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6 months 6 days ago

For nature is not merely present, but is implanted within things, distant from none; naught is distant from her except the false, and that which existed never and nowhere-nullity. And while the outer face of things changeth so greatly, there flourisheth the origin of being more intimately within all things than they themselves. The fount of all kinds, Mind, God, Being, One, Truth, Destiny, Reason, Order.

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VIII 10 as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer
3 months 2 weeks ago

A golden bit does not make a better horse.

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4 months 6 days ago

With new technologies of surveillance, economies of scale overcome problems of cost. Since all their electronic communications can be accessed, it is no longer necessary to segregate the inmates from one another. As there is no outside world, escape becomes unimaginable. Technological progress has brought into being a system of surveillance more far-reaching than any Bentham could have conceived. Enclosing the entire population in a virtual Panopticon might seem the ultimate invasion of freedom. But universal confinement need not be experienced as a privation. If they know nothing else, most are likely to accept it as normal. If the technology through which surveillance operates also provides continuous entertainment, they may soon find any other way of living intolerable.

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In the Puppet Theatre: A Universal Panopticon (p. 125)
5 months 1 week ago

Perhaps power is never free from a feeling of lack.

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7 months 3 days ago

I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all. 

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Taken from Leibniz: Political Writings (2nd Edition, 1988), Edited by Patrick RileyLetter 11 to Grimarest: Passages Concerning the Abbe de St. Pierre's 'Project for Perpetual Peace' (June 1712).

The pleasures of the imagination are as it were only drawings and models which are played with by poor people who cannot afford the real thing.

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C 38
5 months 2 weeks ago

No particular experiences are linked with any particular statements in the interior of the field, except indirectly through considerations of equilibrium affecting the field as a whole.

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"Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
2 months 4 weeks ago

Mechanical Science depends on the Conception of Force; and is divided into 'Statics', the doctrine of Force preventing motion, and 'Dynamics', the doctrine of Force producing motion.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. "It is only on the march and it time of war," says Robertson Smith in The Prophets of Israel, "that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a central authority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of national organization, centering in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thought of mainly as a host of Jehovah. the very name of Israel is martial, and means 'God (El) fighteth,' and Jehovah in the Old Testament is Iahwé Cebāôth - the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on the battlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but in primitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge in time of peace."

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3 months 3 weeks ago

In Kant's words, human beings are uncaused causes, and therefore have infinite value, and a liberal regime protects that autonomy by giving people rights... The right to speak, to organize, to associate, and ultimately to have a share of power by being able to vote. ...This is ...the moral status, the dignity that life in a liberal regime that does respect individual rights, gives us, and it is one of the reasons that to this day, people do not want to live in authoritarian countries that do not recognize the fundamental dignity of their... citizens.

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11:47
2 months 3 weeks ago

Consider all that you've gone through, all that you've survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete. How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?

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(Hays translation) V, 31
5 months 3 weeks ago

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

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The Transcendent Function ("Die Transzendente Funktion") (1916) Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung
5 months 1 week ago

The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or men who love living.

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Chapter Nine, Breaking the Circuit
2 months 3 weeks ago

Philosophers who have wanted to banish the ghost from the machine have usually sought to do so by showing that truths about behavior can sometimes, and in some sense, logically implicate truths about mental states. In so doing, they have rather strongly suggested that the exorcism can be carried through only if such a logical connection can be made out. ... Once it has been made clear that the choice between dualism and behaviorism is not exhaustive, a major motivation for the defense of behaviorism is removed: we are not required to be behaviorists simply in order to avoid being dualists.

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Fodor (1986) "Why Paramecia Don't Have Mental Representations," Midwest Studies in Philosophy 10: 3-23. cited in: Bradley Rives "Jerry A. Fodor (1935 - )" Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Oct. 25, 2010
6 months 3 weeks ago

There is object proof that homosexuality is more interesting than heterosexuality. It's that one knows a considerable number of heterosexuals who would wish to become homosexuals, whereas one knows very few homosexuals who would really like to become heterosexuals.

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As quoted in Who's Who in Contemporary Gay & Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (2001) by Robert Aldrich and Gary Wotherspoon ISBN 041522974X
5 months 3 weeks ago

Hear, and understand: Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.

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15:10-11 (KJV)
6 months 4 weeks ago

Eh bien, continuons... Well, let's get on with it.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single scurvy individual-here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements.

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The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) as translated by Ernest Untermann (1902)
4 months 6 days ago

The belief in unity that has fuelled so many utopian dreams is an effort to reconcile the irreconcilable that ends in repression. Berlin suggests we renounce this venerable faith, and learn how to live with intractable conflict.

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'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.106-7)
2 months 2 weeks ago

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.

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The Evolution of Physics (1938) (co-written with Leopold Infeld)
8 months 2 days ago
So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.
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2 months 2 weeks ago

I believe in intuitions and inspirations. I sometimes feel that I am right. I do not know that I am. When two expeditions of scientists, financed by the Royal Academy, went forth to test my theory of relativity, I was convinced that their conclusions would tally with my hypothesis. I was not surprised when the eclipse of May 29, 1919, confirmed my intuitions. I would have been surprised if I had been wrong.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

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Quotation and Originality
6 months 2 weeks ago

And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours.

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Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
6 months 4 weeks ago

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

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Book IV, Chapter 10, "The New Men"
5 months 4 weeks ago

God, I have said, is the fulfiller, or the reality, of the human desires for happiness, perfection, and immortality. From this it may be inferred that to deprive man of God is to tear the heart out of his breast. But I contest the premises from which religion and theology deduce the necessity and existence of God, or of immortality, which is the same thing. I maintain that desires which are fulfilled only in the imagination, or from which the existence of an imaginary being is deduced, are imaginary desires, and not the real desires of the human heart; I maintain that the limitations which the religious imagination annuls in the idea of God or immortality, are necessary determinations of the human essence, which cannot be dissociated from it, and therefore no limitations at all, except precisely in man's imagination.

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Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
3 months 2 weeks ago

What matters the party to me? I shall find enough anyhow who unite with me without swearing allegiance to my flag.

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Dover 2005, p. 236
7 months 3 days ago

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but in general they bear no regular proportion to those of other older trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.

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Chapter X, Part I, p. 136 (tendency of the rate of profit to fall).
6 months 1 week ago

Happy is that City that hath a wise man to govern it.

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6 months 4 weeks ago

Setting the mind to remember... involves a continual minimal irradiation of excitement into paths which lead thereto... the continued presence of the thing in the 'fringe' of our consciousness. Letting the thing go involves withdrawal of the irradiation, unconsciousness of the thing, and... obliteration of the paths.

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Ch. 16
3 months 1 week ago

If you know that "I", in the sense of the person, the front, the ego, it really doesn't exist. Then...it won't go to your head too badly, if you wake up and discover that you're God.

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11 months 5 days ago

In the Critique of Cynical Reasoning, a great bestseller in Germany (Sloterdijk, 1983), Peter Sloterdijk puts forward the thesis that ideology's dominant mode of functioning is cynical which renders impossible - or, more precisely, vain - the classical critical-ideological procedure. The cynical subject is quite aware of the distance between the ideological mask and the social reality, but he none the less still insists upon the mask.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Tis not sufficient to combine well-chosen words in a well-ordered line.

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Book I, satire iv, line 54 (translated by John Conington)
5 months 1 week ago

The fear of being alone, or of being unloved, had caused women of all races to passively accept sexism and sexist oppression.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

Bach: a scale of tears upon which our desires for God ascend.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

Science raises itself above all Ages and all Times, embracing and apprehending the ONE UNCHANGING TIME as the higher source of all Ages and Epochs, and grasping that vast idea in its free, unbounded comprehension.

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p. 11
3 months 2 weeks ago

To roam in open walks, that the soul may increase and lift itself up in the free air and with much spirit; sometimes travel and a change of country will give vigor, and marriage and more liberal drink. Sometimes even to the point of drunkenness, not that it drowns us, but that it depresses us: for it washes away cares and moves the mind from below, and, as with certain diseases, so it heals sadness.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The end of government is to make the governed and the governors happy. That government then is thebest, which in practice produces the greatest happiness to the greatest number; including those who govern, and those who obey.

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Essay Fourth, The Principles of the Former Essays Applied to Government
4 months 3 weeks ago

Technologies themselves, regardless of content, produce a hemispheric bias in the users.

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p. 71
4 months 4 weeks ago

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us. Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand Variant translation: The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

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5 months 1 week ago

Yet it must be acknowledged that there is a fundamental difference between the sexual impulse in men and women. Her need is for a lover, a protector, a father for her children. His desire is for mastery, conquest, to be allowed to use her body for his own satisfaction. He feels like a bee, burying itself in a flower, apparently doing nothing for the flower but taking its sweetness. If he loves her, then his desire is mixed with a kind of pity.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.

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3 months 1 week ago

If we look deeply into such ways of life as Buddhism and Taoism, Vedanta and Yoga, we do not find either philosophy or religion as these are understood in the West. We find something more nearly resembling psychotherapy. ... The main resemblance between these Eastern ways of life and Western psychotherapy is in the concern of both with bringing about changes of consciousness, changes in our ways of feeling our own existence and our relation to human society and the natural world. The psychotherapist has, for the most part, been interested in changing the consciousness of peculiarly disturbed individuals. The disciplines of Buddhism and Taoism are, however, concerned with changing the consciousness of normal, socially adjusted people.

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pp. 3-4

The rosy mountain peaks laughed like high lustrous thoughts,and Helen, speechless, raised her pale hands toward the sunand joyed to feel its warm rays falling on her frozen palms.

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Book IV, line 1361
7 months 1 day ago

All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerers (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudible business of mankind, and the most heroick of virtues. By these steps unnatural cruelty is planted in us; and what humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us, by laying it in the way to honour. Thus, by fashioning and opinion, that comes to be a pleasure, which in itself neither is, nor can be any.

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Sec. 116

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