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3 months 1 week ago

Just as it sometimes happens that deformed offspring are produced by deformed parents, and sometimes not, so the offspring produced by a female are sometimes female, sometimes not, but male, because the female is as it were a deformed male.

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2 months 1 week ago

In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

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(pp. 133-134)
1 month 1 week ago

If the State, modeled after the universe, is split into two spheres or classes of beings - wherein the free represent the ideas and the unfree the concrete and sensate things - then the ultimate and uppermost order remains unrealized by both. By using sensate things as tools or organs, the ideas obtain a direct relationship to the apparitions and enter into them as souls. God, however, as identity of the highest order, remains above all reality and eternally has merely an indirect relationship. If then in the higher moral order the State represents a second nature, then the divine can never have anything other than an indirect relationship to it, never can it bear any real relationship to it, and religion, if it seeks to preserve itself in unscathed pure ideality, can therefore never exist - even in the most perfect State - other than esoterically in the form of mystery cults.

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P. 51
2 months 1 week ago

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old.

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The Problem, st. 2
2 months 1 week ago

He will better comprehend the foundations and measures of decency and justice, and have livelier, and more lasting impressions of what he ought to do, by giving his opinion on cases propos'd, and reasoning with his tutor on fit instances, than by giving a silent, negligent, sleepy audience to his tutor's lectures; and much more than by captious logical disputes, or set declamations of his own, upon any question. The one sets the thoughts upon wit and false colours, and not upon truth; the other teaches fallacy, wrangling, and opiniatry; and they are both of them things that spoil the judgment, and put a man out of the way of right and fair reasoning; and therefore carefully to be avoided by one who would improve himself, and be acceptable to others.

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Sec. 98

The population of the US is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the US leads the world by miles. You would think that a country with such resources, and such a field of talent, would be able to elect a leader of the highest quality. Yet, what has happened? At the end of all the primaries and party caucuses, the speeches and the televised debates, after a year or more of non-stop electioneering bustle, who, out of that entire population of 300 million, emerges at the top of the heap? George Bush.

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"Bin Laden's victory " The Guardian

With Leibnitz the extent to which thoughts advance is the extent of the universe; where comprehension ceases, the universe ceases, and God begins: so that later it was even maintained that to be comprehended was derogatory to God, because He was thus degraded into finitude. In that procedure a beginning is made from the determinate, this and that are stated to be necessary; but since in the next place the unity of these moments is not comprehended, it is transferred to God. God is therefore, as it were, the waste channel into which all contradictions flow: Leibnitz's Théodicée is just a popular summing up such as this.

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Third division, Chapter I. - The Metaphysics of the Understanding Alternate translation: "God is, as it were, the sewer into which all contradictions flow."
3 weeks 2 days ago

That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.

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2 months 1 week ago

We are reformers in spring and summer; in autumn and winter we stand by the old - reformers in the morning, conservatives at night. Reform is affirmative, conservatism is negative; conservatism goes for comfort, reform for truth.

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p. 223
2 months 1 week ago

Supply and demand constantly determine the prices of commodities; never balance, or only coincidentally; but the cost of production, for its part, determines the oscillations of supply and demand.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 58.
1 month 1 week ago

...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.

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Letter to John Trevor (January 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 218
3 months 1 week ago
Life is, after all, not a product of morality.
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2 months 1 week ago

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

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3 months 5 days ago

What is a rebel? A man who says no. 

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Chapter 1
1 month 5 days ago

The ego involved in responsibility is me and no one else, me with whom one whould have liked to pair up a sister soul, from whom one would have substitution and sacrifice.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 116
2 months 1 week ago

To love is to be delighted by the happiness of someone, or to experience pleasure upon the happiness of another. I define this as true love.

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The Elements of True Piety (c. 1677), The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 189
2 months 4 days ago

A confession has to be part of your new life.

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p. 18e
4 weeks 1 day ago

You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.

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p. 148
1 week 4 days ago

There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea.

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3 weeks 5 days ago

Underlying even the so-called problem of knowledge there is simply this human feeling, just as underlying the inquiry into the "why," the cause, there is simply the search for the "wherefore," the end. All the rest is either to deceive oneself or to wish to deceive others; and to wish to deceive others in order to deceive oneself.

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2 months 4 weeks ago

There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is minute. Therefore the superior man is watchful over himself, when he is alone.

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1 month 6 days ago

FREEDOM, the realization of freedom: who can deny that this is what today heads the agenda of history? ... Revolutionary propaganda is in its deepest sense the negation of the existing conditions of the State, for, with respect to its innermost nature, it has no other program than the destruction of whatever order prevails at the time.... We must not only act politically, but in our politics act religiously, religiously in the sense of freedom, of which the one true expression is justice and love. Indeed, for us alone, who are called the enemies of the Christian religion, for us alone it is reserved, and even made the highest duty ... really to exercise love, this highest commandment of Christ and this only way to true Christianity. 

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"The Reaction in Germany" (1842), Bakunin's first political writings, under the pseudonym "Jules Elysard"; it was not until 1860 that he began to publicly assert a stance of firm atheism and vigorous rejection of traditional religious institutions.
1 month 1 day ago

Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

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17:26-27 (KJV)
2 months 1 week ago

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.

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Chapter II, p. 14.
2 months 2 weeks ago

But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.

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Aphorism 50
1 month 5 days ago

We are afraid of the enormity of the possible.

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1 month 1 day ago

Take heed lest any man deceive you: For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. And the gospel must first be published among all nations. But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

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13:5b-11 (KJV)
2 months 1 week ago

You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'

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Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59
1 month 6 days ago

This means that no state, howsoever democratic its forms, not even the reddest political republic - a people's republic only in the sense of the lie known as popular representation - is capable of giving the people what they need: the free organization of their own interests from below upward, without any interference, tutelage, or coercion from above. That is because no state, not even the most republican and democratic, not even the pseudo-popular state contemplated by Marx, in essence represents anything but government of the masses from above downward, by an educated and thereby privileged minority which supposedly understands the real interests of the people better than the people themselves.

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3 months 6 days 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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2 months 1 week ago

Just as the witticism brings two very different real objects under one concept, the pun brings two different concepts, by the assistance of accident, under one word.

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Volume I, Book I
3 months 1 week ago

Tolerance and apathy are the last virtues of a dying society.

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3 months 1 week ago

When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.

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2 months 1 week ago

In such a chain, too, or succession of objects, each part is caused by that which preceded it, and causes that which succeeds it. Where then is the difficulty? But the WHOLE, you say, wants a cause. I answer, that the uniting of these parts into a whole, like the uniting of several distinct countries into one kingdom, or several distinct members into one body, is performed merely by an arbitrary act of the mind, and has no influence on the nature of things. Did I show you the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable, should you afterwards ask me, what was the cause of the whole twenty. This is sufficiently explained in explaining the cause of the parts.

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Cleanthes to Demea, Part IX
2 months 3 days ago

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

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Part Three, Panopticism

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

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C 54 Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
1 month 5 days ago

Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Few men have been admired by their own households.

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Ch. 2
3 weeks 5 days ago

I am the center of my universe, the center of the universe, and in my supreme anguish I cry with Michelet, "Mon moi, ils m'arrachent mon moi!" What is a man profited if he shall gain the world and lose his own soul? (Matt. xvi. 26).

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1 week 1 day ago

A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?

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V

Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly.

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(p. 109)
2 months 1 week ago

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article I, p. 911.
2 months 4 weeks ago

Those who were best able to provide themselves with the means of security against their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee, passed the most agreeable life in each other's society; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy was such that, if one of them died before his time, the survivors did not mourn his death as if it called for sympathy.

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1 month 4 weeks ago

The core of ethics runs deep in our species and is common to human beings everywhere. It survives the most appalling hardships and the most ruthless attempts to deprive human beings of their humanity. Nevertheless, some people resist the idea that his core has a biological basis which we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors.

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Chapter 2, The Biological Basis Of Ethics, p. 27
3 weeks 2 days ago

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

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ch. 15.
2 weeks 3 days ago

A major task in organizing is to determine, first, where the knowledge is located that can provide the various kinds of factual premises that decisions require.

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p. 24.

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

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An Apology for Idlers.
2 months 1 week ago

The Christian is in a different position from other people who are trying to be good. They hope, by being good, to please God if there is one; or-if they think there is not-at least they hope to deserve approval from good men. But the Christian thinks any good he does comes from the Christ-life inside him. He does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us; just as the roof of a greenhouse does not attract the sun because it is bright, but becomes bright because the sun shines on it.

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Book II, Chapter 5, "The Practical Conclusion"
2 months 1 week ago

Either we must have war against Russia, before she has the atom bomb, or we will have to lie down and let them govern us. ... Anything is better than submission.

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Speech quoted in The Observer (21 November 1948), quoted in Robert Skildesky, Oswald Mosley (1981), p. 542 and Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (1987), p. 52
2 months 1 week ago

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

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§ 8.18

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