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4 months 3 weeks ago

The present crisis of Western democracy is a crisis in journalism.

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Journalism and the Higher Law, p. 5
7 months 3 weeks ago

I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm.

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Act 4, sc. 5
8 months 5 days ago

In order to seek truth, it is necessary once in the course of our life, to doubt, as far as possible, of all things.

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Descartes, René (1644). Principles of Philosophy.
6 months 4 weeks ago

A diversity of opinion upon almost every principle of politics, had indeed drawn a strong line of separation between them and some others. However, they were desirous not to extend the misfortune by unnecessary bitterness; they wished to prevent a difference of opinion on the commonwealth from festering into rancorous and incurable hostility. Accordingly they endeavoured that all past controversies should be forgotten; and that enough for the day should be the evil thereof. There is however a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Men may tolerate injuries, whilst they are only personal to themselves. But it is not the first of virtues to bear with moderation the indignities that are offered to our country.

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Describing the Government's position at a previous time of deep division in British politics in fact over policy on America, Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 2
6 months 3 weeks ago

Not content with real sufferings, the anxious man imposes imaginary ones on himself; he is a being for whom unreality exists, must exist; otherwise where would he obtain the ration of torment his nature demands?

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7 months 3 weeks ago

I do not give a damn about the dead. They died for the [Communist] Party and the Party can decide what it wants. I practice a live man's politics, for the living.

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Act 5, sc. 3
6 months 3 weeks ago

Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.

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Fichte Studies § 651
8 months 3 weeks ago

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

To all my friends without distinction I am ready to display my opulence: come one, come all; and whosoever likes to take a share is welcome to the wealth that lies within my soul.

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iv. 35
6 months 1 week ago

Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.

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8 months 1 week ago

You must acquire the best knowledge first, and without delay; it is the height of madness to learn what you will later have to unlearn.

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Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114
7 months 4 weeks ago

Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once?

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

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As quoted in The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1989) edited by Robert Andrews, p. 114
8 months 3 weeks ago

I joke sometimes to the effect that when I approach a part of a book where I must explain something I don't understand, I just type faster and faster and faster. Then, when I get to the part I don't understand, sheer inertia pushes me through. That's not literally true, of course, but there's something to it psychologically.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Logical analysis applied to mental phenomenon shows that there is but one law of mind, namely that ideas tend to spread continuously and to affect certain others which stand to them in a peculiar relation of affectibility. In this spreading they lose intensity, and especially the power of affecting others, but gain generality and become welded with other ideas.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

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III, 11
7 months 4 weeks ago

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
6 months 3 weeks ago

His disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?" Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."

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6 months 3 weeks ago

We are firmly convinced that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy. In a republic, there are at least brief periods when the people, while continually exploited, is not oppressed; in the monarchies, oppression is constant. The democratic regime also lifts the masses up gradually to participation in public life--something the monarchy never does. Nevertheless, while we prefer the republic, we must recognise and proclaim that whatever the form of government may be, so long as human society continues to be divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation of the majorities by the minorities. The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised.

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5 months 1 week ago

[H]uman nature as encoded in our DNA isn't immutable. Mankind's barbaric track-record to date is an unreliable guide to the future. If Homo sapiens' nastier alleles and their more sinister combinations can be silenced or edited out of the genome, and new improved code-sequences inserted instead, then the pessimists will be confounded. A major discontinuity in the development of life lies ahead. Providentially, we've learned that the DNA-driven world isn't written in God-given proprietary code it would be hubris to tamper with, but in bug-ridden open source amenable to improvement.

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Utopian Pharmacology: Mental Health in the Third Millennium MDMA and Beyond, BLTC Research, last updated 2020
7 months 4 weeks ago

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

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As quoted in the Communist Manifesto (1848) p. 7
8 months 6 days ago

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

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Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
5 months 3 weeks ago

Since Sputnik, the earth has been wrapped in a dome-like blanket or bubble. Nature ended.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophy is not politics, and we do our best, within our all-too-human limitations, to seek the truth, not to score points against opponents. There is little satisfaction in gaining an easy triumph over a weak opponent while ignoring better arguments against your views. 

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'Last Generation': A Response, The New York Times, June 16, 2010.
8 months 2 days ago

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expence, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.

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Chapter III, p. 381.
5 months 5 days ago

For those who live inside a myth, it seems a self-evident fact. Human progress is a fact of this kind. If you accept it you have a place in the grand march of humanity. Humankind is, of course, not marching anywhere. 'Humanity' is a fiction composed from billions of individuals for each of whom life is singular and final. But the myth of progress is extremely potent. When it loses its power those who have lived by it are - as Conrad put it, describing Kayerts and Carlier - 'like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedoms'. When faith in the future is taken from them, so is the image they have of themselves. If they then opt for death, it is because without that faith they can no longer make sense of living.

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An Old Chaos: The Call of Progress (pp. 6-7)
1 month 3 weeks ago

"We reason deeply, when we forcibly feel."
- Mary Wollstonecraft

See biography for Mary Wollstonecraft:
https://civilsimian.com/Mary-Wollstonecraft

Read Mary Wollstonecraft's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/126/content

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7 months 3 days ago

As for me, I am deeply a democrat; this is why I am in no way a socialist. Democracy and socialism cannot go together. You can't have it both ways.

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Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848).
6 months 4 weeks ago

The secret of Hegel's dialectic lies ultimately in this alone, that it negates theology through philosophy in order then to negate philosophy through theology. Both the beginning and the end are constituted by theology; philosophy stands in the middle as the negation of the first positedness, but the negation of the negation is again theology. At first everything is overthrown, but then everything is reinstated in its old place, as in Descartes. The Hegelian philosophy is the last grand attempt to restore a lost and defunct Christianity through philosophy, and, of course, as is characteristic of the modern era, by identifying the negation of Christianity with Christianity itself.

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Part II, Section 21
6 months 3 weeks ago

I react like everyone else, even like those I most despise; but I make up for it by deploring every action I commit, good or bad.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

If you know these things, happy you are if you do them.

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13:17, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
8 months 4 weeks ago

Death cannot explain itself. The earnestness consists precisely in this, that the observer must explain it to himself.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.

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4 months 1 week ago

But no wall can be erected against Fortune which she cannot take by storm; let us strengthen our inner defences. If the inner part be safe, man can be attacked, but never captured.

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7 months 4 weeks ago

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.

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Chapter VI, Attitude of Men of the Present Day to War Variant translation: Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
6 months 4 weeks ago

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man...

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Part 3, Chapter ?
6 months 3 weeks ago

Third, these general ideas are not mere words, nor do they consist in this, that certain concrete facts will every time happen under certain descriptions of conditions; but they are just as much, or rather far more, living realities than the feelings themselves out of which they are concreted. And to say that mental phenomenon are governed by law does not mean merely that they are describable by a general formula; but that there is a living idea, a conscious continuum of feeling which pervades them, and to which they are docile.

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4 months 6 days ago

To be honest, as critical as I am of people for being anti-human, I love everybody so much for sinking on this ship with me. Admit it or not, we're all dying together.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

The pleasure is only for a little moment, and it [passes] like a dream, and a man at the end thereof finds death through knowing it.

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Maxim no. 18. Translated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Teaching Of Amenem Apt Son Of Kanekht (London: Martin Hopkinson and Company Ltd, 1924) p. 58
6 months 3 weeks ago

For a long time - always, in fact - I have known that life here on earth is not what I needed and that I wasn't able to deal with it; for this reason and for this reason alone, I have acquired a touch of spiritual pride, so that my existence seems to me the degradation and the erosion of a psalm.

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6 months 6 days ago

A few years ago I had occasion to visit Peru, and I got to know a fine philosopher and a truly wonderful human being-Francisco Miro Casada. Miro Casada has been an idealist all his life, while being, at the same time, a man of great experience (a former member of several governments and a former Ambassador to France). I found him a man who represents the social democratic vision in its purest form. Talking to him, and to my other friends in Peru (who represented quite a spectrum of political opinion), I heard something that was summed up in a remark he, Miro Casada, made to me, "Whenever you have a Republican president, we get a wave of military dictatorships in Latin America".

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
6 months 1 week ago

Men and women meet now to be idle. Is it extraordinary that they do not know each other, and that, in their mutual ignorance, they form no surer friendships? Did they meet to do something together, then indeed they might form some real tie. But, as it is, they are not there, it is only a mask which is there - a mouth-piece of ready-made sentences about the "topics of the day"; and then people rail against men for choosing a woman "for her face" - why, what else do they see?

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8 months 1 week ago

The propositions which are true and evident must of necessity be employed even by those who contradict them.

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Book II, ch. 20, 1

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