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But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of Bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

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Chapter V
7 months 3 days ago

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
5 months 2 weeks ago

Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 27 (italics and spelling as per text)
5 months 1 week ago

The pornographic body lacks any symbolism. The ritualized body, by contrast, is a splendid stage, with secrets and deities written into it.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

The merits of democracy are negative: it does not insure good government, but it prevents certain evils.

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Ch. 18: The Taming of Power PT311 books.google
6 months 3 weeks ago

What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.

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Book IV, Chapter 10, "Nice People or New Men"
3 months 5 days ago

The awareness that we are all human beings together has become lost in war and through politics. We have reached the point of regarding each other only as members of a people either allied with us or against us and our approach; prejudice, sympathy, or antipathy are all conditioned on that. Now we must rediscover the fact that we - all together - are human beings, and that we must strive to concede to each other what moral capacity we have. Only in this way can we begin to believe that in other peoples as well as in ourselves there will arise the need for a new spirit which can be the beginning of a feeling of mutual trustworthiness toward each other.

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Radio appeal for peace, Oslo, Norway (30 March 1958); also in Peace or Atomic War (1958) Three Appeals Broadcast from Oslo, Norway, on April 28, 29, and 30, 1958.
5 months 3 weeks ago

There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the steadfastness of some men has been nut to so sore a trial. It is not very difficult for well-formed minds to abandon their interest; but the separation of fame and virtue is an harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality.

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3 months 3 days ago

The fundamental principle underlying all justifications of war, from the point of view of human personality, is 'heroism'. War, it is said, offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero who sleeps within him. War breaks the routine of comfortable life; by means of its severe ordeals, it offers a transfiguring knowledge of life, life according to death. The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities. From a spiritual point of view, these possibilities make up for the negative and destructive tendencies of war, which are one-sidedly and tendentiously highlighted by pacifist materialism. War makes one realise the relativity of human life and therefore also the law of a 'more-than-life', and thus war has always an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value.

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p. 21
4 months 1 week ago

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

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Technical Education
3 months 2 weeks ago

There is an unquestionable relationship between economic development and liberal democracy, which one can observe simply by looking around the world. But the exact nature of that relationship is more complicated than it first appeared, and is not adequately explained by any of the theories presented up to this point. The logic of modern natural science and the industrialization process it fosters does not point in a single direction in the sphere of politics, as it does in the sphere of economics. Liberal democracy is compatible with industrial maturity, and is preferred by the citizens of many industrially advanced states, but there does not appear to be a necessary connection between the two. The Mechanism underlying our directional history leads equally well to a bureaucratic-authoritarian future as to a liberal one. We will therefore have to look elsewhere in trying to understand the current crisis of authoritarianism and the worldwide democratic revolution.

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p. 125
3 months 5 days ago

Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

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Western Civ, p. 18.
7 months 1 week ago

The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.

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IV, 3 Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
7 months 1 week ago

For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.

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1:1:1 English Latin Latin: Omnis enim res quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur quomodo habenda est.
6 months 3 weeks ago

For it was my master who taught me not only how very little I knew but also that any wisdom to which I might ever aspire could consist only in realizing more fully the infinity of my ignorance.

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3 months 2 weeks ago

I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree [probably Caesar Baronius]: "The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.

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Variant translation: I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: "That the intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heavens go."
5 months 1 week ago

They certainly demonstrate that Seth, whether an aspect of Jane Robert's unconscious mind or a genuine "spirit," was of a high level of intelligence. Yet when Jane Roberts produced a book that purported to be the after-death journal of the philosopher William James, it was difficult to take it seriously. James's works are noted for their vigour and clarity of style; Jane Robert's "communicator" writes like an undergraduate . . . there is a clumsiness here that is quite unlike James's swift-moving, colloquial prose.

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p. 390
4 months 1 week ago

I do not believe that civilizations have to die...Civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

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In "Prophet of Hope & Fear" [Review of A Study of History, Vols. 7-10] TIME (18 October 1954) p. 108
4 months 3 days ago

Too many of our preferences reflect nasty behaviours and states of mind that were genetically adaptive in the ancestral environment. Instead, wouldn't it be better if we rewrote our own corrupt code?

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The Abolitionist Project, Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007
3 months 1 week ago

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

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Lecture XIX : On the Conduct of the Understanding, Part II
5 months 1 week ago

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

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p. 277
6 months 3 weeks ago

We cannot always choose the vocation to which we believe we are called. Our social relations, to some extent, have already begun to form before we are in a position to determine them.

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 37
2 months 2 weeks ago

It is, therefore, quite natural that the churches have always fought against science and have persecuted its supporters. But, on the other hand, I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research. No one who does not appreciate the terrific exertions, and, above all, the devotion without which pioneer creations in scientific thought cannot come into being, can judge the strength of the feeling out of which alone such work, turned away as it is from immediate practical life, can grow. What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work! Any one who only knows scientific research in its practical applications may easily come to a wrong interpretation of the state of mind of the men who, surrounded by skeptical contemporaries, have shown the way to kindred spirits scattered over all countries in all centuries. Only those who have dedicated their lives to similar ends can have a living conception of the inspiration which gave these men the power to remain loyal to their purpose in spite of countless failures. It is the cosmic religious sense which grants this power. A contemporary has rightly said that the only deeply religious people of our largely materialistic age are the earnest men of research.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The principles of Western liberalism seem no longer to lend themselves to effective action. Deprived of the expressive power, we are awed by it, have a hunger for it, and are afraid of it. Thus we praise the gray dignity of our soft-spoken leaders, but in our hearts we are suckers for passionate outbursts, even when those passionate outbursts are hypocritical and falsely motivated.

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"Literary Notes on Khrushchev" (1961), p. 36
7 months 3 weeks ago

Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. 

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"Historical Murder", as translated by Anthony Bower
3 months 2 weeks ago

To rule the imperial population, behold our vocation.

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94
4 months 3 weeks ago

Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit from taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don't really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth's atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.

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p.73 of the 1966 Signet paperback edition
4 months 2 weeks ago

There is no general reason to expect evolution to be progressive - even in the weak, value-neutral sense. There will be times when increased size of some organ is favoured and other times when decreased size is favoured. Most of the time, average-sized individuals will be favoured in the population and both extremes will be penalised. During these times the population exhibits evolutionary stasis (i.e., no change) with respect to the factor being measured. If we had a complete fossil record and looked for trends in some particular dimension, such as leg length, we would expect to see periods of no change alternating with fitful continuations or reversals in direction - like a weathervane in changeable, gusty weather.

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6 months 3 weeks ago

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

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Reader's Digest, 1934
6 months 2 weeks ago

When he was asked what advantage had accrued to him from philosophy, his answer was, "The ability to hold converse with myself."

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§ 4
4 months 3 weeks ago

To the blind all things are sudden.

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(p. 41)
3 months 3 weeks ago

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers.

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Ch. I: "Routineer and Inventor", p. 30.
5 months 1 week ago

The human soul has need of truth and of freedom of expression. The need for truth requires that intellectual culture should be universally accessible, and that it should be able to be acquired in an environment neither physically remote nor psychologically alien.

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6 months 1 week ago

Phocion compared the speeches of Leosthenes to cypress-trees. "They are tall," said he, "and comely, but bear no fruit."

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56 Phocion
3 months 1 week ago

So near at hand is freedom, and is anyone still a slave?

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6 months 2 weeks ago

If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don't have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.

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p. 50e
6 months 3 weeks ago

The second doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy - that it is possible to know the Divine Ground by a direct intuition higher than discursive reasoning - is to be found in all the great religions of the world. A philosopher who is content merely to know about the ultimate Reality - theoretically and by hearsay - is compared by Buddha to a herdsman of other men's cows. Mohammed uses an even homelier barnyard metaphor. For him the philosopher who has not realized his metaphysics is just an ass bearing a load of books. Christian, Hindu, Taoist teachers wrote no less emphatically about the absurd pretensions of mere learning and analytic reasoning.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

[France is] a Country where the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the Yoke of Laws and morals.

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Letter to William Windham (27 September 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 25
6 months 3 weeks ago

Since Adam and Eve ate the apple, man has never refrained from any folly of which he was capable. The End.

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Full text of Russell's book History of the World in Epitome , written in 1959
5 months 2 weeks ago

An autonomous electorate, free because it is free from indoctrination and manipulation, would indeed be on a "level of articulate opinion and ideology" which is not likely to be found. Therefore, the concept has to be rejected as "unrealistic"-has to be if one accepts the factually prevailing level of opinion and ideology as prescribing the valid criteria for sociological analysis. And-if indoctrination and manipulation have reached the stage where the prevailing level of opinion has become a level of falsehood, where the actual state of affairs is no longer recognized as that which it is, then an analysis which is methodologically committed to reject transitive concepts commits itself to a false consciousness. Its very empiricism is ideological.

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p. 117
4 months 3 weeks ago

There are clear cases in which "understanding" literally applies and clear cases in which it does not apply; and these two sorts of cases are all I need for this argument.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

The judge is condemned when the guilty is absolved.

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Maxim 407 Adopted by the original Edinburgh Review magazine as its motto.
3 months 5 days ago

I have twice gone fishing with rod and line just because other boys asked me to, but this sport was soon made impossible for me by the treatment of the worms that were put on the hook for bait, and the wrenching of the mouths of the fishes that were caught. I gave it up, and even found courage enough to dissuade other boys from going.

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2 months 3 weeks ago

Religious beauty is superior to ideal beauty, since it is the ideal of the ideal.

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p. 287
6 months 2 weeks ago

So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

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Book II, Satire II, Line 135-136 (trans. E. C. Wickham)
2 months 3 weeks ago

I hope we shall... crush in it's birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.

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Letter to George Logan, 1816

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