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1 month 3 weeks ago

The possibility of associating two or three hundred families in agricultural and manufacturing industry depends upon a system so entirely different from what now exists, that it will open to the reader a new social world. He must consequently, in the study which opens before him, follow the guide with confidence, bearing constantly in min the gigantic results which will flow from association. Such results are well worth the sacrifice of a few prejudices. Every sensible reader will be of this opinion, and will concur to follow the advice which I shall constantly give, namely, to neglect the form and style of presentation, and occupy himself solely with the substance of the theory, seeking to determine whether the process of association is really discovered or not.

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The Theory of Social Organization. Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier, p. 5.
3 weeks 3 days ago

Take away your opinion, and there is taken away the complaint. Take away the complaint, and the hurt is gone.

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IV. 7, trans. George Long
2 months 2 weeks ago

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

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According to Kenneth Owen Morgan (The Illustrated History of Britain (1984) p. 421) this was said by Macaulay in 1832. If so, he was quoting a letter written by Edmund Burke in 1777.
1 month 5 days ago

The murder of one person is called unrighteous and incurs one death penalty. Following this argument, the murder of ten persons will be ten times as unrighteous and there should be ten death penalties; the murder of a hundred persons will be a hundred times as unrighteous and there should be a hundred death penalties. All the gentlemen of the world know that they should condemn these things, calling them unrighteous. But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking states, they do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, they applaud it, calling it righteous.

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Book 5: Condemnation of Offensive War I
3 months 3 weeks ago

It is a proof that the state is not an arbitrary invention, but is established by nature and reason, when we actually find that, in places where men have lived together for a time and have become educated, states are erected, although the people in the one such place know not that the same thing has been done in other places. Each people, which does not live in a condition of nature, but has a government, no matter how constituted, has a right to compel its recognition from all adjoining states.

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P. 474, 477
4 months 2 weeks ago

When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, 'such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"

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43 Alexander
5 months 1 day ago

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.

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Part I, Essay 18: The Sceptic
2 months 3 weeks ago

Environments are invisible. Their groundrules, pervasive structure, and overall patterns elude easy perception.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious Idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, [play or] a game in which one releases surplus energy, ...not the production of pleasing objects, and is above all, not pleasure itself, but it is the means of union among mankind, joining them in the same feelings, and necessary for the life and progress toward the good of the individual and of humanity.

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4 months 3 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
4 months 3 weeks ago

Instead of insanity eliminating the crime according to the original meaning of article 64,every crime and even every offense now carries within it, as a legitimate suspicion, but also as a right that may be claimed, the hypothesis of insanity, in any case of anomaly. And the sentence that condemns or acquits is not simply a judgement of guily, a legal decision that lays down punishment; it bears within it an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization Today the judge- magistrate or juror0 certainly does more than 'judge'.

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pp. 20-21
4 months 2 weeks ago

Be ruled by time, the wisest counsellor of all.

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Pericles (Tr. Dryden and Clough)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

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p. 492
2 months 2 weeks ago

One's language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. ... Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.

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Part I, p. 27
2 months 3 weeks ago

Unfortunately not only were the rulers, who were considered supernatural beings, benefited by having the peoples in subjection, but as a result of the belief in, and during the rule of, these pseudodivine beings, ever larger and larger circles of people grouped and established themselves around them, and under an appearance of governing took advantage of the people. And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers.

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III
3 weeks 4 days ago

The Constitution of 1795, like its predecessors, was made for man. But there is no such thing as man in the world. In my lifetime I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, etc.; thanks to Montesquieu, I even know that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare that I have never in my life met him; if he exists, he is unknown to me.

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5 months 5 days ago

The art of dining well is no slight art, the pleasure not a slight pleasure.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 95
5 months 1 day ago

The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain as that of live cattle. Salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expence, of higher price. They could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country.

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Chapter II
3 months 1 week ago

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

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Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 291
2 months 3 weeks ago

Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perception...When these ratios change, men change.

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1 month 1 week ago

This is the real secret of life-to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

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The Essence of Alan Watts
5 months 4 weeks ago
Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific "truth" with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems.
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3 months 2 weeks ago

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

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22:29-32 (KJV)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

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p. 166.
4 months 3 weeks ago

The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by that gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we were: the model itself. But, inversely, the painter's gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange.

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Las Menias
3 months 3 weeks ago

Were we to undertake an exhaustive self-scrutiny, disgust would paralyze us, we would be doomed to a thankless existence.

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3 weeks 4 days ago

What appears to us to be an accurate definition of justice does not also appear to be so to the Gods. For we, looking to that which is most brief, direct our attention to things present, and to this momentary life, and the manner in which it subsists. But the Powers that are superior to us know the whole life of the Soul, and all its former lives.

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The Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, translated from the Greek by Thomas Taylor, (1821) quoted by Annie Besant in Karma,
5 months 4 weeks ago
Every tradition grows ever more venerable — the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.
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3 months 3 weeks ago

To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium - in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.

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2 months 6 days ago

In the long run, there is nothing to stop intelligent agents from identifying the molecular signature of experience below hedonic zero and eliminating it altogether - even in insects. Nociception is vital; pain is optional. I tentatively predict that the world's last unpleasant experience in our forward light-cone will be a precisely datable event - perhaps some micro-pain in an obscure marine invertebrate a few centuries hence.

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The Radical Plan to Phase out Earth's Predatory Species, io9, 30 Jul. 2014
4 months 4 weeks ago

If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?

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From The Total Library by Jorge Luis Borges, 1999
5 months 4 weeks 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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4 months 3 weeks ago

A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane.

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Grey Eminence, 1940
2 months 1 week ago

One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few.

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p. 114
3 months 3 weeks ago

The plebeian must expect to find himself neglected and despised in proportion as he is remiss in cultivation the objects of esteem; the lord will always be surrounded with sycophants and slaves. The lord therefore has no motive to industry and exertion; no stimulus to rouse him from the lethargic 'oblivious pool', out of which every human intellect originally arose.

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Book V, Chapter 10, "Of Hereditary Distinction"
3 months 3 weeks ago

Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?

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2 months 1 week ago

Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible.

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"On The Natural Inequality of Men"
4 months 4 weeks ago

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

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Ch. 13: Freedom in Society
5 months 4 weeks ago

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

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Either/Or Part I, Swenson Translation p. 19 Variations include: People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
1 month 1 week ago

Socialism is the watchword and the catchword of our day. The socialist idea dominates the modem spirit. The masses approve of it. It expresses the thoughts and feelings of all; it has set its seal upon our time. When history comes to tell our story it will write above the chapter "The Epoch of Socialism." As yet, it is true, Socialism has not created a society which can be said to represent its ideal. But for more than a generation the policies of civilized nations have been directed towards nothing less than a gradual realization of Socialism.

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Introduction : The Success of Socialist Ideas
3 weeks 6 days ago

I am a weak, ephemeral creature made of mud and dream. But I feel all the powers of the universe whirling within me.

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3 weeks 6 days ago

Small creatures die because larger creatures are hungry. How superior to this human confusion of greed and creed, blood and fire.

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2 months 4 weeks ago

Well, what does "good" mean anyway...? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good," like "game," has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation."

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P. 152.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

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