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6 months 4 weeks ago

If we compare the third-person attitude of someone who simply says how things stand (this is the attitude of the scientist, for example) with the performative attitude of someone who tries to understand what is said to him (this is the attitude of the interpreter, for example), the implications ... become clear. ... First, interpreters relinquish superiority that observers have by virtue of their privileged position, in that they themselves are drawn, at least potentially, into negotiations about the meaning and validity of utterances. By taking part in communicative action, they accept in principle the same status as those whose utterances they are trying to understand. ... It is impossible to decide a priori who is to learn from whom.

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p. 26
5 months 6 days ago

One reason an egalitarian approach to the value of life is important is that it draws from ideals of radical democracy at the same time that it enters into ethical considerations about how best to practice nonviolence. The institutional life of violence will not be brought down by a prohibition, but only by a counter-institutional ethos and practice.

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p. 61
5 months 2 weeks ago

In his Experiment in Autobiography (1934), H.G. Wells pointed out that ever since the beginning of life, most creatures have been 'up against it'. Their lives are a drama of struggle against the forces of nature. Yet nowadays you can say to a man: Yes, you earn a living, you support a family, you love and hate, but -- what do you do? His real interest may be in something else -- art, science, literature, philosophy. The bird is a creature of the air, the fish is a creature of the water, and man is a creature of the mind.

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pp. 346-347
6 months 3 weeks ago

Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.

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Freeman (1948), p. 155
4 months 4 days ago

Heresy is a set of opinions "at variance with established or generally received principles." In this sense, heresy is the price of all originality and innovation.

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6 months 2 days ago

What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

What renders man an imaginative and moral being is that in society he gives new aims to his life which could not have existed in solitude: the aims of friendship, religion, science, and art.

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Ch. V: Democracy
7 months 3 days ago

I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.

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6 months 5 days ago

France wanted to make proselytes to her opinions, and turn every government in the world into a republic. If every government was against her, it was because she had declared herself hostile to every government. He knew of nothing to which this strange republic could be compared, but to the system of Mahomet, who with the koran in one hand, and a sword in the other, held out the former to the acceptance of mankind, and with the latter compelled them to adopt it as their creed. The koran which France held out, was the declaration of the rights of man and universal fraternity; and with the sword she was determined to propagate her doctrines, and conquer those whom she could not convince.

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Speech in the House of Commons (14 December 1792), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXX (1817), column 72
7 months 3 days ago

It is the good children, Madame, who make the most terrible revolutionaries. They say nothing, they do not hide under the table, they eat only one sweet at a time, but later on, they make Society pay dearly for it!

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Jessica, Act 3, sc. 1
7 months 6 days ago

It is the duty of every man, so far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error.

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The Theophilanthropist: Containing Critical, Moral, Theological and Literary Essays, in Monthly Numbers, p. 387
5 months 3 weeks ago

To know something is to make this something that I know myself; but to avail myself of it, to dominate it, it has to remain distinct from myself.

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7 months 3 days ago

I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. ... One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.

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As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23
6 months ago

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it.

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Introduction
5 months 3 weeks ago

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.

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Quoted in The Observer September 13, 1987.
5 months 1 week ago

To require that all of these must be reducible to a single version is to make the mistake of supposing that 'Which are the real objects?' is a question that makes sense independently of our choice of concepts.

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Lecture I: Is There Still Anything to Say about Reality and Truth?
7 months 4 days ago

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.

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Uses of Great Men
5 months 2 weeks ago

The Reformation was a popular uprising, and for a century and a half drenched Europe in blood. The beginnings of the Scientific movement were confined to a minority among the intellectual elite.... The worst that happened to men of science was that Galileo suffered an honorable detention and a mild reproof, before dying peacefully in his bed. The way in which the persecution of Galileo has been remembered is a tribute to the quiet commencement of the most intimate change in outlook which the human race had yet encountered. Since a babe was born in a manger, it may be doubted whether so great a thing has happened with so little stir.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", pp. 2-3
3 months 1 day ago

External things are not the problem. It's your assessment of them. Which you can erase right now.

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(Hays translation) VIII, 47
5 months 3 weeks ago

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.

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An Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), translated by T. E. Hulme. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1912, p. 44
5 months 3 weeks ago

The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

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13:33 (KJV)
7 months 5 days ago

The "social contract," in the only sense in which it is not completely mythical, is a contract among conquerors, which loses its raison d'être if they are deprived of the benefits of conquest.

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Ch. 12: Powers and forms of governments
3 months 3 weeks ago

There should be 2 systems. One for needs and one for wants. We shouldn't have to compete for needs, and we shouldn't expect the things we want. An ideal system would definitely be a seriously regulated capitalism with an uncompromised safety net that we focus on with automation and AI. But, those with just want those without to die. In the end, they will lose.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. (2) As Plutarch notes... you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, thesame end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill health, that you have escaped.

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6 months 2 days ago

We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel.

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Letter 19
7 months 1 week ago

Animals only follow their natural instincts; but man, unless he has experienced the influence of learning and philosophy, is at the mercy of impulses that are worse than those of a wild beast. There is no beast more savage and dangerous than a human being who is swept along by the passions of ambition, greed, anger, envy, extravagance, and sensuality.

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Translated by Beert C. Verstraete as On Education for Children, in The Erasmus Reader (University of Toronto Press: 1990), p. 73
7 months 2 weeks ago

For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. For where a child has knowledge, he is no worse than we are.

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Book II, ch. 1, 16
7 months 1 week ago

The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads - Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.

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I, 3 Variant translation: The things which ... are esteemed as the greatest good of all ... can be reduced to these three headings, to wit : Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other
7 months 5 days ago

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

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After February 22, 1846
7 months 4 days ago

Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts.

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Chapter 5 (p. 43)
3 months 3 weeks ago

Far from secularization inexorably leading to the death of religion, it has instead given birth to the search for new forms of religious life. The imminent victory of the Kingdom of Reason has never materialized. As a whole, mankind can never get rid of the need for religious self-identification: who am I, where did I come from, where do I fit in, why am I responsible, what does my life mean, how will I face death? Religion is a paramount aspect of human culture. Religious need cannot be excommunicated from culture by rationalist incantation. Man does not live by reason alone.

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Interview with Nathan Gardels

For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely "What basic character do beings manifest?" or "How may the being of beings be characterized?" but "What is this 'being' itself?" The decisive question is that of "the meaning of being," not merely that of the being of beings.

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p. 18
7 months 6 days ago

Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.

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"Atheist", 1764
5 months 2 weeks ago

We have seen that language is something precious because it allows us to express ourselves; but it is fatal when one allows oneself to be completely led astray by it, because then it prevents one from expressing oneself. Language is the source of the prejudices and haste which Descartes thought of as the sources of error.

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p. 76
3 months 1 day ago

Another may be more expert in casting [throwing] his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors.

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VII, 52
3 months 4 days ago

I read no newspaper now but Ritchie's, and in that chiefly the advertisments, for they contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.

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Letter to Nathaniel Macon
3 months 3 weeks ago

If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.

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Book 6, pt. 1, v. 6
5 months 3 weeks ago

All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another and will again be resolved into their own roots, because the nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its nature alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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7 months 4 days ago

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.

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8 months 2 days ago

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

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7 months 4 days ago

Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military character in stock - if keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection, - so that Roosevelt's weaklings and mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face of nature.

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To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.

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El Dorado.
3 months 4 days ago

We need to confront honestly the issue of scale. Bigness has a charm and a drama that are seductive, especially to politicians and financiers; but bigness promotes greed, indifference, and damage, and often bigness is not necessary. You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture cars, but you don't need a large corporation to raise a chicken or a hog. You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally.

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"Compromise, Hell!"
7 months 1 week ago

Jews hate the name of Christ and have a secret and innate rancor against the people among whom they live.

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See Silent Truth by Mark Edwards
7 months 1 week ago

My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.

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Statement while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII

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