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9 months 5 days ago

It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it.

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7 months 1 week ago

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

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"Tipperary"
4 months 2 weeks ago

Cursed be all those on land and sea who eat their fill,cursed be all those who starve yet raise no hand in protest,cursed be all the bread, the wine, the meat which day by daydescends deep in the entrails of the exploited manand turns not into freedom's cry, the murderer's ruthless knife!

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Prayer of three revolutionaries, Book X, line 391
4 months 3 weeks ago

I understand the task of sociology to be description and determination of the historical-psychological origin of those forms in which interactions take place between human beings. The totality of these interactions, springing from the most diverse impulses, directed toward the most diverse objects, and aiming at the most diverse ends, constitutes "society."

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p. 167
1 month 3 weeks ago

Because their truth is truth to a lesser degree....they don't know there are more complex, more accurate, higher degrees of truth.....

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7 months 1 week ago

For his the artist's life is, of necessity, full of conflicts, since two forces fight in him: the ordinary man with his justified claim for happiness, contentment, and guarantees for living on the one hand, and the ruthless creative passion on the other, which under certain conditions crushes all personal desires into the dust.

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7 months 1 week ago

The artist in realizing his own individuality reveals potentialities hitherto unrealized. The revelation is the inspiration of other individuals to make the potentialities real, for it is not sheer revolt against things as they are which stirs human endeavor to its depth, but vision of what might be and is not. Subordination of the artists to any special cause no matter how worthy does violence not only to the artist but to the living source of a new and better future.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

There are two classes of poets - the poets by education and practice, these we respect; and poets by nature, these we love.

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Parnassus (1874) Preface
8 months 2 days ago

Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race. "Yes," said he, "if there were any kings there to run with me."

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41 Alexander
5 months 3 weeks ago

To affirm that humans thrive in many different ways is not to deny that there are universal human values. Nor is it to reject the claim that there should be universal human rights. It is to deny that universal values can only be fully realized in a universal regime. Human rights can be respected in a variety of regimes, liberal and otherwise. Universal human rights are not an ideal constitution for a single regime throughout the world, but a set of minimum standards for peaceful coexistence among regimes that will always remain different.

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Two Faces of Liberalism (New Press, 2000, ISBN 0-745-62259-3. 168 pages), ch. 1: Liberal Toleration (p. 21)
4 months 1 week ago

The universe is flux, life is opinion. The universe is (constant) change, life is (mere) presumption.

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(Analogous translation) The universe is transformation: life is opinion. (Translation by George Long)
4 months 2 weeks ago

Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you. If you find reason to believe there is a God, a consciousness that you are acting under his eye, and that he approves you, will be a vast additional incitement; if that there be a future state, the hope of a happy existence in that increases the appetite to deserve it; if that Jesus was also a god, you will be comforted by a belief of his aid and love.

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5 months 1 week ago

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

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Walden Two (1948), p. 95
8 months 1 week ago

At the core of all well-founded belief, lies belief that is unfounded.

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9 months 1 week ago

Rhetoric, it seems, is a producer of persuasion for belief, not for instruction in the matter of right and wrong. And so the rhetorician's business is not to instruct a law court or a public meeting in matters of right and wrong, but only to make them believe.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

Blessed are those eyes that have seen more water than any man! Blessed be that haughty mind that aimed at the greatest hope! May you be blessed who row the current your life longand now with dry unfreshened lips descend to Hadesto find the hidden deathless springs and slake your thirst! My son, it's death who keeps and pours the deathless waters.

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Voice of the Nile, from Odysseus' story, Book VIII, line 1290 (the first line is taken from an Egyptian hieroglyph.)
7 months 2 weeks ago

While all these are disturbed and divided by the multifarious objects to which their thoughts must be applied, the Philosopher pursues, in solitary silence and in unbroken concentration of mind, his single and undeviating course towards the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; and that is his daily labour, to which others can only resort at times for rest and refreshment after toil.

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P. 17
7 months 1 day ago

Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

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"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
8 months 2 weeks ago

This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

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Chapter I
6 months 3 weeks ago

Among most Christians the Old Testament is little read in comparison to the New Testament. Furthermore, much of what is read is often distorted by prejudice. Frequently the Old Testament is believed to express exclusively the principles of justice and revenge, in contrast to the New Testament, which represents those of love and mercy; even the sentence, "Love your neighbor as yourself," is thought by many to derive from the New, not the Old Testament. Or the Old Testament is believed to have been written exclusively in the spirit of narrow nationalism and to contain nothing of supranational universalism so characteristic of the New Testament.

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You Shall Be as Gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and Its Tradition (1966) "Introduction"
7 months 2 weeks ago

There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But Pope cannot bear every truth. He has a timidity which hinders the full exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those of the general herd of mankind. But whoever is a genuine follower of truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is led, provided that she is the leader. And, my Lord, if it may be properly considered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole legion of vulgar mistakes, than to reject some, and, at the same time, to retain a fondness for others altogether as absurd and irrational. The first has at least a consistency, that makes a man, however erroneously, uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

With respect to modern languages, French, as I have before observed, is indispensible. Next to this the Spanish is most important to an American. Our connection with Spain is already important and will become daily more so. Besides this the antient part of American history is written chiefly in Spanish.

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7 months 2 days ago

To know something is to make this something that I know myself; but to avail myself of it, to dominate it, it has to remain distinct from myself.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

The only government that I recognize-and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army - is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

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7 months 1 week ago

Peace be with you. Receive my peace unto yourselves. Beware that no one lead you astray saying Lo here or lo there! For the Son of Man is within you. Follow after Him! Those who seek Him will find Him. Go then and preach the gospel of the Kingdom. Do not lay down any rules beyond what I appointed you, and do not give a law like the lawgiver lest you be constrained by it.

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Chapter 4. tion.
8 months 1 week ago

I work quite diligently and wish that I were better and smarter. And these both are one and the same.

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In a letter to Paul Engelmann (1917) as quoted in The Idea of Justice (2010) by Amartya Sen, p. 31
5 months 6 days ago

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Thus heaven I've forfeited, I know it full well. My soul, once true to God, is chosen for hell.

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"The Pale Maiden" (1837) ballad
6 months 1 day ago

If the hypothesis of evolution is true, living matter must have arisen from non-living matter; for by the hypothesis the condition of the globe was at one time such, that living matter could not have existed in it, life being entirely incompatible with the gaseous state.

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In the Encyclopaedia Britannica, Ninth edition, (1876) Vol. III, "Biology", p. 689. Also quoted in Joseph Cook (1878), Biology, with Preludes on Current Events, Houghton, Osgood, p. 39
8 months 2 weeks ago

When I endeavour to examine my own conduct, when I endeavour to pass sentence upon it, and either to approve or condemn it, it is evident that, in all such cases, I divide myself, as it were, into two persons; and that I, the examiner and judge, represent a different character from that other I, the person whose conduct is examined into and judged of.

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Chap. I.

Meanwhile, hold fast to this thought, and grip it close: yield not to adversity; trust not to prosperity; keep before your eyes the full scope of Fortune's power, as if she would surely do whatever is in her power to do.

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1 month 2 weeks ago

But not equally with everything...this promotes relativism....

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6 months 3 weeks ago

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

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F 100
5 months 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 6 days ago

The Hero as Divinity, the Hero as Prophet, are productions of old ages; not to be repeated in the new. They presuppose a certain rudeness of conception, which the progress of mere scientific knowledge puts an end to. There needs to be, as it were, a world vacant, or almost vacant of scientific forms, if men in their loving wonder are to fancy their fellow-man either a god or one speaking with the voice of a god. Divinity and Prophet are past.

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4 months 2 weeks ago

The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.

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Letter to Thomas Law, 1813. FE 9:433
5 months 3 weeks ago

I've always written at the top of my lungs and from some secret motives within. I have followed the advice of my good friend Federico Fellini who, when asked about his work, said, "Don't tell me what I'm doing, I don't want to know."

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Ray Bradbury, "Author's Introduction" to 2003 Folio Society edition of Fahrenheit 452
6 months 3 weeks ago

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

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K 41
4 months 2 weeks ago

How can anyone see the only way the world can be saved and not be forced to weep?

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

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Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2.
1 month 1 week ago

Probably more context is needed, and I don't disagree, but talk like this could lead someone to think that consequence is also relative or contingent...which is a dangerous and destructive indirect effect to leave unchecked.

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7 months 1 week ago

The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.

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8 months 2 weeks ago

Never have so many been manipulated so much by so few.

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Chapter 3 (pp. 19-20)
6 months 1 week ago

When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.

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Maxim 275
5 months ago

God has given to all things their course and decided how high and how far they may go, not higher, not lower.

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