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1 week 5 days ago

All persons shall have full and free liberty of religious opinion; nor shall any be compelled to frequent or maintain any religious institution.

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Draft Constitution for Virginia
3 months 5 days ago

Skepticism, like chastity, should not be relinquished too readily.

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George Santayana, as quoted in Quotations for Our Time (1977) edited by Laurence J. Peter
1 week 5 days ago

The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills

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Letter to John Adams, on Christian scriptures
3 months 5 days ago

Hegel's philosophy was an integral part of the culture which authoritarianism had to overcome. It is therefore no accident that the National Socialist assault on Hegel begins with the repudiation of his political theory.

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P. 411
3 months 1 week ago

They say in the grave there is peace, and peace and the grave are one and the same.

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Act I.
4 months 3 days ago

Citizens of a Jeffersonian democracy can be as religious or irreligious as they please as long as they are not "fanatical." That is, they must abandon or modify opinion on matters of ultimate importance, the opinions that may hitherto have given sense and point to their lives, if these opinions entail public actions that cannot be justified to most of their fellow citizens.

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4 months 1 week ago

In the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance.

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Chapter One, pp. 56
3 months 1 week ago

It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

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As quoted in "Socialism" article of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition (1887), edited by Thomas Spencer Baynes with assistance of William Robertson Smith, Vol. 22, p. 216, Charles Scribner's Sons
2 months 4 weeks ago

The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.

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p. 235
2 months 1 week ago

A king is history's slave.

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Bk. IX, ch. 1
2 months 2 weeks ago

Watergate was thus nothing but a lure held out by the system to catch its adversaries-a simulation of scandal for regenerative ends.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 16
4 months 1 week ago

He wanted to assume his entire condition, to carry the world on his shoulders and to become, in defiance of all, what all have made of him.

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p. 384
1 month 3 days ago

Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to collect knowledge disseminated around the globe; to set forth its general system to the men with whom we live, and transmit it to those who will come after us, so that the work of preceding centuries will not become useless to the centuries to come; and so that our offspring, becoming better instructed, will at the same time become more virtuous and happy, and that we should not die without having rendered a service to the human race in the future years to come.

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Encyclopédie
4 months 2 days ago

We are but dust and shadow.

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Book IV, ode vii, line 16
1 month 2 weeks ago

Is there really someone who, searching for a group of wise and sensitive persons to regulate him for his own good, would choose that group of people that constitute the membership of both houses of Congress?

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Ch. 2 : The State of Nature; Protective Associations, p. 14
4 months 1 week ago

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

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Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
3 months 4 weeks ago

When Philip had news brought him of divers and eminent successes in one day, "O Fortune!" said he, "for all these so great kindnesses do me some small mischief."

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34 Philip

It is surely delightful, Sir, to look forward to that period when a series of liberal and prudent measures shall have delivered islands, so highly favoured by the bounty of Providence, from the curse inflicted on them by the frantic rapacity of man. Then the peasant of the Antilles will no longer crawl in listless and trembling dejection round a plantation from whose fruits he must derive no advantage, and a hut whose door yields him no protection; but, when his cheerful and voluntary labour is performed, he will return with the firm step and erect brow of a British citizen from the field which is his freehold to the cottage which is his castle.

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Speech to a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society held in Freemasons' Tavern (25 June 1824), quoted in Report of the Committee of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, Volume I (1824), p. 77
4 months 3 days ago

Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.

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p. 12.
4 months 1 week ago

Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.

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Book II
3 months 2 weeks ago

All things are artificial, for nature is the Art of God.

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Section 16
2 months 1 week ago

Condemn me if you choose - I do that myself, - but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is.

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"Letter to N.N.," quoted by Havelock Ellis in "The New Spirit" (1892) p. 226
3 months 1 week ago

The conception of Rights involves that when men are to live in a community, each must so restrict his freedom as to permit the coexistence of the freedom of all others. But it does not involve that this particular person, A, is to restrict his freedom by the freedom of those particular persons, B, C, and D. That it has happened so that I, A, must conform myself particularly to the freedom of these, B, C, and D, of all other men, is purely the result of my living together with them; and I so live with them, simply by my free-will, not because there is an obligation for me to do so.

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P. 23-24
3 months 1 week ago

The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction - both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality - that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy - is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.

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Part III, Section 31
4 months 3 days ago

Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker.

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Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute. Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 61
4 months 2 weeks ago

"Optimism," said Cacambo, "What is that?" "Alas!" replied Candide, "It is the obstinacy of maintaining that everything is best when it is worst!

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1 week 2 days ago

Whatever this is that I am, it is flesh and a little spirit and an intelligence. This that I am, whatever it be, is mere flesh and a little breathe and the ruling Reason, This Being of mine, whatever it really is, consists of a little flesh, a little breath, and the part which governs.

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A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule all - that is myself. (Staniforth translation) II, 2
2 months 4 weeks ago

It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.

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p. 286
4 months 1 week ago

Why did it occur to anyone to believe in only one God? And conversely why did it ever occur to anyone to believe in many gods? To both these questions we must return the same answer: Because that is how the human mind happens to work. For the human mind is both diverse and simple, simultaneously many and one. We have an immediate perception of our own diversity and of that of the outside world. And at the same time we have immediate perceptions of our own oneness.

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"One and Many," p. 12
1 week 6 days ago

We must understand well that we do not proceed from a unity of God to the same unity of God again. We do not proceed from one chaos to another chaos, neither from one light to another light, nor from one darkness to another darkness. What would be the value of our life then? What would be the value of all life? But we set out from an almighty chaos, from a thick abyss of light and darkness tangled. And we struggle - plants, animals, men, ideas - in this momentary passage of individual life, to put in order the Chaos within us, to cleanse the abyss, to work upon as much darkness as we can within our bodies and to transmute it into light.

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2 months 1 week ago

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

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Maxim 1
4 months 1 week ago

It appears then, that capitalist production comprises conditions independent of good or bad will, conditions which permit the working-class to enjoy that relative prosperity only momentarily, and at that always only as the harbinger of a coming crisis.

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Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 415.
2 months 5 days ago

The core of common culture is religion. Tribes survive and flourish because they have gods, who fuse many wills into a single will, and demand and reward the sacrifices on which social life depends.

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"Culture and Cult" (p. 5)
2 months 3 weeks ago

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

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Ch. 2
3 months 1 week ago

It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.

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As quoted in The Observer (17 August 1986).
4 months 3 days ago

Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and regret may not reach thee from thine own actions.

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3 months 3 days ago

Man must not only make himself: the weightiest thing he has to do is to determine what he is going to be. He is causa sui to the second power.

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As quoted in Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, p. 155
1 week 2 days ago

"The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.

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(Hays translation) IV, 4
4 months 2 weeks ago

Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.

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Chapter XI, Part I, p. 174.
4 months 1 week ago

At the end of reasons comes persuasion.

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3 months 1 week ago

The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another, for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. ... The proletarian liberates himself by abolishing competition, private property, and all class differences.

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4 months 1 week ago

If a man own land, the land owns him.

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Wealth
1 week 2 days ago

If thou canst see sharp, look and judge wisely, says the philosopher.

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VIII, 38
5 months 2 days ago

By the ruler's cultivation of his own character, the duties of universal obligation are set forth. By honoring men of virtue and talents, he is preserved from errors of judgment.

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1 week 1 day ago

Doubtless, it shews the wisdom of God, to have so fram'd things at first, that there can seldom or never need any extraordinary interposition of his power; or the employing from, time to time, an intelligent overseer, to regulate, assist, and control the motions of matter.

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Sect.1.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Two principles we should always have ready that there is nothing good or evil save in the will; and that we are not to lead events, but to follow them.

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Book III, ch. 10, 18.
4 months 1 week ago

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

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Fate
3 months 2 weeks ago

Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Æquinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.

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Chapter V

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