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6 months 1 week ago

Two Chinamen visiting Europe went to the theatre for the first time. One of them occupied himself with trying to understand the theatrical machinery, which he succeeded in doing. The other, despite his ignorance of the language, sought to unravel the meaning of the play. The former is like the astronomer, the latter the philosopher.

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Vol. 2 "On Various Subjects" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
2 months 1 week ago

I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies;though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fedby that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels.I like to name that flame which burns within me God!

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Odysseus, Book XI, line 840
4 months 3 weeks ago

Our whole civilization, our entire culture is concentrated in the mad demand for the most perfected weapons of slaughter. Ammunition! Ammunition! O, Lord, thou who rulest heaven and earth, thou God of love, of mercy and of justice, provide us with enough ammunition to destroy our enemy. Such is the prayer which is ascending daily to the Christian heaven.

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6 months 1 week ago

If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again. Brahma, st. 1 Composed in July 1856 this poem is derived from a major passage of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most popular of Hindu scriptures, and portions of it were likely a paraphrase of an existing translation. Though titled "Brahma" its expressions are actually more indicative of the Hindu concept "Brahman"

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2 months 2 weeks ago

There is no correlation between material and spiritual misery. Only to the lowest and dullest levels of society can one preach the formula for all human happiness and wholeness as the well-named "animal ideal," a well-being that is little better than bovine. Hegel rightly wrote that the epochs of material well-being are blank pages in the history book, and Toynbee has shown that the challenge to mankind of environmentally and spiritually harsh and problematic conditions is often the incentive that awakens the creative energies of civilization. In some cases, it is not paradoxical to say that the man of good will should try to make life difficult for his neighbor! It is a commonplace that all the higher virtues attenuate and atrophy under easy conditions, when man is not forced to prove himself in some way; and in the final analysis it does not matter in such situations if a good number fall away and are lost through natural selection.

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p. 29
5 months 2 days ago

The masses are our masters; and for every one who looks facts in the face his existence has become dependent on them, so that the thought of them must control his doings, his cares, and his duties. Even an articulated mass always tends to become unspiritual and inhuman. It is life without existence, superstitions without faith. It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants.

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5 months 4 days ago

Give an inch, he'll take an ell.

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Liberty and Necessity (no. 111)
4 months 3 weeks ago

Thinking is more erotic than calculating.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

All art is but imitation of nature.

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6 months 1 week ago

It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare.

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Philosophical Dictionary ('Sens Commun') (1767). Compare Juvenal, Satires, viii:73: Original Latin: rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna.
3 months 2 weeks ago

Like other human freedoms, the freedoms embodied in market institutions are justified inasmuch as they meet human needs. Insofar as they fail to do this they can reasonably be altered. This is true not only of the rights that are involved in market institutions. It is true of all human rights.

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'Modus Vivendi' (p.36)
2 months 3 weeks ago

That most knowing of persons - gossip.

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Line 1.
6 months 1 week ago

While we are reading these sentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by.

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2 months 1 day ago

One may say "the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

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5 months 1 week ago

What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.

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6 months 1 week ago

Love truth, but pardon error.

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1738
6 months 1 week ago

Democracy is the road to socialism.

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Attributed to Marx in recent years, including in Communism (2007) by Tom Lansford, p. 48
5 months 1 week ago

Early and provident fear is the mother of safety.

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Speech on the Petition of the Unitarians (11 May 1792), volume vii, p. 50
5 months 2 weeks ago

Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.

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Quote as translated in The Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. 11 (1987), by Mircea Eliade, p. 459
5 months 3 weeks ago

True and perfect Friendship is, to make one heart and mind of many hearts and bodies.

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5 months 1 week ago

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

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6 months 1 week ago

As for Adler, I was much impressed by a personal experience. Once, in 1919, I reported to him a case which to me did not seem particularly Adlerian, but which he found no difficulty in analyzing in terms of his theory of inferiority feelings, although he had not even seen the child. Slightly shocked, I asked him how he could be so sure. "Because of my thousandfold experience," he replied; whereupon I could not help saying: "And with this new case, I suppose, your experience has become thousand-and-one-fold."

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Live always in the best company when you read.

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Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 370
6 months 1 week ago

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

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par. 28
5 months 1 week ago

The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.

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6 months 1 week ago

Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.

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"Thinking for Oneself"
5 months 1 week ago

Society is not a disease, it is a disaster. What a stupid miracle that one can live in it.

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3 months 1 week ago

The poor are thought to be dangerous, either morally dangerous because they are unproductive social parasites - thieves, prostitutes, drug addicts, and the like - or potentially dangerous because they are disorganized, unpredictable, and tendentially reactionary. In fact the term lumpenproletariat (or rad proletariat) has functioned for times to demonize the poor as a whole. ... The industrial reserve army is a constant threat hanging over the heads of the existing working class because, first of all, its misery serves as a terrifying example to workers of what could happen to them, and, second, the excess supply of labor it represents lowers the costs of labor and undermines workers' power against employers (by serving potentially as strike breakers, for example).

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130
5 months 1 week ago

In Germany, the judicial system has been the whore of the German princes for centuries.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

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Ch. 11
4 months 3 weeks ago

Station, power, wealth-how inadequate they have proved! How useless and insecure!

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5 months 3 weeks ago

I think that when friendship and perception of kinship ruled everything, no one killed any creature, because people thought the other animals were related to them.

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2, 22, 1
7 months 1 week ago

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

It is true that parents today are learning to enhance the physical qualities of their children. But their minds and characters they cannot mould. The antiquated system of education and our perverse social influences unfortunately do that. In view of the numerous misfit and marred children these institutions have created, I am quite content not to have contributed any of my own.

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6 months 1 week ago

The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.

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Lectures XI, XII, AND XIII : "Saintliness"
6 months 3 weeks ago

Don't you know that a good and excellent person does nothing for the sake of appearances, but only for the sake of having acted right?

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Book III, ch. 24, 50.
2 months 1 week ago

Whoever is a truly good man seeks a renown not by means of an ornament that does not belong to him but by means of his own virtue.

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p. 151
2 months 1 week ago

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

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Letter to John Taylor (26 November 1798), shortened in The Money Masters to "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution ... taking from the federal government their power of borrowing".
5 months 2 weeks ago

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

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3 months 2 days ago

Complete, at the same time, was his confidence in his own judgment when it spoke to him decisively. He was one of those few that could believe and know as well as inquire and be of opinion. When I remember how much he admired intellectual force, how much he had of it himself, and yet how unconsciously and contentedly he gave others credit for superiority, I again see the healthy spirit of the genuine man.

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7 months 1 week ago

Irony limits, finitizes, and circumscribes and thereby yields truth, actuality, content; it disciplines and punishes and thereby yields balance and consistency.

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6 months 1 week ago

The chief pleasure of his life in these days was to go down the road and look through the window in the wall in the hope of seeing the beautiful Island. ... the sight of the Island and the sounds became very rare ... and the yearning for the sight ... became so terrible that John thought he would die if he did not have them again soon. ... it came into his head that he might perhaps get the old feeling-for what, he thought, had the Island ever given him but a feeling?-by imagining. He shut his eyes and set his teeth again and made a picture of the Island in his mind.

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Pilgrim's Regress 12-13
6 months 1 week ago

What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 95
5 months 1 week 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
3 months 2 weeks ago

In future, nerve cell responsiveness to naturally occurring endogenous opioids can be increased via receptor enrichment in the brain too. In principle, we can modulate their lifelong "overexpression", intermittently heightened (or gently diminished) by whatever kinds of personal and environmental contingencies we judge fit. Both functionally and anatomically, our reward pathways can be made "bigger and better". But intelligent emotional self-mastery will involve re-engineering the mind-brain so we derive the most intense rewards from activities we deem most lastingly worthwhile: i.e. prioritising our higher-order desires over legacy first-order appetites. Natural selection has "encephalised" our emotions to benefit our genes. Rational agents can "re-encephalise" our emotions to benefit us.

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Utopian Neuroscience, BLTC Research, 2019
2 months 3 weeks ago

A great deal of talent is lost to the world for the want of a little courage. Every day sends to their graves a number of obscure men who have only remained obscure because their timidity has prevented them from making a first effort.

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Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
5 months 3 days ago

The true antithesis of nature is not art but arbitrary conceit, fantasy, and stereotyped convention.

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p. 158

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