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6 months 1 week ago

Now what has been said about the Jews is also to be understood about Cahorsins, and anyone else depending upon the depravity of usury.

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art. 4
5 months 3 weeks ago

'Our kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is of self, the less there is of God.

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Chapter VI - Mortification, Non-Attachment, Right Livelihood
5 months 4 weeks ago

Apollo said that every one's true worship was that which he found in use in the place where he chanced to be.

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
1 month 1 week ago

I claim credit for nothing. Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player.

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4 months 1 week ago

The wretched consciousness shrinks from it own annihilation, and just as an animal spirit newly severed from the womb of the world, finds itself confronted with the world and knows itself distinct from it, so consciousness must needs desire to possess another life than that of the world itself.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

I don't care for the applause one gets by saying what others are thinking; I want actually to change people's thoughts. Power over people's minds is the main personal desire of my life; and this sort of power is not acquired by saying popular things.

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Letter to Lucy Martin Donnelly, February 10, 1916
1 month 3 weeks ago

The Cry within me is a call to arms. It shouts: "I, the Cry, am the Lord your God! I am not an asylum. I am not hope and a home. I am not the Father nor the Son nor the Holy Ghost. I am your General! "You are not my slave, nor a plaything in my hands. You are not my friend, you are not my child. You are my comrade-in-arms! "Hold courageously the passes which I entrusted to you; do not betray them. You are in duty bound, and you may act heroically by remaining at your own battle station. "Love danger. What is most difficult? That is what I want! Which road should you take? The most craggy ascent! It is the one I also take: follow me!

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4 months 1 week ago

From whatever side the matter is regarded, it is always found that reason confronts our longing for personal immortality and contradicts it. And the truth is, in all strictness, that reason is the enemy of life.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.

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Book Three, Chapter XII.
4 months 1 week ago

We are sorely deficient in talking with each other and listening to each other. We lack mobility, criticism and self-criticism. We incline to doctrinism. What makes it worse is that so many people do not really want to think. They want only slogans and obedience. They ask no questions and they give no answers, except by repeating drilled-in phrases. They can only assert and obey, neither probe nor apprehend. Thus they cannot be convinced, either. How shall we talk with people who will not go where others probe and think, where men seek independence in insight and conviction?

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2 months 6 days ago

The archer must know what he is seeking to hit; then he must aim and control the weapon by his skill. Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbour he is making for, no wind is the right wind. Chance must necessarily have great influence over our lives, because we live by chance. It is the case with certain men, however, that they do not know that they know certain things. Just as we often go searching for those who stand beside us, so we are apt to forget that the goal of the Supreme Good lies near us.

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Line 3
4 months 2 weeks ago

One principle, that I believe is wanting in you, and all our too fervent and impetuous reformers, is the thought, that almost every institution or form of society is good in its place, and in the period of time to which it belongs. How many beautiful and admirable effects grew out of Popery and the monastic institutions, in the period, when they were in their genuine health and vigour! To them we owe almost all our logic and our literature. What excellent effects do we reap, even at this day, from the feudal system and from chivalry! In this point of view, nothing can, perhaps, be more worthy of our applause than the English constitution.

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Letter to Percy Bysshe Shelley (4 March 1812), quoted in Thomas Jefferson Hogg, The Life of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Vol. II (1858), p. 86

A major task in organizing is to determine, first, where the knowledge is located that can provide the various kinds of factual premises that decisions require.

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p. 24.
1 month 1 week ago

I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.

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2 months 6 days ago

There is no reason why poverty should call us away from philosophy-no, nor even actual want. For when hastening after wisdom, we must endure even hunger. Men have endured hunger when their towns were besieged, and what other reward for their endurance did they obtain than that they did not fall under the conqueror's power? How much greater is the promise of the prize of everlasting liberty, and the assurance that we need fear neither God nor man! Even though we starve, we must reach that goal.

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4 months 4 days ago

What can characterize the Outsider is a sense of strangeness, or unreality.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
5 months 3 weeks ago

Let the punishments of criminals be useful. A hanged man is good for nothing; a man condemned to public works still serves the country, and is a living lesson.

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"Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws," Dictionnaire philosophique (1785-1789)
2 months 2 weeks ago

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

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53
4 months 2 weeks ago

A character is a completely fashioned will.

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(vollkommen gebildeter Wille).
2 months 2 days ago

There is obviously a place in life for a religious attitude for awe and astonishment at existence. That is also a basis for respect for existence. We don't have much of it in this culture, even though we call it materialistic. In this culture we call materialistic, today we are of course bent on the total destruction of material and its conversion into junk and poisonous gases. This is of course not a materialistic culture because it has no respect for material. And respect is in turn based on wonder.

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Images of God
5 months 3 weeks ago

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

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Chapter I, p. 479.
2 months 1 week ago

It must have been in his teens, perhaps rather early, that he and his elder brother John, with William Bell (afterwards of Wylie Hill, and a noted drover) and his brother, all met in the kiln at Eelief to play cards. The corn was dried then at home. There was a fire, therefore, aud perhaps it was both heat and light. The boys had played, perhaps, often enough for trifling stakes, and always parted in good humor. One night they came to some disagreement. My father spoke out what was in him about the folly, the sinfulness, of quarreling over a perhaps sinful amusement. The earnest mind persuaded other minds. They threw the cards into the fire, and (I think the younger Bell told my brother James) no one of the four ever touched a card again through life. My father certainly never hinted at such a game since I knew him. I cannot remember that I, at that age, had any such force of belief. Which of us can?

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6 months 1 week ago

When your father is alive, observe his will. When your father is dead observe his former actions. If, for three years after the death of your father you do not change from the ways of your father, you can be called a 'real son'.

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6 months 1 week ago

The superior man honors his virtuous nature, and maintains constant inquiry and study, seeking to carry it out to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more exquisite and minute points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and brilliancy, so as to pursue the course of the Mean. He cherishes his old knowledge, and is continually acquiring new. He exerts an honest, generous earnestness, in the esteem and practice of all propriety. Thus, when occupying a high situation he is not proud, and in a low situation he is not insubordinate. When the kingdom is well governed, he is sure by his words to rise; and when it is ill governed, he is sure by his silence to command forbearance to himself.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

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Letter to John Sinclair
5 months 3 weeks ago

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

The aim of protection, in short, is to prevent the bringing into a country of things in themselves useful and valuable, in order to compel the making of such things. But what all mankind in the individual affairs of every-day life, regard as to be desired is not the making of things, but the possession of things.

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Henry George, page 39,
1 month 3 weeks ago

We cannot observe external things without some degree of Thought; nor can we reflect upon our Thoughts, without being influenced in the course of our reflection by the Things which we have observed.

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The Elements of Morality, Book 1, ch. 1., 1845
1 month 2 weeks ago

It is permitted to modern philosophy, all swollen up with Bacon's venom, to repeat to us to satiety, to disgust, to nausea, that we make God similar to man; we will reply as many times that is not quite the same thing to say that a man resembles his portrait or that his portrait resembles him.

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p. 293
1 week 3 days ago

"We are by no means opposed to the globalization of relationships as such-in fact, as we said, the strongest forces of Leftist internationalism have effectively led this process. The enemy, rather, is a specific regime of global relations that we call Empire."
- Antonio Negri

See biography for Antonio Negri:
https://civilsimian.com/AntonioNegri

Read Antonio Negri's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/201/content

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5 months 4 weeks ago

There never was in the world two opinions alike, no more than two hairs or two grains; the most universal quality is diversity.

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Book II, Ch. 37. Of the Resemblance of Children to their Fathers
1 month 3 weeks ago

No mathematician can give any meaning to language about matter, force, inertia, used in text-books of mechanics.

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2 months 1 week ago

A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.

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Latter Day Pamphlets, No. 6.
1 month 3 weeks ago

Cultivators of the earth are the most valuable citizens. They are the most vigorous, the most independent, the most virtuous, and they are tied to their country and wedded to its liberty and interests by the most lasting bands. As long therefore as they can find employment in this line, I would not convert them into mariners, artisans, or any thing else. But our citizens will find employment in this line till their numbers, and of course their productions, become too great for the demand both internal and foreign.

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Letter to John Jay (23 August 1785); published in The Papers of Thomas Jefferson (1953), edited by Julian P. Boyd, vol. 8, p. 426
6 months 3 weeks ago

Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God - blessed is he who takes no offense at me. 

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As translated by Howard V. Hong and EdnaH. Hong (1980) Variant translation; Out of love, God becomes man. He says: "See, here is what it is to be a human being."
5 months 3 weeks ago

I care not how affluent some may be, provided that none be miserable in consequence of it. But it is impossible to enjoy affluence with the felicity it is capable of being enjoyed, while so much misery is mingled in the scene.

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Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
1 month 3 weeks ago

I have stated that the constitutions of our several States vary more or less in some particulars. But there are certain principles in which all agree, and which all cherish as vitally essential to the protection of the life, liberty, property, and safety of the citizen:

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.

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p. 35
5 months 2 weeks ago

A philosopher is a man who has to cure many intellectual diseases in himself before he can arrive at the notions of common sense.

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p. 44e
6 months ago

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
4 months 1 week ago

Although the formulations of science now offer the most advanced knowledge of nature, men continue to use obsolete forms of thought long discarded by scientific theory. In so far as these obsolete forms are superfluous for science, the fact that they persist violated the principle of the economy of thought, that characteristic trait of the bourgeois temper.

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p. 133.
5 months 3 weeks ago

Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and like only what suits my taste.

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1 month 4 days ago

He speaks Russian as a first language and prefers the communal side of things, and studying the language of ancient religious texts so he can study them directly.

I like to sort of tread the line and see if I can be convinced that universal values are actually somehow particular. So far, not budging.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as you in my search for truth. I will read your work ... all the more willingly because I have for many years been a partisan of the Copernican view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypothesis. To refute the latter I have collected many proofs, but I do not publish them, because I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he had won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid).

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Letter to Johannes Kepler (1596), as quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 603
3 months 2 weeks ago

What I can't understand is why you can't see the extraordinary beauty of the idea that life started from nothing - that is such a staggering, elegant, beautiful thing, why would you want to clutter it up with something so messy as a God?

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" During his conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams, as quoted in The Telegraph, in 2012-02-24. In "Richard Dawkins: I can't be sure God does not exist"
4 months 3 days ago

Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without ever reaching satisfaction.

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Ch. 4
5 months 3 weeks ago

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.

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p. 489
1 month 2 weeks ago

Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, - there are always new worlds to conquer.

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Discourse Delivered at the Royal Society (30 November 1825)
5 months 3 weeks ago

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.

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Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created

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