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1 month 4 days ago

A comfortable house is a great source of happiness. It ranks immediately after health and a good conscience.

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Vol. II, letter to Lord Murray (29 September 1843), p. 501
3 months 3 weeks ago

In the final, positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after Abolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the cause of phenomenon, and applies itself to the tudy of their laws, - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of the facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.

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Vol I
5 months 1 week ago

We know, that of all living beings man is the best formed, and, as the gods belong to this number, they must have a human form. ... I do not mean to say that the gods have body and blood in them; but I say that they seem as if they had bodies with blood in them. . . , Epicurus, for whom hidden things were as tangible as if he had touched them with his finger, teaches us that gods are not generally visible, but that they are intelligible; that they are not bodies having a certain solidity . . . but that we can recognize them by their passing images; that as there are atoms enough in the infinite space to produce such images, these are produced before us . . . and make us realize what are these happy, immortal beings.

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Book I, Section 18
4 months 3 weeks ago

Freedom is the alone unoriginated birthright of man, and belongs to him by force of his humanity; and is independence on the will and co-action of every other in so far as this consists with every other person's freedom.

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Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Ethics by Immanuel Kant, trans. J.W. Semple, ed. with Iintroduction by Rev. Henry Calderwood (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1886) (3rd edition). Chapter: GENERAL DIVISION OF JURISPRUDENCE.
1 week 2 days ago

We are inclined to overemphasize the material influences in history. The Russians especially make this mistake. Intellectual values and ethnic influences, tradition and emotional factors are equally important. If this were not the case, Europe would today be a federated state, not a madhouse of nationalism.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

As Narcissus fell in love with an outering (projection, extension) of himself, man seems invariably to fall in love with the newest gadget or gimmick that is merely an extension of his own body.

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By the gods I do not want the Galileans to be killed or beaten unjustly nor to suffer any other ill. I do, however, state that the god-fearing (theosebeis) should be preferred to them ... honour should go to the gods and to the men and cities that worship them.

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As quoted in Julian the Apostate (1978), by G. W. Bowersock, Ch. 8 : The Puritanical Pagan, p, 83
3 months 2 weeks ago

As Being and Life are one and the same, so are Death and Nothingness one and the same. But there is no real Death and no real Nothing ness, as we have already said. There is, however, an Apparent Life, and this is the mixture of life and death, of being and nothingness.

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P. 4
3 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing is indefensible - from the absurdest proposition to the most monstrous crime.

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2 weeks 5 days ago

To farm is to be placed absolutely.

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"Imagination in Place"
2 months 2 weeks ago

Be your money's master, not its slave.

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Maxim 657
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is normal to hate what we fear, and it happens frequently, though not always, that we fear what we hate. I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar. They have their own herd, originally a very small one. And within one herd, all are friends, unless there is some special ground of enmity. Other herds are potential or actual enemies; a single member of one of them who strays by accident will be killed. An alien herd as a whole will be avoided or fought according to circumstances. It is this primitive mechanism which still controls our instinctive reaction to foreign nations. The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards a member of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if his herd is to prosper, it must, to some degree, become amalgamated with other herds.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.

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Chapter 3, Opinion, p. 28.
3 months 2 days ago

The huge laugh is a most extreme expression of freedom.

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1 month 4 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
1 month 1 week ago

Has any man, or any society of men, a truth to speak, a piece of spiritual work to do; they can nowise proceed at once and with the mere natural organs, but must first call a public meeting, appoint committees, issue prospectuses, eat a public dinner; in a word, construct or borrow machinery, wherewith to speak it and do it. Without machinery, they were hopeless, helpless.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

...inversion...is an outlet that a child discovers when he is suffocating.

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p. 91
4 months 3 weeks ago

The demands of a free populace, too, are very seldom harmful to liberty, for they are due either to the populace being oppressed or to the suspicious that it is going to be oppressed... and, should these impressions be false, a remedy is provided in the public platform on which some man of standing can get up, appeal to the crowd, and show that it is mistaken. And though, as Tully remarks, the populace may be ignorant, it is capable of grasping the truth and readily yields when a man, worthy of confidence, lays the truth before it.

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Book 1, Ch. 4 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
2 months 2 weeks ago

In anything fit to be called by the name of reading, the process itself should be absorbing and voluptuous; we should gloat over a book, be rapt clean out of ourselves, and rise from the perusal, our mind filled with the busiest, kaleidoscopic dance of images, incapable of sleep or of continuous thought. The words, if the book be eloquent, should run thenceforward in our ears like the noise of breakers, and the story, if it be a story, repeat itself in a thousand coloured pictures to the eye.

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A Gossip on Romance, printed in Longman's Magazine (November 1882).
3 months 2 weeks ago

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

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3 months 4 days ago

Error is the price we pay for progress.

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1 month 5 days ago

Thus the radii of all education run together into one center which is called personality.

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p. 25
3 months 2 weeks ago

So far as it has gone, it probably is the most pure and defecated publick good which ever has been conferred on mankind.

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p. 463 On the Polish Constitution of May 3, 1791
4 months 2 weeks ago

One capitalist always kills many.

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Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 836.
3 weeks 6 days ago

The wise man who has charge of governing the empire should know the cause of disorder before he can put it in order. Unless he knows its cause, he cannot regulate it.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
3 months 1 week ago

A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.

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4 months 1 week ago

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental effort of will.

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"Moral Luck" (1976), p. 32.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Who does not believe in Fate proves that he has not lived.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument - a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself - in solitude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

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3 months 5 days ago

The number 2 thought of by one man cannot be added to the number 2 thought of by another man so as to make up the number 4.

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Oppression and Liberty (1958), p. 82
2 months 1 week ago

The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others.

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Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America
2 months 1 week ago

Nationality is not the only kind of social membership, nor is it an exclusive tie. However, it is the only form of membership that has so far shown itself able to sustain a democratic process and a liberal rule of law.

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1 month 1 week ago

Life is that which is discontent, which struggles and seeks, which suffers and creates.

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Ch. 1 : Our life begins
2 months 3 weeks ago

The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using "good" as our example. Calling something good is characteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of "good" is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation.

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P. 139.
4 months 3 weeks ago

If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
3 months 3 days ago

Black women control the world. We are through being discriminated against.

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Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002) ISBN 0-06-093829-3
2 weeks 5 days ago

When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, an hundred.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

When you get over an infatuation, to fall for someone ever again seems so inconceivable that you imagine no one, not even a bug, that is not mired in disappointment.

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3 months 1 week ago

Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.

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11:4-6 (KJV)
4 months 1 week ago

Those who have a well-ordered character lead also a well-ordered life.

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2 months 1 week ago

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

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p. 248
4 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?" - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said "this is a man," "this is a house," etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?

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p. 17e
3 months 2 weeks ago

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.

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Letter to Mademoiselle Quinault, quoted in Charles Sainte-Beuve, "Lettres inédites de Voltaire," Causeries de Lundi (20 October 1856) ; an English translation can be found on this page:
4 months 2 weeks ago

Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.

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Chapter I, Section 9, pg. 52

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