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5 months 2 weeks ago

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

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Page 159
5 months 1 week ago

My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.

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1 month 1 week ago

The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.

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5 months 1 week ago

Be ruled by time, the wisest counsellor of all.

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Pericles (Tr. Dryden and Clough)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Each time I fail to think about death, I have the impression of cheating, of deceiving someone in me.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

How can one be late to the end of history? A question for today. It is serious because it obliges one to reflect again, as we have been doing since Hegel, on what happens and deserves the name of event, after history; it obliges one to wonder if the end of history is but the end of a certain concept of history.

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Injunctions of Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago

Friendship arises out of mere companionship when two or more of the companions discover that they have in common some insight or interest or even taste which the others do not share and which, till that moment, each believed to be his own unique treasure (or burden). The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, "What? You too? I thought I was the only one."

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one's own nature.

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Act I.
5 months 2 weeks ago

We're at such a low point in the American empire. Its spiritual decay and its immoral decadence are so profound that we have to begin on the foundational level of a spiritual awakening and a moral reckoning. Organized greed. Institutionalized hatred. Routinized indifference to the lives of poor and working people of all colors. We've got to get beyond an analysis of the predatory capitalist processes that have saturated every nook and cranny of the culture. We've got to get beyond the ways in which the political system has been colonized by corporate wealth and by monied elite. We've got to get beyond that sense of impotence of the citizenry. These are all the signs of an empire in decline. The only thing that we have to add is military overreach, and we see that as well. Speaking to Chris Hedges about his decision to run for president in 2024.

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Chris Hedges: Dr. Cornel West Announces He Is Running for President. Scheerpost. June 5, 2023
4 months 2 weeks ago

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

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Ch. 4
5 months 3 weeks ago

It may indeed be doubted, whether butcher's meat is any where a necessary of life. Grain and other vegetables, with the help of milk, cheese, and butter, or oil, where butter is not to be had, it is known from experience, can, without any butcher's meat, afford the most plentiful, the most wholesome, the most nourishing, and the most invigorating diet.

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Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II.
2 months 4 days ago

That man lives badly who does not know how to die well.

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Chapter 11, Section 4
1 month 4 weeks ago

Must we then speak of this subject also: and shall we write concerning things that are not to be told, and shall we publish things not to be divulged, and secrets not to be spoken aloud? Who indeed is Attis or Gallos; who the Mother of the Gods; what is the reason of this rule of Chastity; moreover for what cause has such an institution been established among us from remote antiquity; handed down to us indeed from the most ancient of the Phrygians, but accepted in the first place by the Greeks - and those not the vulgar herd, but the Athenians - taught by the event that they had not done well in ridiculing him that was performing the rites of the Great Mother. For they are said to have insulted and driven off the Gallos, as one who was making innovations in religion: because they did not understand the character of the goddess, or how that she was the very "Deo", "Rhea," and " "Demeter" so much honoured amongst them themselves.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves.

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August 30, 1856
5 months 4 weeks ago

Silence is the virtue of a fool.

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Book VI, xxxi
5 months 2 weeks ago

In actions of enthusiasm, this drawback appears: but in those lower activities, which have no higher aim than to make us more comfortable and more cowardly, in actions of cunning, actions that steal and lie, actions that divorce the speculative from the practical faculty, and put a ban on reason and sentiment, there is nothing else but drawback and negation.

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Goethe; or, The Writer
4 months 2 weeks ago

It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

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Preface to Brissot's Address
3 months 4 weeks ago

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.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrei went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to say, and Prince Andrei felt that something gave way in his soul and that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget.

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Bk. IV, Ch. 9
5 months 2 weeks ago

No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behaviour to sin; he does not say, "You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go." He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right. An analogous way of treating human beings is, however, considered to be contrary to the truths of our holy religion.

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"The Doctrine of Free Will"
1 month 2 weeks ago

Why dost thou not pray... to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?

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IX, 40
6 months 2 weeks ago

The third kind of life is the life of contemplation.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part II
5 months 2 weeks ago

"They would say," he answered, "that you do not fail in obedience through lack of love, but have lost love because you never attempted obedience."

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Ch. 7 : The Pendragon, section 2
4 months 1 week ago

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.

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pp. 48-49
5 months 2 weeks ago

The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.

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"On Violence"
4 months 4 days ago

There is nothing in the real world which is merely an inert fact. Every reality is there for feeling: it promotes feeling; and it is felt.

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Chapter IV, p. 310.
5 months 2 weeks ago

The problem... Democracy is founded by a politeia, a constitution, where the demos, the people, exercise power, and... everyone is equal in front of the law. Such a constitution... is condemned to give equal place to all forms of parrhesia, even the worst. Because parrhesia is given even to the worst citizens, the overwhelming influence of bad, immoral, or ignorant speakers may lead... into tyranny, or... otherwise endanger the city. Hence parrhesia may be dangerous for democracy itself.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Mathematics is as little a natural science as philosophy is one of the humanities. Philosophy in its essence belongs as little in the philosophical faculty as mathematics belongs to natural science. To house philosophy and mathematics in this way today seems to be a blemish or a mistake in the catalog of the universities. Plato put over the entrance to his Academy the words: "Let no one who has not grasped the mathematical enter here!"

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p. 69,75
4 months 2 weeks ago

Till women are more rationally educated, the progress in human virtue and improvement in knowledge must receive continual checks.

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Ch. 3
4 months 2 weeks ago

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

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6 months 4 days ago

We ought neither to fasten our ship to one small anchor nor our life to a single hope.

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Fragment 30 (Oldfather translation)
5 months 3 weeks ago

Every substance is as a world apart, independent of everything else except God.

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Discours de métaphysique, 1686
5 months 2 weeks ago

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from - my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.

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Psyche
4 months 2 weeks ago

To act is to anchor in the imminent future.

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4 months 2 days ago

Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.

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4 months 6 days ago

Oh, how empty is praise when it reflects back to its origin!

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No. 50. (Rica writing to * * *)
1 month 1 week ago

...to the question whether or not the motion of the Earth in space can be made perceptible in terrestrial experiments. We have already remarked... that all attempts of this nature led to a negative result. Before the theory of relativity was put forward, it was difficult to become reconciled to this negative result.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare. For about half of the last century, we worried about world conquest by international communism. Now with less worry (so far) we are witnessing world conquest by international capitalism. Though its political means are milder (so far) than those of communism, this newly internationalized capitalism may prove even more destructive of human cultures and communities, of freedom, and of nature. Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.

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Jupiter, Act 1
5 months 2 weeks ago

She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart.

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"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
5 months 2 weeks ago

Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.

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Act 1
2 months 4 weeks ago

It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Custom reconciles us to every thing.

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Part IV Section XVIII
4 months 2 weeks ago

No sound ought to be heard in the church but the healing voice of Christian charity.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity.

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p. 209
5 months 2 weeks ago

The highest compact we can make with our fellow, is, - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore".

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Behavior

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