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7 months 3 weeks ago

God the Almighty has made our rulers mad; they actually think they can do-and order their subjects to do-whatever they please. And the subjects make the mistake of believing that they, in turn, are bound to obey their rulers in everything.

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p. 83
7 months 2 weeks ago

But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.

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A Letter Concerning Toleration
3 months 1 week ago

Man cannot be wicked without being evil, nor evil without being degraded, nor degraded without being punished, nor punished without being guilty. In short ... there is nothing so intrinsically plausible as the theory of original sin.

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Second Dialogue, p. 38
7 months 2 weeks ago

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man's condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put. He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.

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Introduction
3 months 3 weeks ago

The world is in an extremely dangerous situation, and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure - like the Pasteur serum for rabies.

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Inside Information p. 4
4 months 1 week ago

Pragmatism starts from assumptions similar to those of empiriocriticism, but differs from the latter by its striking formulations, loose aphorisms, and analytical unscrupulousness.

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Chapter Seven, Pragmatism and Positivism, p. 166
3 months 2 weeks ago

From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.

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p. 486
3 months 5 days ago

Everything should be made simple as possible but no simpler.

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Repeated throughout his life, see: [http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/05/13/einstein-simple/ Quote Investigator]

Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much of a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is all the same; you will not be, and you were not. Neither of these periods of time belongs to you.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds. To these for distinction's sake I have assigned names - calling the first class, Idols of the Tribe; the second, Idols of the Cave; the third, Idols of the Market-Place; the fourth, Idols of the Theater.

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Aphorism 39
7 months 2 weeks ago

To require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 94-95
3 months 3 weeks ago

Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or "loyal opposition" to the culture in which it is involved.

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p. 7
8 months ago

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

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Book I, ch. 14, 13, 14.
7 months 3 weeks ago

Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.

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Act III, scene xi
7 months 3 weeks ago

There is nothing more notable in Socrates than that he found time, when he was an old man, to learn music and dancing, and thought it time well spent.

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Book III, Ch. 13
6 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing in the world is harder than speaking the truth and nothing easier than flattery. If there's the hundredth part of a false note in speaking the truth, it leads to a discord, and that leads to trouble. But if all, to the last note, is false in flattery, it is just as agreeable, and is heard not without satisfaction. It may be a coarse satisfaction, but still a satisfaction. And however coarse the flattery, at least half will be sure to seem true. That's so for all stages of development and classes of society.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

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As quoted in the Communist Manifesto (1848) p. 7
7 months 2 weeks ago

It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

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Chapter II
7 months 2 weeks ago

Formerly, it was held by philosophers and mathematicians alike that the proofs in Geometry depended on the figure; nowadays, this is known to be false. In the best books there are no figures at all. The reasoning proceeds by the strict rules of formal logic from a set of axioms laid down to begin with.

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Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
7 months 5 days ago

The mind enamored with deceptive things, declines things better.

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Book II, satire ii, line 6
7 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing is terrible except fear itself.

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De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, "Fortitudo"
3 months 1 week ago

But though much may be said to Excuse the Chymists when they write Darkly, and Ænigmatically, about the Preparation of their Elixir, and Some few other grand Arcana, the divulging of which they may upon Grounds Plausible enough esteem unfit; yet when they pretend to teach the General Principles of Natural Philosophers, this Equivocall Way of Writing is not to be endur'd. For in such Speculative Enquiries, where the naked Knowledge of the Truth is the thing Principally aim'd at, what does he teach me worth thanks that does not, if he can, make his Notion intelligible to me, but by Mystical Termes, and Ambiguous Phrases darkens what he should clear up; and makes me add the Trouble of guessing at the sence of what he Equivocally expresses, to that of examining the Truth of what he seems to deliver.

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6 months 1 week ago

The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion, when the intuition of disaster is so painful that it almost provokes a greater madness. One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.

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7 months 5 days ago

Good breeding in cattle depends on physical health, but in men on a well-formed character.

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Freeman (1948), p. 151
5 months 2 weeks ago

Take provocation, for instance, which is the opposite and the caricature of seduction. It says: "I know that you want to be seduced, and I will seduce you." Nothing could be worse than betraying this secret rule. Nothing could be less seductive than a provocative smile or inciteful behaviour, since both presuppose that one cannot be seduced naturally and that one needs to be blackmailed into it, or through a declaration of intent: "Let me seduce you"

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(p. 67)
7 months 2 weeks ago

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

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Book I, Chapter 1, "The Law of Human Nature"
7 months 2 weeks ago

One of the ideas I had discussed in The Poverty of Historicism was the influence of a prediction upon the event predicted. I had called this the "Oedipus effect", because the oracle played a most important role in the sequence of events which led to the fulfilment of its prophecy. ... For a time I thought that the existence of the Oedipus effect distinguished the social from the natural sciences. But in biology, too-even in molecular biology-expectations often play a role in bringing about what has been expected.

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Page 29
3 months 5 days ago

We are inclined to overemphasize the material influences in history. The Russians especially make this mistake. Intellectual values and ethnic influences, tradition and emotional factors are equally important. If this were not the case, Europe would today be a federated state, not a madhouse of nationalism.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Considering the optimistic turn taken by world trade AT THIS MOMENT...it is some consolation at least that the revolution has begun in Russia, for I regard the convocation of 'notables' to Petersburg as such a beginning. ... On the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (8 October 1858), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), pp. 346-347
6 months 2 weeks ago

Limiting the liberty of each by the like liberty of all, excludes a wide range of improper actions, but does not exclude certain other improper ones.

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Pt. II, Ch. 4 : Derivation of a First Principle, § 4
5 months 4 weeks ago

Sabbath rest does not follow creation; it brings creation to completion.

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8 months 2 weeks ago
This is the mistake which I seem to make eternally, that I imagine the sufferings of others as far greater than they really are. Ever since my childhood, the proposition, my greatest dangers lie in pity, has been confirmed again and again.
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7 months 2 weeks ago

Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.

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Considerations by the Way
7 months 2 weeks ago

Each man is a hero and an oracle to somebody.

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Quotation and Originality
4 months 5 days ago

Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
7 months 2 weeks ago

Truly, if the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him lies, were every one's persuasion, as indeed it is every one's duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politicks and morality by, the world would be much quieter, and better natur'd than it is.

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Sec. 116
3 months 1 week ago

The Pythagoreans thought those who teach for the sake of reward show themselves worse than sculptors, or artists who perform the work sitting. For these, when someone orders wood to make a statue of Hermes, search for wood suited to receive the proper form; while those pretend that they can readily produce the works of virtue from every nature.

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8 months 5 days ago

The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.

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8 months ago

You are a little soul carrying a corpse around, as Epictetus used to say.

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Fragment 26 (Oldfather translation). This fragment originates from Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV. 41.
6 months 6 days ago

Answers determined by the social division of labor become truth as such.

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p. 50: Describing the pragmatist view
6 months 4 weeks ago

Soul, indeed, is a certain medium between an impartible essence, and an essence which is divisible about bodies. But intellect is an impartible essence alone. And qualities and material forms are divisible about bodies. Not everything which acts on another, effects that which it does effect by approximation and contact; but those natures which effect any thing by approximation and contact, use approximation accidentally.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

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p. 167
4 months 6 days ago

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

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Bk. I, ch. 4.
7 months 2 weeks ago

All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.

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Letter X

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