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Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

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Chapter XVII.
6 months 1 week ago

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false.

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Heat the Hornet, a review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True
7 months 4 weeks ago

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workman. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.

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Chapter VIII, p. 80.
7 months 3 weeks ago

It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.

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Letter to Rachel Gleason Brooks, May 5, 1930
7 months 3 weeks ago

Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.

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La Henriade, chant troisième, l.41, 1722
6 months 1 week ago

The state of conformity is an imitation of grace. By a strange mystery - which is connected with the power of the social element - a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints. But the power of the social element makes these virtues natural.

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Accordingly they need a compensation. p. 124
6 months 2 weeks ago

Even after his conversion, the true 'apostate' is not primarily committed to the positive contents of his new belief and to the realization of its aims. He is motivated by the struggle against the old belief and lives on for its negation. The apostate does not affirm his new convictions for their own sake; he is engaged in a continuous chain of acts of revenge against his own spiritual past. In reality he remains a captive of this past, and the new faith is merely a handy frame of reference for negating and rejecting the old. As a religious type, the apostate is therefore at the opposite pole from the 'resurrected,' whose life is transformed by a new faith which is full of intrinsic meaning and value.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 66-67
6 months 1 week ago

We might liken the 'two selves' to Laurel and Hardy. Ollie is the objective mind, 'you'. Stan is the subjective mind, the 'hidden you'. But Stan happens to be in control of your energy supply. So if you wake up feeling low and discouraged, you (Ollie) tend to transmit your depression to Stan, who fails to send you energy, which makes you feel lower than ever. This vicious circle is the real cause of most mental illness.

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p. 121
7 months 4 weeks ago

I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge and an impatient eagerness to advance, also satisfaction at each progressive step. There was a time when I thought that all this could constitute the honor of humanity, and I despised the mob, which knows nothing about it. Rousseau set me straight. This dazzling excellence vanishes; I learn to honor men, and would consider myself much less useful than common laborers if I did not believe that this consideration could give all the others a value, to establish the rights of humanity.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 55
7 months 2 weeks ago

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through life; for death comes upon thee at last, and the perishable part falls to the ground.

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4 months 4 days ago

The entire heaven, making its parts everywhere harmonize with him, is filled with spirits emanating out of the Sun. For this god is ruler of five orbits in the heavens, and whilst traversing three out of these orbits, he produces in three the Graces, themselves three in number, the remaining circles form the Scales to the Balance of supreme Necessity.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

This to the right, that to the left hand strays, and all are wrong, but wrong in different ways.

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Book II, satire iii, line 50 (trans. Conington)
6 months 1 week ago

The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.

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p. 61
5 months 4 days ago

Any plea ... for institutionalized risk-assessment, beefed-up bioethics panels, academic review bodies, worse-case scenario planning, more intensive computer simulations, systematic long-term planning and the institutionalized study of existential risks is admirable. But so is urgent action to combat the global pandemic of suffering. "The easiest pain to bear is someone else's"

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Objections, No 34
8 months 1 week ago

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man's task.

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Book I, ch. 27, § 1.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Desire, to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man; so that Man is distinguished, not only by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 26
4 months 3 weeks ago

Let men be happy, informed, skillful, well behaved, and productive.

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Freedom and the control of men (1955/1956) American Scholar, 25 (1), 47-65
7 months 2 weeks ago

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

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Second Thesis

In America, more than anywhere else in the world, care has been taken constantly to trace clearly distinct spheres of action for the two sexes, and both are required to keep in step, but along paths that are never the same.

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Book Three, Chapter XII.
7 months 3 weeks ago

I do not believe that I am now dreaming, but I cannot prove that I am not. I am, however, quite certain that I am having certain experiences, whether they be those of a dream or those of waking life.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 172
5 months 4 weeks ago

Our tools are extensions of our purposes, and so we find it natural to make metaphorical attributions of intentionality to them; but I take it no philosophical ice is cut by such examples.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

In philosophy the race is to the one who can run slowest-the one who crosses the finish line last.

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p. 40e
4 months 5 days ago

The brutality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations ... often does not appear to him at all as a moral delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical behavior, which draws the objective consequences of the situation.

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"Domination" (1908), in On Individuality and Social Forms (1971), p. 110
4 months 6 days ago

Camus said there is only really one serious philosophical question, which is whether or not to commit suicide. I think there are four or five serious philosophical questions: The first one is: Who started it? The second is: Are we going to make it? The third is: Where are we going to put it? The fourth is: Who's going to clean up? And the fifth: Is it serious?

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Out Of Your Mind (2004), Audio lecture 1: The Nature of Consciousness: A Game That's Worth The Candle
3 months 3 weeks ago

Our lives are guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes. Our words, our phrases, our forms and processes and modes of thought, are common property, fashioned and perfected from age to age; an heirloom which every succeeding generation inherits as a precious deposit and a sacred trust to be handled on to the next one, not unchanged but enlarged and purified, with some clear marks of its proper handiwork. Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. An awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

The cup of life is not so shallow

That we have drained the best 

That all the wine at once we swallow 

And lees make all the rest.

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1827
7 months 3 weeks ago

The world is sacred because it gives an inkling of a meaning that escapes us.

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p. 280
8 months 3 weeks ago

I may live for thirty years, or perhaps forty, or maybe just one day: therefore I have resolved to use this day, or whatever I have to say in these thirty years or whatever I have to say this one day I may have to live - I have resolved to use it in such a way that if not one day in my whole past life has been used well, this one by the help of God will be.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

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Thomas Jefferson Letter (23 Dec 1790) to Martha Jefferson Randolph. Collected in B.L. Rayner (ed.), Sketches of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of Thomas Jefferson (1832), 192.
5 months 4 weeks ago

We will never know if an advertisement or opinion poll has had a real influence on individual or collective wills, but we will never know either what would have happened if there had been no opinion poll or advertisement.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be, and think each day that dawns the last you'll see; For so the hour that greets you unforeseen, will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.

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Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)
8 months 3 days ago

We must remove the Decalogue out of sight and heart.

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Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette, 4, 188. As cited by Jonathan Ramachandran (January 1, 2019), Lake of Fire - Hope for the Wicked One Day? - Essays in First Christianity, 5 Loaf 2 Fish Publications, p. 1264.
7 months 2 days ago

The proximity between the counterfeit and the good coin does not make the good coin counterfeit nor the counterfeit good. In the same way the proximity between truth and falsehood does not make truth falsehood nor falsehood truth.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 33.
7 months 3 weeks ago

My friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, "What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?" and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

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"On Science Fiction". Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2002). p. 67.
7 months 4 weeks ago

Extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme ignorance of self.

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Part IV, Prop. LV
7 months 3 weeks ago

Our responsibility is much greater than we might have supposed, because it involves all mankind.

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Existentialism and Human Emotions
6 months 3 weeks ago

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

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Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations
2 months 1 week ago

I've noticed this more than anything. It's not so much that we tell people how to be. It's more that we teach them what to avoid, as well as simple respect for the space of others. Do what you want, but definitely not that....

 

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7 months 2 weeks ago

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.

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p. 25
4 months 1 week ago

Just as we suffer from excess in all things, so we suffer from excess in literature; thus we learn our lessons, not for life, but for the lecture room.

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Line 12 Alternate translation: Not for life, but for school do we learn. (translator unknown) Alternate translation: We are taught for the schoolroom, not for life. (translator unknown).
6 months 4 weeks ago

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

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Essai sur le Mérite de la Vertu (1745)
6 months 2 weeks ago

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

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14:06
7 months 2 weeks ago

Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 27, 14.

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