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4 months 2 weeks ago

Happy is that City that hath a wise man to govern it.

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1 month 6 days ago

I believe the Indian then to be in body and mind equal to the white man.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

Growth is slow but collapse is rapid.

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Ugo Bardi (2017) . "The Seneca Effect: Why growth is slow but collapse is rapid". ISSN 1612-3018. DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-57207-9.
3 months 3 weeks ago

The cult of the Virgin, Mariolatry, which by the gradual elevation of the divine element in the Virgin has led almost to her deification, answers merely to the feeling that God should be a perfect man, that God should include in his nature the feminine element. The progressive exaltation of the Virgin Mary, the work of Catholic piety, having its beginning in the expression Mother of God, ...has culminated in attributing to her the status of co-redeemer and in the dogmatic declaration of her conception without the stain of original sin. Hence she now occupies a position between Humanity and Divinity and nearer Divinity than Humanity. And it has been surmised that in course of time she may perhaps even come to be regarded as yet another personal manifestation of the Godhead.

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5 months 1 week ago

Look round the world: contemplate the whole and every part of it: You will find it to be nothing but one great machine, subdivided into an infinite number of lesser machines, which again admit of subdivisions, to a degree beyond what human senses and faculties can trace and explain. All these various machines, and even their most minute parts, are adjusted to each other with an accuracy, which ravishes into admiration all men, who have ever contemplated them. The curious adapting of means to ends, throughout all nature, resembles exactly, though it much exceeds, the productions of human contrivance; of human design, thought, wisdom, and intelligence.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part II
3 months 2 weeks ago

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

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L 34
3 months 2 weeks ago

It is not my aim to surprise or shock you - but the simplest way I can summarize is to say that there are now in the world machines that think, that learn and that create. Moreover, their ability to do these things is going to increase rapidly until - in a visible future - the range of problems they can handle will be coextensive with the range to which the human mind has been applied.

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Newell & Simon (1958), quoted in AI, by Daniel Crevier

Serious occupation is labor that has reference to some want.

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Pt. I, sec. 2, ch. 1
1 month 3 days ago

By remembering then that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be content with everything that happens. And inasmuch as I am in a manner intimately related to the parts which are of the same kind with myself, I shall do nothing unsocial, but I shall rather direct myself to the things which are of the same kind with myself, and I shall turn all my efforts to the common interest, and divert them from the contrary.

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X, 6
5 months 1 week ago

Money is itself a product of circulation.

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Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 579.
4 months 2 days ago

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

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1 month 4 days ago

There is the same difference between political theory and constitutional laws as there is between poetics and poetry. The illustrious Montesquieu is to Lycurgus, in the intellectual hierarchy, what Batteux is to Homer or Racine. Moreover, these two talents positively exclude each other, as can be seen by the example of Locke, who fumbled badly when he presumed to give laws to the Americans.

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Chapter VI, p. 52
1 month 3 weeks ago

No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; undeniable, there, there!-I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be without it.

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3 months 1 week ago

Well, what does "good" mean anyway...? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good," like "game," has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation."

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P. 152.

The destiny of the spiritual World, and, - since this is the substantial World, while the physical remains subordinate to it, or, in the language of speculation, has no truth as against the spiritual, - the final cause of the World at large, we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit, and ipso facto, the reality of that freedom.

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1 month 6 days ago

Mechanical Science depends on the Conception of Force; and is divided into 'Statics', the doctrine of Force preventing motion, and 'Dynamics', the doctrine of Force producing motion.

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3 months 3 weeks ago

If the awareness of our limitations begins to limit or to dim our value consciousness as well-as happens, for instance, in old age with regard to the values of youth-then we have already started the movement of devaluation which will end with the defamation of the world and all its values. Only a timely act of resignation can deliver us from this tendency toward self-delusion.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 59
6 months 4 days ago

Books ... hold within them the gathered wisdom of humanity, the collected knowledge of the world's thinkers, the amusement and excitement built up by the imaginations of brilliant people. Books contain humor, beauty, wit, emotion, thought, and, indeed, all of life. Life without books is empty.

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5 months 1 week ago

Thus there is nothing waste, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearence. We might compare this to the appearence of a pond in the distance, where we can see the confused movement and swarming of the fish, without distinguishing the fish themselves.Thus we are that each living body has a dominante entelechy, which in case of an animal is the soul, but the members of this living body are full of other living things, plants and animals, of which each has in turn ita dominant entelechy or soul.

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Monadology (69-70).
4 months 2 days ago

Society: an inferno of saviors!

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3 months 4 weeks ago

In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.

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p. 62
3 months 3 weeks ago

Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.

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Ch. 43, November 11, 1947.
3 months 4 days ago

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical.

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(p. 26)
1 month 3 weeks ago

Did you ever hear my definition of marriage? It is, that it resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them.

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Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 415; paraphrased variant: "Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they can not be separated; often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing anyone who comes between them."
4 months 6 days ago

When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.

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"Patriotism", p. 126
3 months 1 week ago

There is no aphrodisiac like innocence.

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Chapter 5
2 months 1 day ago

Nature has made a race of workers; that is the Chinese race, with a marvelous dexterity of hand and hardly any feeling of honor; govern this race with justice by exacting from them through the competence of such government an ample dowry to the conquering race; the subordinate race will be satisfied; a race of workers of the earth, such is the Negro; let us be for him good and human, and everything will be in order -- a race of masters and soldiers, that is the European race.

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94
4 months 1 week ago

I tell you again that the recollection of the manner in which I saw the Queen of France in the year 1774 and the contrast between that brilliancy, Splendour, and beauty, with the prostrate Homage of a Nation to her, compared with the abominable Scene of 1789 which I was describing did draw Tears from me and wetted my Paper. These Tears came again into my Eyes almost as often as I lookd at the description. They may again. You do not believe this fact, or that these are my real feelings, but that the whole is affected, or as you express it, 'downright Foppery'. My friend, I tell you it is truth-and that it is true, and will be true, when you and I are no more, and will exist as long as men-with their Natural feelings exist.

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Letter to Philip Francis (20 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 91
5 months 6 days ago

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

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A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science, 1892
5 months 1 week ago

It appears... that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The Wealth of Nations is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy... has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith; and the philosophy of society... has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it.

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Preface, 1848
5 months 1 week ago

Intense, long, certain, speedy, fruitful, pure-Such marks in pleasures and in pains endure. Such pleasures seek if private be thy end: If it be public, wide let them extend.Such pains avoid, whichever be thy view: If pains must come, let them extend to few.

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Ch. 4: Value of a Lot of Pleasure or Pain, How to be Measured
5 months 6 days ago

Born for success he seemed, With grace to win, with heart to hold, With shining gifts that took all eyes.

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In Memoriam E. B. E.
1 month 3 days ago

Consider all that you've gone through, all that you've survived. And that the story of your life is done, your assignment complete. How many good things have you seen? How much pain and pleasure have you resisted? How many honors have you declined? How many unkind people have you been kind to?

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(Hays translation) V, 31
3 months 3 weeks ago

Myth deprives the object of which it speaks of all history. In it, history evaporates.

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p. 151
5 months 1 week ago

It must not be supposed that this conflict is, on the part of the Teuton, aggressive in substance, whatever it may be in form. In substance it is defensive, the attempt to preserve Central Europe for a type of civilisation indubitably higher and of more value to mankind than that of any Slav State. The existence of the Russian menace on the Eastern border is, quite legitimately, a nightmare to Germany.

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War: The Offspring of Fear (1914), quoted in Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 (1996), p. 373
2 months 3 weeks ago

It is surely delightful, Sir, to look forward to that period when a series of liberal and prudent measures shall have delivered islands, so highly favoured by the bounty of Providence, from the curse inflicted on them by the frantic rapacity of man. Then the peasant of the Antilles will no longer crawl in listless and trembling dejection round a plantation from whose fruits he must derive no advantage, and a hut whose door yields him no protection; but, when his cheerful and voluntary labour is performed, he will return with the firm step and erect brow of a British citizen from the field which is his freehold to the cottage which is his castle.

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Speech to a meeting of the Anti-Slavery Society held in Freemasons' Tavern (25 June 1824), quoted in Report of the Committee of the Society for the Mitigation and Gradual Abolition of Slavery Throughout the British Dominions, Volume I (1824), p. 77
4 months 2 days ago

Every utopia about to be realized resembles a cynical dream.

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1 month 3 weeks ago

The state is God, deifies arms and prisons. The worship of the state is the worship of force. There is no more dangerous menace to civilization than a government of incompetent, corrupt, or vile men. The worst evils which mankind ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments. The state can be and has often been in the course of history the main source of mischief and disaster.

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Chapter III: Etatism
5 months 1 week ago

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

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Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 39;
3 months 4 weeks ago

Is it always permissible to speak of the extension of a concept, of a class? And if not, how do we recognize the exceptional cases? Can we always infer from the extension of one concept's coinciding with that of a second, that every object which falls under the first concept also falls under the second?

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Vol. 2, p. 127. Replying to Bertrand Russell's letter about Russell's Paradox; quoted in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
1 month 6 days ago

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet; that it was written in their Koran; that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Mussulman who was slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once. That it was a law that the first who boarded an Enemy's Vessell should have one slave.

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Concerning an interview in London with the ambassador from Tripoli, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja.
4 months 1 week ago

Do not know the truth by the men, but know the truth, and then you will know who are truthful.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 29.
6 months 1 week ago

When one merely states that one has many subscribers and keeps on saying it, then one gets many; just as when one sheep goes to water, the next one also goes, and when it is continually said of a large flock of sheep that they go hither and yon to water, then the rest must also go, so people believe that it must be the demand of the times, that for the sake of use and custom, they must also subscribe.

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1 month 3 days ago

No thefts of free will reported.

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(Hays translation) XI, 36
3 months 3 weeks ago

It is a safe rule to apply that, when a mathematical or philosophical author writes with a misty profundity, he is talking nonsense.

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ch. 15.
5 months 1 week ago

Morality is everywhere the same for all men, therefore it comes from God; sects differ, therefore they are the work of men.

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"Atheist", 1764

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