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People are not clones in a monoculture, so what satisfies one will frustrate another, and the only way they can end up equal is if they are treated unequally.
 
You can't get attention of one who focused on himself.
 
Economics, even capitalist economics, assumes that there are desiring beings, but it does not ask why these beings desire one thing rather than another. Economists say that they are interested not in the reasons for people’s preferences, but in revealed preferences, i.e. preferences that are enacted. Economics does not ask about the reasons for these preferences – why would a mass of people prefer to buy cocaine rather than books or cruise vacations...? – it takes into account and calculates the preferences expressed, i.e., the exchange that is acted out. Exchange is an act, not a belief, and it is a more or less risky exchange.
 
Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle — the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.
 
The present non-aristotelian system is based on fundamental negative premises; namely, the complete denial of 'identity.'
 
I used to want to be an old man when I was a kid. Now I'm an old man and my kids are growing, I think I want to be a kid.
 
The Imagination is not a State: it is the Human Existence itself.
 
The habit of spending nearly every waking moment lost in thought leaves us at the mercy of whatever our thoughts happen to be. Meditation is a way of breaking this spell.
 
Consciousness, much like our feelings, is based on a representation of the body and how it changes when reacting to certain stimuli. Self-image would be unthinkable without this representation.
 
You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.
 
My neighbor's poverty makes me feel poor; my own does not.
 
Melancholy: when we have sorrows without a name.
 
The essential thing is not that there be many truths in a work, but that no truth be abused.
 
Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.
 
There ain't no devil, only God when he's drunk.
 
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
 
SWEATER: A garment worn by child when it's mother is feeling chilly.
 
Remember that there is nothing stable in human affairs; therefore avoid undue elation in prosperity, or undue depression in adversity.
 
We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all.
 
One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own nasty way.
 
2718 quotes