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Quotes by Philosopher
"Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power."
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"All political revolutions, not affected by foreign conquest, originate in moral revolutions. The subversion of established institutions is merely one consequence of the previous subversion of established opinions."
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"Neither Aristotelian nor Russellian rules give the exact logic of any expression of ordinary language; for ordinary language has no exact logic."
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"I may not be better than other people, but at least I'm different."
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"When focusing only on one's credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual."
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"A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices."
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"There are, as is known, insects that die in the moment of fertilization. So it is with all joy: life's highest, most splendid moment of enjoyment is accompanied by death."
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"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving."
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"Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis."
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"What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine."
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"The man who is not permitted to own is owned."
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"Intelligence entails a strong mind, but genius entails a heart of a lion in tune with a strong mind."
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"I love good and pleasure, I hate evil and pain, I want to be happy and I am not mistaken in believing, that people, angels and even demons have those same inclinations."
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"Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress."
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"If you are not happy here and now, you never will be."
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"I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this."
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"To a fireman, wind is a curse. To a sailor, wind is a blessing."
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"You don't need to climb the mountain; you need to see it."
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"But until then, and right now, the sun is bright, the air is cool, my head is clear, there's a whole day ahead of us, we're almost to the mountains, it's a good day to be alive. It's this thinner air that does it. You always feel like this when you start getting into higher altitudes."
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"Such is the facility with which mankind believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the one best conception they were able to form of perfect goodness."
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"To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom."
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"The first requisite of a sound monetary system is that it put the least possible power over the quantity or quality of money in the hands of the politicians."
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"I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens."
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"Burke said there were three Estates in Parliament but in the reporters' gallery yonder there sat a fourth Estate more important than them all."
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"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes."
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"To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy."
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"The world is the totality of facts, not of things."
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"You hate someone whom you really wish to love, but whom you cannot love. Perhaps he himself prevents you. That is a disguised form of love."
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"Saint Thomas Aquinas says, wisely, that the only way to drive out a bad passion is by a stronger good passion. The same is true of thoughts as of passions. When your mind wanders, like a child, your will must bring it back, like a mother. [. . .] The will-parent must discipline the mind-child, avoiding both the opposite extremes commonly made in disciplining either children or thoughts: tyranny or permissiveness."
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"A flower does not diminish in beauty, no matter how many weeds envy it."
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"The great artist is the man who most obviously succeeds in turning his pains to advantage, in letting suffering deepens his understanding and sensibility, in growing through his pains."
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"Whoever will be free must make himself free. Freedom is no fairy gift to fall into a man's lap. What is freedom? To have the will to be responsible for one's self."
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"To us also, through every star, through every blade of grass, is not God made visible if we will open our minds and our eyes."
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"Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit."
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"A friend should be a master at guessing and keeping still."
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"A 'no' does not hide anything, but a 'yes' very easily becomes a deception."
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"I wake up wondering if I know we're near mountains because of memory or because of something in the air."
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"We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society."
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"He who laughs best today, will also laughs last."
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"A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility. The story should never be made up of improbable incidents, there should be nothing of the sort in it."
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"Experience seems to most of us to lead to conclusions, but empiricism has sworn never to draw them."
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"Boredom always precedes a period of great creativity."
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