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2 months 3 weeks ago

This miracle of social concord would result not from direct conciliation, which would be impossible, but from the development of new interests, and especially from the amazement with which the minds of men would be filled on being convinced of the radical falseness of the civilized social order by comparison with the associative or combined, and of the errors in which the social world has been so long plunged - misled by speculative philosophy, which upholds and extols this order with all its defects to the entire neglect of the study of association.

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The Theory of Social Organization. Harmonian Man: Selected Writings of Charles Fourier, p. 5.
1 month 3 weeks ago

Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.

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Letter to Dr. James Currie (28 January 1786) Lipscomb & Bergh 18:ii
5 months 2 weeks ago

In a shared fish, there are no bones.

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Freeman (1948), p. 157
4 months 4 weeks ago

All those instances to be found in history, whether real or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which affrighted Nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth.

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

Let them have what instructions you will, and ever so learned lectures of breeding daily inculcated into them, that which will most influence their carriage will be the company they converse with, and the fashion of those about them.

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Sec. 67
5 months 3 weeks ago

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!

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Act 1
5 months 2 days ago

The more man ascends through the past, and the more he launches into the future, the greater he will be, and all these philosophers and ministers and truth-telling men who have fallen victims to the stupidity of nations, the atrocities of priests, the fury of tyrants, what consolation was left for them in death? This: That prejudice would pass, and that posterity would pour out the vial of ignominy upon their enemies. O Posterity! Holy and sacred stay of the unhappy and the oppressed; thou who art just, thou who art incorruptible, thou who findest the good man, who unmaskest the hypocrite, who breakest down the tyrant, may thy sure faith, thy consoling faith never, never abandon me!

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As quoted in "Diderot" in The Great Infidels (1881) by Robert Green Ingersoll; The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll Vol. III (1900), p. 367
5 months 3 weeks ago

Do not allow your dreams of a beautiful world to lure you away from the claims of men who suffer here and now. Our fellow men have a claim to our help; no generation must be sacrificed for the sake of future generations, for the sake of an ideal of happiness that may never be realised.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

The pious soul,-which, if you reflect, will mean the ingenuous and ingenious, the gifted, intelligent and nobly-aspiring soul,-such a soul, in whatever rank of life it were born, had one path inviting it; a generous career, whereon, by human worth and valor, all earthly heights and Heaven itself were attainable. In the lowest stratum of social thraldom, nowhere was the noble soul doomed quite to choke, and die ignobly.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Fortune is not satisfied with inflicting one calamity.

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Maxim 274
5 months 4 weeks ago

The scene should be gently open'd, and his entrance made step by step, and the dangers pointed out that attend him from several degrees, tempers, designs, and clubs of men. He should be prepared to be shocked by some, and caress'd by others; warned who are like to oppose, who to mislead, who to undermine him, and who to serve him. He should be instructed how to know and distinguish them; where he should let them see, and when dissemble the knowledge of them and their aims and workings.

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Sec. 94
4 months 2 weeks 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)
5 months 2 weeks ago

Speciesism is an attitude of prejudice towards beings because they're not members of our species, so just as racism means that you're prejudiced against beings who are not members of your race and sexism means you're prejudiced against people of the other sex. So we humans tend to be speciesist in we think that any being that is a member of the species homo sapien just automatically has a higher moral status and is more important than any being that is a member of any other species, irrespective of the actual characteristics of those beings.

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Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins, 2009.
5 months 3 weeks ago

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

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Vol. 1, Endnotes to the Chapters : Notes to the Introduction.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true." I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation.

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I will make an attempt to attain freedom, the youthful soul says to itself; and is it to be hindered in this by the fact that two nations happen to hate and fight one another, or that two continents are separated by an ocean, or that all around it a religion is taught with did not yet exist a couple of thousand years ago. All that is not you, it says to itself.
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5 months 3 weeks ago

Our language can be seen as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, and of houses with additions from various periods; and this surrounded by a multitude of new boroughs with straight regular streets and uniform houses.

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§ 18
4 months 3 weeks ago

Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.

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As quoted in Demian (1972) by Hermann Hesse, trans. W.J. Strachan
6 months ago

In the natural state no concept of God can arise, and the false one which one makes for himself is harmful. Hence the theory of natural religion can be true only where there is no science; therefore it cannot bind all men together.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 60
3 months 3 weeks ago

The most human thing about us is our technology.

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Man and the future of organizations, Volume 5, School of Business Administration, Georgia State University, 1974, p. 19
5 months 2 weeks ago

You may drive out Nature with a pitchfork, yet she still will hurry back.

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Book I, epistle x, line 24
5 months 3 weeks ago

If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?

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p. 24e
1 month 3 weeks ago

If Providence erases, it is no doubt in order to write.

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Chapter II, p. 20
1 month 3 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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6 months 1 day ago

Love in animals, has not for its only object animals of the same species, but extends itself farther, and comprehends almost every sensible and thinking being. A dog naturally loves a man above his own species, and very commonly meets with a return of affection.

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Part 2, Section 12
We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions.
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5 months 2 days ago

What a hell of an economic system! Some are replete with everything while others, whose stomachs are no less demanding, whose hunger is just as recurrent, have nothing to bite on. The worst of it is the constrained posture need puts you in. The needy man does not walk like the rest; he skips, slithers, twists, crawls.

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2 months 1 week ago

The only certain fact about Russian affairs under the Soviet regime with regard to which all people agree is: that the standard of living of the Russian masses is much lower than ... the paragon of capitalism, the United States of America. If we were to regard the Soviet regime as an experiment, we would have to say that the experiment has clearly demonstrated the superiority of capitalism and the inferiority of socialism.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

The aggregate capital appears as the capital stock of all individual capitalists combined. This joint stock company has in common with many other stock companies that everyone knows what he puts in, but not what he will get out of it.

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Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 437.
6 months 1 week ago

The best books are those, which those who read them believe they themselves could have written.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius.

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Book II, satire viii, lines 73-74
4 months 3 weeks ago

It is debasing to die the way one does; it is intolerable to be exposed to an end over which we have no control, an end which lies in wait for us, overthrows us, casts us into the unnameable.

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5 months 3 days ago

Sleep is a death; oh, make me try By sleeping what it is to die, And as gently lay my head On my grave as now my bed.

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Section 12

Challenge, and not desire, lies at the heart of seduction.

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(p. 57)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

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p. 33
4 months 1 week 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
3 months 4 weeks ago

One of the great American tragedies is to have participated in a just war. It's been possible for politicians and movie-makers to encourage us we're always good guys. The Second World War absolutely had to be fought. I wouldn't have missed it for the world. But we never talk about the people we kill. This is never spoken of.

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Interviewed by Roger Friedman, "God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut", FoxNews.com
2 months 2 weeks ago

Where this will end? In the Abyss, one may prophecy; whither all Delusions are, at all moments, travelling; where this Delusion has now arrived. For if there be a Faith, from of old, it is this, as we often repeat, that no Lie can live for ever. The very Truth has to change its vesture, from time to time; and be born again. But all Lies have sentence of death written down against them, and Heaven's Chancery itself; and, slowly or fast, advance incessantly towards their hour.

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Pt. I, Bk. VI, ch. 3.
6 months 3 weeks ago

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Man's chief difference from the brutes lies in the exuberant excess of his subjective propensities - his preeminence over them simply and solely in the number and in the fantastic and unnecessary character of his wants, physical, moral, aesthetic, and intellectual. Had his whole life not been a quest for the superfluous, he would never have established himself as inexpugnably as he has done in the necessary.

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"Reflex Action and Theism"
2 months 3 weeks ago

Roemer used eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter, and sought how much the event fell behind its prediction. But... this prediction is made... by... astronomic laws; for instance Newton's... The velocity of light... is adopted, such that the astronomic laws compatible with this value may be as simple as possible.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

Irony is a qualification of subjectivity.

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6 months 5 days ago

A penny saved is of more value than a penny paid out.

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What Luther Says, Section on "Life, Human," No. 2438. Rules for a Thrifty Life. 2, p. 784

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