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7 months 1 week ago

What do you think of the aspect of the money market? ... This time, by the by, the thing has assumed European dimensions such as have never been seen before, and I don't suppose we'll be able to spend much longer here merely as spectators. The very fact that I've at last got round to setting up house again and sending for my books seems to me to prove that the 'mobilisation' of our persons is AT HAND.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (26 September 1856), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), pp. 71-72
8 months 1 week ago

The life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you; the first thing the life-giving Spirit says is that you must enter into death, that you must die to, it is this way in order that you many not take Christianity in vain. A life-giving Spirit, that is the invitation; who would not willingly take hold of it! But die first, that is the halt!

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7 months 2 weeks ago

I think, therefore I am.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

To believe in God is to long for His existence and, further, it is to act as if he existed; it is to live by this longing and to make it the inner spring of our action. This longing or hunger for divinity begets hope, hope begets faith, and faith and hope beget charity. Of this divine longing is born our sense of beauty, of finality, of goodness.

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6 months 4 days ago

You are forgiven everything provided you have a trade, a subtitle to your name, a seal on your nothingness.

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3 months 1 week ago

I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.

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Letter to Alexander Donald
3 months 5 days ago

Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.

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VII, 53
7 months 1 week ago

Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?

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Seventh Thesis
8 months 1 week ago

Those who assert that the mathematical sciences say nothing of the beautiful or the good are in error. For these sciences say and prove a great deal about them; if they do not expressly mention them, but prove attributes which are their results or definitions, it is not true that they tell us nothing about them. The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

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7 months 1 week ago

And, oddly enough, even at times when the current style permitted a treatment of the less epileptic aspects of religion, no fully adequate rendering of the contemplative life was ever achieved in the plasdc arts of Christendom. The peace that passes all understanding was often sung and spoken; it was hardly ever painted or carved. Thus, in the writings of St. Bernard, of Albertus Magnus, of Eckhart and Tauler and Ruysbroeck one may find passages that express very clearly the nature and significance of mystical contemplation. But the saints who figure in medieval painting and sculpture tell us next to nothing about this anticipation of the beatific vision. There are no equivalents of those Far Eastern Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who incarnate, in stone and paint, the experience of ultimate reality.

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5 months 1 week ago

I do feel that evolution is being controlled by some sort of divine engineer. I can't help thinking that. And this engineer knows exactly what he or she is doing and why, and where evolution is headed. That's why we've got giraffes and hippopotami and the clap.

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On evolution vs. "intelligent design", interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
8 months 6 days ago

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Once we have tasted the sweetness of what is spiritual, the pleasures of the world will have no attraction for us. If we disregard the shadows of things, then we will penetrate their inner substance.

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8 months 1 week ago

The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.

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5 months 6 days ago

He doubly benefits the needy who gives quickly. 

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Maxim 6
6 months 1 week ago

When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.

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7 months 3 days ago

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth telling... [W]ho is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relations to power. ...[W]ith the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the 'critical' tradition in the West.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

And I will tell you something else: there is no birth of all mortal things, nor any end in wretched death, but only a mixing and dissolution of mixtures; 'birth' is so called on the part of mankind.

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fr. 8
7 months 2 weeks ago

We must calm the mind of the common man, and tell him to abstain from the words and even the passions which lead to insurrection.

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p. 62
5 months 1 day ago

I never yet touched a fig leaf that didn't turn into a price tag.

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Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 159
3 months 5 days ago

Keep this thought handy when you feel a bit of rage coming on - it isn't manly to be enraged. Rather, gentleness and civility are more human, and therefore manlier. A real person doesn't give way to anger and discontent, and such a person has strength, courage, and endurance - unlike the angry and complaining. The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.

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XI 11.18.5b:41
7 months 3 weeks ago

Rules necessary for demonstrations. To prove all propositions, and to employ nothing for their proof but axioms fully evident of themselves, or propositions already demonstrated or admitted; Never to take advantage of the ambiguity of terms by failing mentally to substitute definitions that restrict or explain them.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Humans kill one another - and in some cases themselves - for many reasons, but none is more human than the attempt to make sense of their lives. More than the loss of life, they fear loss of meaning.

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In the Puppet Theatre: Roof Gardens, Feathers and Human Sacrifice (p. 87)
7 months 1 week ago

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The belief in unity that has fuelled so many utopian dreams is an effort to reconcile the irreconcilable that ends in repression. Berlin suggests we renounce this venerable faith, and learn how to live with intractable conflict.

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'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.106-7)
4 months 3 days ago

To write well is to think well; there is no art of style distinct from the culture of the mind. The good writer is a complete mind, gifted with judgment, passion, imagination, and at the same time well trained. The inner qualities of rectitude, of brilliant geniality, are not given; instruction, wealth of information, fulness of knowledge, are acquired. Thus good training of the mind is the only school of good style. Wanting that, you have merely rhetoric and bad taste.

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As quoted in The Art of Authorship (1890) by George Bainton
3 months 1 week ago

My entire soul is a cry, and all my work the commentary on that cry.

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Author's Introduction, p. 15
8 months 6 days ago

Generals are usually a conservative force who can be relied on to oppose social change.

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7 months 1 week ago

Every emancipation is a restoration of the human world and of human relationships to a man himself.

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5 months 6 days ago

It is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behaviour.

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7 months 1 week ago

Life is a business that does not cover the costs.

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Vol II "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life"
7 months 1 week ago

Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.

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Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert, 20 August 1770
5 months 5 days ago

Contrary to earlier prejudices, there is nothing inherently progressive about evolution.

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Chapter 7 "Constructive Evolution" (p. 178)
7 months 1 week ago

Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.

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Authority and the Individual (1949), p. 37
4 months 2 weeks ago

The evil of totalitarianism is not only that it fails to protect specific liberties but that it extinguishes the very possibility of freedom.

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'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.104)
3 months 4 weeks ago

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

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On History.

One lives but once in the world.

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Clavigo, Act I, sc. i
6 months 1 week ago

One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.

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Lenz (1835).
7 months 1 week ago

If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.

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Ch. 17: Some Prospects: Cheerful and Otherwise
7 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing is more common than good things: the point in question is only to discriminate them; and it is certain that they are all natural and within our reach and even known to all mankind.

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5 months 5 days ago

Natural selection is an extremely simple process, in the sense that very little machinery needs to be set up in order for it to work. Of course the effects and consequences of natural selection are complex in the extreme. But in order to set natural selection going on a real planet, all that is required is the existence of inherited information.

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Chapter 2, "Silken Fetters" (p. 68)
3 months 1 week 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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7 months 2 weeks ago

Let me mention another requirement for a better understanding of Holy Scripture. I would suggest that you read those commentators who do not stick so closely to the literal sense. The ones I would recommend most highly after St. Paul himself are Origen, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine. Too many of our modern theologians are prone to a literal interpretation, which they subtly misconstrue.

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p.37

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