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12 months 2 days ago

Survive in such a way that you avoid limiting others who are also trying to survive. We all live in limited systems. This is the core of ethics.

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7 months 1 week ago

Newton... (after having remarked that geometry only requires two of the mechanical actions which it postulates, namely, to describe a straight line and a circle) says: geometry is proud of being able to achieve so much while taking so little from extraneous sources. One might say of metaphysics, on the other hand: it stands astonished, that with so much offered it by pure mathematics it can effect so little. In the meantime, this little is something which mathematics indispensably requires in its application to natural science, which, inasmuch as it must here necessarily borrow from metaphysics, need not be ashamed to allow itself to be seen in company with the latter.

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Preface, Tr. Bax (1883) citing Isaac Newton's Principia
11 months 2 weeks ago

At the beginning of November 2001, there was a series of meetings between White House advisers and senior Hollywood executives with the aim of coordinating the war effort and establishing how Hollywood could help in the "war against terrorism" by getting the right ideological message across not only to Americans, but also to the Hollywood public around the globe — the ultimate empirical proof that Hollywood does in fact function as an "ideological state apparatus."

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6 months 4 weeks ago

People are enticed by a desire which continually cheats them.'Nothing is enough,' they say, 'for you're only worth what you have.'

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Book I, satire i, lines 61-62, as translated by N. Rudd
6 months 2 weeks ago

Do not know the truth by the men, but know the truth, and then you will know who are truthful.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 29.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

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Perennial fashion - Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith
8 months 6 days ago

Scientific writing is abhorrently stylized and places a premium on poor quality.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The issue over there being classes seems more a question of convenient conceptual scheme; the issue over there being centaurs, or brick houses on Elm Street, seems more a question of fact. But I have been urging that this difference is only one of degree, and that it turns upon our vaguely pragmatic inclination to adjust one strand of the fabric of science rather than another in accommodating some particular recalcitrant experience. Conservatism figures in such choices, and so does the quest for simplicity.

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"Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
6 months 2 weeks ago

Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience.

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7 months 1 week ago

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction.

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Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. Introduction to 1961 edition of Sceptical Essays, 1961
7 months 1 week ago

It is generally admitted that most grown-up people, however regrettably, will try to have a good time.

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6 months 5 days ago

It is a woman's outstanding characteristic that she can do anything for the love of a man. But those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with their nature. Love for a thing is a man's prerogative. But since masculine and feminine elements are united in our human nature, a man can live in the feminine part of himself, I and a woman in her masculine part. None the less the feminine element in man is only something in the background, as is the masculine element in woman. If one lives out the opposite sex in oneself one is living in one's own background, and one's real individuality suffers. A man should live as a man and a woman as a woman.

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P. 243
7 months 1 week ago

All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerers (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudible business of mankind, and the most heroick of virtues. By these steps unnatural cruelty is planted in us; and what humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us, by laying it in the way to honour. Thus, by fashioning and opinion, that comes to be a pleasure, which in itself neither is, nor can be any.

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Sec. 116
7 months 1 week ago

The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as where? - how far? - how situated in relation to what? In the mescaline experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern."

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8 months 6 days ago

The Dantean conceptions of Inferno were childish and unworthy of the Divine imagination: fire and torture. Boredom is much more subtle. The inner torture of a mind unable to escape itself in any way, condemned to fester in its own exuding mental pus for all time, is much more fitting. Oh, yes, my friend, we have been judged, and condemned, too, and this is not Heaven, but hell.

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6 months 1 day ago

The Superego, in censoring the unconscious and in implanting conscience, also censors the censor.

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p. 76
5 months 3 weeks ago

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

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"Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"
8 months 1 week ago

Seek first God's Kingdom, that is, become like the lilies and the birds, become perfectly silent - then shall the rest be added unto you.

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6 months 5 days ago

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.

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Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post
6 months ago

But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself.

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6 months 1 day ago

All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another and will again be resolved into their own roots, because the nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its nature alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.

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8 months 6 days ago

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.

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4 months 1 week ago

The great artist liberates the emotions and recreates the sheer wonder of childhood without surrendering the development of the intellect.

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p. 258
3 months 3 weeks ago

Besides, he who follows another not only discovers nothing but is not even investigating.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.

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I, 1
7 months 1 week ago

Even in the games of children there are things to interest the greatest mathematician.

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1688-1690
8 months 1 week ago
One has attained to mastery when one neither goes wrong nor hesitates in the performance.
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4 months 4 days ago

The familial union presents as well a mixture of inconvenient ages and characters that inhibit conversation. Morality engenders a frigid atmosphere, as in all places where it reigns.

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Oeuvres completetes de Charles Fourier
3 months 1 week ago

The Science of Hydrostatics depends upon the Fundamental Principle that 'fluids press equally in all directions'. This Principle necessarily results from the conception of a Fluid, as a body of which the parts are perfectly moveable in all directions. For since the Fluid is a body, it can transmit pressure; and the transmitted pressure is equal to the original pressure, in virtue of the Axiom that Reaction is equal to Action. That the Fundamental Principle is not derived from experience, is plain both from its evidence and from its history.

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6 months 1 week ago

France had endeavoured under the specious pretext of an enlarged benevolence, to sow the seeds of enmity among nations, and destroy all local attachments, calling them narrow and illiberal-thereby to dissever the people from their governors.

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Speech in the House of Commons on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (9 April 1793)
6 months 4 weeks ago

He who upholds Truth with all the might of his power, He who upholds Truth the utmost in his word and deed,He, indeed, is Thy most valued helper, O Mazda Ahura!

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 31, 22.
7 months 1 week ago

Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? ... Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success.

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7 months 1 week ago

Virtue is debased by self-justification.

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Oedipe, act II, scene IV, 1718
6 months 1 week ago

That unwise body, the United Irishmen, have had the folly to represent those Evils as owing to this Country, when in truth its chief guilt is in its total neglect, its utter oblivion, its shameful indifference and its entire ignorance, of Ireland and of every thing that relates to it, and not in any oppressive disposition towards that unknown region.

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Letter to Thomas Hussey (9 December 1796), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
7 months 1 week ago

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

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pp. 178-179
7 months 1 week ago

Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be us'd in the correction of children, and that only in the cases of extremity, after all gently ways have been try'd, and proved unsuccessful; which, if well observ'd, there will very seldom be any need of blows.

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Sec. 84
7 months 3 weeks ago

Christ is not valued at all unless He be valued above all.

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p. 395
7 months 4 weeks ago

Much learning does not teach understanding.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers.

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Logic of Discovery or Psychology of Research?, Criticism and the growth of knowledge edited by Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave
7 months 1 week ago

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.

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Fate
6 months 4 days ago

Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.

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6 months 1 week ago

The free being with absolute freedom proposes to itself certain ends. It wills because it wills, and the willing of an object is itself the last ground of such willing. Thus we have previously determined a free being, and any other determination would destroy the conception of an Ego, or of a free being. Now, if it could be so arranged that the willing of an unlawful end would necessarily - in virtue of an always effective law - result in the very reverse of that end, then the unlawful will would always ANNIHILATE ITSELF. A person could not will that end for the very reason because he did will it; his unlawful will would become the ground of its own annihilation, as the will is indeed always its own last ground.

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p. 193
7 months 1 week ago

I remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told me that I should find, as I got acquainted with new people, that I had been taught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember very imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot.

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(p. 34)
6 months ago

Coleridge said that every work of art must have about it something not understood to obtain its full effect.

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p. 202

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