Philosophy

Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

There is an eloquence in true enthusiasm that is not to be doubted.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal — every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open — this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could More >

Marxists

Immanuel Wallerstein

Production for sale in a market in which the object is to realize the maximum profit  is the essential feature of a capitalist world-economy. “In such a system production is constantly expanded as long as further production is profitable, and men constantly innovate new ways of producing things that will expand the profit margin”

David Harvey

Capitalism in terms of three features: it is growth-oriented (“a steady state of growth is essential for the health of a capitalist economic system”); “growth in real values rests on the exploitation of living labor in production;” and it is “necessarily technologically and organizationally More >

I find nothing so painful as having to lead men.

It’s not observation but theory that led me to this result that experience has confirmed afterwards.

Nature is not embarrassed by difficulties of analysis. She avoids complication only in means. Nature seems to be proposed to do much with little: it is a principle that the development of physics constantly supports by new evidence.

If one was sometimes led astray by trying to simplify the elements of a science, it is because one has established systems before putting together a fairly large number of facts. Some assumption, which would be very simple when More >

One must not always think that feeling is everything. Art is nothing without form.

To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.

One becomes a critic when one cannot be an artist, just as a man becomes a stool pigeon when he cannot be a soldier.

The idea of bringing someone into the world fills me with horror. I would curse myself if I were a father. A son of mine! Oh no, no, no! May my entire flesh perish and may I transmit to no one the aggravations and More >

Submission to the experimental data is the golden rule that dominates any scientific discipline.

Anyone who dares to speak about an aether is regarded as an ignorant and backward mind and he can only lose his credibility in scientific circles, although in reality those who criticize him use the same concept of intermediate medium in other words, whether it be fields, an associated fluid, a probability fluid, a pilot fluid, a quantum fluid, etc.

Any author who uses mathematics should always express in ordinary language the meaning of the assumptions he admits, as well as the significance of the results obtained. The More >

Liberty is the power that we have over ourselves.

Not to know certain things is a great part of wisdom.

A man cannot govern a nation if he cannot govern a city; he cannot govern a city if he cannot govern a family; he cannot govern a family unless he can govern himself; and he cannot govern himself unless his passions are subject to reason.

Even God cannot make two times two not make four.

There are two well-known minor ways in which language has mattered to philosophy. On the one hand there is a belief that if only we produce good defintions, often marking out different senses of words that are confused in commom speech, we will avoid the conceptual traps that ensnared our forefathers. On the other hand is a belief that if only we attend sufficiently closely to our mother tongue and make explicit the distinctions there implicit, we shall avoid the conceptual traps. One or the other of these curiously contrary beliefs may nowadays be most often thought of as an More >

By purple death I’m seized and fate supreme.

Never indeed will there be or appear an orator so gifted that he could describe such surpassing beauty as shines forth on the countenance of the gods.

They are irreverent to the gods and disobedient to our edicts, lenient as they are. For we allow none of them to be dragged to the altars unwillingly. It is therefore my pleasure to announce and publish to all the people by this edict, that they must not abet the seditions of the clergy. They may hold their meetings, if they wish, and offer prayers according to More >

We don’t know how God chooses martyrs. We do know that they give us the most precious gift they possess — their very lives.

Today, thousands of farm workers live under savage conditions — beneath trees and amid garbage and human excrement — near tomato fields in San Diego County, tomato fields which use the most modern farm technology. Vicious rats gnaw on them as they sleep. They walk miles to buy food at inflated prices. And they carry in water from irrigation pumps.

What do we want the Church to do? We don’t ask for more cathedrals. We don’t ask for More >

You can never be too cautious in your prognosis, in the view of the great uncertainty of the course of any disease not long watched, and the many unexpected turns it may take.

Knowledge and timber shouldn’t be much used, till they are seasoned.

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

I talk half the time to find out More >

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more More >

See, capitalism is not fundamentally racist — it can exploit racism for its purposes, but racism isn’t built into it. Capitalism basically wants people to be interchangeable cogs, and differences among them, such as on the basis of race, usually are not functional. I mean, they may be functional for a period, like if you want a super exploited workforce or something, but those situations are kind of anomalous. Over the long term, you can expect capitalism to be anti-racist — just because it’s anti-human. And race is in fact a human characteristic — there’s no reason why it should More >

Known as The Master of the Ladder or Baal HaSulam (1886–1954).

There is a positive force, meaning constructive, and a negative force, meaning negative and destructive. They create and complement the entire reality in general and particular through their harsh and perpetual war with one another. As we have said above, the negative force appears at the end of every political phase, elevating it to a better state, and thus the phases follow one another until they reach their ultimate perfection.

This time it lasted longer, but at last, the liquid forces overpowered once again and erupted from the bowels of the More >