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8 months 2 weeks ago

Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character.

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"The Spirit of the Age, I", Examiner (9 January 1831), p. 20 Full text online
8 months 1 week ago

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill? Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill.

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Fragment
7 months 1 week ago

Thus then does the Doctrine of Knowledge, which in its substance is the realisation of the absolute Power of intelligising which has now been defined, end with the recognition of itself as a mere Schema in a Doctrine of Wisdom, although indeed a necessary and indispensable means to such a Doctrine: - a Schema, the sole aim of which is, with the knowledge thus acquired, - by which knowledge alone a Will, clear and intelligible to itself and reposing upon itself without wavering or perplexity, is possible, - to return wholly into Actual Life; - not into the Life of blind and irrational Instinct which we have laid bare in all its nothingness, but into the Divine Life which shall become visible to us.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.

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Section 4
8 months 2 weeks ago

I shall need only myself to be happy.

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As quoted in The prophetic voice, 1758-1778 by Lester G. Crocke, p. 148.
4 months 1 week ago

That the state is an entity and in fact the decisive entity rests upon its political character.

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4 months 1 week ago

They also gave it the title of "opinion," because truth and falsity lie in opinion. And they called it "movement," "generation," "change," "division," "length," "multiplication," "addition," "kinship," "relativity," "the ratio in proportionality." For the relation of two numbers is of every conceivable form.

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On the Dyad
4 months 1 week ago

Let your occupations be few, says the sage, "if you would lead a tranquil life."

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IV, 24
7 months 4 days ago

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought.

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As quoted in Philosophy for a Time of Crisis : An Interpretation, with Key Writings by Fifteen Great Modern Thinkers (1959) by Adrienne Koch, Ch. 18, "Karl Jaspers : A New Humanism"
5 months 1 week ago

For both the pragmatic... and... moral reasons... liberalism became the dominant doctrine of the 20th century, and should... continue to be defended....

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12:32
8 months 2 weeks ago

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

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Part IV, Preface; translation by R. H. M. Elwes
8 months 2 weeks ago

A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the State with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and they are commonly treated by it as enemies.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Popular escapist fiction enchants adult readers without challenging them to be educated for critical consciousness.

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7 months 1 week ago

The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process.

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The Theory of Psychoanalysis
7 months 1 week ago

No longer ask me for my program: isn't breathing one?

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6 months 1 week ago

We live invested in an electric information environment that is quite as imperceptible to us as water is to fish.

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(p. 5)
7 months 2 weeks ago

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

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Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792), volume vii, p. 50
7 months ago

History is full of religious wars; but, we must take care to observe, it was not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

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No. 65. (Usbek writing to his wives)
8 months 1 week ago

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

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8 months 4 weeks ago

The superfluities of the rich are the necessaries of the poor. They who possess superfluities, possess the goods of others.

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Patrologia Latina, vol. 37, p. 1922
5 months 3 weeks ago

It doesn't matter that it can't last, that we don't find it more often. To know that there is such perfection, that there has been such perfection - it is worth living for. It exists. It has been - it is. One can contemplate it and feel complete peace.

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5 months 4 days ago

The panting breathless haste and vehemence of a man struggling in the thick of battle for life and salvation; this is the mood he is in!

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8 months 3 weeks ago

There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices.

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7 months 1 week ago

Every interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text. An obscure dream, taken by itself, can rarely be interpreted with any certainty, so that I attach little importance to the interpretation of single dreams. With a series of dreams we can have more confidence in our interpretations, for the later dreams correct the mistakes we have made m handling those that went before. We are also better able, in a dream series, to recognize the important contents and basic themes.

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p. 14
4 months 1 week ago

Militarism in both its forms - as war and as armed peace - is a legitimate child, a logical result of capitalism, which can only be overcome with the destruction of capitalism, and that hence whoever honestly desires world peace and liberation from the tremendous burden of armaments must also desire Socialism. Only in this way can real Social Democratic enlightenment and recruiting be carried on in connection with the armaments debate.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

It seems to me, that if the matter of our sun and planets and all the matter of the universe, were evenly scattered throughout all the heavens, and every particle had an innate gravity towards all the rest, and the whole of space throughout which this matter was scattered was but finite, the matter on [toward] the outside of this space would, by its gravity, tend towards all the matter on the inside, and, by consequence, fall down into the middle of the whole space, and there compose one great spherical mass. But if the matter was evenly disposed throughout an infinite space it could never convene into one mass; but some of it would convene into one mass and some into another, so as to make an infinite number of great masses, scattered at great distances from one another throughout all that infinite space.

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Four Letters to Bentley (1692) first letter
8 months 1 week ago

One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief. If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

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Pt II, p. 162
7 months 6 days ago

Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.

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19:4-6 (KJV)
9 months 2 weeks ago

Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Except are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.

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8 months 4 days ago

All of us, I believe, are fortunate to have been born.

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"Death" (1970), p. 7.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Near-ubiquitous technological monitoring is a consequence of the decline of cohesive societies that has occurred alongside the rising demand for individual freedom.

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In the Puppet Theatre: An Iron Mountain and a Shifting Spectacle (p. 121)
6 months 1 week ago

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

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Maxim 469
4 months 3 weeks ago

For a parallel to the lesson of atomic theory regarding the limited applicability of such customary idealizations, we must in fact turn to quite other branches of science, such as psychology, or even to that kind of epistemological problems with which already thinkers like Buddha and Lao Tzu have been confronted, when trying to harmonize our position as spectators and actors in the great drama of existence.

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Speech on quantum theory at Celebrazione del Secondo Centenario della Nascita di Luigi Galvani, Bologna, Italy
8 months 2 weeks ago

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.

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Sec. 139
7 months 6 days ago

The concept of freedom, as the Philosophy of Right has shown, follows the pattern of free ownership. As a result, the history of the world that Hegel looks out upon exalts and enshrines the history of the middle-class, which based itself on this pattern. There is a stark truth in Hegel's strangely certain announcement that history has reached its end. But it announces the funeral of a class, not of history.

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P. 227
5 months 4 days ago

They understood in their heart that it was indispensable to be brave; that Odin would have no favor for them, but despise and thrust them out, if they were not brave. Consider too whether there is not something in this! It is an everlasting duty, valid in our day as in that, the duty of being brave. Valor is still value. The first duty for a man is still that of subduing Fear. We must get rid of Fear; we cannot act at all till then.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Nothing is so fatal to Religion as indifference which is, at least, half Infidelity.

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Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
6 months 3 weeks ago

The pornographic face says nothing. It has no expressivity or mystery.

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8 months 1 week ago

Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul.

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(p19)
5 months 4 weeks ago

So far from the posterior lobe, the posterior cornu, and the hippocampus minor, being structures peculiar to and characteristic of man, as they have been over and over again asserted to be, even after the publication of the clearest demonstration of the reverse, it is precisely these structures which are the most marked cerebral characters common to man with the apes. They are among the most distinctly Simian peculiarities which the human organism exhibits.

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Ch.2, p. 119
7 months 1 week ago

The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor - hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

The old often envy the young; when they do, they are apt to treat them cruelly.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The creative imagination of the Hindus has conceived no loftier and holier character than Sita; the literature of the world has not produced a higher ideal of womanly love, womanly truth, and womanly devotion.

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The Wisdom Of China And India by ) Lin Yutang
8 months 2 weeks ago

In reality, during the continuance of any one regulated proportion, between the respective values of the different values of the different metals in the coin, the value of the most precious metal regulates the value of the whole coin.

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Chapter V, p. 50.
7 months 1 week ago

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Can the "word" be pinned down to either one period or one church? All churches are, of course, only more or less unsuccessful attempts to represent the unseen to the mind.

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Letter quoted in Florence Nightingale in Rome : Letters Written by Florence Nightingale in Rome in the Winter of 1847-1848 (1981)

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