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6 months 3 weeks ago

All that time is lost which might be better employed.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Quotations in Most Frequent Use: Taken Chiefly from the Latin and French, but comprising many from the Greek, Spanish, and Italian Languages, translated into English (1809) by David Evans Macdonnel
6 months 2 weeks ago

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.

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Chapter 3 (p. 19)
5 months 1 week ago

The closed language does not demonstrate and explain-it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes "separation of good from evil;" it establishes unquestionable.

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p. 101
4 months 3 weeks ago

Economic man deals with the "real world" in all its complexity. Administrative man recognizes that the world he perceives is a drastic simplified model... He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation that takes into account just a few of the factors that he regards as most relevant and crucial.

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p. xxix; As cited in: Jesper Simonsen (1994) Administrative Behavior: How Organizations can be Understood in Terms of Decision Processes. Roskilde Universitet.
3 months 3 weeks ago

The irony of scientific progress is that in solving human problems it creates problems that are not humanly soluble. Science has given humans a kind of power over the natural world achieved by no other animal. It has not given humans the ability to remodel the planet according to their wishes. The Earth is not a clock that can be wound up and stopped at will. A living system, the planet will surely rebalance itself. It will do so, however, without any regard for humans.

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Sweet Morality (p. 212)
6 months 2 weeks ago

My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists; for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism.

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Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (1937) edited by Nancy Cunard and publisehd by the Left Review
5 months 5 days ago

And if it is grievous to be doomed one day to cease to be, perhaps it would be more grievous still to go on being always oneself, and no more than oneself, without being able to be at the same time other, without being able to be at the same time everything else, without being able to be all.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Of the various executive abilities, no one excited more anxious concern than that of placing the interests of our fellow-citizens in the hands of honest men, with understanding sufficient for their stations. No duty is at the same time more difficult to fulfil. The knowledge of character possessed by a single individual is of necessity limited. To seek out the best through the whole Union, we must resort to the information which from the best of men, acting disinterestedly and with the purest motives, is sometimes incorrect.

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Letter to Elias Shipman and others of New Haven (12 July 1801).
3 months 3 days ago

"It is nothing-a trifling matter at most; keep a stout heart and it will soon cease"; then in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion; ambition, luxury, greed, hark back to opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer.

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2 months 4 weeks ago

The scene of action of reality is not a three-dimensional Euclidean space but rather a four-dimensional world, in which space and time are linked together indissolubly. However deep the chasm may be that separates the intuitive nature of space from that of time in our experience, nothing of this qualitative difference enters into the objective world which physics endeavors to crystallize out of direct experience. It is a four-dimensional continuum, which is neither "time" nor "space". Only the consciousness that passes on in one portion of this world experiences the detached piece which comes to meet it and passes behind it as history, that is, as a process that is going forward in time and takes place in space.

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Ch. 3 "Relativity of Space and Time"
3 months 3 days ago

This is the worst trait of minds rendered arrogant by prosperity, they hate those whom they have injured.

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De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 33, line 6
7 months 6 days ago

Medicine considers the human body as to the means by which it is cured and by which it is driven away from health.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

The inevitable lack of objectivity in political decisions, which is only the reflex to suppress the politically inherent friend-enemy antithesis, manifests itself in the regrettable forms and aspects of the scramble for office and the politics of patronage. The demand for depoliticalization which arises in this context means only the rejection of party politics, etc. The equation politics = party politics is possible whenever antagonisms among domestic political parties succeed in weakening the all-embracing political unit, the state.

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5 months 1 day ago

Now, obviously, the human race is on the point of an extremely interesting evolutionary development. The first step towards escape from this vicious circle is to recognize that the apparent "ordinariness" of the world is a delusion. If we could become deeply and permanently convinced that the world "out there" is endlessly exciting, we would never again allow ourselves to become trapped in the swamp of "taken-for-grantedness". And we would become practically unkillable. Shaw says of his "Ancients" in Back to Methuselah "Even in the moment of death, their life does not fail them". "Life failure" is that feeling that there is nothing new under the sun, and that we all have to accept defeat in the end. If we could learn the mental trick of causing the dynamo to accelerate, this illusion would never again be able to exert its power over us.

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p. 14
6 months 2 weeks ago

Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.

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Lecture V, Pragmatism and Common Sense
3 months 3 days ago

Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

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Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 312
6 months 3 weeks ago

The offender never forgives.

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Émile et Sophie, ou Les Solitaires, "Lettre Première", 1781
5 months ago

Happiness is the indication that man has found the answer to the problem of human existence: the productive realization of his potentialities and thus, simultaneously, being one with the world and preserving the integrity of his self. In spending his energy productively he increases his powers, he "burns without being consumed."

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p.189
4 months 3 weeks ago

There are two kinds of people, killers, and everybody else.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?

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From The Total Library by Jorge Luis Borges, 1999
6 months 3 weeks ago

Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

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Book II
6 months 2 weeks ago

The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself.

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p. 486
5 months 1 day ago

The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.

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p. 139
2 months 2 weeks ago

What all agree upon is probably right; what no two agree in most probably is wrong.

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Letter to John Adams (11 January 1817) This statement has been referred to as "Jefferson's Axiom"
5 months 3 weeks ago

Americans of all ages, all stations of life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations... In democratic countries knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others.

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Book Two, Chapter V.
5 months 5 days ago

History is full of religious wars; but, we must take care to observe, it was not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

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No. 65. (Usbek writing to his wives)
5 months 3 weeks ago

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
4 months 4 days ago

The sceptics end in the infidelity which asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the atheism which denies the existence of any orderly progress and governance of things: the men of genius propound solutions which grow into systems of Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical language which suggests more than it asserts, take the shape of the Poetry of an epoch.

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Ch.2, p. 72
5 months 2 weeks ago

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.

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Letter 23
5 months 1 day ago

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Reason alone does not suffice.

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p 98
3 months 3 days ago

The archer must know what he is seeking to hit; then he must aim and control the weapon by his skill. Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Chance must necessarily have great influence over our lives, because we live by chance. It is the case with certain men, however, that they do not know that they know certain things. Just as we often go searching for those who stand beside us, so we are apt to forget that the goal of the Supreme Good lies near us.

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Line 3
6 months 2 weeks ago

I mean, a genuinely productive society. I mean you could produce plenty of goods without much freedom, but I think the whole sort of creative life of man is ultimately impossible without a considerable measure of individual freedom, of initiative, creation, all these things which we value, and I think value properly, are impossible without a large measure of freedom.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Some have made the love of God the foundation of morality. This, too, is but a branch of our moral duties, which are generally divided into duties to God and duties to man. If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such being exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to-wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

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Letter to Thomas Law
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
6 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for the credulity of men.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 218
5 months 1 day ago

You've got the temperament of a scholar, and you live on your own and write books. You don't have anything to do with civilization. You've been in London a few days and you can't wait to get back home. But how about the people who can't write books -- people there's no outlet for in this civilization? What about your new men who don't know what to do?

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p. 200
4 months 2 weeks ago

Native societies did not think of themselves as being in the world as occupants but considered that their rituals created the world and keep it operational.

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College and University Journal, Volumes 6-7, American College Public Relations Association, 1967, p. 3
2 months 1 week ago

But to return to the Jewish question. Other groups and nations cultivate their individual traditions. There is no reason why we should sacrifice ours. Standardization robs life of its spice. To deprive every ethnic group of its special traditions is to convert the world into a huge Ford plant. I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.

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E 10
3 months 4 days ago

The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.

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Chapter 5: On Some Popular Errors Concerning the Scope and Method of Economics, § 9 : The Belief in the Omnipotence of Thought
6 months 2 weeks ago

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

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Hymn sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument

If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.

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Letter to Eckermann
4 months 1 week ago

Soon fades the spell, soon comes the night: Say will it not be then the same, Whether we played the black or white,Whether we lost or won the game?

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Sermon in a Churchyard, st. 8 (1825), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. II (1860), p. 390
2 months 4 weeks ago

Myths are not descriptions of things, but expressions of a determination to act... A myth cannot be refuted since it is, at bottom, identical with the convictions of a group, being the expression of these convictions in the language of movement.

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p. 28-29 (Letter to Daniel Halevy)
6 months 2 weeks ago

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfillment. 

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July 18, 1867, Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address
6 months 2 weeks ago

Children are nowhere taught, in any systematic way, to distinguish true from false, or meaningful from meaningless, statements. Why is this so? Because their elders, even in the democratic countries, do not want them to be given this kind of education.

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Chapter 11 (p. 106)

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