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6 months 2 weeks ago

Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.

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(p. 261)
7 months 1 day ago

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

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ABC TV
7 months 1 week 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
4 months 2 weeks ago

Whoever asserts a value, must bring its influence to bear. Whoever maintains that it has value regardless of the influence brought to bear by any individual human being who endorses it, is simply cheating.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

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Ch. 1
6 months 1 week ago

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed have to wait forever.

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p. 42
8 months 4 weeks ago

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.

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Aphorism 7
6 months 3 weeks ago

In short, analytic statements are statements which we all accept and for which we do not give reasons. This is what we mean when we say that they are true by 'implicit convention'. The problem is then to distinguish them from other statements that we accept, and do not give reasons for, in particular from the statements that we unreasonably accept. To resolve this difficulty, we have to point out some of the crucial distinguishing features of analytic statements (e.g. the fact that the subject concept is not a law-cluster concept), and we have to connect these features with what, in the preceding section, was called the 'rationale' of the analytic-synthetic distinction. Having done this, we can see that the acceptance of analytic statements is rational, even though there are no reasons (in the sense of' evidence') in connection with them.

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The analytic and the synthetic
6 months 2 weeks ago

Moral philosophers say things like, 'What is actually wrong with cannibalism?' There are two ways of responding to that: one is to shrink back in horror and say, 'Cannibalism! Cannibalism! We can't talk about cannibalism!' The other is to say, 'Well, actually, what is wrong with cannibalism?' Then you work it out and you tease it out and you decide yes, actually, cannibalism is wrong, but for the following reasons. So I'd like to think that my moral values at least partly come from reasoning. Trying to suppress the gut reaction as much as possible.

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Interview with Sophie Elmhirst (2015),
5 months 1 week ago

The great man is the one who does not lose his child's heart.

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Book 4, pt. 2, v. 12
8 months 2 weeks ago

One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief. If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

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Pt II, p. 162
7 months 5 days ago

If anyone possesses this faculty, then his attention is in reality directed beyond the world, whether he is aware of it or not. The link which attaches the human being to the reality outside the world is, like the reality itself, beyond the reach of human faculties. The respect that it makes us feel as soon as it is recognized cannot be shown to us by evidence or testimony.

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The only way out of today's misery is for people to become worthy of each other's trust.

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2 months 1 week ago

All these libertarian / capitalist philosophies are about to be annihilated as we move to post scarcity value. They were always contingent and parasitic points of view, we just didn't have the technology to destroy them. Automation, maybe after a revolution, will destroy them.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

The first consequence of the principle of bounded rationality is that the intended rationality of an actor requires him to construct a simplified model of the real situation in order to deal with it. He behaves rationally with respect to this model, and such behavior is not even approximately optimal with respect to the real world. To predict his behavior we must understand the way in which this simplified model is constructed, and its construction will certainly be related to his psychological properties as a perceiving, thinking, and learning animal.

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p. 198; Cited in P. Slovic (1972, p. 2).
7 months 1 week ago

The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

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The Second Part, Chapter 26, p. 143
8 months 1 week ago

There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine.

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Chapter 4, Reason, p. 119
8 months 2 weeks ago

Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.

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Principles of Mathematics (1903), p. 451
5 months ago

The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

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Inside Information
4 months 2 weeks ago

All my life I struggled to stretch my mind to the breaking point, until it began to creak, in order to create a great thought which might be able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and to console mankind.

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"Odyssey of Faith" in TIME magazine
8 months 1 week ago

What is important is that sex was not only a question of sensation and pleasure, of law and interdiction, but also of the true and the false.

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Vol. I, p. 76
7 months 5 days ago

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.

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p. 125
7 months 6 days ago

...as the great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out, that in France and Spain there are multitudes who have proceeded from rejecting Popery to absolute atheism, because "the fact is, that false and absurd doctrines, when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget skepticism in those who receive them without reflection. None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much." Here is, indeed, the terrible danger of believing too much. But no! the terrible danger comes from another quarter - from seeking to believe with the reason and not with the life.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

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Book I, Chapter 1, "The Law of Human Nature"
8 months 2 weeks ago

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

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1839
8 months 3 weeks ago

We are all a sort of camelions, that still take a tincture from things near us; nor is it to be wonder'd at in children, who better understand what they see than what they hear.

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Sec. 67
5 months 4 days ago

Let us now enquire whether anger be in accordance with nature, and whether it be useful and worth entertaining in some measure.

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8 months 1 week ago

At times the world sees straight, but many times the world goes astray.

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Book II, epistle i, line 63
8 months 3 weeks ago

Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind - that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.

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p. 69
5 months 2 weeks ago

I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.

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The Republic.
5 months 2 weeks ago

It's also been attacked from the left by people... I teach students at Stanford, and many of them think that liberalism is... the doctrine of their parents' or their grandparents' generation, but it's really not relevant to Gen Z younger people who are impatient for social justice and social change that liberalism is not providing.

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6:48
7 months 2 weeks ago

The surest means of not losing your mind on the spot: remembering that everything is unreal, and will remain so...

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5 months 4 days ago

This spirit thrusts itself forward, confident of commendation and esteem. It is superior to all, monarch of all it surveys; hence it should be subservient to nothing, finding no task too heavy, and nothing strong enough to weigh down the shoulders of a man.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern.

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7 months 1 week ago

My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

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18: 36, (KJV)
7 months 1 week ago

Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts - that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man.

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p. 141

If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.

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Letter to Eckermann
8 months 2 weeks ago

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

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Act 2, sc. 3
5 months 1 week ago

Democracy, which means despair of finding any Heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them,-alas, thou too, mein Lieber, seest well how close it is of kin to Atheism, and other sad Isms: he who discovers no God whatever, how shall he discover Heroes, the visible Temples of God?

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6 months 2 weeks ago

The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice.

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From tail to tale on the path of pilgrims in life, The Scotsman
4 months 2 weeks ago

A wrongdoer is often a man who has left something undone, not always one who has done something.

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IX, 5
8 months 3 weeks ago

We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.

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Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
8 months 2 weeks ago

But you must see that if two things are alike, then it is a further question whether the first is copied from the second, or the second from the first, or both from a third.''What would the third be?''Some have thought that all these loves were copies of our love for the Landlord.'

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Pilgrim's Regress 59
7 months 2 weeks ago

Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that...

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8 months 2 weeks ago

His business is here, it is here that he is despised and vilified, it is here that he must carry out his undertaking.

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p. 67
9 months 4 days ago

(On the Trinitarian indwelling personally experienced by Saint Augustine) But what is it that I love in loving You? Not corporeal beauty, nor the splendour of time, nor the radiance of the light, so pleasant to our eyes, nor the sweet melodies of songs of all kinds, nor the fragrant smell of flowers, and ointments, and spices, not manna and honey, not limbs pleasant to the embracements of flesh. I love not these things when I love my God; and yet I love a certain kind of light, and sound, and fragrance, and food, and embracement in loving my God, who is the light, sound, fragrance, food, and embracement of my inner man — where that light shines unto my soul which no place can contain, where that sounds which time snatches not away, where there is a fragrance which no breeze disperses, where there is a food which no eating can diminish, and where that clings which no satiety can sunder. This is what I love, when I love my God.

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X, 6, 8
7 months 1 week ago

Position expresses the poised readiness of the live creature to meet the impact of surrounding forces, to meet so as to endure and persist, to extend or expand through undergoing the very forces that, apart from its response, are indifferent and hostile. Through going out into the environment, position unfolds into volume; through the pressure of environment, mass is retracted into energy of position, and space remains, when matter is contracted, as an opportunity for further action.

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p. 221
4 months 2 weeks ago

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe.

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Letter to James Madison (20 December 1787), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (19 Vols., 1905) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. VI, p. 392.
8 months 3 weeks ago

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond

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