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1 month 1 week ago

"We are by no means opposed to the globalization of relationships as such-in fact, as we said, the strongest forces of Leftist internationalism have effectively led this process. The enemy, rather, is a specific regime of global relations that we call Empire."
- Antonio Negri

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Lincoln's place in the history of the United States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington!

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10 months 3 weeks ago

In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence... the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.

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7 months 3 days ago

So clearly will truths kindle light for truths.

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Book I, line 1117 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse and M. F. Smith)
2 months 3 weeks ago

In dealing with relationships, not only man-to-man, but also State-to-State and race-to-race, it is necessary to be able to conceive again of that obedience which does not humiliate but exalts, that command or leadership which commits one to superiority and a precise responsibility.

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p. 117
3 months 3 days ago

When we leave you and assemble together by ourselves, we talk freely about his sayings and doings, treating them with the respect which they deserve: in your presence deep silence is observed about him, and thus you lose that greatest of pleasures, the hearing the praises of your son, which I doubt not you would be willing to hand down to all future ages, had you the means of so doing, even at the cost of your own life.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist. Were motion a property of matter, that undiscovered and undiscoverable thing, called perpetual motion, would establish itself. It is because motion is not a property of matter, that perpetual motion is an impossibility in the hand of every being, but that of the Creator of motion. When the pretenders to Atheism can produce perpetual motion, and not till then, they may expect to be credited.

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A Discourse, &c. &c.
5 months 2 weeks ago

It was evident that he revived by fits and starts. He would suddenly come to himself from actual delirium for a few minutes; he would remember and talk with complete consciousness, chiefly in disconnected phrases which he had perhaps thought out and learnt by heart in the long weary hours of his illness, in his bed, in sleepless solitude.

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Part 2, Chapter 10
5 months 2 weeks ago

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

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No. 1
5 months 2 days ago

It is obvious that many women have appropriated feminism to serve their own ends, especially those white women who have been at the forefront of the movement; but rather than resigning myself to this appropriation I choose to re-appropriate the term "feminism," to focus on the fact that to be "feminist" in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation from sexist role patterns, domination, and oppression.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Looking for God-or Heaven-by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play.

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"The Seeing Eye", in Christian Reflections (1967), p. 167
6 months 2 weeks ago

One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

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Inès, Act 1, sc. 5
5 months 2 weeks ago

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

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p. 32 (1981 edition) Originally presented at an Eranos conference.
3 months 1 week ago

Scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense... that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. p. 91

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2012 ed.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Justice is happiness according to virtue.

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Chapter V, Section 48, p. 310
3 months 1 week 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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6 months 2 weeks ago

In this frame of mind it occurred to me to put the question directly to myself: "Suppose that all your objects in life were realized; that all the changes in institutions and opinions which you are looking forward to, could be completely effected at this very instant: would this be a great joy and happiness to you?" And an irrepressible self-consciousness distinctly answered, "No!" At this my heart sank within me: the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.

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(pp. 133-134)
6 months 1 week ago

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through life; for death comes upon thee at last, and the perishable part falls to the ground.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

Blair has been the modern man he claims to be: for him, a sense of subjective certainty is all that is needed for an action to be right. If deception is needed to realise the providential design, it cannot be truly deceitful.

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Neoconned!: How Blair took New Labour for a ride, The Independent
3 months 1 week ago

All laws are... deduced from experiment; but to enunciate them, a special language is needful... ordinary language is too poor...This... is one reason why the physicist can not do without mathematics; it furnishes him the only language he can speak. And a well-made language is no indifferent thing;...the analyst, who pursues a purely esthetic aim, helps create, just by that, a language more fit to satisfy the physicist....law springs from experiment, but not immediately. Experiment is individual, the law deduced from it is general; experiment is only approximate, the law is precise...In a word, to get the law from experiment, it is necessary to generalize... But how generalize? ...in this choice what shall guide us?It can only be analogy. ...What has taught us to know the true profound analogies, those the eyes do not see but reason divines?It is the mathematical spirit, which disdains matter to cling only to pure form.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and pleasing thoughts, as monuments of other men are overgrown with moss; for our Friends have no place in the graveyard.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Even serious students are misled by the myth of the subject.

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7 months 1 week ago

There are two kinds of pleasure: one consisting in a state of rest, in which both body and mind are undisturbed by any kind of pain; the other arising from an agreeable agitation of the senses, producing a correspondent emotion in the soul. It is upon the former of these that the enjoyment of life chiefly depends. Happiness may therefore be said to consist in bodily ease, and mental tranquility.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

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Letter to Louise Dorothea of Meiningen, duchess of Saxe-Gotha Madame, 30 January 1762
5 months 3 days ago

He has been named respectively, Jehovah, Allah, Brahma, Father in Heaven, Order of Heaven, First Cause, Supreme Being, Chance. Each name corresponds to a system of thought derived from the experiences of those who have used it.Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying Him metaphysical compliments. He has been conceived as the foundation of the metaphysical situation with its ultimate activity. If this conception be adhered to, there can be no alternative except to discern in Him the origin of all evil as well as of all good. He is then the supreme author of the play, and to Him must therefore be ascribed its shortcomings as well as its success.

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Ch. 11: "God", pp. 250-251
6 months 3 weeks ago

A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant.

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Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114
6 months 2 weeks ago

Nor is it the irrationality of the form which is taken as characteristic. On the contrary, one overlooks the irrational.

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Vol. II, Ch. I, p. 30.
6 months 2 weeks ago

Knowledge is not so precise a concept as is commonly thought. Instead of saying "I know this," we ought to say "I more or less know something more or less like this." It is true that this proviso is hardly necessary as regards the multiplication table, but knowledge in practical affairs has not the certainty or the precision of arithmetic. Suppose I say "democracy is a good thing": I must admit, first, that I am less sure of this than I am that two and two are four, and secondly, that "democracy" is a somewhat vague term which I cannot define precisely. We ought to say, therefore: "I am fairly certain that it is a good thing if a government has something of the characteristics that are common to the British and American Constitutions," or something of this sort. And one of the aims of education ought to be to make such a statement more effective from a platform than the usual type of political slogan.

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7 months 2 weeks ago

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.

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As quoted by Edward Teller, in Dr. Edward Teller's Magnificent Obsession by Robert Coughlan, in LIFE magazine (6 September 1954), p. 62
7 months 2 weeks ago

No matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.

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5 months 1 week ago

O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.

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15:28 (KJV)
6 months 3 weeks ago

God might grant us riches, honours, life, and even health, to our own hurt; for every thing that is pleasing to us is not always good for us. If he sends us death, or an increase of sickness, instead of a cure, Vvrga tua et baculus, tuus ipsa me consolata sunt. "Thy rod and thy staff have comforted me," he does it by the rule of his providence, which better and more certainly discerns what is proper for us than we can do; and we ought to take it in good part, as coming from a wise and most friendly hand.

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Ch. 12
5 months 2 weeks ago

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgments of the ignorant upon their designs.

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Volume I, p. 7
5 months 3 weeks ago

It was under Catholic Feudalism that they were first united; a union for which their incorporation into the Roman empire had prepared them, and which was finally organized by the incomparable genius of Charlemagne.

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p. 88
5 months ago

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.

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Ch. 4
7 months 2 weeks ago

Parnenides: When there is a number of things which seem to you to be great, you may think, as you look at them all, that there is one and the same idea in them, and hence you think the great is one. But if with your mind's eye you regard the absolute great and these many great things in the same way, will not another great appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great?

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2 months 1 week ago

It's not about telling people how to be, outside of supporting ideals that teach us what to avoid.

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5 months 1 day ago

The STATE IDEA, the authoritarian principle, has been proven bankrupt by the experience of the Russian Revolution. If I were to sum up my whole argument in one sentence I should say: The inherent tendency of the State is to concentrate, to narrow, and monopolize all social activities; the nature of revolution is, on the contrary, to grow, to broaden, and disseminate itself in ever-wider circles. In other words, the State is institutional and static; revolution is fluent, dynamic. These two tendencies are incompatible and mutually destructive. The State idea killed the Russian Revolution and it must have the same result in all other revolutions, unless the libertarian idea prevail.

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5 months 4 days ago

There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. ... The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.

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Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147
6 months 2 weeks ago

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 20, § 242
6 months 3 weeks ago

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny ; flattery to treachery ; standing armies to arbitrary government ; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

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Part I, Essay 8: Of Public Credit (This appears as a footnote in editions H to P. Other editions include it in the body of the text, and some number it Essay 9.)
4 months 2 weeks ago

The new media are not bridges between man and nature: they are nature.

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(p. 14)
6 months 2 weeks ago

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

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Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert, 8 February 1776
5 months 2 weeks ago

When animus and anima meet, the animus draws his sword of power and the anima ejects her poison of illusion and seduction. The outcome need not always be negative, since the two are equally likely to fall in love (a special instance of love at first sight).

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Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.338.30
5 months 1 week ago

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

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8:34b-36 (KJV)

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