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2 months 2 weeks ago

Everyone knows what made Berkeley notorious. He said that there were no material objects. He said the external world was in some sense immaterial, that nothing existed save ideas - ideas and their authors. His contemporaries thought him very ingenious and a little mad.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Nor word for word too faithfully translate.

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Line 133 (tr. John Dryden)
3 months 1 week ago

It is told that those who first brought out the irrationals from concealment into the open perished in shipwreck, to a man. For the unutterable and the formless must needs be concealed. And those who uncovered and touched this image of life were instantaneously destroyed and shall remain forever exposed to the play of the eternal waves.

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As quoted by Tobias Dantzig, Number: The Language of Science (1930) also see Proclus, scholium to Book X of Euclid's Elements, vol. V.
1 week 2 days ago

That man, I declare, is happy whom nothing makes less strong than he is; he keeps to the heights, leaning upon none but himself; for one who sustains himself by any prop may fall.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer's mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

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3 months 1 day ago

Knowledge that is not Infallible is not certain knowledge.

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I. Introduction, p. 7.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.

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Ch. 4
2 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophy offers an antidote to melancholy. And many still believe in the depth of philosophy!

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2 months 2 weeks ago

To suffer is to produce knowledge.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 177
1 month 3 weeks ago

His own character is the arbiter of every one's fortune.

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Maxim 283
1 month 3 weeks ago

Since Sputnik there is no Nature. Nature is an item contained in a man-made environment of satellites and information.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The ancients, even though they believed in destiny, believed primarily in nature, in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself.

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2 months 6 days ago

I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the full development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom.

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4 months 2 days ago

I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.

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Ch. 20
2 months 2 weeks ago

From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.

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The Second Part, Chapter 19, p. 97
4 months 1 week ago

For human beings, the measure of every action is the impression of the senses.

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Book I, ch. 28, 10
3 months 3 weeks ago

A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane.

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Grey Eminence, 1940
3 months 2 weeks ago

So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

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§ 261
2 weeks 6 days ago

If children are a joy for the well-to-do, they are a torment for seven-eights of all civlizees, who cannot afford to maintain and educate them.

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4 months 1 week ago

Of the truths within our reach... the mind and the heart are as doors by which they are received into the soul, but... few enter by the mind, whilst they are brought in crowds by the rash caprices of the will, without the council of reason.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

The slaving Poor are incapable of any Principles: Gentlemen may be converted to true Principles, by Time and Experience. The middling Rank of Men have Curiosity and Knowledge enough to form Principles, but not enough to form true ones, or correct any Prejudices that they may have imbib'd: And 'tis among the middling Rank, that Tory Principles do at present prevail most in England.

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Part I, Essay 9: Of The Parties of Great Britain; final lines of this essay in the 1741 and 1742 editions of Essays, Moral and Political, they were not included in later editions.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!

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Thrasymachus, in On the Indestructibility of our Essential Being by Death, in Essays and Aphorisms (1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale, p. 76
2 months 4 weeks ago

Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been, and ever will be, pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.

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Chapter XV.
2 weeks 4 days ago

If what we are discussing were a point of law or of the humanities, in which neither true nor false exists, one might trust in subtlety of mind and readiness of tongue and in the greater experience of the writers, and expect him who excelled in those things to make his reasoning most plausible, and one might judge it to be the best. But in the natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will, one must take care not to place oneself in the defense of error; for here a thousand Demostheneses and a thousand Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit upon the truth for himself. Therefore, Simplicio, give up this idea and this hope of yours that there may be men so much more learned, erudite, and well-read than the rest of us as to be able to make that which is false become true in defiance of nature.

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Salviati, p. 61
4 months 3 weeks ago
Being silent is something one completely unlearns if, like him, one has been for so long a solitary mole.
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3 months 3 weeks ago

A man who belongs to some communist or revolutionary society wills certain concrete ends, which imply the will to freedom, and that freedom is willed in community. We will freedom for freedom's sake, and in and through the particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own.

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pp. 51-52
3 months 3 weeks ago

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?

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"Forced Emigration," New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853.
2 weeks ago

Most of our literature and social philosophy after 1850 was the voice of freedom against authority, of the child against the parent, of the pupil against the teacher. Through many years I shared in that individualistic revolt. I do not regret it; it is the function of youth to defend liberty and innovation, of the old to defend order and tradition, and of middle age to find a middle way. But now that I too am old, I wonder whether the battle I fought was not too completely won. Let us say humbly but publicly that we resent corruption in politics, dishonesty in business, faithlessness in marriage, pornography in literature, coarseness in language, chaos in music, meaninglessness in art.

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"The Second Sexual Revolution", Time magazine,
3 months 3 weeks ago

As for the square at Meknes, where I used to go every day, it's even simpler: I do not see it at all anymore. All that remains is the vague feeling that it was charming, and these five words that are indivisibly bound together: a charming square at Meknes. ... I don't see anything any more: I can search the past in vain, I can only find these scraps of images and I am not sure what they represent, whether they are memories or just fiction.

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Diary entry of Friday 3:00pm (9 February?)
3 months 2 weeks ago

Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.

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Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994. p. 115
2 months 2 weeks ago

For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

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p. 67
3 months 3 weeks ago

When I was a child the atmosphere in the house was one of puritan piety and austerity. There were family prayers at eight o'clock every morning. Although there were eight servants, food was always of Spartan simplicity, and even what there was, if it was at all nice, was considered too good for children. For instance, if there was apple tart and rice pudding, I was only allowed the rice pudding. Cold baths all the year round were insisted upon, and I had to practice the piano from seven-thirty to eight every morning although the fires were not yet lit. My grandmother never allowed herself to sit in an armchair until the evening. Alcohol and tobacco were viewed with disfavor although stern convention compelled them to serve a little wine to guests. Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.

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p. 9
4 months 2 days ago

I have greater confidence in my wife and my pupils than I have in Christ.

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2397
4 months 3 weeks ago

Let us suppose that a man believes in eternal life on Christ's word. In that case he believes without any fuss about being profound and searching and philosophical and racking his brains.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The sun provides the moon with its brightness.

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Fragment in Plutarch De facie in orbe lunae, 929b, as quoted in The Riverside Dictionary of Biography (2005), p. 23
1 month 3 days ago

[O]ne might naively suppose that a negative utilitarian would welcome human extinction. But only (trans)humans - or our potential superintelligent successors - are technically capable of phasing out the cruelties of the rest of the living world on Earth. And only (trans)humans - or rather our potential superintelligent successors - are technically capable of assuming stewardship of our entire Hubble volume.

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"Unsorted Postings", Facebook, pre-2014
2 months 3 weeks ago

In the interval between his campaigns Agricola was employed in the great labours of peace. He knew that the general must be perfected by the legislator; and that the conquest is neither permanent nor honourable, which is only an introduction to tyranny... In short, he subdued the Britons by civilizing them; and made them exchange a savage liberty for a polite and easy subjection. His conduct is the most perfect model for those employed in the unhappy, but sometimes necessary, task of subduing a rude and free people.

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An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763)
1 month 2 weeks ago

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

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4 months 2 days ago

Plato says, "'Tis to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly."

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Book II, Ch. 2. Of Drunkenness
3 months 3 weeks ago

You must love the crust of the earth on which you dwell more than the sweet crust of any bread or cake; you must be able to extract nutriment out of a sand heap.

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January 25, 1858
2 months 1 week ago

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values.The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood - these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society - the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

The experiences of this period had two very marked effects on my opinions and character. In the first place, they led me to adopt a theory of life, very unlike that on which I had before acted, and having much in common with what at that time I certainly had never heard of, the anti-self-consciousness theory of Carlyle.

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(pp. 141-142)
3 months 3 weeks ago

You come from attending the funeral of mankind to attend to a natural phenomenon. A little thought is sexton to all the world.

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p. 490
1 month 1 week ago

I do not believe that civilizations have to die...Civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

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In "Prophet of Hope & Fear" [Review of A Study of History, Vols. 7-10] TIME (18 October 1954) p. 108
2 weeks 1 day 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 2 weeks ago

Opinions, yes; convictions, no. That is the point of departure for an intellectual pride.

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