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4 months 4 weeks ago

We do not go to cowards for tender dealing; there is nothing so cruel as panic; the man who has least fear for his own carcase, has most time to consider others.

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314
5 months 2 weeks ago

It is clearly absurd to say that if you go on adding atoms together until they have fused into a complex molecule, that molecule will become capable of self-reproduction. It is like saying that a skyscraper is more capable of reproduction than a bungalow. And suppose life did come into being through some accidental interaction of molecules, sun and cosmic rays; why should it not be content to rest passively? Why should it have been possessed of a desire to persist and evolve?

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p. 259
5 months ago

To forget the wrongs you receive, is to remedy them.

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Maxim 383
7 months 2 days ago

You know how much I admire Che Guevara. In fact, I believe that the man was not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age: as a fighter and as a man, as a theoretician who was able to further the cause of revolution by drawing his theories from his personal experience in battle.

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As quoted in Marianne Alexandre (ed.), !Viva Che!: Contributions in Tribute to Ernesto 'Che' Guevara, 1968
5 months 2 weeks ago

When I read the catechism of the Council of Trent, it seems as though I had nothing in common with the religion there set forth.

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6 months 2 weeks ago

Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

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Cicero
7 months 3 days ago

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

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Beauty
5 months 1 day ago

When we put our central nervous system outside us we returned to the primal nomadic state.

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7 months 2 days ago

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

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7 months 5 days ago

To Americans. That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.

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6 months 3 days ago

The Republican form of government is the highest form of government; but because of this it requires the highest type of human nature - a type nowhere at present existing.

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Vol. 3, Ch. XV, The Americans
7 months 4 days ago

Whatever bitterness and hate may be found in the movements which we are to examine, it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest. If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in this from their opponents; and in the source of their inspiration they have shown themselves superior to those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the injustices and oppressions by which the existing system is preserved.

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Introduction, p. 10.
5 months 4 weeks ago

In a single second we do away with all seconds; God himself could not do as much.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

After all, why should ordinary people want to contemplate the End, especially when we see the condition of those who do?

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7 months 3 days ago

A man is a god in ruins.

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Prospects
3 months 3 days ago

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

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Referring to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom, in his Autobiography, 1821
6 months 4 weeks ago

But more correctly: The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings - shows that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question "How do I know..." drags out the language-game, or else does away with it.

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8 months 1 day ago

Your pride has been too much for the pride of your admirers; they were numerous and high-spirited, but they have all run away, overpowered by your superior force of character; not one of them remains. And I want you to understand the reason why you have been too much for them. You think that you have no need of them or of any other man, for you have great possessions and lack nothing, beginning with the body, and ending with the soul. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

The mind that puts everything in question, reaches, after a thousand interrogations, an almost total inertia, a situation which the inert, in fact, knows from the start, by instinct. For what is inertia but a congenital perplexity?

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5 months 1 week ago

In short, analytic statements are statements which we all accept and for which we do not give reasons. This is what we mean when we say that they are true by 'implicit convention'. The problem is then to distinguish them from other statements that we accept, and do not give reasons for, in particular from the statements that we unreasonably accept. To resolve this difficulty, we have to point out some of the crucial distinguishing features of analytic statements (e.g. the fact that the subject concept is not a law-cluster concept), and we have to connect these features with what, in the preceding section, was called the 'rationale' of the analytic-synthetic distinction. Having done this, we can see that the acceptance of analytic statements is rational, even though there are no reasons (in the sense of' evidence') in connection with them.

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The analytic and the synthetic
5 months 4 weeks ago

The assumption that the human psyche possesses layers that lie below consciousness is not likely to arouse serious opposition. But... there could just as well be layers lying above consciousness... The conscious mind can only claim a relatively central position and must put up with the fact that the unconscious psyche transcends and as it were surrounds it on all sides. Unconscious contents connect it backward with the physiological states on the one hand and archetypal data on the other. But it is extended forward by intuitions which are conditioned partly by archetypes and partly by subliminal perceptions depending on the relativity of time and space in the unconscious.

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p. 132
5 months 4 weeks ago

No one can enjoy freedom without trembling.

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5 months 4 weeks ago

Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.

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Vol. V, par. 265
3 months ago

Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul. Variant translation: Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.

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IV, 3.
7 months 5 days ago

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

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L'Ingénu, ch.10 (1767) Quoted in The End, part 13 of A Series of Unfortunate Events
7 months 1 week ago

One should hasten to put such witches to death. Statement of 20 August 1538;

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as quoted in Conversations With Martin Luther (1915), translated and edited by Preserved Smith and Herbert Percival Gallinger, p. 163
7 months 3 days ago

Since the working-class lives from hand to mouth,it buys as long as it has the means to buy.

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Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 449.
3 months 3 weeks ago

Why, reader, truly, if they asked thee or me, Which way we meant to vote?-were it not our likeliest answer: Neither way! I, as a Tenpound Franchiser, will receive no bribe; but also I will not vote for either of these men. Neither Rigmarole nor Dolittle shall, by furtherance of mine, go and make laws for this country. I will have no hand in such a mission. How dare I! If other men cannot be got in England, a totally other sort of men, different as light is from dark, as star-fire is from street-mud, what is the use of votings, or of Parliaments in England?

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7 months 1 week ago

I have here only made a nosegay of culled flowers, and have brought nothing of my own but the thread that ties them together.

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Book III, Ch. 12. Of Physiognomy
7 months 1 week ago

The Apostle Paul wants us to work with our hands in order to share with the needy (Ephesians 5:28). Notice that he could have said that we should work to support ourselves. But Paul says that we work to give to those in need. This is why caring for our body is also a Christian work. If the body is healthy and fit, we are able to work and save money that can be used to help those in need.

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p. 80
3 months 2 weeks ago

Among the smaller duties of life I hardly know any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.

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Lecture IX : On the Conduct of the Understanding
5 months 2 weeks ago

...the Outsider's problem is the problem of denial of self-expression.

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Chapter Four The Attempt to Gain Control
6 months 2 weeks ago

There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacings of the spheres.

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As quoted in the preface of the book entitled Music of the Spheres by Guy Murchie
8 months ago

Science doesn't purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It's a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It's a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it.

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8 months ago

If one thing goes without saying, almost anything can.

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5 months 2 weeks ago

Neurosis can be understood best as the battle between tendencies within an individual; deep character analysis leads, if successful, to the progressive solution.

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p. 264
5 months 1 day ago

Great ages of innovation are the ages in which entire cultures are junked or scrapped.

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(p. 309)
7 months 3 days ago

O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.

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Ode, st. 1
6 months 1 week ago

A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 23.
7 months 4 weeks ago

When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

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8 months 3 days ago

Just as it sometimes happens that deformed offspring are produced by deformed parents, and sometimes not, so the offspring produced by a female are sometimes female, sometimes not, but male, because the female is as it were a deformed male.

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6 months 3 days ago

We are at war with a system, which, by it's essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by it's essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail.

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p. 19
7 months 3 days ago

The "through-and-through" universe seems to suffocate me with its infallible impeccable all-pervasiveness. Its necessity, with no possibilities; its relations, with no subjects, make me feel as if I had entered into a contract with no reserved rights ... It seems too buttoned-up and white-chokered and clean-shaven a thing to speak for the vast slow-breathing unconscious Kosmos with its dread abysses and its unknown tides.

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Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), Ch. 12 : Absolutism and Empiricism
5 months 2 weeks ago

The philosophy of the soul of my people appears to me as an expression of an inward tragedy analogous to the tragedy of the soul of Don Quixote, as the expression of conflict between what the world is as scientific reason shows it to be and what we wish that it might be, as our religious faith affirms it to be. And in this philosophy is to be found the explanation of what is usually said about us - namely, that we are fundamentally irreducible to Kultur - or in other words, that we refuse to submit to it. No, Don Quixote does not resign himself either to the world, or to science or logic, or to art or esthetics, or to morality or ethics.

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5 months 5 days ago

No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful. If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDEDFOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD WAS MUSIC. Now, during our catastrophically idiotic war in Vietnam, the music kept getting better and better and better. We lost that war, by the way. Order couldn't be restored in Indochina until the people kicked us out. That war only made billionaires out of millionaires. Today's war is making trillionaires out of billionaires. Now I call that progress.

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As quoted in "Vonnegut's Blues For America" Sunday Herald

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