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6 months 3 weeks ago

But Don Quixote was converted. Yes - and died, poor soul. But the other, the real Don Quixote, he who remained on earth and lives among us with his spirit - this Don Quixote was not converted, this Don Quixote continues to incite us to make ourselves ridiculous, this Don Quixote must never die.

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8 months 1 week ago

He that gives quickly gives twice.

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Adagia, 1508
6 months 3 weeks ago

The direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but - from what we can judge to-day - of any civilisation. ...The type of man dominant to-day is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.

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Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
4 months 2 days ago

No human institution can endure unless supported by the Hand which supports all; that is to say, if it is not especially consecrated to Him at its origin. The more it is penetrated with the Divine principle, the more durable it will be. How strange is the blindness of men in our age! They boast of their knowledge, and are ignorant of everything, since they are ignorant of themselves. They know not what they are, nor what they can do. An invincible pride bears them on continually to overthrow every thing which they have not made; and in order to work out new creations, they separate themselves from the source of all existence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau has, however, very well said, Little, vain man, show me thy power, and I will show thee thy weakness. It might be said, with as much truth and more profit, Little, vain man, confess to me thy weakness, and I will show thee thy strength.

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XLVI, p. 130
7 months 3 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
6 months 3 weeks ago

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

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Ch. 1
6 months 2 weeks ago

In refusing to face evil, Sinclair has gained nothing and lost a great deal; the Buddhist scripture expenses it: those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
8 months 6 days ago

Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

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9 months 5 days ago

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.

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2 months 1 week ago

The masses will burn it down first....or they'll just break away from the system. It won't be the techno feudalism the sadists dream of.....

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6 months 3 weeks ago

We suppose, it would seem, that concepts grow in the individual mind like leaves on a tree, and we think to discover their nature by studying their growth; we seek to define them psychologically, in terms of the human mind. But this account makes everything subjective, and if we follow it through to the end, does away with truth. What is known as the history of concepts is really a history either of our knowledge of concepts or of the meanings of words.

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Translation J. L. Austin (Oxford, 1950) as quoted by Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding: The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts (1972) Vol. 1, p. 56.
4 months 3 weeks ago

When young, one is confident to be able to build palaces for mankind, but when the time comes one has one's hands full just to be able to remove their trash.

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Letter to Johann Kaspar Lavatar
8 months 1 week ago

I moreover affirm that our wisdom itself, and wisest consultations, for the most part commit themselves to the conduct of chance.

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Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
7 months ago

Why do you lack the strength to escape the obligation to breathe?

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8 months 4 days ago

If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
8 months 3 weeks ago

The administration of government lies in getting proper men. Such men are to be got by means of the ruler's own character. That character is to be cultivated by his treading in the ways of duty. And the treading those ways of duty is to be cultivated by the cherishing of benevolence.

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9 months 5 days ago

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Everyone sits in the prison of his own ideas; he must burst it open, and that in his youth, and so try to test his ideas on reality.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

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6 months 4 days ago

No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art" took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.

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Ch. 4 "Problems of Humanistic Ethics"
4 months 3 weeks ago

"Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).

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Life of Fredrick the Great, Bk. IV, ch. 3 (1858-1865). Sometimes misreported as "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains";
8 months 5 days ago

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

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pp. 60-61
7 months ago

If someone incessantly drops the word "life," you know he's a sick man.

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6 months 4 weeks 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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2 months 1 week ago

See biography for Joseph de Maistre:
https://civilsimian.com/Joseph-de-Maistre

Read Joseph de Maistre's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/245/content

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7 months 1 week ago

By and large the literature of a democracy will never exhibit the order, regularity, skill, and art characteristic of aristocratic literature; formal qualities will be neglected or actually despised. The style will often be strange, incorrect, overburdened, and loose, and almost always strong and bold. Writers will be more anxious to work quickly than to perfect details. Short works will be commoner than long books, wit than erudition, imagination than depth. There will be a rude and untutored vigor of thought with great variety and singular fecundity. Authors will strive to astonish more than to please, and to stir passions rather than to charm taste.

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Book One, Chapter XIII.
4 months 4 days ago

The State legislatures should be immediately urged to relinquish the right of establishing banks of discount. Most of them will comply, on patriotic principles, under the convictions of the moment; and the non-complying may be crowded into concurrence by legitimate devices.

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Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:190
6 months 3 weeks ago

I came to set fire to the earth, and I wish it were already on fire!

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12:49 (CEV)
4 months 1 week ago

I feel awe of the gods, I love, I revere, I venerate them, and in short have precisely the same feelings towards them as one would have towards kind masters or teachers or fathers or guardians or any beings of that sort.

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Oration to the Cynic Heracleios
8 months 5 days ago

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

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Book IV, Chapter VI, §2
8 months 3 days ago

Nobody knows what is going to happen because so much depends on an enormous number of variables, on simple hazard. On the other hand if you look at history retrospectively, then, even though it was contingent, you can tell a story that makes sense.... Jewish history, for example, in fact had its ups and downs, its, enmities and its friendships, as every history of all people has. The notion that there is one unilinear history is of course false. But if you look at it after the experience of Auschwitz it looks as though all of history-or at least history since the Middle Ages - had no other aim than Auschwitz.... This, is the real problem of every philosophy of history how is it possible that in retrospect it always looks as though it couldn't have happened otherwise?

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7 months 4 days ago

Only through blind Instinct, in which the only possible guidance of the Imperative is awanting, does the Power in Intuition remain undetermined; where it is schematised as absolute it becomes infinite; and where it is presented in a determinate form, as a principle, it becomes at least manifold. By the above-mentioned act of Intelligising, the Power liberates itself from Instinct, to direct itself towards Unity.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Do you seek Alcides' equal? None is, except himself.

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line 84; (Juno)
6 months 3 weeks ago

It really is worth the trouble to invent a new symbol if we can thus remove not a few logical difficulties and ensure the rigour of the proofs. But many mathematicians seem to have so little feeling for logical purity and accuracy that they will use a word to mean three or four different things, sooner than make the frightful decision to invent a new word.

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Gottlob Frege in: Dagobert David Runes (1962). Readings in epistemology, theory of knowledge and dialectics. p. 334
8 months 5 days ago

It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks the magistrate."

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Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism
6 months 2 days ago

War has become the environment of our time if only because it is an accelerated form of innovation and education.

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(p. 381)
4 months 1 week ago

I lay it down that there is Matter, and also there are Material Species, but unless a Final Cause for them be previously assumed, we shall be, without perceiving it, introducing the doctrine of Epicurus: since if nothing be anterior to two efficient causes, a spontaneous flux and chance must have united the two together.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

If one only wished to be Sad, this could be horrible for the rest of civilisation; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors, Both Ancient and Modern (1891) edited by Tryon Edwards.
6 months 3 weeks ago

True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.

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Introduction
4 months 2 weeks ago

Avoid shame, but do not seek glory: nothing so expensive as glory.

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Vol. I, ch. 4, pp. 134-135
7 months ago

For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.

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4 months 1 day ago

Wipe out the imagination. Stop pulling the strings. Confine thyself to the present. ...Divide and distribute every object into the causal [formal] and the material. ...Let the wrong which is done by a man stay there where the wrong was done.

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VII, 29
8 months 3 days ago

If the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant-in this respect almost alone among the philosophers-was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

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p. 13
7 months 1 week ago

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

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Book Three, Chapter XIV.

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