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2 months 3 weeks ago

T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light.

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Book III, Ch. 7. Of the Inconveniences of Greatness
1 month 2 weeks ago

True anarchy is the generative element of religion. Out of the annihilation of all existing institutions she raises her glorious head, as the new foundress of the world.

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English translation as quoted in The Dublin Review Vol. III (July-October 1837)
2 months 2 weeks ago

Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.

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Act 1
2 months 2 weeks ago

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

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Civilization
2 months 1 week ago

One should emulate works and deeds of virtue, not arguments about it.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

The subject must distinguish itself through opposition from the rational being, which it has assumed outside of itself. The subject has posited itself as one, which contains in itself the last ground of something that is in it, (for this is the condition of Egohood, or of Rationality generally;) but it has also posited a being outside of itself, as the last ground of this something in it. It is to have the power of distinguishing itself from this other being; and this is, under our presupposition, possible only, if the subject can distinguish in that given something how far the ground of this something lies in itself and how far it lies outside of itself.

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P. 63
2 months 2 weeks ago

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

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"The British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1853.
1 month 1 day ago

Taken as a whole, the Cross Correspondences and the Willet scripts are among the most convincing evidence that at present exists for life after death. For anyone who is prepared to devote weeks to studying them, they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Myers, Gurney, and Sidgwick went on communicating after death.

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p. 136
2 months 3 weeks ago

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

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Ch. 12
2 weeks 2 days ago

The space of early Greek cosmology was structured by logos - resonant utterance or word.

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p. 35
1 month 4 days ago

We should desire neither the immortality nor the death of any human being, whoever he may be, with whom we have to do.

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p. 260
2 months 1 week ago

Leading a human life is a full-time occupation, to which everyone devotes decades of intense concern.

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"The Absurd" (1971), p. 15.
3 months 4 days ago

But if we discard this definition of a people, and, assuming another, say that a people is an assemblage of reasonable beings bound together by a common agreement as to the objects of their love, then, in order to discover the character of any people, we have only to observe what they love. Yet whatever it loves, if only it is an assemblage of reasonable beings and not of beasts, and is bound together by an agreement as to the objects of love, it is reasonably called a people; and it will be a superior people in proportion as it is bound together by higher interests, inferior in proportion as it is bound together by lower.

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XIX, 24
2 months 2 weeks ago

In spite of Death, the mark and seal of the parental control, Man is yet free, during his brief years, to examine, to criticise, to know, and in imagination to create. To him alone, in the world with which he is acquainted, this freedom belongs; and in this lies his superiority to the resistless forces that control his outward life.

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1 month 1 day ago

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls?

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2 months 3 weeks ago

The blame rests with the government. Why do they not put adulterers to death? Then I would not need to give such advice. Between two evils one is always the lesser, in this case allowing the adulterer to remarry in a distant land in order to avoid fornication . . .

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2 months 2 weeks ago

That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.

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"The Idea of Equality"
2 months 2 weeks ago

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

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Mother to her young son, Act 1
3 months 3 days ago

Show me someone who is ill and yet happy, in danger and yet happy, dying and yet happy, exiled and yet happy. Show me such a person; by the gods, how greatly I long to see a Stoic!

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Book II, ch. 19, 24.
1 month 3 days ago

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race..

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ch. 5

We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.

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Surviving the Future (1971; Oxford UP, 1972) p. 95
2 months 3 weeks ago

As all those have shown who have discussed civil institutions, and as every history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity; and if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of every truth, will cause it to be discovered.

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Book 1, Ch. 3
2 months 2 weeks ago

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

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The Words (1964), speaking of his grandmother.
1 month 1 week ago

Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man. (7) This saying has been interpreted by some as referring to such anger as consumes a man…(rather than is consumed by him, through his reason and love), 'til that man is the lion of Anger. Other more mystical interpretations might also be found or devised that have merit.

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2 months 2 days ago

Animals are rational; in most of them logos is imperfect, but it is certainly not wholly lacking. So if, as our opponents say, justice applies to rational beings, why should not justice, for us, also apply to animals?

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3, 18, 1
2 months 3 weeks ago

You need only look around you, replied PHILO, to satisfy yourself with regard to this question. A tree bestows order and organisation on that tree which springs from it, without knowing the order; an animal in the same manner on its offspring; a bird on its nest; and instances of this kind are even more frequent in the world than those of order, which arise from reason and contrivance. To say, that all this order in animals and vegetables proceeds ultimately from design, is begging the question; nor can that great point be ascertained otherwise than by proving, a priori, both that order is, from its nature, inseparably attached to thought; and that it can never of itself, or from original unknown principles, belong to matter.

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Philo to Demea, Part VII
2 months 2 weeks ago

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument - a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself - in solitude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

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3 weeks 6 days ago

At the time of its initial publication, Public Administration helped to define this field of study and practice by introducing two major new emphases: an orientation toward human behavior and human relations in organizations, and an emphasis on the interaction between administration, politics, and policy. Without neglecting more traditional concerns with organization structure, Simon, Thompson, and Smithburg viewed administration in its behavioral and political contexts. The viewpoints they express still are at the center of public administration's concerns.

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Book abstract, 1991
3 months 1 day ago

Behold a God more powerful than I who comes to rule over me.

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Chapter I (tr. Barbara Reynolds); of love.
2 months 2 weeks ago

The word "art" does not designate the concept of a mere eventuality; it is a concept of rank.

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p. 125
2 months 2 weeks ago

His imperial muse tosses the creation like a bauble from hand to hand to embody any capricious thought that is uppermost in her mind. The remotest spaces of nature are visited, and the farthest sundered things are brought together by a subtle spiritual connection.

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p. 237
2 months 3 weeks ago

My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.

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Statement while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII
1 week 2 days ago

French schoolchildren can be proud to become citizens of the country that gave the world the Declaration of the Rights of Man; need they be told that it was disregarded a few years after it inspired the revolution in Haiti, whose leader, Toussaint Louverture, was consigned to death in a French prison?

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1 month 1 day ago

With Puritanism as the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.

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1 month 1 week ago

Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

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Matthew 6:26 (NKJV)
1 month 1 day ago

Being precedes identity. 
Existence precedes essence. 

Contingent identity subgroups are never more important than the deterministic universal evolution. 

"Precedence Culture" builds a culture around being, before choice, rather than identity particularity that is contingent and after choice. Identity particularity can't even exist without deterministic emergence. Respect life first.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

What good would it be to possess the whole universe if one were its only survivor?

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A Lasting Peace Through the Federation of Europe, 1756
3 months 2 weeks ago

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with reason when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.

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2 months 1 week ago

The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread.

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Plato's Pharmacy
1 month 2 weeks ago

The definition of definition is at bottom just what the maxim of pragmatism expresses.

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Letter to William James
2 months 3 weeks 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).
2 months 2 weeks ago

The politician may change sides so frequently as to find himself always in the majority, but most politicians have a preference for one party to the other, and subordinate their love of power to this preference.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules - it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.

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p. 25
1 month 2 weeks ago

The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.

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Ninth Thesis
2 months 1 week ago

Follow your desire as long as you live and do not perform more than is ordered; do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... When riches are gained, follow desire, for riches will not profit if one is sluggish.

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Maxim no. 11.
2 months 2 weeks ago

We are and irrefutable arbiters of value, and in the world of value Nature is only a part. Thus in this world we are greater than Nature. In the world of values, Nature in itself is neutral, neither good nor bad deserving of neither admiration nor censure. It is we who create value and our desires which confer value. In this realm we are kings, and we debase our kingship if we bow down to Nature. It is for us to determine our good life, not for Nature - not even for Nature personified as God.

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