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7 months 1 week ago

Holding fast to these things, you will know the worlds of gods and mortals which permeates and governs everything. And you will know, as is right, nature similar in all respects, so that you will neither entertain unreasonable hopes nor be neglectful of anything.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
7 months 3 weeks ago

A house sold by A to B does not wander from one place to another, although it circulates as a commodity.

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Vol. II, Ch. VI, p. 152.
8 months 3 weeks ago

No one is so modest as not to believe himself a competent amateur sleuth.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.

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An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196
7 months 2 weeks ago

Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.

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Stobaeus, iii. 13. 44
4 months 2 weeks ago

Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and, especially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with their long train of baleful and well-known evils. Undue cultivation of the outward, again, though less immediately prejudicial, and even for the time productive of many palpable benefits, must, in the long-run, by destroying Moral Force, which is the parent of all other Force, prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.

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6 months 1 week ago

Black women control the world. We are through being discriminated against.

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Communion: The Female Search for Love (2002) ISBN 0-06-093829-3
3 months 3 weeks ago

It is man's peculiar duty to love even those who wrong him.

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VII, 22
7 months 4 weeks ago

Divorce is probably of nearly the same age as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

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"Divorce", 1771
8 months ago

Lands for the purposes of pleasure and magnificence, parks, gardens, public walks, &c. possessions which are every where considered as causes of expence, not as sources of revenue, seem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilized monarchy, ought to belong the crown.

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Chapter II, Part I, p. 891.
4 months 5 days ago

On the same subject you will obtain more complete and more abstruse information by consulting the works upon it composed by the divine Iamblichus: you will find there the extreme limit of human wisdom attained. May the mighty Sun grant me to attain to no less knowledge of himself, and to teach it publicly to all, and privately to such as are worthy to receive it: and as long as the god grants this to us, let us consult in common his well-beloved Iamblichus; out of whose abundance a few things, that have come into my mind, I have here set down. That no other person will treat of this subject more perfectly than he has done, I am well aware; not even though he should expend much additional labour in making new discoveries in the research; for in all probability he will go astray from the most correct conception of the nature of the god.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

A talent is formed in stillness, a character in the world's torrent.

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Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. ii
8 months 2 weeks ago

Thus, where'er the drift of hazardSeems most unrestrained to flow,Chance herself is reined and bitted,And the curb of law doth know.

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8 months 3 weeks ago

It's my belief that the Universe possesses, in its essence, fractal properties of a very complex sort and that the pursuit of science shares those properties. It follows that any part of the Universe that remains un-understood, and any part of scientific investigation that remains unresolved, however small that might be in comparison to what is understood and resolved, contains within it all the complexity of the original. Therefore, we'll never finish. No matter how far we go, the road ahead will be as long as it was at the start, and that's the secret of the Universe.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false.

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Heat the Hornet, a review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True
4 months 1 week ago

Worse than war is the very fear of war.

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line 572 (Chorus).
6 months 3 weeks ago

Every cause produces more than one effect.

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On Progress: Its Law and Cause
8 months 4 weeks ago
Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
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8 months 4 weeks ago
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
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3 months 2 weeks ago

Reading after a certain age diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theater is tempted to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

One must be something in order to do something.

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Conversations with Eckermann
4 months 1 week ago

The fact is that in order to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.

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Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
7 months 3 weeks ago

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?

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"The Will to Believe" p. 14
6 months 1 week ago

The jargon makes it seem that ... the pure attention of the expression to the subject matter would be a fall into sin.

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p. 9
7 months 3 weeks ago

Go where he will, the wise man is at home, His hearth the earth, his hall the azure dome.

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Wood-notes, st. 3
4 months 1 week ago

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed and rightly.

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Line 13.
8 months 5 days ago

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

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Aphorism 46
5 months 3 weeks ago

Those attacks upon language and religion in Poland, the Baltic provinces, Alsace, Bohemia, upon the Jews in Russia, in every place that such acts of violence occur-in what name have they been, and are they, perpetrated? In none other than the name of that patriotism which you defend. Ask our savage Russifiers of Poland and the Baltic provinces, ask the persecutors of the Jews, why they act thus. They will tell you it is in defence of their native religion and language; they will tell you that if they do not act thus, their religion and language will suffer-the Russians will be Polonised, Teutonised, Judaised.

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A Reply to Criticisms
7 months 3 weeks ago

A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

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Wage Labour and Capital (December 1847), in Marx Engels Selected Works, Volume I, p. 163.
7 months 1 week ago

"These Macedonians," said he, "are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade."

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39 Philip
6 months 1 day ago

There are two kinds of people, killers, and everybody else.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

The world is upheld by the veracity of good men: they make the earth wholesome.

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Uses of Great Men
7 months 1 week ago

When it comes to consideration of how to do well in running the city, which must proceed entirely through justice and soundness of mind.

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As quoted in Protagoras by Plato
5 months 3 weeks ago

The recognition that love represents the highest morality was nowhere denied or contradicted, but this truth was so interwoven everywhere with all kinds of falsehoods which distorted it, that finally nothing of it remained but words. It was taught that this highest morality was only applicable to private life - for home use, as it were - but that in public life all forms of violence - such as imprisonment, executions, and wars - might be used for the protection of the majority against a minority of evildoers, though such means were diametrically opposed to any vestige of love.

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III
5 months 3 days 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 3 weeks ago

The conscious mind allows itself to be trained like a parrot, but the unconscious does not - which is why St. Augustine thanked God for not making him responsible for his dreams.

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par. 51 p.46
6 months 3 weeks ago

The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny.

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Letter to Thomas Mercer
7 months 2 weeks ago

I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions that seem to have nothing in common with political power, that have the appearance of being independent, but are not.

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Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971
7 months 3 weeks ago

The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to find the common element in all its applications has shackled philosophical investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him understand the usage of the general term.

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p. 19
7 months 2 weeks ago

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

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(p4)
4 months 5 days ago

Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

And finally remember that nothing harms him who is really a citizen, which does not harm the state; nor yet does anything harm the state which does not harm law [order]; and of these things which are called misfortunes not one harms law. What then does not harm law does not harm either state or citizen.

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X, 33
7 months 3 weeks ago

My first advice (on how not to grow old) would be to choose you ancestors carefully. Although both my parents died young, I have done well in this respect as regards my other ancestors. My maternal grandfather, it is true, was cut off in the flower of his youth, at the age of sixty-seven, but my other three grandparents all lived to be over eighty. Of remoter ancestors I can only discover one who did not live to a great age, and he died of a disease which is now rare, namely, having his head cut off.

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p. 50
3 months 3 weeks ago

In the middle ages of Christianity opposition to the State opinions was hushed. The consequence was, Christianity became loaded with all the Romish follies. Nothing but free argument, raillery & even ridicule will preserve the purity of religion.

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Notes on Religion (October 1776), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 2, p. 256
6 months 3 weeks ago

Each of us is born with a share of purity, predestined to be corrupted by our commerce with mankind, by that sin against solitude.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

It is all work and forgotten work, this peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, high-towered, wide-acred World. The hands of forgotten brave men have made it a World for us; they,- honour to them; they, in spite of the idle and the dastard. This English Land, here and now, is the summary of what was found of wise, and noble, and accordant with God's Truth, in all the generations of English Men. Our English Speech is speakable because there were Hero-Poets of our blood and lineage; speakable in proportion to the number of these. This Land of England has its conquerors, possessors, which change from epoch to epoch, from day to day; but its real conquerors, creators, and eternal proprietors are these following, and their representatives if you can find them: All the Heroic Souls that ever were in England, each in their degree; all the men that ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of England, contrived a wise scheme in England, did or said a true and valiant thing in England.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

He has begun by supposing that light has a constant velocity... the same in all directions. This... could never be verified directly by experiment... The postulate... resembling the principle of sufficient reason... furnishes us with a new rule for the investigation of simultaneity.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A being that is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. Variant translation: Now slavery has a certain likeness to death, hence it is also called civil death. For life is most evident in a thing's moving itself, while what can only be moved by another, seems to be as if dead. But it is manifest that a slave is not moved by himself, but only at his master's command.

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Chapter 14

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