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5 months 2 weeks ago

Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself.

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3 months 2 days ago

The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.

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p. 32
3 months 2 days ago

A work of art bears within itself its own verification: conceptions which are devised or stretched do not stand being portrayed in images, they all come crashing down, appear sickly and pale, convince no one. But those works of art which have scooped up the truth and presented it to us as a living force - they take hold of us, compel us, and nobody ever, not even in ages to come, will appear to refute them.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

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Ch. 4
7 months 1 week ago

What! You would convict me from my own words, and bring against me what I had said or written elsewhere. You may act in that manner with those who dispute by established rules. We live from hand to mouth, and say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the only people who are really at liberty.

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Book 5 Section 11
3 months 2 weeks ago

The seeds of heavenly bodies are deposited and cared for in the Milky Way, from which they emanate in swarms of comets that travel a ;long time and ordinarily gravitate towards various suns before becoming fixed in orbit.

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L'attraction passioneé
6 months 3 weeks ago

For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

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Vol. 1, Part 1.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Government is violence, Christianity is meekness, non-resistance, love. And, therefore, government cannot be Christian, and a man who wishes to be a Christian must not serve government.

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Letter to Dr. Eugen Heinrich Schmitt (October 12, 1896), translated by Nathan Haskell Dole
4 months 2 weeks ago

A woman can earn her pardon for a good year of disobedience by a single adroit submission.

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The Rajah's Diamond, Story of the Bandbox.
6 months 1 week ago

It is no more evident that democratic institutions are to be measured by the sort of person they create than that they are to be measured against divine commands. ... Even if the typical character types of liberal democracies are bland, calculating, petty, and unheroic, the prevalence of such people may be a reasonable price to pay for political freedom.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.

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Ch. 13
4 months 2 weeks ago

The pre-atomist multisensory void was an animate, pulsating, and moving vibrant interval, neither container nor contained, acoustic space penetrated by tactility.

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p. 34

Finally, every man will become dear and pleasing to every other man; all will be beloved by all! and, what is still more desirable, beloved also by Christ; to become acceptable to whom is the highest felicity of human nature.

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3 months 6 days ago

Accept in an unruffled spirit that which is inevitable.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

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4 months ago

What I would like to show is that there is a vital dimension of their writing, which I call performative reflexivity, which if ignored or misunderstood will impede an adequate response to it.

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Chapter 8, Performative Reflexivity, p. 134
2 months 2 weeks ago

If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment- If you can embrace this without fear or expectation-can find fulfillment in what you're doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)-then your life will be happy.

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(Hays translation)- III, 12
5 months 1 week ago

There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude...we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.

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No. 104. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Sanity itself is a kind of convention.

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The Hunter's Family
6 months 3 weeks ago

It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.

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Les Lettres d'Amabed (1769): Septième Lettre d'Amabed
6 months 2 weeks ago

Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
5 months 2 weeks ago

Simplify the social system, in the manner which every motive, but those of usurpation and ambition, powerfully recommends; render the plain dictates of justice level to every capacity; remove the necessity of implicit faith; and we may expect the whole species to become reasonable and virtuous.

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Portable Enlightenment Reader, p. 477
5 months 1 week ago

But our Don Quixote, the inward, the immortal Don Quixote, conscious of his own comicness, does not believe that his doctrines will triumph in this world, because they are not of it. And it is better that they should not triumph. And if the world wished to make Don Quixote king, he would retire alone to the mountain, fleeing from the king-making crowds, as Christ retired alone to the mountain when, after the miracle of the loaves and fishes, they sought to proclaim him king. He left the title of king for the inscription written over the cross.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

If women get tired and die of bearing, there is no harm in that; let them die as long as they bear; they are made for that.

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-- Essays, quoted in Luther On "Woman"
7 months 1 week ago

There is no city that is truly one other than this city that we are involved in bringing forth.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

How many women does one need to sing the scale of love all the way up and down?

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Act I.
3 months 6 days ago

Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.

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Line 12 Alternate translation: Not for life, but for school do we learn. (translator unknown) Alternate translation: We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life. (translator unknown).
6 months 3 weeks ago

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

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Beauty
6 months 3 weeks ago

This miracle of analysis, this marvel of the world of ideas, an almost amphibian object between Being and Non-being that we call the imaginary number.

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Quoted in Singularités : individus et relations dans le système de Leibniz (2003) by Christiane Frémont
7 months 3 weeks ago
Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart.
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6 months 3 weeks ago

For nature beats in perfect tune, And rounds with rhyme her every rune, Whether she work in land or sea, Or hide underground her alchemy. Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, Or dip thy paddle in the lake, But it carves the bow of beauty there, And the ripples in rhymes the oar forsake.

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Wood-notes, no. II, st. 7
6 months 3 weeks ago

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Brahma, st. 1 Composed in July 1856 this poem is derived from a major passage of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most popular of Hindu scriptures, and portions of it were likely a paraphrase of an existing translation. Though titled "Brahma" its expressions are actually more indicative of the Hindu concept "Brahman"

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6 months 3 weeks ago

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

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Sec. 1
5 months 2 weeks ago

Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

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11:4-6 (KJV)
4 months 2 weeks ago

In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions.

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(p. 21)
4 months 3 weeks ago

"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutúzov. He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge.

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Bk XIII, Ch. 17
5 months 1 week ago

Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad, the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.

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p. 55
5 months 3 weeks ago

Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the Development Hypothesis. They are merely asked to point out a conceivable mode. On the other hand, they ask, not simply for a conceivable mode, but for the actual mode.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Parmenides: If anyone, with his mind fixed on all these objections and others like them, denies the existence of ideas of things, and does not assume an idea under which each individual thing is classed, he will be quite at a loss, since he denies that the idea of each thing is always the same, and in this way he will utterly destroy the power of carrying on discussion... Then what will become of philosophy? To what can you turn, if these things are unknown?

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5 months 2 weeks ago

What does the future, that half of time, matter to the man who is infatuated with eternity?

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Even Darwin's natural selection only predicts that survivors will be fit enough, that is, fitter than their losing competitors; it postulates satisficing, not optimizing.

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p. 166; As cited in Ronald J. Baker (2010, p. 122).

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

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C 38
6 months 2 weeks ago

But how can the characters in a play guess the plot? We are not the playwright, we are not the producer, we are not even the audience. We are on the stage. To play well the scenes in which we are "on" concerns us much more than to guess about the scenes that follow it.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all.

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7 months 6 days ago

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

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Book II, ch. 17, 1.
3 months 6 days ago

But he has no fear; unconquered he looks down from a lofty height upon his sufferings.

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3 months 2 days ago

Not less strong than the will to truth must be the will to sincerity. Only an age, which can show the courage of sincerity, can possess truth, which works as a spiritual force within it.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge - not even in the long run.

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"Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary," from Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions

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