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6 months 2 weeks ago

When you are reading God's Word, it is not the obscure passages that bind you but what you understand, and with that you comply at once. If you understood only one single passage in all of Holy Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all, but you do not first have to sit down and ponder the obscure passages.

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2 months 1 week ago

What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

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Carlyle, Essays, On History. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The beauty or uncomeliness of many things, in good and ill breeding, will be better learnt, and make deeper impressions on them, in the examples of others, than from any rules or instructions can be given about them.

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Sec. 82
1 month 2 weeks ago

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rainsnew flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

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Book XI, line 652
4 months 2 weeks ago

Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can.

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Book VI, Chapter 3: Conversations and Exhortations of Father Zossima
4 months 3 weeks ago

Art is the perfection of nature.

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Section 16
4 months 2 weeks ago

...what was done in France was a wild attempt to methodize anarchy; to perpetuate and fix disorder. That it was a foul, impious, monstrous thing, wholly out of the course of moral nature. He undertook to prove, that it was generated in treachery, fraud, falsehood, hypocrisy, and unprovoked murder. ... That by the terror of assassination they had driven away a very great number of the members, so as to produce a false appearance of a majority.-That this fictitious majority had fabricated a constitution, which as now it stands, is a tyranny far beyond any example that can be found in the civilized European world of our age.

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p. 376
1 month 1 week ago

Fundamental ideas play the most essential role in forming a physical theory. Books on physics are full of complicated mathematical formulae. But thought and ideas, not formulae, are the beginning of every physical theory. The ideas must later take the mathematical form of a quantitative theory, to make possible the comparison with experiment.

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The Evolution of Physics (1938) (co-written with Leopold Infeld)
1 month 2 weeks ago

During the last three centuries, there has been, by virtue of the Inquisition, a greater enjoyment of peace, and happiness, in Spain, than in the other nations of Europe.

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p. 57
4 months 2 weeks ago

Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.

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"On Philosophy: To Dorothea," in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 421
5 months 1 week ago

He used to reason as follows: 'Everything belongs to the gods; the wise are friends of the gods; friends hold all things in common; ergo, everything belongs to the wise.'

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 37, as reported in Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes as translated by Robin Hard (Oxford: 2012), p. 13
4 months 2 weeks ago

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.

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Preface
1 month 1 week ago

Shamed, dishonored, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics - as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity - so it appears in all its hideous nakedness.

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Ch. 1, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (1970), trns: Mary-Alice Waters
5 months 3 weeks ago

If you don't know how to die, don't worry; Nature will tell you what to do on the spot, fully and adequately. She will do this job perfectly for you; don't bother your head about it.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.

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Section 1 : Of The Different Species of Philosophy
4 months 1 week ago

We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade to the void.

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1 month 1 week ago

I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care about money. Decorations, titles or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin, and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production.

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Introduction, p. 14.
4 months 2 weeks ago

A living language can stand on a higher level of culture in comparison with another, but it can never in itself attain that perfection of development which a dead language quite easily attains. In the latter the connotation of words is fixed, and the possibilities of suitable combinations will also gradually become exhausted. Hence, he who wishes to speak this language must speak it just as it is; but, after he has once learnt to do this, the language speaks itself in his mouth and thinks and imagines for him.

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Consequences of the Difference p. 85
5 months 2 weeks ago

United States! the ages plead, - Present and Past in under-song, - Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

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Ode, st. 5
3 months 3 days ago

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Of all the media of expression employed by man (and let us never forget that they are many) none are so unstable, none so quick to change their meaning, as words. Even sculpture, architecture, painting, in their noblest works, speak differently under different conditions; but these arts are relatively immortal compared with speech.

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4 months 4 days ago

The philosophical thought of Kant, the supreme flower of the Germanic people, has its roots in the religious feeling of Luther, and it is not possible for Kantism, especially the practical part of it, to take root and bring forth flower and fruit in peoples who have not undergone the experience of the Reformation and who perhaps were incapable of experiencing it. Kantism is Protestant, and we Spaniards are fundamentally Catholic. And if Krause struck some roots here - more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed - it is because Krause has roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl has demonstrated in his Geschichte des Pietismus, has specifically Catholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather the persistence of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestant rationalism. And this explains why not a few Catholic thinkers in Spain became followers of Krause.

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4 months 1 week ago

For the first time in the revolutionary movement of 1848, for the first time since 1793, a nation surrounded by superior counter-revolutionary forces dares to counter the cowardly counter-revolutionary fury by revolutionary passion, the terreur blanche by the terreur rouge. For the first time after a long period we meet with a truly revolutionary figure, a man who in the name of his people dares to accept the challenge of a desperate struggle, who for his nation is Danton and Carnot in one person - Lajos Kossuth.

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The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).
4 months 3 weeks ago

He who seeks freedom for anything but freedom's self is made to be a slave.

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p. 204
4 months 1 week ago

Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws is fear.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27
2 months 2 weeks ago

I agree with Paul that love is more important than faith and hope; but so are honesty, integrity, and moral courage. The world needs less faith and more love and nobility.

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Preface
5 months 3 weeks ago

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

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Book I, Ch. 40. Of Good and Evil, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
5 months 2 weeks ago

As to the having and possessing of things, teach them to part with what they have, easily and freely to their friends, and let them find by experience that the most liberal has always the most plenty, with esteem and commendation to boot, and they will quickly learn to practise it.

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Sec. 110
5 months 1 week ago

Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. (2) As Plutarch notes... you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.

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4 months 1 week ago

The sin of pride may be a small or a great thing in someone's life, and hurt vanity a passing pinprick or a self-destroying or even murderous obsession. Possibly, more people kill themselves and others out of hurt vanity than out of envy, jealousy, malice or desire for revenge.

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The Philosopher's Pupil (1983) p. 76.
2 months 2 days ago

To no creature besides man has been given wisdom, foresight, industry, and reflection.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

It is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behaviour.

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6 months 2 days ago

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

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Book V, lines 1152-1153 (tr. Rouse)
5 months 1 week ago

The disciple must break the glass, or better the mirror, the reflection, his infinite speculation on the master. And start to speak.

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Cogito and The History of Madness, p.37 (Routledge classics edition)
5 months 2 weeks ago

If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.

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"What Makes a Life Significant?"
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is easy to see that the existing generation are conspiring with a beneficence, which, in its working for coming generations, sacrifices the passing one, which infatuates the most selfish men to act against their private interest for the public welfare. We build railroads, we know not for what or for whom; but one thing is certain, that we who build will receive the very smallest share of benefit. Benefit will accrue; they are essential to the country, but that will be felt not until we are no longer countrymen. We do the like in all matters: - 'Man's heart the Almighty to the Future setBy secret and inviolable springs.'

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5 months 2 weeks ago

In the deepest heart of all of us there is a corner in which the ultimate mystery of things works sadly.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
5 months 2 weeks ago

There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority ... The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

When the evolutionary process shifts from biology to software technology the body becomes the old hardware environment. The human body is now a probe, a laboratory for experiments.

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(p. 180)
4 months 3 weeks ago

...or justify inhumane treatment, human over human, because animals do it...

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6 months 2 days ago

Cease therefore to be dismayed by the mere novelty and so to reject reason from your mind with loathing: weigh the questions rather with keen judgment and if they seem to you to be true, surrender, or if the thing is false, gird yourself to the encounter.

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Book II, lines 1040-1043 (tr. Munro)
5 months 2 weeks ago

Capitals accumulate faster than the population; thus wages; thus population; thus grain prices; thus the difficulty of production and hence the exchange values.

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Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 271.
5 months 2 weeks ago

I needed to be made to feel that there was real, permanent happiness in tranquil contemplation. Wordsworth taught me this, not only without turning away from, but with a greatly increased interest in the common feelings and common destiny of human beings.

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(p. 148)
4 months 2 days ago

Nature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process.

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Ch. 4: "The Eighteenth Century", p. 102
4 months 2 weeks ago

I hate tyranny, at least I think I do; but I hate it most of all where most are concerned in it. The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. If, as society is constituted in these large countries of France and England, full of unequal property, I must make my choice (which God avert!) between the despotism of a single person, or of the many, my election is made. As much injustice and tyranny has been practised in a few months by a French democracy, as in all the arbitrary monarchies in Europe in the forty years of my observation.

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Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 96
2 months 1 week ago

Human progress having reached a high level through respect for the liberty and dignity of men, it has become desirable to re-affirm these evident truths: That differences of race, color, and creed are natural, and that diverse groups, institutions, and ideas are stimulating factors in the development of man; That to promote harmony in diversity is a responsible task of religion and statesmanship; That since no individual can express the whole truth, it is essential to treat with understanding and good will those whose views differ from our own; That by the testimony of history intolerance is the door to violence, brutality and dictatorship; and That the realization of human interdependence and solidarity is the best guard of civilization.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

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November 8, 1838

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