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5 months 3 weeks ago

To be or not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of being's other, of the otherwise than being, claims to state a difference over and beyond that which separates being from nothingness - the very difference of the beyond, the difference of transcendence.

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Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (1974) Chapter I, Section 1.
2 months 3 weeks ago

A horse at the end of the race...A dog when the hunt is over...A bee with its honey stored...And a human being after helping others. They don't make a fuss about it. They just go on to something else, as the vine looks forward to bearing fruit again in season. We should be like that. Acting almost unconsciously.

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(Hays translation) V, 6
5 months 3 weeks ago

On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"

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6 months 3 weeks ago

It is because we are predominantly purposeful beings that we are perpetually correcting our immediate sensations. But men are free not to be utilitarianly purposeful. They can sometime be artists, for example. In which case they may like to accept the immediate sensation uncorrected, because it happens to be beautiful.

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"One and Many," p. 11
5 months 3 weeks ago

Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed, because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavour to settle that power on a Divine right, which will not bear the investigation of reason.

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Ch. 11
2 months 3 weeks ago

Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life.

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VII, 47
7 months 3 weeks ago

One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. "What! — by such narrow ways — ?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

I would really like to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctuation marks. For I would like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.)

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p. 77e
6 months 3 weeks ago

The next good quality belonging to a gentleman, is good breeding [manners]. There are two sorts of ill-breeding: the one a sheepish bashfulness, and the other a mis-becoming negligence and disrespect in our carriage; both of which are avoided by duly observing this one rule, not to think meanly of ourselves, and not to think meanly of others.

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Sec. 141
6 months 3 weeks ago

The superfluous, a very necessary thing. 

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Variant translation: The superfluous is very necessary, Le Mondain, 1736
4 months 3 weeks ago

Logic is figure without a ground.

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(p. 241)
4 months 3 weeks ago

I don't explain-I explore.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Truth is great and its effectiveness endures. 

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Maxim no. 5. Cf. 1 Esdras 4:41
7 months 2 weeks ago

When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

It is better to form new words as technical terms, than to employ old ones in which the last three Aphorisms cannot be complied with.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Be attentive therefore, according to the instruction of the Gospel, to learn obedience from the lily and the bird. Be not affrighted, do no despair, when thou comparest thy life with these teachers. There is nothing to despair about, for indeed thou shalt learn from them; and the Gospel first comforts thee by telling thee that God is the God of patience, and then it adds: 'Thou shalt learn from the lilies and the birds, learn to be absolutely obedient like the lilies and the birds, learn not to serve two masters; for no man can serve two masters, he must either ... or.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Anytime two human beings find genuine pleasure, joy, and love, the stars smile and the universe is enriched. Yet as long as that pleasure, joy, and love is still predicated on myths of black sexuality, the more fundamental challenge of humane interaction remains unmet.

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(p85)
3 weeks 4 days ago

I think of it like a tree. Even if you stop studying philosophy or critical thinking itself the seed you planted begins growth that just happens by living in the world with the tools you have.

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4 months 2 days ago

Might there not be a connection between the attempt to eradicate religion and the loss of freedom? It is unlikely that Mao, who launched his assault on the people and culture of Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison," would have agreed that his atheist world-view had no bearing on his policies.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

I soon perceived that she possessed in combination, the qualities which in all other persons whom I had known I had been only too happy to find singly. In her, complete emancipation from every kind of superstition (including that which attributes a pretended perfection to the order of nature and the universe), and an earnest protest against many things which are still part of the established constitution of society, resulted not from the hard intellect, but from strength of noble and elevated feeling, and co-existed with a highly reverential nature.

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(p. 186)
6 months 3 weeks ago

I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

The fact of being within capital and sustaining capital is what defines the proletariat as a class.

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53
2 months 3 weeks ago

As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you.

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3 months 6 days ago

For several years I have referred to this, hitherto, rare and inaccessible work as the I-told-you-so-book, because it has often been implied that I have invented my explanations of Buddhism out of thin air, thus falsifying its authentic teachings... Yet, despite the occultist flavor of its title, The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects is the most direct, no-nonsense, and down-to-earth explanation of Mahayana Buddhism which has thus far been written.

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Watts' Foreward to The Secret Oral Teachings in the Tibetan Buddhist Sects (1964)], by Alexandra David Neel
2 months 3 weeks ago

I am glad (sayes Eleutherius) to see the Vanity or Envy of the canting Chymists thus discover'd and chastis'd; and I could wish, that Learned Men would conspire together to make these deluding Writers sensible, that they must no longe[r] hope with Impunity to abuse the World. For whilst such Men are quietly permitted to publish Books with promising Titles, and therein to Assert what they please, and contradict others, and ev'n themselves as they please, with as little danger of being confuted as of being understood, they are encourag'd to get themselves a name, at the cost of the Readers, by finding that intelligent Men are wont for the reason newly mention'd, to let their Books and Them alone: And the ignorant and credulous (of which the number is still much greater then that of the other) are forward to admire most what they least understand.

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4 months 1 week ago

I always argue that no kill principles can be argued as effective logically, as well as from a naturalistic perspective.

A general social contract mitigates anxiety in society, but if this is not enough, understanding that harming others leads to higher probability that you will be harmed yourself should be enough for a mentally healthy person.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches.

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As quoted in The Portable Curmudgeon (1987) by Jon Winokur, p. 219
5 months 4 days ago

Since my world picture approximates reality only crudely, I cannot aspire to optimize anything; at most, I can aim at satisficing. Searching for the best can only dissipate scarce cognitive resources; the best is the enemy of the good.

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(p.361) p. 361; As cited in Ronald J. Baker (2010) Implementing Value Pricing: A Revolutionary Business Model for Professional Firms. p. 122.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Being asked what learning is the most necessary, he replied, "How to get rid of having anything to unlearn.

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" § 7
2 weeks ago

Liberalism, neoliberalism, libertarianism...Democrats and Republicans switched values at one point...people don't even agree what liberalism is in your average thread. It's associated with treating each individual as an end in themselves and universal human rights, supporting the quote below.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

While Trump is not going to be president, Trumpism is going to survive. ...The Democrats need to look very very carefully at those election results because ...the Republicans did well not necessarily because people love what they represent, but because they don't like what the Democrats represent... Unless they sort out what that is, they are going to continue to lose elections.

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28:52:00
6 months 3 weeks ago

No man can have society upon his own terms. If he seeks it, he must serve it too.

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1833
2 months 3 weeks ago

Terms must be constructed and appropriated so as to be fitted to enunciate simply and clearly true general propositions.

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3 months 3 days ago

I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.

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"The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", in The China Critic, Vol. III, no. 4 (23 January 1930), p. 81
6 months 4 weeks ago

With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.

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E. C. Mossner, Life of David Hume (Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 311.

Because their truth is truth to a lesser degree....they don't know there are more complex, more accurate, higher degrees of truth.....

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4 months 4 days ago

When one is gripped by excruciating physical pain, one is always shocked at just how frightful it can be.

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"The Abolitionist Project", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007
2 months 2 weeks ago

Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The abolition of the market means not only that the consumers-that is all members of society-are robbed of virtually all choice of consumption and all influence over production; it also means that the information and communication are monopolized by the State, as they too need a vast material base in order to operate. The abolition of the market means, then, that both material and intellectual assets would be totally rationed. To say nothing of the inefficiency of production convincingly demonstrated in the history of communism, this economy requires an omnipotent police state. Briefly: the abolition of the market means a gulag society.

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"The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society"
6 months 2 weeks ago

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through great connections and race; for in the end thy trust is on thine own deeds.

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(p. 60)
4 months 4 weeks ago

The student should have enough knowledge of his or her cultural tradition to know how it got to be the way it is. This involves both political and social history, on the one hand, as well as the mastery of some of the great philosophical and literary texts of the culture on the other. It involves reading not only texts that are of great value, like those of Plato, but many less valuable that have been influential, such as the works of Marx. For the United States, the dominant tradition is, and for the foreseeable future, will remain the European tradition. The United States is, after all, a product of the European Enlightenment. However, you do not understand your own tradition if you do not see it in relation to others. Works from other cultural traditions need to be studied as well.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

A man might say, with enough truth to justify a joke: "Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know." But it should be added that philosophical speculation as to what we do not yet know has shown itself a valuable preliminary to exact scientific knowledge.

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4 months 1 week ago

The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates.

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As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937), E.H. Carr, p. 453
5 months 2 weeks ago

Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order - for "rational" is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.

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pp. 141-142
5 months 3 weeks ago

In Germany, the judicial system has been the whore of the German princes for centuries.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

When I come to my own beliefs, I find myself quite unable to discern any purpose in the universe, and still more unable to wish to discern one.

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"Is There a God?", 1952

Égalité is an expression of envy. It means, in the real heart of every Republican, " No one shall be better off than I am;" and while this is preferred to good government, good government is impossible.

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Conversation with Nassau William Senior, 22 May 1850 Nassau, p. 94

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