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2 months 2 weeks ago

Nations are barbarian in their infancy but not savage. The barbarian is a proportional mean between the savage and the citizen. He already possesses no end of knowledge: he has habitations, some agriculture, domestic animals, laws, a cult, regular tribunals; he lacks only the sciences.

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p. 25
5 months 1 week ago

I am the resurrection and the life. The one who exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life; and everyone who is living and exercises faith in me will never die at all.

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11:25-26, NWT
6 months 3 weeks ago

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

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Book I, Ch. 9
3 months 2 weeks ago

The United States has been in a long term decline, with its political institutions decaying. ...The single source of that decline is ...the pervasive polarization ...within American society that has made the United States unable to meet some of the basic governance challenges that it has faced. The most recent example... has been the COVID pandemic... Wearing a mask, instead of becoming a health measure that people take to protect themselves and their loved ones, becomes as political statement... You don't wear a mask if you're a Trump supporter, and you do... if you're a Democrat. This is... not the way that... coherent nations... meet systemic challenges like a global pandemic.

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21:57
6 months 2 weeks ago

Navigation brought man face to face with the uncertainty of destiny, where each is left to himself and every departure might always be the last. The madman on his crazy boat sets sail for the other world, and it is from the other world that he comes when he disembarks. This enforced navigation is both rigorous division and absolute Passage, serving to underline in real and imaginary terms the liminal situation of the mad in medieval society. It was a highly symbolic role, made clear by the mental geography involved, where the madman was confined at the gates of the cities. His exclusion was his confinement, and if he had no prison other than the threshold itself he was still detained at this place of passage. In a highly symbolic position he is placed on the inside of the outside, or vice versa. A posture that is still his today, if we admit that what was once the visible fortress of social order is now the castle of our own consciousness.

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Part One: 1. Stultifera Navis
5 months 2 weeks ago

What place do we occupy in the "universe"? A point, if that! Why reproach ourselves when we are evidently so insignificant? Once we make this observation, we grow calm at once: henceforth, no more bother, no more frenzy, metaphysical or otherwise. And then that point dilates, swells, substitutes itself for space. And everything begins all over again.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

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Richard Dawkins on militant atheism,
2 months 2 weeks ago

When a series of progressive numbers is given as the result of observation, it may generally be reduced to law by combinations of arithmetical and geometrical progressions. A true formula for a progressive series of numbers cannot commonly be obtained from a narrow range of observations.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature ... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.

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Rules for the Direction of the Mind in Key Philosophical Writings (1997), pp. 29-30
5 months 1 week ago

Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.

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"On My Friendly Critics"
6 months 2 weeks ago

The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.

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Chapter III, Section 30, pg. 190
5 months 3 weeks ago

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

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Letter to Richard Burke post 19 February 1792 (1792), in R. B. McDowell and William B. Todd (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. 9: I: The Revolutionary War, 1794-1797; II: Ireland. p. 647
6 months 1 week ago

Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.

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Freeman (1948), p. 161
5 months 3 weeks ago

Obstinacy in a bad cause, is but constancy in a good.

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Section 25
2 months 2 weeks ago

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

So the majority of the highest classes of that age, even the popes and ecclesiastics, really believed in nothing at all. They did not believe in the Church doctrine, for they saw its insolvency; but neither could they follow Francis of Assisi, Kelchitsky, and most of the sectarians in acknowledging the moral, social teaching of Christ, for that undermined their social position. And so these people remained without any religious view of life. And, having none, they could have no standard with which to estimate what was good and what was bad art, but that of personal enjoyment.

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7 months 3 weeks ago
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
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2 months 2 weeks ago

I consist of a little body and a soul.

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VI, 32
5 months 1 week ago

The free will, the actual motor of reason in society, necessarily creates wrong. The individual must clash with the social order that claims to represent his own will in its objective form. But the wrong and the 'avenging justice' that remedies it not only expresses a 'higher logical necessity,' but also prepare the transition to a higher social form of freedom, the transition from abstract right to morality. For, in committing a wrong, and in accepting punishment for his deed, the individual becomes conscious of the 'infinite subjectivity' of his freedom. He learns that he is free only as a private person.

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P. 198
6 months 1 week ago

With an ill-famed man form no connection.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

You should hammer your iron when it is glowing hot.

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Maxim 262
3 months 1 week ago

This worthy man, whose nephew is still minister of Eskdalemuir (and author of a book on the Jews), proved the greatest blessing to that household. My father would, in any case, have saved himself. Of the other brothers, it may be doubted whether William Brown was not the primary preserver. They all learned to he masons from him, or from one another; instead of miscellaneous laborers and hunters, became regular tradesmen, the best in all their district, the skilfullest and faithfullest, and the best-rewarded every way. Except my father, none of them attained a decisive religiousness. But they all had prudence and earnestness, love of truth, industry, and the blessings it brings.

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6 months 1 week ago

On reaching Athens he fell in with Antisthenes. Being repulsed by him, because he never welcomed pupils, by sheer persistence Diogenes wore him out. Once when he stretched out his staff against him, the pupil offered his head with the words, "Strike, for you will find no wood hard enough to keep me away from you, so long as I think you've something to say."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 21,
6 months 1 week ago

Once, when he was applauded by rascals, he remarked, "I am horribly afraid I have done something wrong."

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§ 5
6 months 3 weeks ago

A company of solemn tyrants is impervious to all seductions.

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"Tyranny", 1764
5 months 2 weeks ago

Our place is somewhere between being and nonbeing - between two fictions.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below? When I see the temporal suffering of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied all the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all. The Enemy, true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalize and torment us - to mock the incessant hunger, which, during this present phase of great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing.

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Letter V
4 months 2 weeks ago

To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent.

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Maxim 113
5 months 1 week ago

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

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"Tipperary"
6 months 3 weeks ago

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.

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Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts
3 weeks 1 day ago

This is exactly why when I write programs I have the people at ground level create the process and only tell them to correct when they deviate from the standard....

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2 months 4 weeks ago

Suppose we try to locate the cause of disorder, we shall find it lies in the want of mutual love.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
2 months 2 weeks ago

Let it not be in any man's power to say truly of thee that thou art not simple or that thou art not good; but let him be a liar whoever shall think anything of this kind about thee; and this is altogether in thy power.

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X, 32
5 months 1 week ago

Subjective reason ... is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalized mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion.

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p. 12.
3 months 1 week ago

If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be un-inhabited, what a waste of space.

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On other stars Attributed by John Burroughs on the first page of his 1920 book Accepting The Universe
5 months 6 days ago

When, as a result of what was called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the priests had in fact almost entirely lost this function of guidance. Their place was taken by writers and scientists. In both cases it is equally absurd. Mathematics, physics, and biology are as remote from spiritual guidance as the art of arranging words. When that function is usurped by literature and science it proves there is no longer any spiritual life.

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"Morality and literature," pp. 164-165
7 months 3 days ago

God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.

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5 months 1 week ago

I have always thought that clarity is a form of courtesy that the philosopher owes; moreover, this discipline of ours considers it more truly a matter of honor today than ever before to be open to all minds ... This is different from the individual sciences which increasingly [interpose] between the treasure of their discoveries and the curiosity of the profane the tremendous dragon of their closed terminology.

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p. 19
6 months 4 weeks ago

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

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Book III, Ch. 8
4 months 2 weeks ago

People never remember but the computer never forgets.

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(p. 69)
6 months 1 week ago

Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race. "Yes," said he, "if there were any kings there to run with me."

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41 Alexander
4 months 2 weeks ago

The population of the US is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the US leads the world by miles. You would think that a country with such resources, and such a field of talent, would be able to elect a leader of the highest quality. Yet, what has happened? At the end of all the primaries and party caucuses, the speeches and the televised debates, after a year or more of non-stop electioneering bustle, who, out of that entire population of 300 million, emerges at the top of the heap? George Bush.

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"Bin Laden's victory " The Guardian
2 months 4 weeks ago

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.

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As quoted by Edward Teller, in Dr. Edward Teller's Magnificent Obsession by Robert Coughlan, in LIFE magazine (6 September 1954), p. 62
5 months 1 week ago

The avant-garde and the beatniks share in the function of entertaining without endangering the good conscience of the men of good will.

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p. 70
5 months 1 week ago

Let us go on committing suicide by working among our people, and let them dream life just as the lake dreams the sky.

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3 months 1 week ago

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.

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Bk. II, ch. 1.
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.

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p. 5
6 months 3 weeks ago

The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments-of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue-are complete sceptics in religion...

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(p. 45)

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