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8 months 1 day ago

And now I have explained the series of social and intellectual conditions by which the discovery of sociological laws, and consequently the foundation of Positivism, was fixed for the precise date at which I began my philosophical career: that is to say, one generation after the progressive dictatorship of the Convention, and almost immediately after the fall of the retrograde tyranny of Bonaparte.

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p. 71
9 months 1 week ago

The Heavenly City outshines Rome, beyond comparison. There, instead of victory, is truth; instead of high rank, holiness; instead of peace, felicity; instead of life, eternity.

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Book II, Chapter 29
6 months 2 weeks ago

A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political , legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers on its members the benefits of socially accumulated knowledge.

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"What is Culture?" (p. 2)
8 months 2 weeks ago

The principles of ethics come from our own nature as social, reasoning beings.

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Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 149
1 month 6 days ago

"In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of truth."
- Xunzi

See biography for Xunzi:
https://civilsimian.com/Xunzi

Read Xunzi's work:
https://civilsimian.com/user/200/content

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7 months 5 days 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.
5 months 1 week 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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9 months 5 days ago

I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party.

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Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni (1523), § 176, As quoted in Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1900) by Ephraim Emerton, p. 377
7 months 1 week ago

Emptiness is not a denial of the proper but an affirmation of it.

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5 months 3 weeks ago

The way positive reinforcement is carried out is more important than the amount.

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As quoted in Meditations for Parents Who Do Too Much (1993) by Jonathon Lazear and Wendy Lazear, p. 5
8 months 3 weeks ago

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

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p. 18

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.

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F 81
7 months 3 weeks ago

Some propose mere welfare measures - while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

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Aims, principles, &c., have a place in our thoughts, in our subjective design only; but not yet in the sphere of reality. That which exists for itself only, is a possibility, a potentiality; but has not yet emerged into Existence. A second element must be introduced in order to produce actuality - viz. actuation, realization; and whose motive power is the Will - the activity of man in the widest sense.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

Comrades, I've voyaged long and far on sea and soul,my eyes have seen disease, gods, ghosts, and men, and yetin no land have I seen a more false, murderous sirenthan that wind-headed, babbling, blind bitch-hound called Hope!

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Odysseus, Book X, line 892
9 months 3 weeks ago

Socrates did not stop with a philosophical consideration of mankind; he addressed himself to each one individually, wrested everything from him, and sent him away empty-handed.

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4 months 3 weeks ago

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: 'I have to go to work - as a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I'm going to do what I was born for - the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?' 

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(Farquharson translation)(Hays translation) At dawn of day, when you dislike being called, have this thought ready: "I am called to man's labour; why then do I make a difficulty if I am going out to do what I was born to do and what I was brought into the
8 months 3 weeks ago

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

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Introduction
7 months 1 week ago

books are only what we want them to be; rather, what we read into them.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.

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7 months ago

It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for we have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which are the causes and effects of the true motions.

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Definitions - Scholium
6 months 5 days ago

Philosophy is an everlasting fire, sometimes damped down by setting itself limits, then flaring into new life as it consumes them. Every field of inquiry is limited, but philosophy has an essential relation to the question of limits, to its own limits.

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Introduction, p. xiii
5 months 1 week ago

He was a one-book man. Some men have only one book in them; others, a library.

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Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 402
9 months 4 weeks ago
...and woe betide fateful curiosity should it ever succeed in peering through a crack in the chamber of consciousness, out and down into the depths, and thus gain an intimation of the fact that humanity, in the indifference of its ignorance, rests on the pitiless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous clinging in dreams, as it were, to the back of a tiger.
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8 months 3 weeks ago

What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most - that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman - the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.

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Vol. 1, Ch 8 "The Philosopher King"
4 months 3 weeks ago

I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another, for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.

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Letter to Elbridge Gerry (26 January 1799); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 10, p. 78
9 months 4 days ago

Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.

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Ch. 12
7 months 3 weeks ago

In the case of colors, there is a tridimensional spread of feelings. Originally all feelings may have been connected in the same way, and the presumption is that the number of dimensions was endless. For development essentially involves a limitation of possibilities. But given a number of dimensions of feeling, all possible varieties are obtainable by varying the intensities of the different elements.

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7 months 3 weeks ago

The correct relationship between the higher and lower classes, the appropriate mutual interaction between the two is, as such, the true underlying support on which the improvement of the human species rests. The higher classes constitute the mind of the single large whole of humanity; the lower classes constitute its limbs; the former are the thinking and designing part, the latter the executive part.

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The System of Ethics According to the Principles of the Wissenschaftslehre (1798; Cambridge, 2005), p. 320.
7 months 1 week ago

Eros conquers depression.

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3 months 1 week ago

Sometimes they do things wrong repeatedly and initiate the apology at their convenience....or not....sometimes just silence....

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8 months 3 weeks ago

A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

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pp. 366-67
7 months 3 weeks ago

...no legislator, at any period of the world, has willingly placed the seat of active power in the hands of the multitude: Because there it admits of no control, no regulation; no steady direction whatsoever. The people are the natural control on authority; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and impossible.

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p. 441
6 months 5 days ago

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

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"Hype"
7 months 1 week ago

The salvation of reality is its obstinate, irreducible, matter-of-fact entities, which are limited to be no other than themselves. Neither science, nor art, nor creative action can tear itself away from obstinate, irreducible, limited facts.

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Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 132
5 months 1 week ago

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak with God as if men were listening.

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Line 5.
5 months 1 week ago

Bishop Berkeley destroyed this world in one volume octavo; and nothing remained after his time, but mind - which experienced a similar fate from the hand of Mr. Hume, in 1737.

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Introduction
6 months 3 weeks ago

An appeal to his alarm is never a good plan to rid oneself of a spirited young man.

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The Pavilion on the Links, ch. III.
4 months 3 weeks ago

Everything is the work of imagination, and... all the faculties of the soul can be correctly reduced to pure imagination...

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7 months 3 weeks ago

Modern man may assert that he can dispense with them, and he may bolster his opinion by insisting that there is no scientific evidence of their truth. But since we are dealing with invisible and unknowable things (for God is beyond human understanding, and there is no mean of proving immortality), why should we bother with evidence?

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p. 75-76
8 months 3 days ago

I entirely agree with you, as to the ill tendency of the affected doubts of some philosophers, and fantastical conceit of others. I am even so far gone of late in this way of think, that I have quitted several of the sublime notions I had got in their schools for vulgar opinions. And I give it you on my word, since this revolt from metaphysical notions to the plain dictates of nature and common sense, I find my understanding strangely enlightened, so that I can now easily comprehend a great many thing which before were all mystery and riddle.

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Said by Philonous (Berkeley) to Hylas in the opening of dialog 1 with reference to the recent surge philosophic endeavors (Locke, Newton, et al) that seemed to lead to skepticism about the existence of the world.

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