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5 months 1 week ago

And yet there is nothing so badly imagined: nature seems to have provided, that the follies of men should be transient, but they by writing books render them permanent. A fool ought to content himself with having wearied those who lived with him: but he is for tormenting future generations; he is desirous that his folly should triumph over oblivion, which he ought to have enjoyed as well as his grave; he is desirous that posterity should be informed that he lived, and that it should be known for ever that he was a fool. Commonly paraphrased as "An author is a fool who, not content with having bored those who have lived with him, insists on boring future generations".

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No. 66. (Rica writing to * * *)
7 months 6 days ago

For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.

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Book IV, ch. 1, 175.

No critic writing about a film could say more than the film itself, although they do their best to make us think the opposite.

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"Film Critics"
5 months 4 weeks ago

The man who makes his religion a means to the gaining of this world, will lose both worlds alike; whereas the man who gives up this world for the sake of religion, will get both worlds alike.

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The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali, Allen & Unwin (1963), p. 152.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

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(John 7:24) (NASB) Variant translation: Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment. (NIV)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Society in shipwreck is a comfort to all.

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Maxim 144
5 months 4 days ago

But as I listened to him, I felt a touch of coldness inside of me, as if I had suddenly become aware of the eyes of some dangerous creature. It passed in a moment, but I found myself shuddering.

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p. 29
5 months 4 days ago

These men traveling down to the City in the morning, reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for corn-plasters, Elliot's lines: We are the hollow men

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2 months 2 weeks ago

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.

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XI, 32
2 months 2 weeks ago

False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing. Original text:Les fausses opinions ressemblent à la fausse monnaie qui est frappée d'abord par de grands coupables et dépensée ensuite par d'honnêtes gens qui perpétuent le crime sans savoir ce qu'ils font.

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"First Dialogue," p. 13
6 months 2 weeks ago

I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental. I think that all things, in their own way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least. "Reflect" is the important word. This lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit, merely an image.

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3 months 6 days ago

Perhaps its destruction has been brought about only that it may be raised up again to a better destiny. Oftentimes a reverse has but made room for more prosperous fortune. Many structures have fallen only to rise to a greater height.

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6 months 1 week ago

There is one story left, one road: that it is. And on this road there are very many signs that, being, is uncreated and imperishable, whole, unique, unwavering, and complete.

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Frag. B 8.1-4, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics, 144

When a book and a head collide and a hollow sound is heard, must it always have come from the book?

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D 66
3 months 2 days ago

When you tell a girl how beautiful she is, she will say, "Now isn't that just like a man! All you men think about is bodies. OK, so I'm beautiful, but I got my body from my parents and it was just luck. I prefer to be admired for myself, not my chassis." Poor little chauffeur! All she is saying is that she has lost touch with her own astonishing wisdom and ingenuity, and wants to be admired for some trivial tricks that she can perform with her conscious attention. And we are all in the same situation, having dissociated ourselves from our bodies and from the whole network of forces in which bodies can come to birth and live.

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p. 112
5 months 3 weeks ago

That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.

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Volume iii, p. 332
2 months 2 weeks ago

To change your mind and to follow him who sets you right is to be nonetheless the free agent that you were before. Remember that to change thy opinion and to follow him who corrects thy error is as consistent with freedom as it is to persist in thy error.

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(Long translation) VIII, 16
5 months 1 week ago

The fundamental sense of freedom is freedom from chains, from imprisonment, from enslavement by others. The rest is extension of this sense, or else metaphor.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

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Quoted in Library of Living Philosophers: The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, 1944
4 months 2 weeks ago

Once introduced discontinuity, once challenge any of the properties of visual space, and as they flow from each other, the whole conceptual framework collapses.

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p. 43
4 months 2 weeks ago

There is only one way to defeat the enemy, and that is to write as well as one can. The best argument is an undeniably good book.

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Quoted by Granville Hicks in The Living Novel: A Symposium (Macmillan, 1957; digitized version in 2006), p. ix
3 weeks 1 day ago

😁...but what about YOU Emil, if that's your real name.....

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Whether the succeeding generation is to be more virtuous than their predecessors, I cannot say; but I am sure they will have more worldly wisdom, and enough, I hope, to know that honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom.

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Letter to Nathaniel Macon
2 months 3 weeks ago

If an event really happened which was not a part of the uniformity of nature, it would have two properties: no evidence could give the right to believe it to any except those whose actual experience it was; and no inference worthy of belief could be founded upon it at all. Are we then bound to believe that nature is absolutely and universally uniform? Certainly not; we have no right to believe anything of this kind. The rule only tells us that in forming beliefs which go beyond our experience, we may make the assumption that nature is practically uniform so far as we are concerned. Within the range of human action and verification, we may form, by help of this assumption, actual beliefs; beyond it, only those hypotheses which serve for the more accurate asking of questions.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

My trade and my art is living.

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Ch. 6 (tr. Donald M. Frame)
6 months 3 weeks ago

The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity, with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides.

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Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), Ch. 12 : Absolutism and Empiricism
2 months 3 weeks ago

I have no fear that the result of our experiment will be that men may be trusted to govern themselves without a master. Could the contrary of this be proved, I should conclude either that there is no god, or that he is a malevolent being.

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Letter to David Hartley
6 months 3 weeks ago

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

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Section 1, paragraph 14.
3 months 1 week ago

On the contrary, to educate rational people, that should be sufficient; it is not really intended for sensible people; to understand things and conditions, there is the matter ended,-to understand oneself does not seem to be everyman's concern.

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p. 22
5 months 4 days ago

Without narration, life is purely additive.

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6 months 1 week ago

Strength and beauty are the blessings of youth; temperance, however, is the flower of old age.

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Fragment quoted in H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.) Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Vol. II (1952), no. 294
7 months 6 days ago

For every one feels to what purpose he can use his own powers. Before the horns of a calf appear and sprout from his forehead, he butts with them when angry, and pushes passionately.

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Book V, lines 1033-1035 (tr. Bailey)
5 months 2 weeks ago

I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.

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Letter to Victoria, Lady Welby (1908) SS 80-81
6 months 3 weeks ago

It would be worthy of the age to print together the collected Scriptures or Sacred Writings of the several nations, the Chinese, the Hindus, the Persians, the Hebrews, and others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown the labors of the printing-press. This would be the Bible, or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the uttermost parts of the earth.

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7 months ago

But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.

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Aphorism 50
7 months 6 days ago

If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?

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(28) [tr. Elizabeth Carter]
4 months 2 weeks ago

An agreeable companion on a journey is as good as a carriage.

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Maxim 143
6 months 2 weeks ago

Harvard now, I think, suffers from a kind of self-idolatry, that it needs to be critical of itself in order to grow. And again, if you can be in contact with the best of its past, then it's got a chance. But if it just remains well adjusted to the status quo, generating careerist and opportunist students rather than critically oriented students who have a heart and soul, concerned about suffering here and around the world - then Harvard has a chance. I'm not giving up on Harvard, but I am making my way to New York.

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Speaking in Too Radical for Harvard? Cornel West on Failed Fight for Tenure, Biden's First 50 Days & More, Democracy Now!
5 months 1 week ago

When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.

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As quoted in The Dialectical Imagination : A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research (1973) by M Jay, p. 279.
2 months 2 weeks ago

Providence has given the French nation precisely two instruments, two arms, so to speak, with which it stirs up the world - the French language and the spirit of proselytism that forms the essence of the nation's character.

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Chapter II, p. 20
3 months 2 weeks ago

The fact of being within capital and sustaining capital is what defines the proletariat as a class.

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53
3 months 6 days ago

Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.

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line 407; (Lycus).
5 months 4 days ago

Violence may capture space, but it does not create space.

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6 months 3 days ago

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.

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The Collected Works of Karen Horney‎ (1957) by Karen Horney, p. 154: "We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression."
6 months 3 weeks ago

Far or forgot to me is near; Shadow and sunlight are the same; The vanished gods to me appear; And one to me are shame and fame.

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Brahma, st. 2
5 months 3 weeks ago

If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him ; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.

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Addresses to the German Nation (1807), Second Address : "The General Nature of the New Education". Chicago and London, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1922, p. 21
3 months 1 week ago

We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what he meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

So much of modern mathematical work is obviously on the border-line of logic, so much of modern logic is symbolic and formal, that the very close relationship of logic and mathematics has become obvious to every instructed student. The proof of their identity is, of course, a matter of detail: starting with premisses which would be universally admitted to belong to logic, and arriving by deduction at results which as obviously belong to mathematics, we find that there is no point at which a sharp line can be drawn, with logic to the left and mathematics to the right. If there are still those who do not admit the identity of logic and mathematics, we may challenge them to indicate at what point, in the successive definitions and deductions of Principia Mathematica, they consider that logic ends and mathematics begins. It will then be obvious that any answer must be quite arbitrary.

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Ch. 18: Mathematics and Logic

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