History has a way of...

History has a way of reducing individuals to flat, two-dimensional portraits. it is the enemy of subjectivity, which is why Stephen Dedalus called it "a nightmare from which I am trying to awake". If we think of Kierkegaard, of Nietzsche, of Hölderlin, we see them standing alone, outside of history. They are spotlighted by their intensity, and the background is all darkness. They intersect history, but are not a part of it. There is something anti-history about such men; they are not subject to time, accident and death, but their intensity is a protest against it. I have elsewhere called such men "Outsiders" because they attempt to stand outside history. which defines humanity on terms of limitation, not of possibility.

We must be careful to...

We must be careful to discriminate between our own incapacity to test truth and the necessary improbability of an event. It is plain that from our ignorance of the remote spheres of God's action we cannot judge of His works removed from our experience; but a fact is not necessarily doubtful because it cannot be reached by our ordinary senses. To recapitulate, we may lay down the following propositions: 1. That there is no real physical distinction between miracles and any other operations of the Divine energy : that we regard them differently is because we are familiar with one order of events and not the other. 2. There is nothing incredible in a miracle, and the credibility of a miraculous event is to be measured only by the evidence which sustains it. And although the extraordinary character of a phenomenon may render the event itself improbable, it does not, therefore, necessarily render it either incredible or untrue.

There comes up another difficulty...

There comes up another difficulty which more nearly concerns our vanity: namely, the impossibility of our conceiving this property [the faculty of feeling] as a dependence or attribute of matter.

The composer reveals the innermost...

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

...They [the Jews] have had...

...They [the Jews] have had the most painful history of all peoples, not without the fault of all of us, and when one owes to them the noblest man (Christ), the purest sage (Spinoza), the most powerful book, and the most effective moral law in the world. [Original in German: Trotzdem möchte ich wissen, wie viel man bei einer Gesamtabrechnung einem Volke nachsehen muß, welches, nicht ohne unser aller Schuld, die leidvollste Geschichte unter allen Völkern gehabt hat, und dem man den edelsten Menschen (Christus), den reinsten Weisen (Spinoza), das mächtigste Buch und das wirkungsvollste Sittengesetz der Welt verdankt.]

Would we have played with...

Would we have played with our lives for nothing but worldly gain? If our people had run after earth's goods and gold,Need they have smashed idols, and not idols sold?

[http://www.egs.edu/resources/deleuze.html Biography]

[http://www.egs.edu/resources/deleuze.html Biography]

If a lack of empirical...

If a lack of empirical foundations is a defect of the theory of logical probability, it is also a defect of deductive logic.

Nietzsche, driven by the absolute...

Nietzsche, driven by the absolute demand of his existential truthfulness, could not abide the bourgeois world, even when its representative had human nobility.

The soul is... but an...

The soul is... but an empty word, of which no one has any idea, and which an enlightened man should use only to signify the part in us that thinks...

A mother gave her children...

A mother gave her children Aesop’s fables to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: This is no book for us; it’s much too childish and stupid. You can’t make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to talk; we’ve got beyond stories of that kind! In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Rationalists of the future.

Spinoza does not believe that...

Spinoza does not believe that worshipful awe is an appropriate attitude to take before God or nature. There is nothing holy or sacred about nature, and it is certainly not the object of a religious experience. Instead, one should strive to understand God or nature, with the kind of adequate or clear and distinct intellectual knowledge that reveals nature's most important truths and shows how everything depends essentially and existentially on higher natural causes. The key to discovering and experiencing God/nature, for Spinoza, is philosophy and science, not religious awe and worshipful submission. The latter give rise only to superstitious behaviour and subservience to ecclesiastic authorities; the former leads to enlightenment, freedom and true blessedness (i.e. peace of mind).

The law of nature teaches...

The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence: With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any man born on St. Innocents Day. I never had a bribe or reward in my eye or thought when pronouncing judgment or order (…). I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the King. (17 April 1621)

The history of human thought...

The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees herself from the chains with which those interested — rulers, lawyers, clerics — have carefully enwound her. She shatters the chains. She subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught her, and lays bare the emptiness of the religious political, legal, and social prejudices amid which she has vegetated. She starts research in new paths, enriches our knowledge with new discoveries, creates new sciences. But the inveterate enemies of thought — the government, the lawgiver, and the priest — soon recover from their defeat. By degrees they gather together their scattered forces, and remodel their faith and their code of laws to adapt them to the new needs.

If A were not allowed...

If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is.

Another was, "Watch your opportunity."

Another was, "Watch your opportunity."

Means at our disposal should...

Means at our disposal should be regarded as a bulwark against the many evils and misfortunes that can occur. We should not regard such wealth as a permission or even an obligation to procure for ourselves the pleasures of the world.

Many I believe will wonder...

Many I believe will wonder at this juxtaposition, not seeing that he is like Spinoza, or that he holds the same conspicuous position in art as Spinoza in science. Without destroying the balance of the Speech, I could only suggest my reason. There is now another reason why I should say no more. During these fifteen years the attention to Spinoza, awakened by Jacobi's writings and continued by many later influences, which was then somewhat marked, has relaxed. Novalis also has again become unknown to many. At that time, however, these examples seemed significant and important. Many coquetted in insipid poetry with religion, believing they were akin to the profound Novalis, just as there were advocates enough of the All in the One taken for followers of Spinoza who were equally distant from their original.

I could not be true...

I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.

Man should know from this...

Man should know from this rule that he is cut off from truth.

As man does not live...

As man does not live in a solitary state, habits and feeling develop within him which are useful for the preservation of society and the propagation of the race. Without social feelings and usages life in common would have been absolutely impossible. It is not law which has established them; they are anterior to all law. Neither is it religion which has ordained them; they are anterior to all religions. They are found amongst all animals living in society. They are spontaneously developed by the new nature of things, like those habits in animals which men call instinct. They spring from a process of evolution, which is useful, and, indeed, necessary, to keep society together in the struggle it is forced to maintain for existence.

Being happy involves both a...

Being happy involves both a certain achievement in action and a rational assurance about the outcome.

Of a rich man who...

Of a rich man who was niggardly he said, "That man does not own his estate, but his estate owns him."

Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding...

Montaigne [puts] not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

It has become extremely questionable...

It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically.

Men are by nature merely...

Men are by nature merely indifferent to one another; but women are by nature enemies.

Only those are happy who...

Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood — all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.

Specifically because of the fact...

Specifically because of the fact that the James-Lange theory can be considered as a living realization of Cartesian teaching, studying its truth and historical fate cannot but be placed at the beginning of the study of Spinozist teaching on the passions. [...] What occurred in the psychology of emotions in the last half century and what we have tried to consider in the preceding chapters is nothing other than the historical continuation of this struggle, the prototype of which we perceive in the oppositeness of the two teachings, the Cartesian and the Spinozist. And exactly as it is impossible without explaining this oppositeness to properly understand the Spinozist teaching without elucidating the fate of anti-Spinozist ideas in the psychology of affects, it is also impossible to determine correctly the historical significance of Spinozist thought for the present and future of all of psychology. Just as Spinoza did not think that he found the best philosophy, but knew that he recognized truth, so in the struggle of contemporary psychological theory, we are trying to find not the one that best meets our tastes, best satisfies us and for this reason seems to be the best, but the one that best meets its objective and thus must be recognized as truer because the goal of science, like the goal of philosophy, is truth.

In the same manner as...

In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works we may very properly apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works; accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention.

My enemy is not the...

My enemy is not the man who wrongs me, but the man who means to wrong me.

Not only has a coercive...

Not only has a coercive system contributed and powerfully aided to create all the present economical, political and social evils, but it has given proof of its absolute impotence to raise the moral level of societies; it has not been even able to maintain it at the level it had already reached. If a benevolent fairy could only reveal to our eyes all the crimes that are committed every day, every minute, in a civilized society under cover of the unknown, or the protection of law itself, — society would shudder at that terrible state of affairs.

Once he saw a youth...

Once he saw a youth blushing, and addressed him, "Courage, my boy! that is the complexion of virtue."

If a big diamond is...

If a big diamond is cut up into pieces, it immediately loses its value as a whole; or if an army is scattered or divided into small bodies, it loses all its power; and in the same way a great intellect has no more power than an ordinary one as soon as it is interrupted, disturbed, distracted, or diverted; for its superiority entails that it concentrates all its strength on one point and object, just as a concave mirror concentrates all the rays of light thrown upon it. Noisy interruption prevents this concentration. This is why the most eminent intellects have always been strongly averse to any kind of disturbance, interruption and distraction, and above everything to that violent interruption which is caused by noise; other people do not take any particular notice of this sort of thing.

Detachment from the world as...

Detachment from the world as an attachment to the ego... Who can realize the detachment in which you are as far away from yourself as you are from the world?

...The materialist is primarily an...

...The materialist is primarily an observer; and he will probably be such in ethics also; that is, he will have no ethics, except the emotion produced upon him by the march of the world. If he is an esprit fort and really disinterested, he will love life; as we all love perfect vitality, or what strikes us as such, in gulls and porpoises. This, I think, is the ethical sentiment psychologically consonant with a vigorous materialism: sympathy with the movement of things, interest in the rising wave, delight at the foam it bursts into, before it sinks again. Nature does not distinguish the better from the worse, but the lover of nature does. He calls better what, being analogous to his own life, enhances his vitality and probably possesses some vitality of its own. This is the ethical feeling of Spinoza, the greatest of modern naturalists in philosophy; and we shall see how Lucretius, in spite of his fidelity to the ascetic Epicurus, is carried by his poetic ecstasy in the same direction.

His achievement was not the...

His achievement was not the less great because it was indirect. His philosophical works, though little read now, "moved the intellects which moved the world." He made himself the eloquent voice of the optimism and resolution of the Renaissance. Never was any man so great a stimulus to other thinkers... The whole tenor and career of British thought have followed the philosophy of Bacon. His tendency to conceive the world in Democritean mechanical terms gave to his secretary, Hobbes, the starting-point for a thorough-going materialism; his inductive method gave to Locke the idea of an empirical psychology, bound by observation and freed from theology and metaphysics; and his emphasis on "commodities" and "fruits" found formulation in Bentham's identification of the useful and the good. Wherever the spirit of control has overcome the spirit of resignation, Bacon's influence has been felt. He is the voice of all those Europeans who have changed a continent from a forest into a treasure-land of art and science, and have made their little peninsula the center of the world... Everything is possible to man. Time is young; give us some little centuries, and we shall control and remake all things. We shall perhaps at last learn the noblest lesson of all, that man must not fight man, but must make war only on the obstacles that nature offers to the triumph of man.

It is absolutely incomprehensible to...

It is absolutely incomprehensible to us that intelligent men — and such are not wanting in the collectivist party — can remain partisans of national or municipal parliaments after all the lessons history has given them — in France, in England, in Germany, or in the United States.

The methodological advice to interpret...

The methodological advice to interpret in a way that optimizes agreement should not be conceived as resting on a charitable assumption about human intelligence that might turn out to be false. If we cannot find a way to interpret the utterances and other behaviour of a creature as revealing a set of beliefs largely consistent and true by our standards, we have no reason to count that creature as rational, as having beliefs, or as saying anything

To fear is to die...

To fear is to die every minute.

...The rise, triumph, and victory...

...The rise, triumph, and victory of Spinozism in Europe are reminiscent of the power of ancient Buddhism because both are religiosity rather than philosophy. Spinozism is religion even when it operates with bizarre formulas. Its starting-point is a dead God, who is reminiscent of Buddha's Brahma. It is man's metaphysical fear and not the idea of a living God which is the driving force in religiosity. True religiosity is not an understanding of how God is correlated to man and to the world but the feeling of man's insignificance in the cosmos, giving birth to a state of meekness, humbleness, compassion, and pity. Only when man is crushed and overwhelmed by the thought of his insignificance in this vast universe does he become truly religious. These feelings are as present in Spinozism as they are in Buddhism.

[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-25 Dictionary of the History...

[http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-25 Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Baconianism]

Mutual aid, even though it...

Mutual aid, even though it may represent one of the factors of evolution, covers nevertheless one aspect only of human relations; that by the side of this current, powerful though it may be, there is, and always has been, the other current — the self-assertion of the individual, not only in its efforts to attain personal or caste superiority, economical, political, and spiritual, but also in its much more important although less evident function of breaking through the bonds, always prone to become crystallized, which the tribe, the village community, the city, and the State impose upon the individual. In other words, there is the self-assertion of the individual taken as a progressive element. It is evident that no review of evolution can be complete, unless these two dominant currents are analyzed. However, the self-assertion of the individual or of groups of individuals, their struggles for superiority, and the conflicts which resulted therefrom, have already been analyzed, described, and glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time, this current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the annalist, the historian, and the sociologist. History, such as it has hitherto been written, is almost entirely a description of the ways and means by which theocracy, military power, autocracy, and, later on, the richer classes' rule have been promoted, established, and maintained.

One [method] is by a...

One [method] is by a Watch to keep time exactly. But, by reason of the motion of the Ship, the Variation of Heat and Cold, Wet and Dry, and the Difference of Gravity in different Latitudes, such a watch hath not yet been made.

I AM an Anarchist. All...

I AM an Anarchist. All good men are Anarchists. All cultured, kindly men; all gentlemen; all just men are Anarchists. Jesus was an Anarchist. A Monarchist is one who believes a monarch should govern. A Plutocrat believes in the rule of the rich. A Democrat holds that the majority should dictate. An Aristocrat thinks only the wise should decide; while an Anarchist does not believe in government at all. Richard Croker is a Monarchist; Mark Hanna a Plutocrat; Cleveland a Democrat; Cabot Lodge an Aristocrat; William Penn, Henry D. Thoreau, Bronson Alcott and Walt Whitman were Anarchists. An Anarchist is one who minds his own business. An Anarchist does not believe in sending warships across wide oceans to kill brown men, and lay waste rice fields, and burn the homes of people who are fighting for liberty. An Anarchist does not drive women with babes at their breasts and other women with babes unborn, children and old men into the jungle to be devoured by beasts or fever or fear, or die of hunger, homeless, unhouseled and undone. Destruction, violence, ravages, murder, are perpetrated by statute law.

To different minds, the same...

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

The inversion of external compulsion...

The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience … produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

But, braggart demons, we postpone...

But, braggart demons, we postpone our end: how could we renounce the display of our freedom, the show of our pride?

[https://archive.org/details/tractatusdeintel00unknuoft Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione...

[https://archive.org/details/tractatusdeintel00unknuoft Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (On the Improvement of the Understanding), English]

May we not say that,...

May we not say that, in the fortuitous combination of the productions of Nature, since only those creatures could survive in whose organizations a certain degree of adaptation was present, there is nothing extraordinary in the fact that such adaptation is actually found in all these species which now exist? Chance, one might say, turned out a vast number of individuals; a small proportion of these were organized in such a manner that the animals' organs could satisfy their needs. A much greater number showed neither adaptation nor order; these last have all perished.... Thus the species which we see today are but a small part of all those that a blind destiny has produced.

The game of science is,...

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.