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7 months 2 days ago

I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

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Diary entry of Friday (2 February), concerning a card game
7 months 6 days ago

As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the Governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.

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6 months 1 day ago

Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.

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Ch. 8
3 months 2 weeks ago

Who profits by a sin has done the sin.

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6 months 1 day 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
7 months 1 week ago

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

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4 months ago

Democracy is a meaningless word unless it signifies that differences of opinion have been expressed, represented, and even satisfied in the decision.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", pp. 47-48
7 months 2 days ago

Social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they are to be to the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society.

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p. 6
3 months 1 day ago

Opinion is so powerful in war that it can alter the nature of the same event and give it two different names, for no reason other than its own whim. A general throws his men between two enemy armies and he writes to his king, I have split him, he has lost. His opponent writes to his king, He has put himself between two fires, he is lost. Which of the two is mistaken? Whoever is seized by the cold goddess. Assuming that all things, especially size, are at least approximately equal, the only difference between the two positions is a purely moral one. It is imagination that loses battles.

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"Seventh Dialogue," p. 221
5 months 3 weeks ago

Gentile himself call his doctrine 'absolute formalism': there is no; 'matter' apart from the pure 'form' of acting. 'The only matter there is in the spiritual act is the form itself, as activity.'

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P. 407
3 months 2 weeks ago

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow creatures love, and respect.

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Sermon XII, Sermons
3 months 4 days ago

One of our fan-coloring biographers, who paints small men as very great, inquired of me lately with real affection too, whether he might consider as authentic, the change of my religion much spoken of in some circles. Now this supposed that they knew what had been my religion before, taking for it the word of their priests, whom I certainly never made the confidants of my creed. My answer was "say nothing of my religion. It is known to my God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life; if that has been honest and dutiful to society, the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one."

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Letter to John Adams (11 January 1817), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12, pp. 48-49
7 months 4 days ago

In every stock-jobbing swindle everyone knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety.

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Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 5, pg. 296.
7 months 2 weeks ago

She is the sum of nature's universe.To her perfection all of beauty tends.

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Chapter XIV, lines 49-50 (tr. Barbara Reynolds)
4 months 1 week ago

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation.

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

The first remark we have to make, and which - though already presented more than once - cannot be too often repeated when the occasion seems to call for it, - is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle - Plan of Existence - Law - is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as such - however true in itself - is not completely real.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

So long as it is not possible to produce so much that there is enough for all, with more left over for expanding the social capital and extending the forces of production - so long as this is not possible, there must always be a ruling class directing the use of society's productive forces, and a poor, oppressed class. How these classes are constituted depends on the stage of development.

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7 months 1 week ago

That the sun will not rise to-morrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no contradiction, than the affirmation, that it will rise.

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§ 4.8
3 months 2 days ago

I care nothing for creeds. I am not concerned with any one's religious belief. But I would have men think for themselves. If we do not, we can only abandon one superstition to take up another, and it may be a worse one. It is as bad for a man to think that he can know nothing as to think he knows all. There are things which it is given to all possessing reason to know, if they will but use that reason. And some things it may be there are, that - as was said by one whom the learning of the time sneered at, and the high priests persecuted, and polite society, speaking through the voice of those who knew not what they did, crucified - are hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes.

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Conclusion : The Moral of this Examination
6 months 4 days ago

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise!

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Part 4, Chapter 5
7 months 1 week ago

Tis evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men. Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another [...] And 'tis remarkable, that tho' almost all animals use in play the same member, and nearly the same action as in fighting; a lion, a tyger, a cat their paws; an ox his homs; a dog his teeth; a horse his heels: Yet they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho' they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the sense brutes have of each other's pain and pleasure.

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Part 2, Section 12
6 months 1 day ago

The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again.

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As quoted in The Experience of the Foreign : Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany (1992) by Antoine Berman Variant translation: Romanticize the world.
2 months 3 weeks ago

How can this cosmic religious experience be communicated from man to man, if it cannot lead to a definite conception of God or to a theology? It seems to me that the most important function of art and of science is to arouse and keep alive this feeling in those who are receptive.

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7 months 3 days ago

It often happens that reforms merely have the effect of transferring the undesirable tendencies of individuals from one channel to another channel. An old outlet for some particular wickedness is closed; but a new outlet is opened. The wickedness is not abolished; it is merely provided with a different set of opportunities for self-expression.

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Ch. 3, p. 20 [2012 reprint]
7 months 3 days ago

But then again of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all.

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3 months ago

Everything harmonizes with me, which is harmonious to thee, O Universe. Nothing for me is too early or too late, which is in due time for thee. There is one light of the sun, though it is interrupted by walls, mountains and infinite other things. There is one common substance, though it is distributed among countless bodies which have their several qualities. There is one soul, though it is distributed among several natures and individual limitations. There is one intelligent soul, though it seems to be divided.

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XII, 30
7 months 1 week ago

Of all our infirmities, the most savage is to despise our being.

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Book III, Ch. 13 Variant: Of all the infirmities we have, 'tis the most savage to despise our being. (Charles Cotton translation)

Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question.

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Vol. V, par. 211
7 months 1 week ago

There is no wish more natural than the wish to know.

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Ch. 13
5 months 1 day ago

Receive an injury rather than do one.

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Maxim 5
7 months 5 days ago

I am against a League war in present circumstances, because the anti-League powers are strong. The analogy is not King v. Barons, but the War of the Roses. If the League were strong enough I should favour sanctions, because the effect would suffice, or the war would be short and small. The whole question is quantitative.

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Letter to Kingsley Martin shortly before the Italo-Abyssinian War (7 August 1935), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207
1 month 2 weeks ago

I struggle with this too, as it is necessary for me to call the Board of Word Creation and make an appeal to add to the word "Universality" so it can fit the role I've assigned to it....creating new words won't work when current words fill specific spaces.....

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7 months 3 weeks ago

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Without narration, life is purely additive.

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7 months 5 days ago

In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one's rights and double one's duties.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 27, § 370 Variant translation: To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
7 months 1 week ago

For a desperate disease a desperate cure.

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Book II, Ch. 3. The Custom of the Isle of Cea
3 months ago

If...it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt.

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VIII, 45
6 months 4 days ago

Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.

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"On Philosophy: To Dorothea," in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 421
7 months 3 days ago

He begins to think for himself and meets Nineteenth-century Rationalism Which can explain away religion by any number of methods.

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Pilgrim's Regress 19-20
6 months 4 weeks ago

Between the fine point of the brush and the steely gaze, the scene is about to yield up its volume.

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Las Meninas
3 months 4 days ago

They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face.

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Letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (19 July 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12, p. 244
5 months 6 days ago

The state monopolizes violence by calling its critics "violent". Hence, we should be wary about those who claim that violence is necessary to curb or check violence; those who praise the forces of law, including the police and the prisons, as the final arbiters. To oppose violence is to understand that violence does not always take the form of the blow.

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p. 63
6 months 2 weeks ago

Remind yourself that all men assert that wisdom is the greatest good, but that there are few who strenuously seek out that greatest good.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
7 months 2 weeks ago

Reason is not measured by size or height, but by principle.

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Book I, ch. 12, 26.
5 months 3 weeks ago

What, by a word lacking even in grammar, is called amorality, is a thing that does not exist. If you are unwilling to submit to any norm, you have, nolens volens, to submit to the norm of denying all morality, and this is not amoral, but immoral. It is a negative morality which preserves the empty form of the other.

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Chapter XV: We Arrive At The Real Question
6 months 4 weeks ago

If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.

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Pt II, p. 217
8 months ago

There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.

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