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7 months 1 week ago

Time will prolong time, and life will serve life. In this field that is both limited and bulging with possibilities, everything to himself, except his lucidity, seems unforeseeable to him. What rule, then, could emanate from that unreasonable order? The only truth that might seem instructive to him is not formal: it comes to life and unfolds in men. The absurd mind cannot so much expect ethical rules at the end of its reasoning as, rather, illustrations and the breath of human lives.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

In order to acquire any exact and solid knowledge, the student must possess with perfect precision the ideas appropriate to that part of knowledge: and this precision is tested by the student's 'perceiving' the axiomatic evidence of the 'axioms' belonging to each 'Fundamental Idea'.

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6 months 1 week ago

Anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed.

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Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p. 73
7 months 2 weeks ago

The Bible and science agree in being unable to say anything certainly about what happened before the beginning. There is this difference. The Bible will never be able to tell us. It has reached its final form, and it simply doesn't say. Science, on the other hand, is still developing, and the time may come when it can answer questions that, at present, it cannot.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

A science that observes the laws of causation, and so is value-free, threatens human freedom and man's religious, ethical, and legal responsibility. The philosophy of values raised to that challenge, in the sense that it opposed a sphere of values, as a realm of ideal valuations, to a sphere of being that was only causally understood. It was an attempt to assert the human being as a free, responsible creature, indeed not in itself, but at least, in its valuation, what one called value. That attempt was put forth as a positivistic substitute for the metaphysical.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Let us maintain inviolably equality in the sacred right of suffrage: public security can never have a basis more solid.

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Author's Inscription: French Edition
6 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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6 months 2 weeks ago

In the United States of North America, every independent movement of the workers was paralysed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labour cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded.

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Vol. I, Ch. 10, Section 7, pg. 329.
2 months 2 weeks ago

It is as to whether its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentleman for his own amusement is not.

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Book I, Ch. 3
5 months 4 weeks ago

Write in the sand the flaws of your friend.

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As quoted in Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorists‎ (2007) by James Geary
6 months 2 weeks ago

I do like clarity and exact thinking and I believe that very important to mankind because when you allow yourself to think inexactly your prejudices, your bias, your self interest comes in in ways you don't notice and you do bad things without knowing that you are doing them: self deception is very easy. So that I do think clear thinking immensely important.

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Television interview ("On clarity and exact thinking" - available on youtube)
7 months 1 week ago

Fate is not in man but around him.

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5 months 2 days ago

One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love - to serve the loved one without his knowing it - is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

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Last Notebook (1942) p. 84
6 months 3 weeks ago

There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.

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Aphorism 23
5 months 2 weeks ago

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

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Part III, Chapter 2
3 months 1 day ago

You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

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Vol. 1, bk. 1, ch.4
2 months 3 weeks ago

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now - always, and indeed then most truly when it seems most unsuitable to actual circumstances. Care for distress at home and care for distress elsewhere do but help each other if, working together, they wake men in sufficient numbers from their thoughtlessness, and call into life a new spirit of humanity.

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Ch. XI : Conclusion
2 months 1 week ago

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

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IX, 16
2 months 3 weeks ago

Recognition of the subjectivity of the qualities of sense is found in Galilei (and also in Descartes and Hobbes) in a form closely related to the principle underlying the constructive mathematical method of our modern physics which repudiates" qualities".

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Introduction
5 months 1 week ago

It is an understatement to say that in this society injustices abound: in truth, it is itself the quintessence of injustice.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

The peoples' revolution .... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

There is something which unites magic and applied science while separating both from the wisdom of earlier ages. For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been how to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

It is sublime as night and a breathless ocean. It contains every religious sentiment, all the grand ethics, which visit in turn each noble poetic mind .... It is of no use to put away the book if I trust myself in the woods or in a boat upon the pond. Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently: eternal compensation, unfathomable power, unbroken silence .... This is her creed. Peace, she saith to me, and purity and absolute abandonment - these panaceas expiate all sin and bring you to the beatitude of the Eight Gods.

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Quoted in Nani Ardeshir Palkhivala, India's Priceless Heritage, 1st ed. (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1980) pp. 9-24
2 months 3 weeks ago

There are two kinds of animals on earth. One kind minds his own business, the other minds other people's business. The former are vegetarians, like cows, sheep and thinking men. The latter are carnivorous, like hawks, tigers and men of action.

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As quoted by Tai-yi Lin (Lin Yutang's daughter) in her Foreword (26 March 1950) to The Importance of Living, p. x
4 months 1 week ago

The selfish gene theory is Darwin's theory, expressed in a way that Darwin did not choose but whose aptness, I should like to think, he would instantly have recognized and delighted in. It is in fact a logical outgrowth of orthodox neo-Darwinism, but expressed as a novel image. Rather than focus on the individual organism, it takes a gene's eye view of nature. It is a different way of seeing, not a different theory.

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Preface to Second Edition
6 months 2 weeks ago

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
3 months 1 day ago

Perhaps its destruction has been brought about only that it may be raised up again to a better destiny. Oftentimes a reverse has but made room for more prosperous fortune. Many structures have fallen only to rise to a greater height.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

First of all, no one knows his place in society, his class position or social status; nor does he know his fortune in the distribution of natural assets and abilities, his intelligence and strength, and the like. Nor, again, does anyone know his conception of the good, the particulars of his rational plan of life, or even the special features of psychology such as his aversion to risk or liability to optimism or pessimism. More than this, I assume that the parties do not know the particular circumstances of their own society. That is, they do not know its particular economic or political situation, or the level of civilization and culture it has been able to achieve. The persons in the original position have no information as to which generation they belong.

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p. 117
7 months 1 week ago

At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort.

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7 months 1 week ago

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

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6 months 4 days ago

The great god Pan is dead.

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Why the Oracles cease to give Answers (Tr. Goodwin)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Speech structures the abyss of mental and acoustic space...it is a cosmic, invisible architecture of the human dark.

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(p. 13)
5 months 1 week ago

Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.

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2 months 1 week ago

All is ephemeral - fame and the famous as well.

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IV, 35
6 months 2 weeks ago

The word of man is the most durable of all material.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 25, sect. 298

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.
— Niccolò Machiavelli

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7 months 1 week ago

If the world were clear, art would not exist.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

All these people talk so eloquently about getting back to good old-fashioned values. Well, as an old poop I can remember back to when we had those old-fashioned values, and I say let's get back to the good old-fashioned First Amendment of the good old-fashioned Constitution of the United States-and to hell with the censors! Give me knowledge or give me death!

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As quoted in "An Interview with Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Carey Horwitz, Library Journal, Apr. 15, 1973: 1131
6 months 2 weeks ago

Every Christian is to become a little Christ. The whole purpose of becoming a Christian is simply nothing else.

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Book IV, Chapter 4, "Good Infection"
7 months 2 weeks ago
One will rarely err if extreme actions be ascribed to vanity, ordinary actions to habit, and mean actions to fear.
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6 months 2 weeks ago

Nature offers nothing that can be called this man's rather than another's ; but, under nature, everything belongs to all - that is, they have authority to claim it for themselves. But, under dominion, where it is by common law determined what belongs to this man, and what to that, he is called just who has a constant will to render to every man his own, but he, unjust who strives, on the contrary, to make his own that which belongs to another.

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Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
5 months 3 days ago

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said.

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(Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.)
6 months 6 days ago

The right-minded man, ever inclined to righteous and lawful deeds, is joyous day and night, and strong, and free from care. But if a man take no heed of the right, and leave undone the things he ought to do, then will the recollection of no one of all his transgressions bring him any joy, but only anxiety and self-reproaching.

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6 months 1 week ago

Quality leadership is neither the product of one great individual nor the result of odd historical accidents. Rather, it comes from deeply bred traditions and communities that shape and mold talented and gifted persons. Without a vibrant tradition of resistance passed on to new generations, there can be no nurturing of a collective and critical consciousness-only professional conscientiousness survives.

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(p37)
5 months 2 weeks ago

There is nothing whatever in Existence but immediate and living Thought:-Thought, I say, but by no means a thinking substance, a dead body in which thought inheres,-with which no-thought indeed a no-thinker is full surely at hand:-Thought, I say, and also the real Life of this Thought, which at bot tom is the Divine Life; both of which-Thought and , this its real Life-are molten together into one inward organic Unity; like as, outwardly, they are one simple, identical, eternal, and unchangeable Unity.

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P. 56
6 months 2 weeks ago

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

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Chapter I, p. 471.

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