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2 months 4 days ago

It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur:-like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. The art of free society consists first in the maintenance of the symbolic code; and secondly in fearlessness of revision, to secure that the code serves those purposes which satisfy an enlightened reason. Those societies which cannot combine reverence to their symbols with freedom of revision, must ultimately decay either from anarchy, or from the slow atrophy of a life stifled by useless shadows.

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Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927), chapter 3, p. 88; final paragraph of the book.
4 months 4 days ago

Show that you know this only, how you may never either fail to get what you desire or fall into what you avoid.

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Book II, ch. 1, 37
3 months 2 weeks ago

Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle - the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.

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As quoted in 1,001 Pearls of Wisdom (2006) by David Ross
2 months 2 weeks ago

Out of the shadow of the abstract man, who thinks for the pleasure of thinking, emerges the organic man, who thinks because of a vital imbalance, and who is beyond science and art.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust - ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

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5 days ago

Liberty of the people is not my liberty!

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Cambridge 1995, p. 190
3 months 2 weeks ago

We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot 'see' how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without.

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Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
4 months 1 week ago

Of our desires some are natural and necessary, others are natural but not necessary; and others are neither natural nor necessary, but are due to groundless opinion.

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3 months 4 weeks ago

Silence is the virtue of a fool.

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Book VI, xxxi
2 months 2 weeks ago

If there is to be any philosophy at all, this contradiction must be resolved - and the solution of this problem, or answer to the question: how can we think both of Presentations as conforming to objects, and objects as conforming to presentations? is, not the first, but the highest task of transcendental philosophy.

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2 months 1 week ago

“What man among you with 100 sheep, on losing one of them, will not leave the 99 behind in the wilderness and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he has found it, he puts it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he gets home, he calls his friends and his neighbors together, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' I tell you that in the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over 99 righteous ones who have no need of repentance.

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Luke 15: 4-7
1 month 2 weeks ago

It's misleading to suppose there's any basic difference between education & entertainment. This distinction merely relieves people of the responsibility of looking into the matter.

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(1957) from "Classroom Without Walls", Explorations Vol. 7, 1957; reprinted in Explorations in Communication ed. E. Carpenter & M. McLuhan, (Boston: Beacon, 1960); and again in McLuhan: Hot and Cool ed. G. E. Stearn (NY: Dial, 1967).
1 month 3 weeks ago

Truth and falsity are the most fundamental terms of rational criticism, and any adequate philosophy must give some account of these, or failing that, show that they can be dispensed with.

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"Introduction: Philosophy of language and the rest of philosophy"
3 months 2 weeks ago

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

It is the fantasy of seizing reality live that continues-ever since Narcissus bent over his spring. Surprising the real in order to immobilize it, suspending the real in the expiration of its double. You bend over the hologram like God over his creature: only God has this power of passing through walls, through people, and finding Himself immaterially in the beyond. We dream of passing through ourselves and of finding ourselves in the beyond: the day when your holographic double will be there in space, eventually moving and talking, you will have realized this miracle. Of course, it will no longer be a dream, so its charm will be lost.

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"Holograms," p. 105
2 months 2 weeks ago

The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.

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The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849) Referring to the Serb uprising of 1848-49
2 months 2 weeks ago

To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.

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4 days ago

To take Macaulay out of literature and society and put him in the House of Commons, is like taking the chief physician out of London during a pestilence.

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Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 315
3 months 2 weeks ago

There is no rule more invariable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding what we suspect.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 254
4 months 1 week ago

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

In order to remain silent Da-sein must have something to say.

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Stambaugh translation
3 months 3 weeks ago

He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

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24 April 1776, The Forester's Letters", Letter III: To Cato, Pennsylvania Journal
4 months 1 week ago

Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters... We are lucky to have them... They make the battle. Ah but the One, One of them is a Warrior... and He will bring the others back.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

We all have a weakness for beauty.

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2 months 2 weeks ago

Dying people often become childish.

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Act II.
4 days ago

Consider that we shouldn't call our brother a fool, since we don't know ourselves what we are.

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1 month 5 days ago

Let us have "sweet girl graduates" by all means. They will be none the less sweet for a little wisdom; and the "golden hair" will not curl less gracefully outside the head by reason of there being brains within.

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Emancipation - Black and White
4 months 2 weeks ago

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

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1 month 5 days ago

The great tragedy of Science - the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.

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Presidential Address at the British Association, "Biogenesis and abiogenesis" (1870); later published in Collected Essays, Vol. 8, p. 229
3 months 2 weeks ago

My friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, "What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?" and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

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"On Science Fiction". Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2002). p. 67.
4 months 1 week ago

Chi Wan thought thrice, and then acted. When the Master was informed of it, he said, "Twice may do."

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3 months 2 weeks ago

To-day unbind the captive, So only are ye unbound; Lift up a people from the dust, Trump of their rescue, sound!

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Boston Hymn, st. 17
3 months 2 weeks ago

All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.

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Letter X
2 months 6 days ago

There is no tyranny in the world more hateful than that of ideas. Ideas bring ideophobia, and the consequence is that people begin to persecute their neighbors in the name of ideas. I loathe and detest all labels, and the only label that I could now tolerate would be that of ideoclast or idea breaker.

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Recalled by Walter Starkie from a conversation he had with Unamuno, as related in the Epilogue of Unamuno.
3 months 3 weeks ago

The next thing is by gentle degrees to accustom children to those things they are too much afraid of. But here great caution is to be used, that you do not make too much haste, nor attempt this cure too early, for fear lest you increase the mischief instead of remedying it.

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Sec. 115
2 months 4 days ago

Modern science has imposed on humanity the necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure.

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Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 291
3 months 3 weeks ago

Percepts and phenomena which precedes the logical use of the intellect is called appearance, while the reflex knowledge originating from several appearances compared by the intellect is called experience.

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1 month 1 week ago

Women will be no longer made the slaves of, or dependent upon men ... They will be equal in education, rights, privileges and personal liberty.

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Sixth Part
2 months 3 weeks ago

Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena. . . . but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation....

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1 month 4 weeks ago

Economic man deals with the "real world" in all its complexity. Administrative man recognizes that the world he perceives is a drastic simplified model... He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation that takes into account just a few of the factors that he regards as most relevant and crucial.

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p. xxix; As cited in: Jesper Simonsen (1994) Administrative Behavior: How Organizations can be Understood in Terms of Decision Processes. Roskilde Universitet.
4 weeks ago

Humans already massively intervene in Nature, whether through habitat destruction, captive breeding programs for big cats, "rewilding", etc. So the question is not whether humans should "interfere", but rather what ethical principles should govern our interventions.

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The Antispeciesist Revolution, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 26 Jul. 2013
3 months 1 week ago

For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 30, 9.
2 months 5 days ago

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

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Letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (November 1815)
3 months 2 weeks ago

Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether?

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Lecture I, "Religion and Neurology"
3 months 3 weeks ago

Few men have been admired by their own households.

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Ch. 2
3 months 1 week ago

With an ill-famed man form no connection.

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3 months 1 week ago

Wealth and poverty do not lie in a person's estate, but in their souls.

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iv. 34

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