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2 months 5 days ago

The much occupied man has no time for wantonness, and it is an obvious commonplace that the evils of leisure can be shaken off by hard work.

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Line 9
6 months 1 week ago

Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

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August 19, 1851
4 months 3 days ago

Husserl has shown that man's prejudices go a great deal deeper than his intellect or his emotions. Consciousness itself is 'prejudiced' - that is to say, intentional.

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p. 54
2 months 5 days ago

A great pilot can sail even when his canvas is rent.

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Line 3.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

The whole life of the upper classes is a constant inconsistency. The more delicate a man's conscience is, the more painful this contradiction is to him.

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Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
5 months 2 weeks ago

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.

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3 months 4 days ago

Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence.

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(p116)
4 months 1 week ago

I am the resurrection and the life. The one who exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life; and everyone who is living and exercises faith in me will never die at all.

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11:25-26, NWT
3 months 2 weeks ago

Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist-I really believe he is Antichrist-I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you-sit down and tell me all the news.

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Bk. I, Ch. I
4 months 1 week ago

Interest only becomes one-sided and morbid only when it ceases to be frank, and becomes sly and furtive.

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p. 197
2 months 1 week ago

It is a most earnest thing to be alive in this world; to die is not sport for a man. Man's life never was a sport to him; it was a stern reality, altogether a serious matter to be alive!

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2 months 2 weeks ago

A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature. ...we work not only to obtain the positive results which, according to the profane, constitute our one and only affection, as to experience this esthetic emotion and to convey it to others who are capable of experiencing it.

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"Notice sur Halphen," Journal de l'École Polytechnique (Paris, 1890), 60ème cahier, p. 143.
1 month 2 weeks ago

The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

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VII, 61
4 months 1 week ago

Now, apparently, many men are again feeling homesick for the herd. They devote themselves passionately to whatever there is left in them of the sheep. They want to march through life together, along the collective path, shoulder to shoulder, wool rubbing wool, and the head down. This is the reason why so many European peoples are looking for a shepherd and a sheep dog.

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p. 170
4 months 3 days ago

Violence may capture space, but it does not create space.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

These papers are all written from what is called a realist perspective. The statements of science are in my view either true or false (although it is often the case that we don't know which) and their truth or falsity does not consist in their being highly derived ways of describing regularities in human experience. Reality is not a part of the human mind; rather the human mind is a part - and a small part at that - of reality.

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"Introduction: Science as approximation to truth"
1 month 2 weeks ago

To know the nature of man, the most direct and wisest way undoubtedly is to know what he has always been. Since when can theories be opposed to facts? History is experimental politics; this is the best or rather the only good politics.

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p. 21

Does it? Maybe some places....

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4 months 3 weeks ago

They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom.

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Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848). http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/tocqueville-s-critique-of-socialism-1848
5 months 4 weeks ago

Cunning and deceit will every time serve a man better than force to rise from a base condition to great fortune.

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Book 2, Ch. 13
1 month 2 weeks ago

Before making a decision the first thing to do - don't get worked up. For everything happens according to the nature of all things, and in a short time you'll be nobody and nowhere even as the great emperors Hadrian and Augustus are now. The next thing to do - consider carefully the task at hand for what it is, while remembering that your purpose is to be a good human being. Get straight to doing what nature requires of you, and speak as you see most just and fitting - with kindness, modesty, and sincerity.

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VIII. 5:162
6 months 3 weeks ago

How will one part of the infinite be above, and another below? Or how will it have extremes or a middle? Further still, every sensible body is in place; but the species and differences of place are upward and downward, before and behind, to the right hand and to the left: and these things not only thus subsist with relation to us, and by position, but have a definite subsistence in the universe itself. But it is impossible that these things should be in the infinite: and... that there should be an infinite place. But every body is in place; and therefore it is also impossible that there should be an infinite body. ...Therefore ...there is not an infinite body in energy.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.

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3 months 3 days ago

So dazzling was the spread of constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight. I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us - invisibly.

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As quoted in No More Words : A Journal of My Mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (2001) by Reeve Lindbergh, p. 41
4 months 5 days ago

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

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Ch. 22, August 30, 1941.
2 months 2 weeks ago

On the more conservative side... Liberalism has been associated with... the right to own private property... one of the most fundamental individual rights that is protected in true liberal societies, and that right is... what made possible the modern economic world. As any economist would tell you, without secure property rights and contract enforcement, you don't get investment and therefore economic growth.

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13:44
4 months 3 weeks ago

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

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As quoted in Happyology by Harald W. Tietze, p. 28
2 months 5 days ago

It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: "How did I get into this condition?"

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

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(2) Original German: Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.
6 months 5 days ago

If what the philosophers say be true,—that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain, so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.

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Book I, ch. 18, 1.
1 month 2 weeks ago

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions. ... Even the fundamental "I am," which cannot be doubted, is no guide to action until it takes to itself "I shall be," which goes beyond experience. The question is not, therefore, "May we believe what goes beyond experience?" for this is involved in the very nature of belief; but "How far and in what manner may we add to our experience in forming our beliefs?"

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5 months 4 weeks ago

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
1 month 1 week ago

One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations - wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.

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6 months 5 days ago

For freedom is not acquired by satisfying yourself with what you desire, but by destroying your desire.

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Book IV, ch. 1, 175.
4 months 1 week ago

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

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Mark 13:31, KJV
5 months 4 weeks ago

Most Christians are superstitious rather than pious, and except for the name of Christ differ hardly at all from superstitious pagans.

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The Erasmus Reader (1990), pp. 140-141.
2 months 1 week ago

History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.

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6 months 1 week ago

I am not bothered by the fact that I am not understood. I am bothered when I do not know others.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.

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Introduction to Our Time Is Now: Notes From the High School Underground, John Birmingham, ed.
4 months 2 weeks ago

What will be the influence of communist society on the family? It will transform the relations between the sexes into a purely private matter which concerns only the persons involved and into which society has no occasion to intervene. It can do this since it does away with private property and educates children on a communal basis, and in this way removes the two bases of traditional marriage - the dependence rooted in private property, of the women on the man, and of the children on the parents.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.

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Act 10, sc. 2
1 month 2 weeks ago

It is a palpable falsehood to say we can have specie for our paper whenever demanded. Instead, then, of yielding to the cries of scarcity of medium set up by speculators, projectors and commercial gamblers, no endeavors should be spared to begin the work of reducing it by such gradual means as may give time to private fortunes to preserve their poise, and settle down with the subsiding medium; and that, for this purpose, the States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.

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6 November 1813, ME 13:431: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 13, p. 431
1 month 2 weeks ago

This makes me think that the French Revolution is a great epoch and that its consequences, in all kinds of ways, will be felt far beyond the time of its explosion and the limits of its birthplace.

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Chapter II, p. 21

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