. 67
3 months 4 days ago

To the question whether I am a pessimist or an optimist, I answer that my knowledge is pessimistic, but my willing and hoping are optimistic.

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Epilogue, p. 242
5 months 6 days ago

It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood, who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. I believe that there can be no real wealth, social wealth, so long as it rests on human lives - young lives, old lives and lives in the making.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

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Salviati, p. 88
5 months 3 weeks ago

Religion is the dream of the human mind. But even in dreams we do not find ourselves in emptiness or in heaven, but on earth, in the realm of reality; we only see real things in the entrancing splendor of imagination and caprice, instead of in the simple daylight of reality and necessity.

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Preface to Second Edition
6 months 1 week ago

When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
5 months 1 week ago

Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

In fact, the old Marxist distinctions between productive and unproductive labor, as well as that between productive and reproductive labor, which were always dubious, should now be completely thrown out.

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135
6 months 3 weeks ago

Everyone has a goal which appears to be great, at least to himself, and is great when deepest conviction, the innermost voice of the heart, pronounces it great. ... This voice, however, is easily drowned out, and what we thought to be inspiration may have been created by the fleeting moment and again perhaps destroyed by it. ... We must seriously ask ourselves, therefore, whether we are really inspired about a vocation, whether an inner voice approves of it, or whether the inspiration was a deception, whether that which we took as the Deity's calling to us was self-deceit. But how else could we recognize this except by searching for the source of our inspiration?

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 36

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