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4 months 2 weeks ago

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. ... Whenever the Westerner hears the word "psychological," it always sounds to him like "only psychological."

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Psyche and Symbol (1958), p. 285
3 months 4 weeks ago

The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth.

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Foreward (p. vii)

It is so hard to forget what it is worse than useless to remember! If I am to be a thoroughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain-brooks, the Parnassian streams, and not the town-sewers. There is inspiration, that gossip which comes to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of heaven. There is the profane and stale revelation of the bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted to receive both communications. Only the character of the hearer determines to which it shall be open, and to which closed. I believe that the mind can be permanently profaned by the habit of attending to trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged with triviality.

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p. 492
2 weeks 5 days ago

It might have been supposed that the building of 30,000 miles of railways would have brought a measure of prosperity to India. But these railways were built not for India but for England; not for the benefit of the Hindu, but for the purposes of the British army and British trade... The railroads are entirely in European hands, and the Government refuse to appoint even one Hindu to the Railway Board. The railways lose money year after year, and are helped by the Government out of the revenues of the people. All the loses are borne by the people, all the gains are gathered by the trader.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Human life, by its very nature, has to be dedicated to something, an enterprise glorious or humble, a destiny illustrious or trivial. We are faced with a condition, strange but inexorable, involved in our very existence.

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Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
1 month 4 weeks ago

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.

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Ch. VI
4 months 3 weeks ago

Indeed, it may well be argued that one reason for the decline in science, art, and literature was the increasing absorption of the better minds into a new sort of intellectual pursuit, theology.

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4 months 1 week ago

I will first discuss images according to the Law of Moses, and then according to the gospel. And I say at the outset that according to the Law of Moses no other images are forbidden than an image of God which one worships. A crucifix, on the other hand, or any other holy image is not forbidden. Heigh now! you breakers of images, I defy you to prove the opposite!

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pp. 85-86
3 months 4 weeks ago

I do not think the resemblance between the Christian and the merely imaginative experience is accidental. I think that all things, in their own way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least. "Reflect" is the important word. This lower life of the imagination is not a beginning of, nor a step toward, the higher life of the spirit, merely an image.

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We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.

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January 6, 1842
4 months 3 weeks ago

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

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The reason that I call my doctrine logical atomism is because the atoms that I wish to arrive at as the sort of last residue in analysis are logical atoms and not physical atoms. Some of them will be what I call "particulars" - such things as little patches of color or sounds, momentary things - and some of them will be predicates or relations and so on.

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One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

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J 85
3 months ago

The most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labours. In a state of artificial society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labour most enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labour not at all have the greatest number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

It is impossible for any man, when the most favourable circumstances concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted with uncontrolled power; how then must they be violated when his very elevation is an insuperable bar to the attainment of either wisdom or virtue; when all the feelings of a man are stifled by flattery, and reflection shut out by pleasure! Surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him NECESSARILY below the meanest of his subjects! But one power should not be thrown down to exalt another--for all power intoxicates weak man; and its abuse proves, that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

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Ch. 1
1 week 3 days ago

I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less ... than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.

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4 months 2 days ago

I am at heart more of a United-States-man than an Englishman.

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Letter to Andrew Jackson (14 June 1830), quoted in Correspondence of Andrew Jackson, Volume 4, ed. David Maydole Matteson (1929), p. 146
3 months 4 days ago

As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways.

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Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848).
1 month 3 weeks ago

Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment.

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Pt. I, ch. II.
1 week ago

To accomplish anything whatsoever one must have standards. None have yet accomplished anything without them.

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Book 1; On the necessity of standards
3 months 4 weeks ago

There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, - the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.

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The Will to Believe, 1897
2 months 2 weeks ago

In old days the plastic arts, music, and poesy were so germane to man in his totality that his Transcendence plainly manifest in them. ... What is to-day obvious to all is a decay in the essence of art. ... the opposition to man's true nature as man.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

"Everything is already there in...." How does it come about that [an] arrow points? Doesn't it seem to carry in it something besides itself? - "No, not the dead line on paper; only the psychical thing, the meaning, can do that." - That is both true and false. The arrow points only in the application that a living being makes of it.

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§ 454
2 weeks 5 days ago

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves; let us be above such transparent egotism. If you can't say good and encouraging things, say nothing. Nothing is often a good thing to do, and always a clever thing to say.

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We Have a Right To Be Happy Today, commencement address at the Webb School of Claremont, California
2 months 1 week ago

Witness the tragic condition of Russia. The methods of State centralization have paralysed individual initiative and effort; the tyranny of the dictatorship has cowed the people into slavish submission and all but extinguished the fires of liberty; organized terrorism has depraved and brutalized the masses and stifled every idealistic aspiration; institutionalized murder has cheapened human life, and all sense of the dignity of man and the value of life has been eliminated; coercion at every step has made effort bitter, labour a punishment, has turned the whole of existence into a scheme of mutual deceit, and has revived the lowest and most brutal instincts of man. A sorry heritage to begin a new life of freedom and brotherhood.

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4 months 1 day ago

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 19, § 233
2 months 2 weeks ago

Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.

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The Authoritarian Personality (1950), p. 976, co-written with Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford
2 months 1 week ago

A few years ago I had occasion to visit Peru, and I got to know a fine philosopher and a truly wonderful human being-Francisco Miro Casada. Miro Casada has been an idealist all his life, while being, at the same time, a man of great experience (a former member of several governments and a former Ambassador to France). I found him a man who represents the social democratic vision in its purest form. Talking to him, and to my other friends in Peru (who represented quite a spectrum of political opinion), I heard something that was summed up in a remark he, Miro Casada, made to me, "Whenever you have a Republican president, we get a wave of military dictatorships in Latin America".

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
4 months 1 day ago

I have lived an honest and useful life to mankind; my time has been spend in doing good and I die in perfect composure and resignation to the will of my Creator, God.

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Last will (1809), as quoted in The Fortnightly Review, vol. 31, pp. 398-399
2 months 1 week ago

Upper middle-class upbringing has rooted out any element of what might appear to be self-assertion or egoism; good manners is to be like everyone else. So the male of the species becomes accustomed to suppress any stirring of impatience or originality. Shaw once said you can't learn to skate without making a fool of yourself; the British middle-class attitude seems to be that, in that case, you hadn't better skate at all. The result seems to be considerably more oppressive than being brought up in a Jewish ghetto or a west side slum.

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p. 112, An integrity born of hope: Notes on Christopher Isherwood

I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject.

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4 months 3 days ago

There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.

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Théodicée (1710)ː Préface
4 months 3 weeks ago

Milton Ashe is not the type to marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes.

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I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

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Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
2 months 2 weeks ago

Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide.

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Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 155
4 months 3 days ago

And as every present state of a simple substance is naturally a consequence of its preceding state, so its present is pregnant with its future.

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La monadologie (22).
4 months 3 days ago

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. -- Were one to go round the world with an intention of giving a good supper to the righteous, and a sound drubbing to the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed in his choice, and would find that the merits and the demerits of most men and women scarcely amount to the value of either.

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Essay on the Immortality of the Soul

No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.

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Ch. 12: Education and Discipline
4 months 2 weeks ago

The inclination to seek the truth is safer than the presumption which regards unknown things as known.

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(Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 1, p. 24
4 months 3 weeks ago

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind - my wayward heart creates its own misery - Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child - long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

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Undated letter to Joseph Johnson (October? 1792), published in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), edited by Janet Todd, p. 206.
4 months 1 day ago

He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

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Maxima debetur pueris reverentia [The greatest respect is owed to the children]. Sec. 71; Note: Here Locke quotes Juvenal
4 months 1 day ago

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

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Vol. 2 "Further Psychological Observations" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
1 month 3 weeks ago

The idea that the citizen owes loyalty to a country, a territory, a jurisdiction and all those who reside within it - the root assumption of democratic politics, and one that depends upon the nation as its moral foundation - that idea has no place in the minds and hearts of many who now call themselves citizens of European states.

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3 months 4 days ago

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.

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Chapter XIV.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Martyrs must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood, never!

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2 weeks 6 days ago

We have the greatest admiration for this learned doctor: with what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering; like a wise man through some huge, gaudy, imposing Vauxhall, whose fire-works, cascades and symphonies, the vulgar may enjoy and believe in,-but where he finds nothing real but the saltpetre, pasteboard and catgut.

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1 week 3 days ago

The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Love, a tacit agreement between two unhappy parties to overestimate each other. p. 111, first American edition

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1970

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