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8 months 2 weeks ago

Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.

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"The Absurd" (1971), p. 15.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Pragmatism starts from assumptions similar to those of empiriocriticism, but differs from the latter by its striking formulations, loose aphorisms, and analytical unscrupulousness.

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Chapter Seven, Pragmatism and Positivism, p. 166
4 months 3 weeks ago

In religions which have lost their creative spark, the gods eventually become no more than poetic motifs or ornaments for decorating human solitude and walls.

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Ch. 12
8 months 2 weeks ago

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

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§ 217
8 months 3 weeks ago

Malthus's population principle was quite as much a banner, and a point of union among us, as any opinion specially belonging to Bentham. This great doctrine, originally brought forward as an argument against the indefinite improvability of human affairs, we took up with ardent zeal in the contrary sense, as indicating the sole means of realizing that improvability by securing full employment at high wages to the whole labouring population through a voluntary restriction of the increase of their numbers.

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(p. 105)
6 months 1 week ago

If...we look at the essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may consider each of them as the representative of a great principle, essential to the welfare of nations. One is, in an especial manner, the guardian of liberty, and the other, of order. One is the moving power, and the other the steadying power of the state. One is the sail, without which society would make no progress, the other the ballast, without which there would be small safety in a tempest.

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The Earl of Chatham', The Edinburgh Review (October 1844), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review: A New Edition (1852), p. 725
8 months 3 weeks ago

"If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." But all nature cries aloud that he does exist: that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

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Voltaire quoting himself in his Letter to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (28 November 1770), translated by S.G. Tallentyre, Voltaire in His Letters, 1919
4 months 3 weeks ago

Treasury notes of small as well as high denomination, bottomed on a tax which would redeem them in ten years, would place at our disposal the whole circulating medium of the United States... The public... ought never more to permit its being filched from them by private speculators and disorganizers of the circulation.

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Letter to William H. Crawford, 1815. ME 14:242
9 months 3 weeks ago

A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

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"War Shrines"
9 months 1 week ago

Some of their faults people readily admit, but others not so readily.

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Book II, ch. 21, 1
7 months 2 weeks ago

Truths begin by a conflict with the police - and end by calling them in.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The, diverse states of the soul are always correlative with those of the body.

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9 months 2 days ago

How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!

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Book II, Ch. 16. Of Glory
7 months 3 weeks ago

The present state of France was ten times worse than a tyranny. The new constitution was said to be an experiment but the assertion was not true. It had already been tried, and had been found to be only productive of evils. They would go on from tyranny to tyranny, from oppression to oppression, till at last the whole system would terminate in the destruction of that miserable and deluded people... He sincerely hoped that no member of that House would ever barter the constitution of this country, the eternal jewel of their souls, for a wild and visionary system, which could only lead to confusion and disorder.

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Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 397
8 months 3 weeks ago

To be taken without consent from my home and friends; to lose my liberty; to undergo all those assaults on my personality which modern psychotherapy knows how to deliver; to be re-made after some pattern of "normality" hatched in a Viennese laboratory to which I never professed allegiance; to know that this process will never end until either my captors have succeeded or I have grown wise enough to cheat them with apparent success-who cares whether this is called Punishment or not? "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment"

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1949
8 months 3 weeks ago

England and France, the two most civilized nations on earth, who are in contrast to each other because of their different characters, are, perhaps chiefly for that reason, in constant feud with one another. Also, England and France, because of their inborn characters, of which the acquired and artificial character is only the result, are probably the only nations who can be assumed to have a particular and, as long as both national characters are not blended by the force of war, unalterable characteristics. That French has become the universal language of conversation, especially in the feminine world, and that English is the most widely used language of commerce among tradesmen, probably reflects the difference in their continental and insular geographic situation.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 226
8 months 3 weeks ago

As a rule, begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that scientific method does not exist. ...having been ...the one and only professor of this non-existent subject within the British Commonwealth.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

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Book Three, Chapter XI.
7 months 1 week ago

Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.

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"Wave Mechanics," p. 75
8 months 3 weeks ago

The Indians, whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.

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Sec. 145
7 months 1 day ago

Many modern philosophers claim that probability is relation between an hypothesis and the evidence for it.

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Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 31.
7 months 2 days ago

On another possible world or another planet a word might be associated with much the same stereotype and much the same criteria as our term 'water', but it might designate XYZ and not H₂O. At least this could happen in a prescientific era. And it would not follow that XYZ was water; it would only follow that XYZ could look like water, taste like water, etc. What 'water' refers to depends on the actual nature of the paradigms, not just on what is in our heads.

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Language and Reality
5 months 1 week ago

Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

When a man is taken in a mystical sense, his qualities are often signified by his actions, and by the circumstances of things about him. So a Ruler is signified by his riding on a beast; a Warrior and Conqueror, by his having a sword and bow; a potent man, by his gigantic stature; a Judge, by weights and measures... the affliction or persecution which a people suffers in laboring to bring forth a new kingdom, by the pain of a woman in labor to bring forth a man-child; the dissolution of a body politic or ecclesiastic, by the death of a man or beast; and the revival of a dissolved dominion, by the resurrection of the dead.

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Vol. I, Ch. 2: Of the Prophetic Language
5 months 2 weeks ago

Nature admits no lie.

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Latter Day Pamphlet, No. 5.
9 months 1 week ago

For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.

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1:1:1 English Latin Latin: Omnis enim res quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur quomodo habenda est.
8 months 1 week ago

To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."

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Of Agesilaus the Great
8 months 3 weeks ago

People are said to believe in God, or to disbelieve in Adam and Eve. But in such cases what is believed or disbelieved is that there is an entity answering a certain description. This, which can be believed or disbelieved is quite different from the actual entity (if any) which does answer the description. Thus the matter of belief is, in all cases, different in kind from the matter of sensation or presentation, and error is in no way analogous to hallucination. A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

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On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism, 1914
8 months 1 week ago

When it comes to consideration of how to do well in running the city, which must proceed entirely through justice and soundness of mind.

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As quoted in Protagoras by Plato
8 months 2 weeks ago

Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.

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Freeman (1948), p. 161
7 months 3 weeks ago

Young man, there is America - which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

If the Communists conquered the world, it would be very unpleasant for a while, but not forever. But if the human race is wiped out, that is the end.

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Television interview on March 24, 1958, as quoted in The United States in World Affairs (1959), p. 12
8 months 3 weeks ago

Whenever the general disposition of the people is such, that each individual regards those only of his interests which are selfish, and does not dwell on, or concern himself for, his share of the general interest, in such a state of things, good government is impossible.

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Ch. II: The Criterion of a Good Form of Government (p. 167)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Man, in wearing himself out his whole life long by saying: What is that! and what is that called! and what does that mean! is a big spectacle to himself if he wants to open his eyes. All his natural powers tending towards the truth, he never ceases looking for true names; he senses a language prior to that of Babel, and even of Eden.

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p. 68
8 months 3 weeks ago

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling falsehood.

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Chapter 11 (p. 104)
5 months 3 weeks ago

There is no social entity with a good that undergoes some sacrifice for its own good. There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others, uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more.

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Ch. 3 : Moral Constraints and the State; Why Side Constraints?, p. 32
8 months 2 weeks ago

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

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§ 112
6 months 2 weeks ago

Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends.

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Ch. 4. The Gene machine
6 months 3 weeks ago

Although it is commonly supposed that war making is the specific activity of nations, the blind rage that motivates war destroys the very social bonds that make nations possible. Of course, it can fortify the nationalism of a nation, producing a provisional coherence bolstered by war and enmity, but it also erodes the social relations that make politics possible. The power of destruction unleashed by war breaks social ties and produces anger, revenge, and distrust ("embitterment") such that it becomes unclear whether reparation is possible, undermining not only those relations that may have been built in the past, but also the future possibility of peaceful coexistence.

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p. 154
5 months 2 weeks ago

Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;-till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;-is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honor such a man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Then take, good sir, your pleasure while you may; With life so short 'twere wrong to lose a day.

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Book II, satire viii, line 96 (trans. Conington)
8 months 2 weeks ago

Ethics seems a morass which we have to cross, but get hopelessly bogged in when we make the attempt.

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Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 167
8 months 3 weeks ago

The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

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p. 9
5 months 2 weeks ago

It seems to us that the past is our property. Well, on the contrary - we are its property, because we are not able to make changes in it, while it fills the whole of our existence.

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Original: "Otóż przeciwnie - to my jesteśmy jej własnością, ponieważ nie jesteśmy w stanie dokonać w niej zmian, ona natomiast wypełnia całość naszego istnienia." Klucz niebieski albo opowieści biblijne zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

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G 42

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