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4 months ago
Whoever makes something having bought or contracted for all other held resources used in the process (transferring some of his holdings for these cooperating factors), is entitled to it. The situation is not one of something’s getting made, and there being an open question of who is to get it. Things come into the world already attached to people having entitlements over them.
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Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
4 months ago
The savage recognizes life only in himself and his personal desires. His interest in life is concentrated on himself alone. The highest happiness for him is the fullest satisfaction of his desires. The motive power of his life is personal enjoyment. His religion consists in propitiating his deity and in worshiping his gods, whom he imagines as persons living only for their personal aims.
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Chapter IV, Christianity Misunderstood by Men of Science
4 months ago
Nor did equality fare well as an ideal in the aftermath of the French Revolution. One twentieth-century writer, the Israeli historian Jacob Talmon, blamed the egalitarian thrust of the Revolution, and especially the ideas of Rousseau, for the totalitarian dictatorships of his time, while other thinkers who experienced those dictatorships at first hand, including Leo Strauss and the right-wing German philosopher Carl Schmitt, found it easier to defend secrecy, elitism, and dictatorship than to endorse anything resembling egalitarian principles.
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Alan Wolfe, The Future of Liberalism, Chapter 3. Equality’s Inevitability
4 months ago
We must have kings, and we must have nobles. Nature provides such in every society, — only let us have the real instead of the titular. Let us have our leading and our inspiration from the best. In every society some men are born to rule, and some to advise. Let the powers be well directed, directed by love, and they would everywhere be greeted with joy and honor.
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4 months ago
In America I was liberated from a certain naïve belief in culture and attained the capacity to see culture from the outside. To clarify the point: in spite of all social criticism and all consciousness of the primacy of economic factors, the fundamental importance of the mind—“Geist”—was quasi a dogma self-evident to me from the very beginning. The fact that this was not a foregone conclusion, I learned in America, where no reverential silence in the presence of everything intellectual prevailed.
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as quoted in The Origin of Negative Dialectics (Free Press: 1977), p. 187
4 months ago
Angela Davis says this perfectly; she's like, knowledge is built through struggle. It isn't just built through somebody theorizing an idea. But through struggle, together, we come up with new concepts and ideas: that's the best thinking.
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Mariame Kaba, We Do This Til We Free Us (2021)
4 months ago
The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.
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4 months ago
Smith's claim that the selfish human urge to increase private profits is the basis for collective wealth is one of the most revolutionary ideas in human history - revolutionary not just from an economic perspective, but even more so from a moral and political perspective. What Smith says is, in fact, that greed is good, and that by becoming richer I benefit everybody, not just myself. Egoism is altruism.
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Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (2011), Chapter 16: "The Capitalist Creed"
4 months ago
Of course, not everything old is beautiful, any more than everything black, or everything white, or everything young. But the notion that old means ugly is every bit as harmful as the prejudice that black is ugly. In one way it is even more pernicious. The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future. It keeps us from understanding our roots and the greatest works of our culture and other cultures. It also makes us dread what lies ahead of us and leads many to shirk reality.
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Time is an Artist (1978) [http://taimur.sarangi.info/text/kaufmann_time.htm Epilogue : Old is Beautiful]
4 months ago
By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.
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4 months ago
Majorities and minorities cannot rightfully be taken at all into account in deciding questions of justice. And all talk about them, in matters of government, is mere absurdity.
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p. 8
4 months ago
I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?
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The Problem, st. 1
4 months ago
Hegel ... destroyed the illusion of the subject's being-in-itself and showed that the subject is itself an aspect of social objectivity. ... However, ... we must ask this question: is this objectivity which we have shown to be a necessary condition and which subsumes abstract subjectivity in fact the higher factor? Does it not rather remain precisely what Hegel reproached it with being in his youth, namely pure externality, the coercive collective? Does not the retreat to this supposedly higher authority signify the regression of the subject, which had earlier won its freedom only with the greatest efforts, with infinite pains?
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p. 16
4 months ago
Make yourself known as a philosopher, that is a free man.
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Epp. Apoll. 28
4 months ago
I owe to a journey I made with Mr Smith from Edinburgh to London, the difference between light and darkness through the best part of my life. The novelty of his principles, added to my youth and prejudices, made me unable to comprehend them at the time, but he urged them with so much benevolence, as well as eloquence, that they took a certain hold, which, though it did not develop itself so as to arrive at full conviction for some few years after, I can fairly say, has constituted, ever since, the happiness of my life, as well as any little consideration I may have enjoyed in it.
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Lord Shelburne to Dugald Stewart (1795), quoted in Ian S. Ross (ed.), On The Wealth of Nations: Contemporary Responses to Adam Smith (1998), p. 147
4 months ago
Simonson, in rubber jacket and similar galoshes, bound with whip-cord over woolen socks (he was a vegetarian and did not use the skin of animals), was also awaiting the departure of the party. He stood near the entrance of the house, writing down in a note-book a thought that occurred to him. "If," he wrote, "a bacterium were to observe and analyze the nail of a man, it would declare him an inorganic being. Similarly, from an observation of the earth's surface, we declare it to be inorganic. That is wrong."
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Ch. 83
4 months ago
We are obligated to be more scrupulous in fulfilling the commandment of charity than any other positive commandment because charity is the sign of a righteous man.
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As quoted in A Maimonides Reader (1972) by Isadore Twersky, p. 135. A footnote on this page states : tzedekah is translated as both "righteousness" and "charity".
4 months ago
That what we seek we shall find; what we flee from flees from us.
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Fate
4 months ago

According to John Locke the enlightened philosopher is to accept a subordinate position: he must be, says Locke, an “underlaborer” to the empirical scientist.

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p. 4
4 months ago
Every beloved object is the center point of a paradise.
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Fragment No. 51; Jeder geliebte Gegenstand ist der Mittelpunkt eines Paradieses. | Variant translations:
4 months ago
If an action ... involves little profit but much righteousness, do it.
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Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
4 months ago
Here we arrive at the most dangerous limit that the Hellenic Will, with its Apollonian-optimistic founding principle, could tolerate. Here, the Hellenic Will set to work immediately with its natural healing power, reversing that negating disposition; its means are the tragic work of art and the tragic idea. Its intent absolutely could not be to weaken, still less to suppress, the Dionysian state; direct coercion was impossible and, if it was possible, far too dangerous — for, if detained in its outpouring, the element would then break for itself some other course and infuse all the veins of life.
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page 44
4 months ago
Saying that what we call our "selves" consist only of our bodies and that reason, soul, and love arise only from the body, is like saying that what we call our body is equivalent to the food that feeds the body. It is true that my body is only made up of digested food and that my body would not exist without food, but my body is not the same as food. Food is what the body needs for life, but it is not the body itself. The same thing is true of my soul. It is true that without my body there would not be that which I call my soul, but my soul is not my body. The soul may need the body, but the body is not the soul.
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p. 12
4 months ago
Having concluded these introductory remarks I proceed to examine those expressions, to the true meaning of which, as apparent from the context, it is necessary to direct your attention. This book will then be a key admitting to places the gates of which would otherwise be closed. When the gates are opened and men enter, their souls will enjoy repose, their eyes will be gratified, and even their bodies, after all toil and labour, will be refreshed.
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4 months ago
All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.
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Illusions
4 months ago
Acutely aware of our beings’ limitations and acknowledging the infinite mystery of the a priori universe into which we are born but nevertheless searching for a conscious means of hopefuily competent participation by humanity in its own evolutionary trending while employing only the unique advantages inhering exclusively to. the individual who takes and maintains the economic initiative in the face of the formidable physical capital and credit advantages of the massive corporations and political states and deliberately avoiding political ties and tactics while endeavoring by experiments and explorations to excite individuals’ awareness and realization of humanity’s higher potentials.
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4 months ago
It is impossible to read the works of the economists who since the time of Smith have endeavored to build up and elucidate the science of political economy without seeing how, over and over again, they stumble over the law of wages without once recognizing it. Yet, "if it were a dog it would bite them!" Indeed, it is difficult to resist the impression that some of them really saw this law of wages, but, fearful of the practical conclusions to which it would lead, preferred to ignore and cover it up, rather than use it as the key to problems which without it are so perplexing. A great truth to an age which has rejected and trampled on it, is not a word of peace, but a sword!
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4 months ago
The perfection of a thing does not annul its existence, but, on the contrary, asserts it. Imperfection, on the other hand, does annul it ; therefore we cannot be more certain of the existence of anything, than of the existence of a being absolutely infinite or perfect—that is, of God. For inasmuch as his essence excludes all imperfection, and involves absolute perfection, all cause for doubt concerning his existence is done away, and the utmost certainty on the question is given. This, I think, will be evident to every moderately attentive reader.
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Part I, Prop. XI
4 months ago
The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.
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4 months ago
Time is the soul of this world.
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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
4 months ago
My task is to throw a light on that which we must always love and revere, of which no subsequent knowledge can rob us: man in his greatness.
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4 months ago
Powerless to prevent those about him from serving him, he resented even to the last that he must attended to and cared for despite his hatred of such things, and that even after turning away from temptation, he was not permitted to die as a peasant, as he had been unable to live as a peasant. Almost at the point of death, he sat up in bed and shouted, as doctors, attendants, and friends crowded about him: "This is the end... I give you only this advice... besides Leo Tolstoy, there are many other people in the world, and you attend only to this Leo...!"
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Robert Hunter in [http://books.google.com/books?id=dh1HAAAAIAAJ& "Why We Fail as Christians"] (1919), Ch. 3 : How Tolstoy Tried To Live The Truth, p. 57
4 months ago
All the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions, or religious principles, are likewise due to non-existence, because they originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom.
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Ch.11
4 months ago
If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.
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Brahma, st. 1 | Composed in July 1856 this poem is derived from a major passage of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most popular of Hindu scriptures, and portions of it were likely a paraphrase of an existing translation. Though titled "Brahma" its expressio
4 months ago
We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as many have long suspected — like it or not — "life is but a dream."
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4 months ago
Why should charity be offered the unemployed? It is not alms they ask. They are insulted and embittered and degraded by being forced to accept as paupers what they would gladly earn as workers. What they ask is not charity, but the opportunity to use their own labor in satisfying their own wants. Why can they not have that? It is their natural right. He who made food and clothing and shelter necessary to man's life has also given to man, in the power of labor, the means of maintaining that life; and when, without fault of their own, men cannot exert that power, there is somewhere a wrong of the same kind as denial of the right of property and denial of the right of life — a wrong equivalent to robbery and murder on the grandest scale. Charity can only palliate present suffering a little at the risk of fatal disease. For charity cannot right a wrong; only justice can do that. Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.
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p. 179
4 months ago
It is difficult to walk at one and the same time many paths of life.
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"Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus" (1904)
4 months ago
It is certainly not an overstatement to say that no one has ever spoken so greatly and so nobly of what a philosopher is as Nietzsche.
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Leo Strauss, "Existentialism", lecture delivered in 1956, published in Interpretation, Spring 1995, Vol. 22, No. 3
4 months ago
The evil into which these philosophers have fallen is greater than that from which they sought to escape, because they refuse to say that God neglects or forgets a thing, and yet they maintain that His knowledge is imperfect, that He is ignorant of what is going on here on earth, that He does not perceive it.
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Ch.16
4 months ago
Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration.
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Art
4 months ago
There is no joy equal to that of being able to work for all humanity and doing what you're doing well.
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4 months ago
It seemed singular that his taste in this should be so acute, when his professional eminence is in a province so different and remote; but I was much more surprised when I found that the first chemist of his time was a professed angler; and that he thinks, if he were obliged to renounce fishing or philosophy, that he should find the struggle of his choice pretty severe.
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4 months ago
Use examples; that such as thou teachest may understand thee the better!
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4 months ago
Though a state of affairs that would contravene the laws of physics can be represented by us spatially, one that would contravene the laws of geometry cannot. (3.0321)
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Original German: Wohl können wir einen Sachverhalt räumlich darstellen, welcher den Gesetzen der Physik, aber keinen, der den Gesetzen der Geometrie zuwiderliefe.
4 months ago
It is man's duty to love and to fear God, even without hope of reward or fear of punishment.
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Ch.24
4 months ago
Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
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Quotation and Originality
4 months ago
Max Planck says, "The opposition never yields; they just die off." It's just a question of time. They are dying off.
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4 months ago
No one will deny that the soul of Pythagoras was sent to mankind from Apollo's domain, having either been one of his attendants, or more intimate associates, which may be inferred both from his birth, and his versatile wisdom.
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Ch. 2 : Youth, Education, Travels
4 months ago
To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
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"The Meaning of Life".
4 months ago
For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.
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Variant: For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death. ([http://classics.mit.edu/Epictetus/discourses.2.two.html Book II, ch. 1]) | Book II, ch. 1, § 13.

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