We shall, therefore, assume the...

We shall, therefore, assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and a corresponding acceleration of the reference system.

Science is international but its...

Science is international but its success is based on institutions, which are owned by nations. If therefore, we wish to promote culture we have to combine and to organize institutions with our own power and means.

I believe with Schopenhauer: We...

I believe with Schopenhauer: We can do what we wish, but we can only wish what we must. Practically, I am, nevertheless, compelled to act as if freedom of the will existed. If I wish to live in a civilized community, I must act as if man is a responsible being. I know that philosophically a murderer is not responsible for his crime; nevertheless, I must protect myself from unpleasant contacts. I may consider him guiltless, but I prefer not to take tea with him.

It's not about...

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

Art is a human activity...

Art is a human activity having for its purpose the transmission to others of the highest and best feelings to which men have risen.

If our fathers, in 1776,...

If our fathers, in 1776, had acknowledged the principle that a majority had the right to rule the minority, we should never have become a nation; for they were in a small minority, as compared with those who claimed the right to rule over them.

Hast thou named all the...

Hast thou named all the birds without a gun; Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk.

The jargon of authenticity ......

The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness, ... sub-language as superior language.

You must shun barbarians and...

You must shun barbarians and not govern them since, barbarians as they are, it is not right that they should receive a benefit.

Adam Smith discovered a remarkable...

Adam Smith discovered a remarkable property of a competitive market economy. Under perfect competition and with no market failures, markets will squeeze as many useful goods and services out of the available resources as is possible. But where monopolies or pollution or similar market failures become pervasive, the remarkable efficiency properties of the invisible hand may be destroyed.

"Why, you have tried to...

"Why, you have tried to improve before, and failed," the tempter in his soul whispered. "What is the good of trying again? You are not the only one—all are alike. Such is life." But the free, spiritual being which alone is true, alone powerful, alone eternal, was already awake in Nekhludoff. And he could not help believing it. However great the difference between that which he was and that which he wished to be, for the awakened spiritual being everything was possible.

[…] one should accept the...

[…] one should accept the truth from whatever source it proceeds.

Great men, great nations, have...

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

In this distancing, are aspects...

In this distancing, are aspects of our own reality as persons deeply concealed, and the concealment concealed? Are many professors of philosophy today afraid to reflect? I think so.

Everywhere we seek the Absolute,...

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

Not having heard of it...

Not having heard of it is not as good as having heard of it. Having heard of it is not as good as having seen it. Having seen it is not as good as knowing it. Knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice. Learning arrives at putting it into practice and then stops.

Is Wagner a human being...

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.

In the spiritual realm nothing...

In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.

Know that the figures employed...

Know that the figures employed by prophets are of two kinds: first, where every word which occurs in the simile represents a certain idea: and secondly, where the simile, as a whole, represents a general idea, but has a great many points which have no reference whatever to that idea: they are simply required to give to the simile its proper form and order, or better to conceal the idea: the simile is therefore continued as far as necessary, according to its literal sense. Consider this well.

Leave this hypocritical prating about...

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

The World Game deals in...

The World Game deals in all the terrestrially available quantities of the 92 regenerative chemical elements and all of their isotopes. It deals with all that man has learned in all history regarding the generalized principles operative in the physical universe and all the vast ramifications of technology, industrialization, the behavioral sciences, ecology, et al... The World Game is as meticulously geared to priority scheduling of “first things first” as is the gestation of a human being, or as is the gestation of any of the most scientifically implemented procedures of humanity’s sometimes vast undertakings, such as world wars or moon landings.

There are people into whose...

There are people into whose heads it never enters to conceive of any better state of society than that which now exists.

Of all the things that...

Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.

The rude, discursive Thinker is...

The rude, discursive Thinker is the Scholastic (Schoolman Logician). The true Scholastic is a mystical Subtlist; out of logical Atoms he builds his Universe; he annihilates all living Nature, to put an Artifice of Thoughts (Gedankenkunststuck, literally Conjuror's-trick of Thoughts) in its room. His aim is an infinite Automaton. Opposite to him is the rude, intuitive Poet: this is a mystical Macrologist: he hates rules and fixed form; a wild, violent life reigns instead of it in Nature; all is animate, no law; wilfulness and wonder everywhere. He is merely dynamical. Thus does the Philosophic Spirit arise at first, in altogether separate masses. In the second stage of culture these masses begin to come in contact, multifariously enough; and, as in the union of infinite Extremes, the Finite, the Limited arises, so here also arise "Eclectic Philosophers" without number; the time of misunderstanding begins. The most limited is, in this stage, the most important, the purest Philosopher of the second stage. This class occupies itself wholly with the actual, present world, in the strictest sense. The Philosophers of the first class look down with contempt on those of the second; say, they are a little of everything, and so nothing; hold their views as the results of weakness, as Inconsequentism. On the contrary, the second class, in their turn, pity the first; lay the blame on their visionary enthusiasm, which they say is absurd, even to insanity.

Truth is so great a...

Truth is so great a perfection, that if God would render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body and truth for his soul.

The homogenizing of European man...

The homogenizing of European man ... requires a justification: it lies in serving a higher sovereign species that stands upon the former which can raise itself to its task only by doing this. Not merely a master race whose sole task is to rule, but a race with its own sphere of life, with an excess of strength ... strong enough to have no need of the tyranny of the virtue-imperative.

The real pioneers in ideas,...

The real pioneers in ideas, in art and in literature have remained aliens to their time, misunderstood and repudiated. And if, as in the case of Zola, Ibsen and Tolstoy, they compelled their time to accept them, it was due to their extraordinary genius and even more so to the awakening and seeking of a small minority for new truths, to whom these men were the inspiration and intellectual support.

The proposition has... been laid...

The proposition has... been laid down in the most general terms, "All evils are negations." Thus for man death is evil; death is his non-existence. Illness, poverty, and ignorance are evils for man; all these are privations of properties. ...The destruction of other things is likewise nothing but the absence of their form. After these propositions, it must be admitted as a fact that it cannot be said of God that He directly creates evil, or He has the direct intention to produce evil; this is impossible. His works are all perfectly good. He only produces existence, and all existence is good; whilst evils are of a negative character, and cannot be acted upon.

For the prevision is allied...

For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates.

The word generalization in literature...

The word generalization in literature usually means covering too much territory too thinly to be persuasive, let alone convincing. In science, however, a generalization means a principle that has been found to hold true in every special case. ... The principle of leverage is a scientific generalization.

Even a minor event in...

Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child’s world and thus a world event.

As there are many to...

As there are many to whom the beauty and harmony of economic laws are hidden, and to whom the inspiring thought of a social order in which there should be work for all, leisure for all, and abundance for all — in which all might be at least as true, as generous and as manful as they wish to be — is shut out by the deference paid to economic authorities who have as it were given bonds not to find that for which they profess to seek, so there are many to-day to whom any belief in the spiritual element, in the existence of God and in a future life, is darkened or destroyed, not so much by difficulties they themselves find, but by what they take to be the teachings of science.

Holding fast to these things,...

Holding fast to these things, you will know the worlds of gods and mortals which permeates and governs everything. And you will know, as is right, nature similar in all respects, so that you will neither entertain unreasonable hopes nor be neglectful of anything.

All I need is a...

All I need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then I can turn the world upside down.

That which is impossible has...

That which is impossible has a permanent and constant property, which is not the result if some agent, and cannot in any way change, and consequently we do not ascribe to God the power of doing what is impossible.

Hitch your wagon to a...

Hitch your wagon to a star.

Humanity is moving ever deeper...

Humanity is moving ever deeper into crisis—a crisis without precedent. First, it is a crisis brought about by cosmic evolution irrevocably intent upon completely transforming omnidisintegrated humanity from a complex of around-the-world, remotely-deployed-from-one-another, differently colored, differently credoed, differently cultured, differently communicating, and differently competing entities into a completely integrated, comprehensively interconsiderate, harmonious whole.

The delight which Mr Davy...

The delight which Mr Davy experienced when he first saw the minute globules of ' (the new metal) burst through the crust of potash, and take fire as they entered the atmosphere, was witnessed by his relative and assistant Mr . 'He could not contain his joy—he actually danced about the room in ecstatic delight, and some little time was required for him to compose himself sufficiently to continue the experiment.'

Hear gladly!

Hear gladly!

When you start thinking about...

When you start thinking about art and creativity, rationality is not big enough to contain it all. Otherwise you end up at a B.F. Skinner hypothesis where it is all purely to do with stimulus and response. B. F. Skinner actually put forward — and this is a measure of scientific desperation over consciousness — the idea that consciousness was a weird vibrational by-product of the vocal cords. That we did not actually think. We thought we thought because of this weird vibration caused by the vocal cords. This shows the lengths that hard science will go to to banish the ghost from the machine.

The whole sense of the...

The whole sense of the book might be summed up the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.

Eliphas never abandoned his belief...

Eliphas never abandoned his belief that the fate of man is the result of justice, that we do not know all our shortcomings for which we are punished, nor the way how we incur the punishment through them.

The heroic cannot be the...

The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be heroic.

Science... the ways it does...

Science... the ways it does its calculating that approximately nobody going in at a basic level can gain any sense of the whole.

It is irreverent to the...

It is irreverent to the Gods to give you this demonstration, but for your sakes it shall be done.

To make our position clearer,...

To make our position clearer, we may formulate it in another way. Let us call a proposition which records an actual or possible observation an experiential proposition. Then we may say that it is the mark of a genuine factual proposition, not that it should be equivalent to an experiential proposition, or any finite number of experiential propositions, but simply that some experiential propositions can be deduced from it in conjunction with certain other premises without being deducible from those other premises alone.

In theory there is nothing...

In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.

They thought they found in...

They thought they found in numbers, more than in fire, earth, or water, many resemblances to things which are and become; thus such and such an attribute of numbers is justice, another is soul and mind, another is opportunity, and so on; and again they saw in numbers the attributes and ratios of the musical scales. Since, then, all other things seemed in their whole nature to be assimilated to numbers, while numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of numbers to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number.

The familial union presents as...

The familial union presents as well a mixture of inconvenient ages and characters that inhibit conversation. Morality engenders a frigid atmosphere, as in all places where it reigns.

The difficulty in philosophy is...

The difficulty in philosophy is to say no more than we know.