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1 month 3 weeks ago

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

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Dedication
1 month 3 weeks ago

How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

One hardly saves a world without ruling it.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

A moral point of view too often serves as a substitute for understanding in technological matters.

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(p. 245)
4 days ago

[H]ere we come to the nub of the issue: the alleged moral force of the term "natural". If any creature, by its very nature, causes terrible suffering, albeit unwittingly, is it morally wrong to change that nature? If a civilised human were to come to believe s/he had been committing acts that caused grievous pain for no good reason, then s/he would stop - and want other moral agents to prevent the recurrence of such behaviour. May we assume that the same would be true of a lion, if the lion were morally and cognitively "uplifted" so as to understand the ramifications of what (s)he was doing? Or a house cat tormenting a mouse? Or indeed a human sociopath?

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"Reprogramming Predators", BLTC Research, 2009
1 month 2 weeks ago

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

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The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62
2 months 2 weeks ago

Men in their prayers beg the gods for health, not knowing that this is a thing they have in their own power. Through their incontinence undermining it, they themselves become, because of their passions, the betrayers of their own health.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness, but come down into the green valleys of silliness.

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p. 76e
3 weeks 2 days ago

The media have substituted themselves for the older world. "Education, Language, and Media". Cycle 7, 1973, p. 232

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Torn in this way from its normal connection with contemplation, with being within one's self, pure action permits and produces only a chain of stupidities which we might better call "stupidity unchained." So we see today that an absurd attitude justifies the appearance of an opposing attitude no more reasonable; at least, reasonable enough, and so on indefinitely. Such is the extreme to which political affairs in the West have come!

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p. 34
3 months 3 weeks ago

The true discovery of America by mankind came when those first hunting bands crossed over from Siberia 25,000 years ago. This, however, never seems to count. When people speak of the "discovery of America" they invariably mean its discovery by Europeans.

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2 months 1 day ago

But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.

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Section 4

Useful undertakings which require sustained attention and vigorous precision in order to succeed often end up by being abandoned, for, in America, as elsewhere, the people move forward by sudden impulses and short-lived efforts.

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Chapter V
2 months 3 weeks ago

The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.

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January 5, 1856
1 month 3 weeks ago

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.

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Letter to Jean-Richard Bloch
2 months 3 weeks ago

But when they have realized that it [society] rejects them forever, they themselves assume the ostracism of which they are victims so as not to leave the initiative to their oppressors.

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p. 65-6
2 months 3 weeks ago

O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.

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Ode, st. 1
2 months 3 weeks ago

Inuring children gently to suffer some degrees of pain without shrinking, is a way to gain firmness to their minds, and lay a foundation for courage and resolution in the future part of their lives.

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Sec. 115
1 month 3 weeks ago

It was these Romans who reunited in one State the Culture which had now been produced by the intermixture of different races, and thereby completed the period of Ancient Time, and closed the simple course of Ancient Civilization. With respect to its influence on Universal History, this nation, more than any other, was the blind and unconscious instrument for the furtherance of a higher World-Plan; after having formed itself, by its internal des tiny indicated above, into a most fit and proper instrument for that purpose.

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p. 192
1 month ago

There's no objective morality, but that's not the real point. It's not the point that morality has to somehow be a stone, or something that can be touched. 

The options that are available to choose are determined to a point, and this is the objective aspect of morality, ethics, goodness, fairness, justice. 

The subjective aspect can still remain subjective, but that doesn't mean goodness is relative.....at all. The measure of a man is a man.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

Freedom and not servitude is the cure of anarchy; as religion, and not atheism, is the true remedy for superstition.

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3 weeks 2 days ago

Practice is the best of all instructors.

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Maxim 439
2 months 3 weeks ago

His obedience is real since he really and truly fulfills his mission, since he runs real risks in order to carry out the beloved's orders. But, on the other hand, it is imaginary because he submits only to a creature of his mind.

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p. 152
2 months 3 weeks ago

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe - "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Into the middle things.

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Line 148
2 months 3 weeks ago

The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other.

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Ch. 8
2 months 3 weeks ago

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

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July 14, 1852
2 months 3 weeks ago

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

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Greatness
2 months 3 weeks ago

We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.

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Reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 225
2 months 2 weeks ago

A righteous government is of all the most to be wished for,Bearing of blessing and good fortune in the highest.Guided by the law of Truth, supported by dedication and zeal,It blossoms into the Best of Order, a Kingdom of Heaven!To effect this I shall work now and ever more.

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Vohu-Khshathra Gatha; Yasna 51, 1.

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.

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Chapter 1 "Explaining the Very Improbable"
2 months 3 weeks ago

An individual who finds that he enjoys seeing others in positions of lesser liberty understands that he has no claim whatever to this enjoyment.

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Chapter I, Section 6, pg. 31
1 month 3 weeks ago

No one has the audacity to exclaim: "I don't want to do anything!" - we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions.

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If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

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F 39

It is because the method of physics does not satisfy the comprehension that we have to go on further.

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1 month 1 week ago

Those who have a spark of self-respect left, prefer open defiance, prefer crime to the emaciated, degraded position of poverty.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Against the diseases of the mind, philosophy provides sufficient antidotes. The instruments which it employs for this purpose are the virtues; the root of which, whence all the rest proceed, is prudence. This virtue comprehends the whole art of living discreetly, justly, and honorably, and is, in fact, the same thing with wisdom. It instructs men to free their understandings from the clouds of prejudice; to exercise temperance and fortitude in the government of themselves: and to practice justice towards others. Although pleasure, or happiness, which is the end of living, be superior to virtue, which is only the means, it is every one's interest to practice all the virtues; for in a happy life, pleasure can never be separated from virtue.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Be it well understood, I am free by compulsion, whether I wish to be or not. Freedom is not an activity pursued by an entity that, apart from and previous to such pursuit, is already possessed of a fixed being. To be free means to be lacking in constitutive identity, not to have subscribed to a determined being, to be able to be other than what one was, to be unable to install oneself once and for all in any given being. The only attribute of the fixed, stable being in the free being is this constitutive instability.

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"Man has no nature"
2 months 4 weeks ago

The evident justice and utility of the foregoing maxims have recommended them more or less to the attention of all nations.

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Chapter II, Part II, p. 894.

What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

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Book Two, Chapter XIX.
1 month 3 weeks ago

The terrifying experience and obsession of death, when preserved in consciousness, becomes ruinous. If you talk about death, you save part of yourself. But at the same time, something of your real self dies, because objectified meanings lose the actuality they have in consciousness.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

Love of the absolute engenders a predilection for self-destruction. Hence the passion for monasteries and brothels. Cells and women, in both cases. Weariness with life fares well in the shadow of whores and saintly women.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

The judgment that human life is worth living, or rather can and ought to be made worth living, ... underlies all intellectual effort; it is the a priori of social theory, and its rejection (which is perfectly logical) rejects theory itself.

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p. xliii
3 months 1 week ago

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

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p. 607
1 month 3 weeks ago

The meaning and design of a problem seem not to lie in its solution, but in our working at it incessantly.

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p. 103

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