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Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. read more
It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from their sense of inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression.
There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self read more
There is apparently some connection between dissatisfaction with oneself and proneness to credulity. The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They asked to be deceived.
A man is never more his single separate self than when he sets out on a journey.
A man is never more his single separate self than when he sets out on a journey.
That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and read more
That hatred springs more from self-contempt than from a legitimate grievance is seen in the intimate connection between hatred and a guilty conscience.
Every animal is sad after coitus except the human female and the rooster.
Every animal is sad after coitus except the human female and the rooster.
The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
The short-lived self, teetering on the edge of extinction, is the only thing that can ever really matter.
The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means read more
The most basic inherent constraint is that neither time nor wisdom are free goods available in unlimited quantity. This means that in social processes, as in economic processes, it is not only impossible to attain perfection but irrational to seek perfection- or even to seek the "best possible" result in each separate instance.
Collective judgement of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free read more
Collective judgement of new ideas is so often wrong that it is arguable that progress depends on individuals being free to back their own judgement despite collective disapproval.