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3 months 3 weeks ago
Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Because he never raises his eyes to the great and the meaningful, the philistine has taken experience as his gospel. It has become for him a message about life's commonness. But he has never grasped that there exists something other than experience, that there are values—inexperienceable—which we serve.
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"Experience" (1913) as translated by L. Spencer and S. Jost, in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Vol. 1 (1996), p. 4
3 months 3 weeks ago
Not the wretchedest man or woman but has a deep secretive mythology with which to wrestle with the material world and to overcome it and pass beyond it. Not the wretchedest human being but has his share in the creative energy that builds the world. We are all creators. We all create a mythological world of our own out of certain shapeless materials.
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p. 222
3 months 3 weeks ago
The characters of self-restrained officials are exceedingly careful and just and conservative, but they lack keenness and a certain quick and active boldness. The courageous natures, on the other hand, are deficient in justice and caution in comparison with the former, but excel in boldness of action; and unless both these qualities are present it is impossible for a state to be entirely prosperous in public and private matters.
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311a
3 months 3 weeks ago
The lover who kills himself for a girl has an experience which is more complete and much more profound than the hero who overturns the world.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
And though this may seem to subtile a deduction of the Lawes of Nature, to be taken notice of by all men;whereof the most part are too busie in getting food, and the rest too negligent to understand; yet to leave all men unexcusable, they have been contracted into one easie sum, intelligble, even to the meanest capacity; and that is, Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thyselfe; which sheweth him, that he has no more to do in learning the Lawes of Nature, but, when weighing the actions of other men with his own, they seem too heavy, to put them into the other part of the balance, and his own into their place, that his own passions, and selfe love, may adde nothing to the weight; and then there is none of these Laws of Nature that will not appear unto him very reasonable.
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The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 79
3 months 3 weeks ago
Unless some Hero-worship, in its new appropriate form, can return, this world does not promise to be very habitable long.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Only a thoughtless observer can deny that correspondences come into play between the world of modern technology and the archaic symbol-world of mythology.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.
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Professor Virchow and Evolution.
3 months 3 weeks ago
And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions he arrives at the notion of absolute beauty, and at last knows what the essence of beauty is.
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211
3 months 3 weeks ago
As for silver, I never could see any degree of fire make it part with any of its three principles. ...But admitting, that some parts of the silver were driven away by the violence of the fire, what proof is there, that it was either the salt, the sulphur, or the mercury of the metal, and not rather a part of it homogeneous to what remained? for besides that the silver, that was left, seemed not sensibly altered, which probably would have appeared, had so much of any one of its principles been separated from it.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
The thoughts are to the desires, as scouts and spies, to range abroad and find the way to the thing desired.
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Reported in Robert P. George, Conscience and Its Enemies (2013) pt. 2, ch. 8, p. 81
3 months 3 weeks ago
Descend where you will into the lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue you will, by Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by Mining-Labourer Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful result discloses itself: you have to admit that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any parallel.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
The irrationality of the "appeal to Nature" is illustrated by a simple thought-experiment. Imagine, fancifully, if starvation, disease, parasitism, disembowelling, asphyxiation and being eaten alive were not endemic to the living world - or such miseries have already been abolished and replaced by an earthly paradise. Would anyone propose there is ethical case for (re)introducing them? Even proposing such a thought-experiment can sound faintly ridiculous.
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"[https://www.ledonline.it/index.php/Relations/article/view/881 A Welfare State For Elephants?: A Case Study of Compassionate Stewardship]", Relations: Beyond Anthropocentrism, Vol. 3, Iss. 2 (Nov. 2015), p. 162
3 months 3 weeks ago
Thus, the Jewish empowerment entailed in creating a Jewish state was not merely a matter of guaranteeing external, physical security of the Jews. Ultimately, its aim is to provide an internal security of the soul, which is the indispensable precondition for the emergence of a noble, uniquely Jewish character and civilization.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
How much emphasis should we place on the size of the brain, when each individual neuron can serve multiple purposes and even a tiny brain has millions of potential states?
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.
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Attributed to Plato in No Ordinary Moments: A Peaceful Warrior's Guide to Daily Life (1992) by Dan Millman.  It has also been wrongly attributed to Philo.  It is a variant of the Christmas message "Be pitiful, for every man is fighting a hard ba
3 months 3 weeks ago
He... discovered the dependence of the of a liquid upon , explained the action of the , the effect of the air on the vibration of a pendulum and on the propagation of sound, and made experiments on the nature of , and on the relation of air to and .
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?
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3 months 3 weeks ago
But leaving this, let us remark one thing which is very plain: That whatever be the uses and duties, real or supposed, of a Secretary in Parliament, his faculty to accomplish these is a point entirely unconnected with his ability to get elected into Parliament, and has no relation or proportion to it, and no concern with it whatever.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
...it won't just be the quality and quantity of consciousness in the world that will be transformed in the post-Darwinian Transition. As (post-)humanity emerges from the neurochemical Dark Ages, enriched dopaminergic function in particular may sharpen the sheer intensity and meaningfulness of every moment of conscious existence. For a generation whose lifetimes span both modes of awareness, it will be as if they had just woken up. They will feel they had hitherto been sleep-walking through life in a twilit stupor. Thereafter their former mundane and minimal existence may be recalled only as some kind of zombified trance-state whose nature they were physiologically incapable of recognising...
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The Hedonistic Imperative: Heaven on Earth?, [https://www.hedweb.com/heaven/heaven7.htm "Eden"], BLTC Research
3 months 3 weeks ago
Man is in his short sojourn on earth equal to God in His eternity.
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[paraphrasing the view of Seneca], p. 34.
3 months 3 weeks ago
If someone needs the "unusual" to be moved to astonishment, that person has lost the ability to respond rightly to the wondrous, the mirandum, of being. The hunger for the sensational, posing, as it may, in "bohemian garb," is an unmistakable sign of the loss of the true power of wonder, for a bourgeois-ized humanity.
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p. 102
3 months 3 weeks ago
An anxious man constructs his terrors, then installs himself within them: a stay-at-home in a yawning chasm.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
The habits of study acquired at Universities are of the highest importance in after-life. At the season when you are in young years the whole mind is, as it were, fluid, and is capable of forming itself into any shape that the owner of the mind pleases to order it to form itself into. The mind is in a fluid state, but it hardens up gradually to the consistency of rock or iron, and you cannot alter the habits of an old man, but as he has begun he will proceed and go on to the last.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Philosophy in its very act is a process of translation!
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Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 81
3 months 3 weeks ago
No one deserves his greater natural capacity nor merits a more favorable starting place in society.
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Chapter II, Section 17, pg. 102
3 months 3 weeks ago

This temperature of space is not the same in different regions of the universe; but it does not vary in the regions... of planetary bodies... The planets of our system... equally participate in the common temperature... augmented for each... by the rays of the sun, according to the distance of the planet from... it. ...The intensity and distribution of heat on the surface of these bodies results from the distance from the sun, the inclination of the axes of rotation to the orbit, and the state of the surface...

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3 months 3 weeks ago
The production relations of capitalist society approach more and more the production relations of socialist society. But on the other hand, its political and juridical relations established between capitalist society and socialist society a steadily rising wall. This wall is not overthrown, but is on the contrary strengthened and consolidated by the development of social reforms and the course of democracy. Only the hammer blow of revolution, that is to day, the conquest of political power by the proletariat can break down this wall.
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Ch. 7
3 months 3 weeks ago
If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man’s property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.
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Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 227
3 months 3 weeks ago
I am for the most part so convinced that everything is lacking in basis, consequence, justification, that if someone dared to contradict me, even the man I most admire, he would seem to me a charlatan or a fool.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Lord Bacon could as easily have created this planet as he could have written Hamlet.
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According to Moncure Conway (Thomas Carlyle (1881) p. 122) Carlyle said this in reply to a Baconian enthusiast who was attempting to convert him; alternatively reported as "the planets", remark in discussion, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10
3 months 3 weeks ago
The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be — this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.
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Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345
3 months 3 weeks ago
Men resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence.
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Chapter IX, Section 82, p. 547
3 months 3 weeks ago
When we say there is a GOD, we mean that there is an intelligent designing cause of what we see in the world around us, and a being who was himself uncaused.
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Vol. I : Part I : The Being and Attributes of God, § 1 : Of the existence of God, and those attributes which art deduced from his being considered as uncaused himself, and the cause of every thing else (1772)
3 months 3 weeks ago
In the present situation, such an experiment would be doubly dangerous to the Russian Social Democracy. It stands on the eve of decisive battles against tsarism. It is about to enter, or has already entered, on a period of intensified creative activity, during which it will broaden (as is usual in a revolutionary period) its sphere of influence and will advance spontaneously by leaps and bounds. To attempt to bind the initiative of the party at this moment, to surround it with a network of barbed wire, is to render it incapable of accomplishing the tremendous task of the hour.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
The world is idea.This truth is by no means new. It was implicitly involved in the sceptical reflections from which Descartes started. Berkeley, however, was the first who distinctly enunciated it, and by this he has rendered a permanent service to philosophy, even though the rest of his teaching should not endure. Kant's primary mistake was the neglect of this principle... How early again this truth was recognised by the wise men of India, appearing indeed as the fundamental tenet of the Vedânta philosophy ascribed to Vyasa, is pointed out by Sir William Jones in the last of his essays: "On the philosophy of the Asiatics"...
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Arthur Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (1818/19) as quoted in The World as Will and Idea (1883) Tr. R. B. Haldane, J. Kemp [https://books.google.com/books?id=US0bhPS4h2UC&pg=PA4 p. 4.] Schopenhauer cites Jones in Asiatic Researches vol iv
3 months 3 weeks ago
When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
When he [Joseph Chamberlain] was busy on temperance and the Gothenburg system, we had one of our talks with Carlyle. The sage told him that he rejoiced that this mighty reform was being attempted; then all at once he took fire at thought of compensation for the dispossessed publican, and burst into full blaze at its iniquity. Fiercely smiting the arms of his chair, with strong voice and flashing eye, he summoned an imaginary publican before him. "Compensation!" he cried, "you dare come to me for compensation! I'll tell you where to go for compensation! Go to your father the devil, let him compensate you".
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John Morley, Recollections, Volume I (1917), pp. 153-154
3 months 3 weeks ago
Since it is every man's interest to be happy through the whole of life, it is the wisdom of every one to employ philosophy in the search of felicity without delay; and there cannot be a greater folly, than to be always beginning to live.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
In the First Part of his poem... Parmenides [is] chiefly interested to prove... it is; but it is not... obvious... what it is... that is. He says simply, What is, is. ...[W]e are accustomed to ...distinctions between ...kinds and degrees of reality, and we do not see which ...is meant. Such distinctions... were... unknown in those days. "That which is," with Parmenides, is primarily... matter or body; only it is not matter ...distinguished from anything else. It is... spatially extended; for it is... spoken of as a (fr. 8, 40). ...Aristotle tells us ...Parmenides believed in none but a sensible reality, which ...includes any ...perceived if the senses were more perfect ...
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3 months 3 weeks ago
Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas.
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Letter (1890)
3 months 3 weeks ago
A wise man, who puts himself under the government of reason, will be able to receive an injury with calmness, and to treat the person who committed it with lenity; for he will rank injuries among the casual events of life, and will prudently reflect that he can no more stop the natural current of human passions, than he can curb the stormy winds.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
It is necessary that every thing which is harmonized, should be generated from that which is void of harmony, and that which is void of harmony from that which is harmonized. ...But there is no difference, whether this is asserted of harmony, or of order, or composition... the same reason will apply to all of these.
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Book I, Ch. VI, p. 57.
3 months 3 weeks ago
The conceited villager believes the entire world to be his village. Provided that he can be mayor, humiliate the rival who stole his sweetheart, or add to the savings in his strongbox, he considers the universal order good, unaware of those giants with seven-league boots who can crush him underfoot, or of the strife in the heavens between comets that go through the air asleep, gulping down worlds.
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3 months 3 weeks ago
It is thus quite simply false that whereof one cannot speak (in the sense of 'there is nothing to say about it that specifies it and grants it separating properties'), thereof one must be silent. It must on the contrary be named.
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Original French: Il est donc tout simplement faux que ce dont on ne peut parler (au sens ou il n'y a rien à en dire qui le spécifie, qui lui accorde des propriétés séparatrices), il faille le taire. Il faut au contraire le nommer... | From Manifesto for P
3 months 3 weeks ago
The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable.
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Vol. 2, Ch. 1, § 1
3 months 3 weeks ago
Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.
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