
Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute precision to all the precepts of geometry as to all the properties of space there demonstrated, this being the subjective condition, not hypothetically but intuitively given, of every phenomenon in which nature can ever be revealed to the senses.
My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.
It is the most advanced industrial society which feels most directly threatened by the rebellion, because it is here that the social necessity of repression and alienation, of servitude and heteronomy is most transparently unnecessary, and unproductive in terms of human progress. Therefore the cruelty and violence mobilized in the struggle against the threat, therefore the monotonous regularity with which the people are made familiar with, and accustomed to inhuman attitudes and behavior-to wholesale killing as patriotic act.
I shall assume that your silence gives consent.
Man consists in Truth. If he exposes Truth, he exposes himself. If he betrays Truth, he betrays himself. We speak not here of lies, but of acting against Conviction.
That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.
Kierkegaard's individualistic interpretation of 'the negation of philosophy' inevitably developed a fierce opposition to Western rationalism. .... According to Kierkegaard, the individual is not the knowing but only the 'ethically existing subjectivity.' The sole reality that matters to him is his own 'ethical existence'.
I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.
Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.
Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.
This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.
The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakes impersonality for impartiality.
My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth, at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.
Man is a creature who lives not upon bread alone, but principally by catchwords; and the little rift between the sexes is astonishingly widened by simply teaching one set of catchwords to the girls and another to the boys.
The happiness which belongs to man, is that state in which he enjoys as many of the good things, and suffers as few of the evils incident to human nature as possible; passing his days in a smooth course of permanent tranquility. A wise man, though deprived of sight or hearing, may experience happiness in the enjoyment of the good things which yet remain; and when suffering torture, or laboring under some painful disease, can mitigate the anguish by patience, and can enjoy, in his afflictions, the consciousness of his own constancy.
By the ruler's cultivation of his own character, the duties of universal obligation are set forth. By honoring men of virtue and talents, he is preserved from errors of judgment.
To teach him betimes to love and be good-natur'd to others, is to lay early the true foundation of an honest man; all injustice generally springing from too great love of ourselves and too little of others.
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.
Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful.
If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.
Nowadays, to say that we are clever animals is not to say something philosophical and pessimistic but something political and hopeful - namely, if we can work together, we can make ourselves into whatever we are clever and courageous enough to imagine ourselves becoming. This is to set aside Kant's question "What is man?" and to substitute the question "What sort of world can we prepare for our great grandchildren?"
When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."
Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it.
Character is higher than intellect...A great soul will be strong to live, as well as strong to think.
In the beginning there were two primal spirits,Twins spontaneously active,These are the Good and the Evil, in thought, and in word, and in deed.
The stars are scattered all over the sky like shimmering tears, there must be great pain in the eye from which they trickled.
Among other men Reason awakes in another form-as the impulse towards Personal Freedom, which, although it never opposes the mild rule of the inward Instinct which it loves, yet rises in rebellion against the pressure of a stranger Instinct which has usurped its rights; and in this awakening it breaks the chains,-not of Reason as Instinct itself, but of the Instinct of foreign natures clothed in the garb of external power.
If death is as horrible as is claimed, how is it that after the passage of a certain period of time we consider happy any being, friend or enemy, who has ceased to live?
Cut not fire with a sword. Symbol 9 Variant translation: Poke not the fire with a sword.
I cannot read a sentence in the book of the Hindoos without being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as the Ganges, and seems as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh Mounts. Even at this late hour, unworn by time with a native and inherent dignity it wears the English dress as indifferently as the Sanscrit.
If it were true what in the end would be gained? Nothing but another truth. Is this such a mighty advantage? We have enough old truths still to digest, and even these we would be quite unable to endure if we did not sometimes flavor them with lies.
The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.
Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent.
Since Sputnik there is no Nature. Nature is an item contained in a man-made environment of satellites and information.
...no Monarchy limited or unlimited, nor any of the old Republics, can possibly be safe as long as this strange, nameless, wild, enthusiastic thing is established in the Center of Europe.
He felt neither guilt nor distress at the pleasure with which he was now filled by the proximity of this young creature, and when he discovered in himself even physical symptoms of his inclination he did not take fright, but continued cheerfully and serenely to see Nick whenever the ordinary run of his duties suggested it, congratulating himself upon the newly achieved solidity and rational calm of his spiritual life.
Some of their faults people readily admit, but others not so readily.
This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.
There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.
To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.
I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.
Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.
To explain the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer.
It is as useless for a person to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize its existence and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else (gnothi seauton). Not until a person has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning.
We ought neither to fasten our ship to one small anchor nor our life to a single hope.
We need to augment and amend the existing body of classical and neoclassical economic theory to achieve a more realistic picture of economic process.
But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
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