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4 months 1 week ago

That to expect bad people not to injure others is crazy. It's to ask the impossible. And to let them behave like that to other people but expect them to exempt you is arrogant-the act of a tyrant.

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(Hays translation) XI, 18
3 months ago

"I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives."
- Henry David Thoreau

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#philosophy #quotes #CivilSimian #UniversalHumanism

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4 months 1 day ago

The only justification for our concepts and system of concepts is that they serve to represent the complex of our experiences; beyond this they have no legitimacy. I am convinced that the philosophers have had a harmful effect upon the progress of scientific thinking in removing certain fundamental concepts from the domain of empiricism, where they are under our control, to the intangible heights of the a priori. For even if it should appear that the universe of ideas cannot be deduced from experience by logical means, but is, in a sense, a creation of the human mind, without which no science is possible, nevertheless the universe of ideas is just as little independent of the nature of our experience as clothes are of the form of the human body. This is particularly true of our concepts of time and space, which physicists have been obliged by the facts to bring down from the Olympus of the a priori in order to adjust them and put them in a serviceable condition.

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8 months 6 days ago

Bernie Sanders is...an anti-racist in his heart. Two, he's old-school. He's like me. He doesn't know the buzzwords. He doesn't endorse reparations, one moment in the last 30 years, silent on it. He has the consistency over the years decade after decade and therefore it's true in his language, in his rhetoric. There are times in which he doesn't... use the same kind of buzzwords. But when it comes to his fight against racism, going to jail in Chicago as a younger brother and he would go to jail again. He and I would go to jail together again in terms of fighting against police brutality. So in that sense, I would just tell my brothers and sisters, but especially my chocolate ones that they shouldn't be blinded by certain kinds of words they're looking for, that in the end, he is a long distance runner in the struggle against white supremacy.

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Quoted in: Cornel West on Bernie, Trump, and Racism, The Intercept, Mehdi Hasan
6 months 3 weeks ago

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

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"Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

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p. 315
5 months 3 days ago

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

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7A:1, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 62
8 months 1 day ago

Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, "Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 27
6 months 1 week ago

The anger of lovers renews the strength of love.

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Maxim 24
8 months 1 week ago

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.

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p. 125
7 months 1 week ago

Having destroyed the social power of the nobility and the guildmasters, the bourgeois also destroyed their political power. Having raised itself to the actual position of first class in society, it proclaims itself to be also the dominant political class. This it does through the introduction of the representative system which rests on bourgeois equality before the law and the recognition of free competition, and in European countries takes the form of constitutional monarchy. In these constitutional monarchies, only those who possess a certain capital are voters - that is to say, only members of the bourgeoisie. These bourgeois voters choose the deputies, and these bourgeois deputies, by using their right to refuse to vote taxes, choose a bourgeois government.

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5 months 6 days ago

Because the President has undisputed authority over foreign policy, President Biden... will be able to reinsert the United States into the international system. He will rejoin the World Health Organization, the Paris Climate Accords, he will go to NATO and reaffirm support for... our Asian allies, for Australia, for every other country that has depended on... American power, but... it's going to be extremely difficult to return to the kind of world that we assumed existed before 2016, because America does remain fundamentally divided. That bipartisan support for the liberal international order that we thought was extremely strong is no longer...

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29:41:00
7 months 4 days ago

The soul, too, has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.

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"Normal Madness," Ch. 3, P. 56
4 months 1 week ago

Lay down true principles and adhere to them inflexibly. Do not be frightened into their surrender by the alarms of the timid, or the croakings of wealth against the ascendency of the people.

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Letter to Samuel Kercheval
8 months 2 weeks ago

... no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
8 months 2 weeks ago

To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble maxims as these, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that the whole is greater than a part, that two and three make five; is pretending to stop the ocean with a bullrush. Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires, which were kindled for heretics, will serve also for the destruction of philosophers.

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Part XI - With regard to reason or absurdity
8 months 1 week ago

The circulation of capital realizes value, while living labour creates value.

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Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 463.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Freeeedom! Too much freedom and you have anarchy and a state of war...which is actually not free at all....everybody always wants MORE freedom instead of the balance that's necessary...

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6 months 1 week ago

He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.

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About Platon Karataev in Bk. XII, ch. 13
7 months 4 days ago

All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad. But after I am risen again, I will go before you into Galilee.

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26:31-32 (KJV)
6 months 1 week ago

The inner trip is not the sole prerogative of the LSD traveler; it's the universal experience of TV watchers.

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7 months 1 week ago

The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor.

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8 months 1 week ago

We invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution: "In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them".

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9 months 1 week ago

The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness.

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8 months 1 week ago

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

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Ch. 14: Freedom Versus Authority in Education
8 months 1 week ago

Capital is money, capital is commodities. ... By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

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Vol. I, Ch. 4, pp. 171-172
4 months 1 week ago

That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.

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IV, 8
7 months 4 days ago

Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind.

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p. 64
4 months 2 weeks ago

A mellow understanding of life and of human nature is, and always has been, the Chinese ideal of character, and from that understanding other qualities are derived, such as pacifism, contentment, calm and strength of endurance which distinguish the Chinese character.

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p. 43
5 months 2 days ago

Thus Mr. Sale informs me, the old Arab Tribes would gather in liveliest gaudeamus, and sing, and kindle bonfires, and wreathe crowns of honour, and solemnly thank the gods that, in their Tribe too, a Poet had shewn himself. As indeed they well might; for what usefuller, I say not nobler and heavenlier thing could the gods, doing their very kindest, send to any Tribe or Nation, in any time or circumstances?

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8 months 1 week ago

The Quaestor turned back the pages until he found himself among the Pensées. "We are not satisfied," he read, "with the life we have in ourselves and our own being; we want to live an imaginary life in other people's idea of us. Hence all our efforts are directed to seeming what we are not. We labor incessantly to preserve and embellish this imaginary being, and neglect that which is really ours." The Quaestor put down the book, ... and ruefully reflected that all his own troubles had arisen from this desire to seem what in fact he was not. To seem a man of action, when in fact he was a contemplative; to seem a politician, when nature had made him an introspective psychologist; to seem a wit, which God had intended him for a sage.

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"Variations on a Philosopher" in Themes and Variations (1943), p. 2
3 weeks 2 days ago

Socrates hated homeschooling...🤷‍♂️😁

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7 months 4 days ago

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

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13:24-30 (KJV)
6 months 4 days ago

Without the background of a remembered faith modernism loses its conviction: it becomes routinised. For a long time now it has been assumed that there can be no authentic creation in the sphere of high art which is not is some way a 'challenge' to the ordinary public. Art must give offence, stepping out of the future fully armed against the bourgeois taste for kitsch and cliché. But the result of this is that offence becomes a cliché.

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Avant-garde and Kitsch (p. 86)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.

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Line 11 This can be related to other expressions on the ethics of reciprocity, often referred to as the variants of the Golden Rule.
5 months 3 weeks ago

The business of grabbing and money-making, through a violent extractive economy that the 1% have built, is burdening the earth and humanity with unbearable and non-sustainable costs, and has brought us to the brink of extinction. We do not have to escape from the earth; we have to escape from the illusions that enslave our minds and make extinction look inevitable.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Would not anyone who is a man have his slumbers broken by a war-trumpet rather than by a chorus of serenaders?

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity? Philosophy offers counsel.

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4 months 1 week ago

Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.

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IV, 31
7 months 2 days ago

When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.

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p. 28.
6 months 1 week ago

There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.

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[A chapter sub-heading attributed by McLuhan to Alfred North Whitehead]
6 months 1 week ago

I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality. I was never against the category of men. "As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up" in Haaretz.

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24-Feb-10
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is not Matter itself that is here meant, but the ultimate Cause of things incorporeal, which also existed before Matter. Moreover, it is asserted by Heraclitus: "Death unto souls is but a change to liquid." This Attis, therefore, the intelligible Power, the holder together of things material below the Moon, having intercourse with the pre-ordained Cause of Matter, holds intercourse therewith, not as a male with a female, but as though flowing into it, since he is the same with it.

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4 months 1 week ago

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rainsnew flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

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Book XI, line 652

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