Quote of the day

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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Colin Wilson from The Outsider

Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man’s place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus.


Or especially, I'm guessing, when he's sitting there taking a shit and then wiping his ass.

Never, until these last few days, had I understood the meaning of existence. I was like the others…I said with them: The ocean is green, that white speck up there is a seagull, but I didn’t feel that it existed…And then suddenly existence had unveiled itself.

Of course, who hasn't experienced that.

The Outsider’s case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make look civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for Truth.

And I'm doing my bit here.

The word ‘personality’ hides the vagueness of the concept; it refers to no factual object, like ‘body’. Human beings are not like the characters in literature, fixed, made immutable by their creator; the visible part of the human being is his dead part; it is the other part, the unconditioned Will that constitutes his being. Will precedes essence. Our bourgeois civilization is based on personality. It is our chief value. A film star has ‘personality’; the salesman hoping to sell his first insurance policy tries to ooze ‘personality’.

Yeah, what about that?

Our findings point more and more to the conclusion that the Outsider is not a freak, but is only more sensitive than the ‘sanguine and healthy-minded'

How about your findings?

It seemed to me that a solution must be found. Here, my natural optimism was to my advantage. For when I read Sartre or Camus or Graham Greene, I experienced a temperamental rejection of their pessimism. I suspected that their ultimate picture might be distorted by a certain self-pity or lack of discipline—or, in the case of Greene, by a certain congenital lack of vitality. I suspected that if the problem left them defeated, it was because they had not attacked it hard enough.

On the other hand, to the best of my knowledge, no one has attacked it harder than me.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Philosophy Tweets

“This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.” Bertrand Russell


I revel in them myself.

"The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is." Allan Bloom

Our good books, of course.

"Any necessary truth, whether a priori or a posteriori, could not have turned out otherwise." Saul Kripke

Our necessary truths, of course.

"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves." Lord Byron

Ah, of course, the pinheads.

"Man's greatest weakness is his love of life." Molière.

If only all the way to the grave.

“Words are loaded pistols.” Jean-Paul Sartre

And, from time to time, with henry, loaded bazookas.
promethean75
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Re: Quote of the day

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"i wonder if when designing the laws of physics, solar systems and functioning planets, god knew hurricanes could result from the particular conditions on erf that were caused by the laws of physics, but decided not to change the original design so that hurricanes wouldn't be possible." - a Puerto Rican philosopher, 9/18/2022
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Matt Haig

Sometimes just to say your own truth out loud is enough to find others like you.


You know, like me here.

You see, doing one thing differently is very often the same as doing everything differently.

No, actually, I don't see.

And even if you were a pawn - maybe we all are - then you should remember that a pawn is the most magical piece of all. It might look small and ordinary but it isn't. because a pawn is never just a pawn. A pawn is a queen-in-waiting. All you need to do is find a way to keep moving forward. One square after another. And you can get to the other side and unlock all kinds of power.

So, any pawns here heartened?

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.

You know, if and ever this actually happens.[/b]

Regrets don’t leave. They weren’t mosquito bites. They itch for ever.

Or at least until you're dead and gone.

Look at that chessboard we put back in place, said Mrs Elm softly. Look at how ordered and safe and peaceful it looks now, before a game starts. It’s a beautiful thing. But it is boring. It is dead. And yet the moment you make a move on that board, things change. Things begin to get more chaotic. And that chaos builds with every single move you make.

Gee, he wondered, what's that remind you of?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Philosophy Tweets

"Sometimes the truth is too simple for intellectuals.” Jean-Paul Sartre


Here, on the other hand, most times the truth is too complex for pinheads.

"Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise...specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine." Allan Bloom

That and the big bucks.

"There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative." Allan Bloom

Come on, Allan, hardly ever in the either/or world.

"It really is a nice theory. The only defect I think it has is probably common to all philosophical theories. It's wrong." Saul Kripke

You know, as intellectual contraptions go.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Vladimir Lenin

And this one?

“Disorder is simply the order we are not looking for.” Henri Bergson

Figures, right?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar

...because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.


Next up: the bell jar shatters.

I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.

You either grasp this or you don't.

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.

My guess: she'd find it eventually.

I felt wise and cynical as all hell.

I long ago understood that the wiser you get in this world the more cynical it all seems.

The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.

Of course, eventually, she did fall farther.

I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died.

Been there myself. In fact, some will tell you, I wrote the book.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Philosophy Tweets

"The wise have always said the same things, and fools, who are the majority have always done just the opposite." Arthur Schopenhauer


Let's make a solemn pact to change that.

“The universe is a machine for the making of Gods.” Henri Bergson

Them and the pinheads.

“Time is invention and nothing else.” Henri Bergson

Though one hell of an invention, of course.

“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” Henri Bergson

See, I told you.

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.” Henri Bergson

Hey, deal with it.

"Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians." David Brinkley

Will Fox News be the first?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jean-Paul Sartre, from Nausea

A pale reflection of myself wavers in my consciousness...and suddenly the “I” pales, pales, and fades out.


Now you're talking.

People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I want to vomit—and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea.

Now you're talking.

A madman's ravings are absurd in relation to the situation in which he finds himself, but not in relation to his madness.

Next up: the madwoman.

Most of the time, because of their failure to fasten on to words, my thoughts remain misty and nebulous. They assume vague, amusing shapes and are then swallowed up: I promptly forget them.

And then one day: all of the time.

The Nausea has not left me and I don't believe it will leave me so soon; but I no longer have to bear it, it is no longer an illness or a passing fit: it is I.

You know, if you're an existentialist.

Then I realized what separated us: what I thought about him could not reach him; it was psychology, the kind they write about in books. But his judgment went through me like a sword and questioned my very right to exist. And it was true, I had always realized it; I hadn't the right to exist. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant or a microbe. My life put out feelers towards small pleasures in every direction. Sometimes it sent out vague signals; at other times I felt nothing more than a harmless buzzing.

Not only that but, it turns out, Hell is other people.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Werner Twertzog

I shall not dwell on what might have been, with Jane.


This?
https://www.apple.com/tv-pr/news/2022/0 ... ptember-9/

Fine. I shall change the Zeitgeist. Again.

Let's go back to the others.

At 2PM Central Standard Time, I shall smash the patriarchy to bits.

Last Friday. But it came and went.

But the corpse of the Giant Squid silenced our touristic banter…

That'll do it. You know, for some.

Au revoir Jean-Luc.

And then some.

Kenneth Starr is dead, but the persecuting spirit lives on.

Not counting Donald Trump of course. He's one of theirs.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Harlan Ellison

I now believe that television itself, the medium of sitting in front of a magic box that pulses images at us endlessly, the act of watching TV, per se, is mind crushing. It is soul deadening, dehumanizing, soporific in a poisonous way, ultimately brutalizing. It is, simply put so you cannot mistake my meaning, a bad thing.


Not counting the good stuff of course.

...the machine masturbated and we had to take it or die.

You know, if it ever comes to that.

Love ain't nothing but sex misspelled.

Most times, let's say.

I mean, what do you do, when you find that things are not what you were taught they’re supposed to be? What do you do with the desperation that boils up from your stomach when you know there’s a road out there with your destination at the end of it, but it’s too damned dark to even find the road?

Besides coming here, in other words.

You're a nonconformist.
That didn’t used to be a felony.
It is now.


Next up: That didn't used to be a capital crime.

There are forces in the world today, Mr. Winsocki, that are invisibly working to make us all carbon copies of one another. Forces that crush us into molds of each other.

Social media let's call it.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jan Mieszkowski

18th-century philosophy: WHY do we exist?
19th-century philosophy: Why do WE exist?
20th-century philosophy: Why do we EXIST?
21st-century philosophy: We don't exist.


With any luck, any day now.

Psychology: The past hurts
Sociology: The present hurts
Politics: The future hurts
Philosophy: The past conditional perfect will have hurt if the future conditional perfect turns out to hurt as well


The key word: hurts.

I think therefore I
Descartes: am
Marx: do
Kierkegaard: dare
Schopenhauer: despair


Of course, they're all dead now.

"I would love to write a short treatise on love of ruins. What else is there to love, anyway?" Jacques Derrida

How about the ruin that ILP has become?

Camus: One must imagine Sisyphus happy
Sisyphus: One must imagine Camus without a cigarette


Let's imagine both and move on.

English lit: My mind is a labyrinth
French lit: My soul is a phantom
German lit: My heart is a furnace
Russian lit: I think I'm going to lie down on these train tracks


American lit: :lol:
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Barbara Ehrenreich

Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.


Though, sure, from time to time, it has been both.

The urge to transform one's appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the powerful and embrace perfect strangers is not easy to suppress.

Well, some of them.

You can think of death bitterly or with resignation, as a tragic interruption of your life, and take every possible measure to postpone it. Or, more realistically, you can think of life as an interruption of an eternity of personal nonexistence, and seize it as a brief opportunity to observe and interact with the living, ever-surprising world around us.

Ah, the philosophy of death.

The truly self-confident, or those who have in some way made their peace with the world and their destiny within it, do not need to expend effort censoring or otherwise controlling their thoughts.

:lol:

The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.

No, really, think about it this time.

We can hardly pride ourselves on being the world’s preeminent democracy, after all, if the large numbers of citizens spend half their waking hours in what amounts, in plain terms, to a dictatorship.

No, really, think about it this time.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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God

It's easy to blame other people for your problems, so do that.


You heard Him.

The Bible is 100% accurate, especially when thrown at close range.

God and His quips!

Things always get worse before they get worser.

Right, like things can actually get worser here.

Fuck off, Church of England. You were LITERALLY CREATED for the SOLE purpose of undermining the sanctity of marriage.

A little help with this one please.
Unless of course you're gay.


The internet in Iran is going down.
The mullahs are too.


Mahsa Amini and the "morality police".
The mullahs are still there though.


Just because Christianity is terrible and often evil doesn't mean Islam isn't also terrible and often evil.

Next up: Judaism
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jean Luc Godard

Sometimes reality is too complex. Stories give it form.


Too much form as often as not.

First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we’re entering the Age of the Ass.

Here for example.

The world isn't a sad place, it's just big.

Or, compromising, big and sad.

Objects exist and if one pays more attention to them than to people, it is precisely because they exist more than the people. Dead objects are still alive. Living people are often already dead.

An insight, let's call it.

Mirrors should reflect before sending an image.

You know, once we all live in the best of all possible worlds.

When we talked, I talked about me, you talked about you, when we should have talked about each other.

Like that won't sometimes make things even worse.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Guy In Line For Port-A-Potty Won’t Stop Assuring Everyone He Pisses Quick


And he damn well better not be lying, right?

Student Reporter Hits It Out Of The Park With 5 Accurate Sentences

In a row no less!

Man Always Sleeps With Bat Beside Bed Just In Case Any Major League Pitchers Try To Break In

Choose one:
1] Wood
2] Aluminum


Mom Calmly Emptying Dishwasher As If Shrieking Argument Didn’t Happen 10 Minutes Ago

Or calmly plotting a murder.

Dying Dad Wondering If You'll Hit Traffic On Way To Hospital

Unfortunately, you did.

Cackling Garry Kasparov Wins Another Chess Match Against Roomba

Next up: another cackling match with Putin.
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