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6 months 2 weeks ago

Necessity makes a joke of civilization.

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2 months 1 week ago

The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to him,-fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

No one will deny that the soul of Pythagoras was sent to mankind from Apollo's domain, having either been one of his attendants, or more intimate associates, which may be inferred both from his birth, and his versatile wisdom.

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Ch. 2 : Youth, Education, Travels
4 months 1 week ago

But the individual butterfly or earthquake remains just the unique existence which it is. We forget in explaining its occurrence that it is only the occurrence that is explained, not the thing itself.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), pp. 7-8
6 months 2 weeks ago

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. It would be easy, however, to destroy that good conscience by shouting to them: if you want the happiness of the people, let them speak out and tell what kind of happiness they want and what kind they don't want! But, in truth, the very ones who make use of such alibis know they are lies; they leave to their intellectuals on duty the chore of believing in them and of proving that religion, patriotism, and justice need for their survival the sacrifice of freedom.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.

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Quoted in Ethics Matters (2012) by Peter and Charlotte Vardy, p. 114 ISBN 978-0334043911
4 months 4 days ago

The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all.

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Section 10
1 month 2 weeks ago

With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind. The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets. The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment.

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2 months 1 week ago

O reader, to what shifts is poor Society reduced, struggling to give still some account of herself, in epochs when Cash Payment has become the sole nexus of man to men!

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Ch. 6, Laissez-Faire.
4 months 2 weeks ago

Humiliate the reason and distort the soul...

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Part 2, Chapter ?
4 months 1 day ago

The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

The most insistent and formidable concern of agriculture, wherever it is taken seriously, is the distinct individuality of every farm, every field on every farm, every farm family, and every creature on every farm.

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Imagination in Place
3 months 2 weeks ago

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

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Maxim 524
4 months 1 week ago

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world.

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"Art a Thing of No Consequence"
5 months 2 weeks ago

The politician may change sides so frequently as to find himself always in the majority, but most politicians have a preference for one party to the other, and subordinate their love of power to this preference.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Rational and kindly behavior tends to produce good results and these results remain good even when the behavior which produced them was itself produced by a pill.

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"Brave New World Revisited" (1956), in Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1977), p. 99
1 month 2 weeks ago

The healthy eye ought to see all visible things and not to say, I wish for green things; for this is the condition of the diseased eye. And the healthy hearing and smelling ought to be ready to perceive all that can be heard and smelled. And the healthy stomach ought to be with respect to all food just as the mill with respect to all things which it is formed to grind. And accordingly the healthy understanding ought to be prepared for everything which happens; but that which says, Let my dear children live, and let all men praise whatever I may do, is an eye which seeks for green things, or teeth which seek for soft things.

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X, 35
3 months 2 weeks ago

The hardware world tends to move into software form at the speed of light.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The church is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

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"How The Churches Have Retarded Progress"

One needs only eyes to see the necessary influence of old age on reason.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

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Letter to John Taylor (26 November 1798), shortened in The Money Masters to "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution ... taking from the federal government their power of borrowing".
4 months 1 week ago

But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.

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The First Part, Chapter 5, p. 21
5 months 2 weeks ago

Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them when they come to be men, rather than to have their heads stuff'd with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live: and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for.

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Sec. 94
5 months 2 weeks ago

Revolutions never go backwards.

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p. 214
2 months 2 days ago

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.

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Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
4 months 4 days ago

Even the most insensitive hit song enthusiast cannot always escape the feeling that the child with a sweet tooth comes to know in the candy store.

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p. 290
3 months 3 days ago

If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk".

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6 months 2 weeks ago

He was extremely important to his contemporaries, who wanted nothing more than to see in him the Expected One; they wanted almost to press it upon him and and to force him into the role - but that he then refuses to be that!

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Power may be defined as the production of intended effects.

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Ch. 3: The Forms of Power
2 months 1 week ago

This poor amphibious Pope too gives loaves to the Poor; has in him more good latent than he is himself aware of. His poor Jesuits, in the late Italian Cholera, were, with a few German Doctors, the only creatures whom dastard terror had not driven mad: they descended fearless into all gulfs and bedlams; watched over the pillow of the dying, with help, with counsel and hope; shone as luminous fixed stars, when all else had gone out in chaotic night: honour to them!

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5 months 1 week ago

Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. (2) As Plutarch notes... you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.

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5 months 1 week ago

There is little in common between the organised parading of madness in the eighteenth century and the freedom with which madness came to the fore during the Renaissance. The earlier age had found it everywhere, an integral element of each experience, both in images and in real life dangers. During the classical period, it was also on public view, but behind bars. When it manifested itself it was at a carefully controlled distance, under the watchful eye of a reason that denied all kinship with it, and felt quite unthreatened by any hint of resemblance. Madness had become a thing to be observed, no longer the monster within, but an animal moved by strange mechanisms, more beast than man, where all humanity had long since disappeared.

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Part One: 5. The Insane
6 months 2 weeks ago

Married people pledge love for each other throughout eternity. Well, now, that is easy enough but does not mean very much, for if one is finished with time one is probably finished with eternity. If, instead of saying "throughout eternity," the couple would say, "until Easter, until next May Day," then what they say would make some sense, for then they would be saying something and also something they perhaps could carry out.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom. What can Juno give which thou canst not receive from Wisdom? What mayest thou admire in Venus which thou mayest not also contemplate in Wisdom? Her beauty is not small, for the lord of all things taketh delight in her. Her I have loved and diligently sought from my youth up.

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As quoted in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer
5 months 2 weeks ago

One must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.

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Letter to Colette O'Niel, October 23, 1916; published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970, p. 87
5 months 2 weeks ago

A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of Communism.

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Preamble, paragraph 1, line 1.
5 months 2 weeks ago

As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.

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Act 5, sc. 3
6 months 2 weeks ago

Generals are, as a matter of course, allowed to be far more idiotic than ordinary human beings are permitted to be.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

It is impossible to care for each other more or differently than we care for the earth. This last statement becomes obvious enough when it is considered that the earth is what we all have in common, that it is what we are made of and what we live from, and that we therefore cannot damage it without damaging those with whom we share it. But I believe it goes farther and deeper than that. There is an uncanny resemblance between our behavior toward each other and our behavior toward the earth. Between our relation to our own sexuality and our relation to the reproductivity of the earth, for instance, the resemblance is plain and strong. By some connection we do not recognize, the willingness to exploit one becomes the willingness to exploit the other.

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The Unsettling of America (1977), Chapter Seven : The Body and the Earth
2 months 1 week ago

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero.

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Ch. 6, Laissez-Faire.
2 months 1 week ago

Normal science, the activity in which most scientists inevitably spend almost all their time, is predicated on the assumption that the scientific community knows what the world is like. Normal science often suppresses fundamental novelties because they are necessarily subversive of its basic commitments.

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p. 5
5 months 2 weeks ago

A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.

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Lectures XI, XII, and XIII, "Saintliness"

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