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9 months 1 week ago

They do not know the penalty of unrighteousness, which is the thing they most ought to know. For it is not what they think it is scourgings and death, which they sometimes escape entirely when they have done wrong but a penalty which it is impossible to escape. Two patterns, my friend, are set up in the world, the divine, which is most blessed, and the godless, which is most wretched, and their silliness and extreme foolishness blind them to the fact that through their unrighteous acts they are made like the one and unlike the other. They therefore pay the penalty for this by living a life that conforms to the pattern they resemble.

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8 months 1 week ago

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will-"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"-need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-until next year-that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

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Diary entry (April 30, 1870) as quoted in Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1, p. 323; Letters of William James, vol. I, p. 147.
8 months 1 week ago

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,-a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

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par. 5
6 months 1 week ago

Nothing in this book is true.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Feminist thought and practice were fundamentally altered when radical women of color and white women allies began to rigorously challenge the notion of "gender" was the primary factor determining a woman's fate. I can still recall how it upset everyone in the first women's studies class I attended-a class where everyone except me was white and female and mostly from privileged backgrounds-when I interrupted a discussion about the origins of domination in which it was argued that when a child is coming out of the womb the factor deemed most important is gender. I stated that when the child of two black parents is coming out of the womb the factor that is considered first is skin color, then gender, because race and gender will determine that child's fate. Looking at the interlocking nature of gender, race, and class was the perspective that changed the direction of feminist thought.

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p. xiii.
6 months 3 weeks ago

Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways, that there is an affinity between us and other people as well as things.

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7 months 3 days ago

In proportion as a man's interests become humane and his efforts rational, he appropriates and expands a common life, which reappears in all individuals who reach the same impersonal level of ideas.

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Ch. VIII: Ideal Society
4 months 1 week ago

Secondary Qualities are not 'extended' but 'intensive'; their effects are not augmented by addition of parts, but by increased operation of the medium. Hence they are not measured directly, but by 'scales'; not by 'units', but by 'degrees'.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Such words as spontaneity, sincerity, gratuitousness, richness, enrichment - words which imply an almost total indifference to contrasts of value - have come more often from their [the surrealists'] pens than words which contain a reference to good and evil. Moreover, this latter class of words has become degraded, especially those which refer to the good, as Valéry remarked some years ago. Words like virtue, nobility, honor, honesty, generosity, have become almost impossible to use or else they have acquired bastard meanings; language is no longer equipped for legitimately praising a man's character.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 168
8 months 1 week ago

It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far - not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world - that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.

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Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in London, March 1850
7 months 3 days ago

I know not how the world will receive it, nor how it may reflect on those that shall seem to favor it. For in a way beset with those that contend, on one side for too great Liberty, and on the other side for too much Authority, 'tis hard to passe between the points of both unwounded.

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The Epistle Dedicatory, Paris, April 15-25, 1651
8 months 1 week ago

I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), Part III, chapter II, "Solipsism", p. 196
8 months 1 week ago

Most books belong to the house and streets only, and in the fields their leaves feel very thin.

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6 months 3 days ago

The strange superstition has arisen in the Western world that we can start all over again, remaking human nature, human society, and the possibilities of happiness; as though the knowledge and experience of our ancestors were now entirely irrelevant.

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Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life
4 months 1 week ago

Death,-a stopping of impressions through the senses, and of the pulling of the cords of motion, and of the ways of thought, and of service to the flesh.

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VI, 28
8 months 6 days ago

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
6 months 2 weeks 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.
7 months 3 days ago

Elias truly shall first come, and restore all things. But I say unto you, That Elias is come already, and they knew him not, but have done unto him whatsoever they listed. Likewise shall also the Son of man suffer of them.

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17:11-12 (KJV)
6 months 1 week ago

Advertising is the greatest art form of the twentieth century.

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quoted in Advertising Age, Sep. 3, 1976
8 months 1 week ago

We love those who hate our enemies, and if we had no enemies there would be very few people whom we should love. All this, however, is only true so long as we are concerned solely with attitudes towards other human beings. You might regard the soil as your enemy because it yields reluctantly a niggardly subsistence. You might regard Mother Nature in general as your enemy, and envisage human life as a struggle to get the better of Mother Nature. If men viewed life in this way, cooperation of the whole human race would become easy. And men could easily be brought to view life in this way if schools, newspapers, and politicians devoted themselves to this end. But schools are out to teach patriotism; newspapers are out to stir up excitement; and politicians are out to get re-elected. None of the three, therefore, can do anything towards saving the human race from reciprocal suicide.

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7 months 3 days ago

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

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13:31-32 (KJV)
8 months 6 days ago

We must plow through the whole of language.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
7 months 1 week 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 3 weeks ago

A man, in so far as he is an individual, may be very sharply detached from others, a sort of spiritual crustacean, and yet be very poor in differentiating content. And further, it is true on the other hand that the more personality a man has and the greater his interior riches and the more he is a society within himself, the less brusquely he is divided from his fellows.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling. Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use-which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing-for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.

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p. 92
4 months 1 week ago

The whole contains nothing which is not or its advantage; and all natures indeed have this common principle, but the nature of the universe has this principle besides, that it cannot be compelled even by any external cause to generate anything harmful to itself.

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X, 6
7 months 2 days ago

Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.

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The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) p. 248.
5 months 6 days ago

Just sit back and listen to some of the clamorous grievances against the contemporary global system. Our list does not pretend to be comprehensive, and the partiality of its selections will undoubtedly reveal our own blindnesses, but it should nonetheless give a sense of the range and depth of today's grievances.

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270
8 months 2 weeks ago

Every thing in the world is purchased by labour.

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Part II, Essay 1: Of Commerce
8 months 3 weeks ago

The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

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I, 7
6 months 1 week ago

The newspaper is a corporate symbolist poem, environmental and invisible, as poem.

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7 months 3 days ago

The words of the world want to make sentences.

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Ch. 5, sect. 4
7 months 3 days ago

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

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Mark 13:31, KJV
7 months 1 week ago

I am convinced that we have a degree of delight, and that no small one, in the real misfortunes and pains of others.

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Part I Section XIV
8 months 1 week ago

The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the glory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade.

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7 months 1 week 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

Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.

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Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 56
8 months 3 weeks ago

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

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p. 395
6 months 1 week ago

Challenge, and not desire, lies at the heart of seduction.

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(p. 57)
4 months 1 week ago

It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.

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Letter to Arthur Campbell
3 weeks 2 days ago

Every individual is an end in themselves and should be respected as such. In crowded areas, that means commonsense respect. Move out to the woods if you can't handle it.

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4 months 1 week ago

High up where the poor sat, the people quaked with fear:they saw the soul stretched on the ground, a votive beastbeaten by the conflicting powers of light and dark,and their minds shook, nor knew now what great god to choose,for comfort's road dropped to the right, the rough ascentrose to the left, and both roads seemed to lead to God,while at the crossroads stood the human heart, and swayed.

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Book VI, line 242
4 months 1 week ago

Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and Father of the University of Virginia. Epitaph, upon his instructions to erect a "a plain die or cube ... surmounted by an Obelisk" with "the following inscription, and not a word more...because by these, as testimonials that I have lived, I wish most to be remembered." It omits that he had been President of the United States, a position of political power and prestige, and celebrates his involvement in the creation of the means of inspiration and instruction by which many human lives have been liberated from oppression and ignorance.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

The most important part of education - to teach the meaning of to know (in the scientific sense). The last statement in her notebook

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7 months 2 days ago

Historians of ideas, however scrupulous and minute they may feel it necessary to be, cannot avoid perceiving their material in terms of some kind of pattern.

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