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7 months ago

During such calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of false divinity never make their appearance.

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Part XIV - Bad influence of popular religions on morality
7 months 3 weeks ago

You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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5 months 5 days ago

The empirical research of the last fifteen years on the structure of large organizations seems to confirm the hypothesis of Herbert Simon that human cognitive limits are a basic limiting factor in determining organization structures .

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Jay R. Galbraith, "Organization design: An information processing view." Organizational Effectiveness Center and School 21 (1977). p. 21
2 months 3 weeks ago

I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.

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Letter to Hugh P. Taylor
6 months 3 weeks ago

The less somebody knows and understands himself the less great he is, however great may be his talent. For this reason our scientists are not great.

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p. 51e
5 months 2 weeks ago

To the degree to which they correspond to the given reality, thought and behavior express a false consciousness, responding to and contributing to the preservation of a false order of facts. And this false consciousness has become embodied in the prevailing technical apparatus which in turn reproduces it.

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p. 145
7 months 1 week ago

Now, justification in this life is given to us according to these three things: first by the laver of regeneration by which all sins are forgiven; then, by a struggle with the faults from whose guilt we have been absolved; the third, when our prayer is heard, in which we say: Forgive us our debts, because however bravely we fight against our faults, we are men; but the grace of God so aids as we fight in this corruptible body that there is reason for His hearing us as we ask forgiveness.

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Against Julian, Book II, ch. 8, 22. In The Fathers of the Church, Matthew A. Schumacher, tr., 1957, ISBN 0813214009 ISBN 9780813214009 pp. 83-84.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.

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7 months ago

If a workman can conveniently spare those three halfpence, he buys a pot of porter. If he cannot, he contents himself with a pint, and, as a penny saved is a penny got, he thus gains a farthing by his temperance.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article IV, p. 951.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Close thy Byron; open thy Goethe.

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Bk. I, ch. 9.
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is written, By me kings reign. This is not a phrase of the church, a metaphor of the preacher; it is a literal truth, simple and palpable. It is a law of the political world. God makes kings in the literal sense. He prepares royal races; maturing them under a cloud which conceals their origin. They appear at length crowned with glory and honour; they take their places; and this is the most certain sign of their legitimacy.

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Preface
7 months 4 days ago

In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.

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Descartes, René (1644). Principles of Philosophy.
6 months 3 weeks ago

In the name of national security, the Commission's hearings were held in secret, thereby continuing the policy which has marked the entire course of the case. This prompts my second question: If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security? Indeed, precisely the same question must be put here as was posed in France during the Dreyfus case: If the Government is so certain of its case, why has it conducted all its inquiries in the strictest secrecy? "

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16 Questions on the Assassination" in The Minority of One, ed. M.S. Arnoni (1964-09-06), pp. 6-8
6 months 3 weeks ago

We love those who hate our enemies, and if we had no enemies there would be very few people whom we should love. All this, however, is only true so long as we are concerned solely with attitudes towards other human beings. You might regard the soil as your enemy because it yields reluctantly a niggardly subsistence. You might regard Mother Nature in general as your enemy, and envisage human life as a struggle to get the better of Mother Nature. If men viewed life in this way, cooperation of the whole human race would become easy. And men could easily be brought to view life in this way if schools, newspapers, and politicians devoted themselves to this end. But schools are out to teach patriotism; newspapers are out to stir up excitement; and politicians are out to get re-elected. None of the three, therefore, can do anything towards saving the human race from reciprocal suicide.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference.

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Speech in San Francisco: Democracy Matters
4 months 4 weeks ago

To dissimulate is to pretend not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one doesn't have. One implies a presence, the other an absence. But it is more complicated than that because simulating is not pretending: "Whoever fakes an illness can simply stay in bed and make everyone believe he is ill. Whoever simulates an illness produces in himself some of the symptoms" (Littré). Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary."

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 3
5 months 1 week ago

The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class; the class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from the cradle to the grave. No less pathetic is it that so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Your church is a whore: she sells her favors to the rich.

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Act 1
5 months 2 weeks ago

For thought and speech are of a thinking and speaking subject, and if the life of the latter depends on the performance of a superimposed function, it depends on fulfilling the requirements of this function - thus it depends on those who control these requirements.

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p. 128
6 months 2 weeks ago

I'd rather be mad than feel pleasure.

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§ 3; quoted also by Eusebius of Caesarea, Praeparatio Evangelica xv. 13
7 months 1 week ago

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.

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Variant: Men go abroad to admire the heights of mountains, the mighty billows of the sea, the broad tides of rivers, the compass of the ocean, and the circuits of the stars, and pass themselves by. X
6 months 3 weeks ago

Not my idea of God, but God.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Ethics increases the range of what it is about ourselves that we can will-extending it from our actions to the motives and character traits and dispositions from which they arise. We want to be able to will the sources of our actions down to the very bottom.

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p. 135.
7 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

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q. 2, art. 3, arg. 19 This is known as the Peripatetic axiom.
6 months 2 weeks ago

To have good sense, is the first principle and fountain of writing well.

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Line 309
5 months 3 weeks ago

We can never legitimately cut loose from our archetypal foundations unless we are prepared to pay the price of a neurosis, any more than we can rid ourselves of our body and its organs without committing suicide.

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J.B. Priestley, Times Literary Supplement, London
2 months 3 weeks ago

Descartes, a genius made to blaze new paths and to go astray in them, supposed with some other philosophers that God is the only efficient cause of motion, and that every instant He communicates motion to all bodies. But this opinion is but an hypothesis which he tried to adjust to the light of faith; and in so doing he was no longer attempting to speak as a philosopher or to philosophers. Above all he was not addressing those who can be convinced only by the force of evidence.

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Ch. V Concerning the Moving Force of Matter
5 months 3 weeks ago

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.

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Letter to Jean-Richard Bloch
5 months 1 week ago

Pettiness separates; breadth unites. Let us be broad and big. Let us not overlook vital things because of the bulk of trifles confronting us. A true conception of the relation of the sexes will not admit of conqueror and conquered; it knows of but one great thing: to give of one's self boundlessly, in order to find one's self richer, deeper, better. That alone can fill the emptiness, and transform the tragedy of woman's emancipation into joy, limitless joy.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of man, and righteousness is his straight path.

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Justice and Truth, no. 100
5 months 2 weeks ago

Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.

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12:48-50 (KJV)
7 months ago

The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 786 (See also.. Public-private partnerships).
6 months 3 weeks ago

This is the contradiction of racism, colonialism, and all forms of tyranny: in order to treat a man like a dog, one must first recognize him as a man.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Things are impressed better by active than by passive repetition. ...It pays better to wait and recollect by an effort from within, than to look at the book again.

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Ch. 16
5 months 1 week ago

I must confess that my estimate of Lovecraft would not have pleased his most ardent admirers. The view I expressed in that book was that, while Lovecraft was distinctly a creative genius in his own way, his pessimism should not be taken too seriously; that it was the pessimism of a sick recluse, and had about it an element of rassentiment, a kind of desire to take revenge on the world that rejected him. In short, Lovecraft was a 19th century romantic, born in the wrong time. Most men of genius dislike their own age, but the really great ones impose their own vision on the age. The weak ones turn away into a world of gloomy fantasy.

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p. 2
3 months 1 week ago

We should become angels and not devils, that's why we have been created and born into the world. Therefore be and stick to what God has chosen you for.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) connotes a distinction from sophos. It signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. This meaning of the word still endures: the essence of philosophy is not the possession of the truth but the search for truth. ... Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

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Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy (1951) as translated by Ralph Mannheim, Ch. 1, What is Philosophy?, p. 12
6 months 3 weeks ago

I call this Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is "nothing better" now to be had.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which thou seest, and out of there substance will make other things, and again other things from the substance of them, in order that the world may ever be new.

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VII, 25 (See also Charles Darwin)
5 months 1 week ago

There are pretenses which are very sincere, and marriage is their school.

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Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo [Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue] (1920); Two Mothers
7 months 4 days ago

For Christ is Joy and Sweetness to a broken heart. Christ is a Lover of poor sinners, and such a Lover that He gave Himself for us. Now if this is true, and it is true, then are we never justified by our own righteousness.

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Chapter 3, verse 20
2 months 3 weeks ago

Children till 10. years old to serve as nurses. from 10. to 16. the boys make nails, the girls spin. at 16. go into the ground or learn trades.

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Jefferson's Farm Book as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine,
5 months 3 weeks ago

Indeed, even this last moment will be recognized like the rest, at least, be just beginning to be so.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

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Act 1
3 months 1 week ago

He who does not wish to die cannot have wished to live.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

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As quoted in Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909) by James Huneker, p. 367
2 months 3 weeks ago

For if experience has ever taught a truth, it is that a plurality in the supreme Executive will forever split into discordant factions, distract the nation, annihilate its energies, and force the nation to rally under a single head, generally an usurper. We have, I think, fallen on the happiest of all modes of constituting the Executive, that of easing and aiding our President, by permitting him to choose Secretaries of State, of Finance, of War, and of the Navy, with whom he may advise, either separately or all together, and remedy their divisions by adopting or controlling their opinions at his discretion; this saves the nation from the evils of a divided will, and secures to it a steady march in the systematic course which the President may have adopted for that of his administration.

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