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4 months 3 weeks ago

With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

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19:26 (KJV)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

We shall, therefore, assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and a corresponding acceleration of the reference system.

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Statement of the equivalence principle in Yearbook of Radioactivity and Electronics (1907)
6 months 4 days ago

I am against a League war in present circumstances, because the anti-League powers are strong. The analogy is not King v. Barons, but the War of the Roses. If the League were strong enough I should favour sanctions, because the effect would suffice, or the war would be short and small. The whole question is quantitative.

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Letter to Kingsley Martin shortly before the Italo-Abyssinian War (7 August 1935), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207
2 months 3 days ago

Your favor of July 2. came duly to hand. The concern you therein express as to the effect of your pamphlet in America, induces me to trouble you with some observations on that subject.

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Benjamin Wade speech about Jefferson's letter about Price's work Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution as quoted in the Congressional Record, 1854, pp. 312-313
5 months 3 days ago

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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You have to ask yourself, what is the ideal language? The ideal conversation would be one where world models are presented as increasingly better options until a conclusion. This is what AI is starting to do.....have conversations using a form....

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Only after Winter comes do we know that the pine and the cypress are the last to fade.

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6 months 4 days ago

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument by which one prove that there is not a God. On the other hand, if I am to convey the right impression to the ordinary man in the street I think that I ought to say that I am an Atheist, because, when I say that I cannot prove that there is not a God, I ought to add equally that I cannot prove that there are not the Homeric gods.

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"Proof of God"
1 month 4 weeks ago

Social Democratic centralism cannot be based on the mechanical subordination and blind obedience of the party membership to the leading party center. The Social Democratic movement cannot allow the erection of an air-tight partition between the class-conscious nucleus of the proletariat already in the party and its immediate popular environment, the nonparty sections of the proletariat.

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2 months 1 week ago

Of the splendid constellation of great names... we admire the living and revere dead far too warmly and too deeply to suffer us sit in judgment on their respective claims to in this or that particular discovery; to balance mathematical skill of one against the experimental dexterity of another, or the philosophical acumen a third. So long as "one star differs from another in glory," - so long as there shall exist varieties, or even incompatibilities of excellence, - so long will the admiration of mankind be found sufficient for all who merit it.

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On the Theory of Light (1828) p.494
4 months 3 days ago

Amid this life based on coercion, one and the same thought constantly emerged among different nations, namely, that in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love.

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II
6 months 3 days ago

The religious world is but the reflex of the real world.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 91.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, colour by convention; atoms and Void [alone] exist in reality.

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(trans. Freeman 1948), p. 92.
6 months 3 days ago

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

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Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
4 months 2 weeks ago

Maslow explained that, some time in the late thirties, he had been struck by the thought that modern psychology is based on the study of sick people. But since there are more healthy people around than sick people, how can this psychology give a fair idea of the workings of the human mind? It struck him that it might be worthwhile to devote some time to the study of healthy people.

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p. 15
6 months 2 days ago

A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere... God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

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p. 191
4 months 2 weeks ago

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race..

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ch. 5
5 months 1 week ago

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity. Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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Book Four, Chapter VIII
4 months 3 weeks ago

The remembrance of forbidden fruit is the earliest thing in the memory of each of us, as it is in that of mankind.

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Chapter I: Moral Obligation
2 months ago

Objective judgment, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance-now, at this very moment-of all external events. That's all you need.

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(Hays translation) IX, 6
2 months 1 week ago

The one absolutely, the Intelligible, the ever Preexisting, comprehending all the universe together within the One - nay, more, is not the whole world One living thing - all and everywhere full of life and soul, perfect and made up out of parts likewise perfect? Now of this double unity the most perfect part (I mean of the Unity in the Intelligible World that comprehends all things in One, and of the Unity encompassing the Sensible World, that brings together all things into a single and perfect nature) is the perfection of the sovereign Sun, which is central and single, and placed in the middle of the intermediate Powers.

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4 months 4 weeks ago

Only thoughts that are randomly born die. The other thoughts we carry with us without knowing them. They have abandoned themselves to forgetfulness so that they can be with us all the time.

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Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 153
7 months 1 day ago

You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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3 months 1 week ago

The mass political movements of the 20th century were vehicles for myths inherited from religion, and it is no accident that religion is reviving now that these movements have collapsed.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

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2 months ago

And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen.

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X, 33
6 months 3 weeks ago

All things are nourished together without their injuring one another. The courses of the seasons, and of the sun and moon, are pursued without any collision among them. The smaller energies are like river currents; the greater energies are seen in mighty transformations. It is this which makes heaven and earth so great.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws is fear.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27
6 months 4 days ago

There is one very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in hell. I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

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"The Moral Problem"
5 months 3 weeks ago

Speciesism-the word is not an attractive one, but I can think of no better term-is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species.

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Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal
4 months 3 weeks ago

Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty, for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void.

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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 251
6 months 4 days ago

There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), part I, "The World of Science", chapter 3, "The World of Physics", p. 41

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

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F 69
4 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.
3 months 4 weeks ago

Eternity is best spent under a general anesthetic - which is what is going to happen.

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Interview with Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience (2019);
2 months 3 days ago

If, in my retirement to the humble station of a private citizen, I am accompanied with the esteem and approbation of my fellow citizens, trophies obtained by the blood-stained steel, or the tattered flags of the tented field, will never be envied. The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.

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Letter To the Republican Citizens of Washington county, Maryland
2 months 3 days ago

As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

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"Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book
2 months 2 days ago

The inevitable lack of objectivity in political decisions, which is only the reflex to suppress the politically inherent friend-enemy antithesis, manifests itself in the regrettable forms and aspects of the scramble for office and the politics of patronage. The demand for depoliticalization which arises in this context means only the rejection of party politics, etc. The equation politics = party politics is possible whenever antagonisms among domestic political parties succeed in weakening the all-embracing political unit, the state.

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4 months 1 day ago

While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.

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Maxim 185
2 months 2 weeks ago

It is the quality of a great soul to scorn great things and to prefer that which is ordinary rather than that which is too great.

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2 months 3 days ago

Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.

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Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
6 months 4 days ago

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

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Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
4 months 2 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
6 months 1 week ago

And to bring in a new word by the head and shoulders, they leave out the old one.

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Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
5 months 4 days ago

All men that are ruined, are ruined on the side of their natural propensities.

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No. 1, volume v, p. 286
4 months 2 weeks ago

And the conversion of the other Don Quixote - he who was converted only to die - was possible because he was mad, and it was his madness, and not his death or his conversion that immortalized him, earning him forgiveness for this crime of having been born. Felix culpa! And neither was his madness cured, but only transformed. His death was his last knightly adventure; in dying he stormed heaven, which suffereth violence.

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