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2 months 3 days ago

Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human-we are a continuum.

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1 month 5 days ago

Everything over which I have might that cannot be torn from me remains my property; well, then let might decide about property, and I will expect everything from my might! Alien might, might that I leave to another, makes me an owned slave: then let my own might make me an owner. Let me then withdraw the might that I have conceded to others out of ignorance regarding the strength of my own might! Let me say to myself, what my might reaches to is my property; and let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as far as I entitle, that is, empower, myself to take.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 227, 228
3 months 1 week ago

My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

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18: 36, (KJV)
2 weeks 6 days ago

I surrender myself to everything. I love, I feel pain, I struggle. The world seems to me wider than the mind, my heart a dark and almighty mystery.

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1 month 5 days ago

Human or general needs can be satisfied through society; for satisfaction of unique needs you must do some seeking. A friend and a friendly service, or even an individual's service, society cannot procure you. And yet you will every moment be in need of such a service, and on the slightest occasions require somebody who is helpful to you. Therefore do not rely on society, but see to it that you have the wherewithal to - purchase the fulfilment of your wishes.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 243
3 months 2 weeks ago

I don't need any support, advice, or compassion, because even if I am the most ruinous man, I still feel so powerful, so strong and fierce. For I am the only one that lives without hope.

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2 weeks 6 days ago

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

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"Italy", Ch. 18, p. 182
4 months 3 weeks ago

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

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Jeannot et Colin, 1764
4 months 3 weeks ago

Opinions have caused more ills than the plague or earthquakes on this little globe of ours.

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Letter to Élie Bertrand, 5 January 1759
4 months 2 weeks ago

[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death.

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Ch. 9
2 months 1 week ago

Liberty is not the same thing as equality, and that those who call themselves liberals are far more interested in equalizing than in liberating their fellows.

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The Limits of Liberty, The American Spectator
3 months 3 weeks ago

And now I have explained the series of social and intellectual conditions by which the discovery of sociological laws, and consequently the foundation of Positivism, was fixed for the precise date at which I began my philosophical career: that is to say, one generation after the progressive dictatorship of the Convention, and almost immediately after the fall of the retrograde tyranny of Bonaparte.

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p. 71
4 months 2 weeks ago

Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else.

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As quoted by David Macey, The lives of Michel Foucault (1993) p. 177. Citing 'Les Intellectuels et le Pouvoir', Le'Arc 49, 1972, pp. 3-10.
4 months 4 weeks ago

Besides, you also have many Jews living in the country, who do much harm... You should know the Jews blaspheme and violate the name of our Savior day for day... for that reason you, Milords and men of authority, should not tolerate but expel them. They are our public enemies and incessantly blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ, they call our Blessed Virgin Mary a harlot and her Holy Son a bastard and to us they give the epithet of changelings and abortions. Therefore deal with them harshly as they do nothing but excruciatingly blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ, trying to rob us of our lives, our health, our honor and belongings.

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Sermon at Eisleben, a few days before his death, February, 1546. See The Jews by Zuhdī Fātiḥ, 1972
5 months 2 weeks ago

Manhattan. Sometimes from beyond the skyscrapers, across of thousands of high walls, the cry of a tugboat finds you in your insomnia in the middle of the night, and you remember that this desert of iron and cement is an island.

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1 month 1 week ago

Do nothing, only keep agitating, debating; and things will destroy themselves.

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Pt. I, Bk. VI, ch. 3.
4 months 2 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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2 weeks 5 days ago

The tax upon land values is, therefore, the most just and equal of all taxes. It falls only upon those who receive from society a peculiar and valuable benefit, and upon them in proportion to the benefit they receive. It is the taking by the community, for the use of the community, of that value which is the creation of the community. It is the application of the common property to common uses. When all rent is taken by taxation for the needs of the community, then will the equality ordained by Nature be attained. No citizen will have an advantage over any other citizen save as is given by his industry, skill, and intelligence; and each will obtain what he fairly earns. Then, but not till then, will labor get its full reward, and capital its natural return.

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Book VIII, Ch. 3
4 months 2 weeks ago

All human activities are equivalent ... and ... all are on principle doomed to failure.

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Conclusion, II
1 month 3 weeks ago

Tyranny offers relief from the burden of sanity and a licence to enact forbidden impulses of hatred and violence. By acting on these impulses and releasing them in their subjects tyrants give people a kind of happiness, which as individuals they may be incapable of achieving.

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An Old Chaos: What a Tyrant Can Do For You (p. 57)
2 weeks 3 days ago

Look at everything that exists, and observe that it is already in dissolution and change, and as it were putrefaction or dispersion, or that everything is so constituted in nature as to die.

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X, 18
1 month 1 week ago

To me, in these circumstances, that of "Hero-worship" becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the management of the world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing is so firmly believed as what we least know.

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Ch. 31. Of Divine Ordinances, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
2 weeks 6 days ago

Violence breeds violence. Acts of violence committed in "justice" or in affirmation of "rights" or in defense of "peace" do not end violence. They prepare and justify its continuation.

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2 months 1 week ago

Many politicians of our time are in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident proposition, that no people ought to be free till they are fit to use their freedom. The maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men are to wait for liberty till they become wise and good in slavery, they may indeed have to wait forever.

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p. 42
4 months 2 weeks ago

How shall we define a god? Expressed in psychological terms (which are primary-there is no getting behind them) a god is something that gives us the peculiar kind of feeling which Professor Otto has called "numinous". Numinous feelings are the original god-stuff from which the theory-making mind extracts the individualised gods of the pantheon.

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"Meditation on the Moon"
1 month 1 week ago

I plead guilty to valuing such a man beyond all other sorts of men. Smooth-shaven Respectabilities not a few one finds, that are not good for much. Small thanks to a man for keeping his hands clean, who would not touch the work but with gloves on!

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1 month 1 week ago

It is always a genial laughter. Not at mere weakness, at misery or poverty; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it.

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Letter 138, To Gilbert Elliot of Minto; August 9, 1757
2 months 4 weeks ago

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

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L 34
4 months 3 weeks ago

He that I am reading seems always to have the most force.

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
3 months 4 days ago

In a sense, all explanation must end in an ultimate arbitrariness.

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Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 130
4 months 2 weeks ago

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.

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Chapter I, Section 1, pg. 3-4
3 months 4 days ago

Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.

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Fragment No. 96
4 months 3 weeks ago

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

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Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière, 28 February 1778
4 months 4 days ago

I think that when friendship and perception of kinship ruled everything, no one killed any creature, because people thought the other animals were related to them.

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2, 22, 1
3 months 1 week ago

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.

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2 weeks 3 days ago

All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.

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IX, 19
1 month 2 weeks ago

Of course, not everything old is beautiful, any more than everything black, or everything white, or everything young. But the notion that old means ugly is every bit as harmful as the prejudice that black is ugly. In one way it is even more pernicious. The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future. It keeps us from understanding our roots and the greatest works of our culture and other cultures. It also makes us dread what lies ahead of us and leads many to shirk reality.

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Time is an Artist (1978) Epilogue : Old is Beautiful
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is all too easy to forget that there are emotional motivations in history, as well as economic ones.

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2 weeks 3 days ago

It is written, By me kings reign. This is not a phrase of the church, a metaphor of the preacher; it is a literal truth, simple and palpable. It is a law of the political world. God makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares royal races; maturing them under a cloud which conceals their origin. They appear at length crowned with glory and honour; they take their places; and this is the most certain sign of their legitimacy.

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Preface
4 months 3 weeks ago

Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment. Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honour, yet seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world.

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Section I, Chap. III.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. There can be no transforming of darkness into light and of apathy into movement without emotion.

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Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype

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