Truth
Reality
Reason
Philosophy
Essence
Logic
Fact
Science
Knowledge
Understanding
Causality
Being
Ideals
Religion
Belief
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Republic.
"[W]ould
God willingly mask the truth behind appearance and deceive us by
his words or action? . . . [T]here's nothing of the lying poet in
God. . . God is entirely uniform and truthful."1a
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The
Metaphysics.
"
. . . [P]hilosophy is rightly called a knowledge of Truth. . . But
we cannot know the truth apart from the cause."1a
EINSTEIN
"
. . . [I]t is of Being qua Being that we . . . must
grasp the first causes."1b*
"To say that what is is not, or
that what is not is, is false;
but to say that what is is, and
what is not is not, is true; and
therefore also he who says that a
thing is or is not will say either what is true and what is false."1c
"The
term 'being' . . . denotes first the 'what' of a thing . . . what
it is . . . "1d*
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The
Dead Sea Scrolls.
" . . Cursed be [S]atan in his hostile design, and damned in
his guilty dominion. Cursed be all the spirits of his [lo]t in their wicked
design . . . For they are a lot of darkness and their visitation is for eternal
destruction. Amen, amen. . . [Cursed be a]ll those who practi[se] their [wicked designs] .
. . [plotting against Go]d'[s Covenant] . . . to exchange the
judgemen[ts of
truth for folly.]"1
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The New
Testament.
" . . .
[T]here
is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and
hid, that shall not be known." [St. Matthew 10:26]1a
"Then said Jesus
to those Jews which believed on him. If ye continue in my
word, then are ye my disciples indeed;
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make
you free.
They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in
bondage to any man; how sayest thou, Ye shall be made
free?
Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever
committeth sin is the servant of sin." [St.
John 8:31-34].3b*
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On Free Choice of the Will.
"No part of truth is ever made the private property of
anyone; rather, it is entirely common to all at the same
time."1a
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The Prince.
" . . . [I]t is necessary . . . to be a great feigner and
dissembler; and men are so simple and so ready to obey present
necessities, that one who deceives will always find those who
allow themselves to be deceived."1a
The Discourses.
" . . . [A] prince who wishes
to do great things must learn to practice deceit."2a
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Meditations.
"Everything I have accepted up to now as being absolutely
true and assured, I have learned from or through the senses. But I
have sometimes found that these senses played me false, and it
is prudent never to trust entirely those who have once deceived
us."1a
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The Ethics.
"He who has a true
idea knows at the same time that he has a true idea, and
cannot doubt its truth."1a*
"The free man never acts deceitfully, but always with good
faith."1b*
"To act in
absolute conformity with virtue is nothing else in us but
to act, to live, to preserve one's own being (these three
mean the same) under the guidance of reason, on the basis
of seeking one's own advantage."1c*
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Monadology.
"Our reasoning is
based upon two great principles: first, that of Contradiction
. . . And second, the principle of Sufficient Reason . . .
There are also two kinds of Truths: those of Reasoning
and those of Fact. The Truths of Reasoning are necessary,
and their opposite is impossible. Those of Fact, however, are contingent,
and their opposite is possible."1a
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Philosophy of
Mind.
"In
the formula, I=I, is enunciated the principle of absolute
Reason and freedom."1a
"Truth aware of what it is,
is mind (spirit)."1b
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Utilitarianism
and Other Essays.
"The truths which are ultimately accepted as the first
principles of a science, are really the last results of
metaphysical analysis . . . and their relation to the science
is not that of foundations to an edifice, but of roots to a
tree . . . "1a
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The Descent of
Man.
"False
facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they
often endure long . . . "1a
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Bertrand
Russell on
God and Religion.
"I am persuaded that there is absolutely
no limit to the absurdities that can, by government action,
come to be generally believed. Give me an adequate army . .
. and I will undertake . . . to make the majority of the
population believe that two and two are three . . . "1a
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The Myth of
the State.
" . . .
[A]ccording
to [Hegel] . . . 'Men are as foolish as to forget . . .
in their enthusiasm for liberty of conscience and political
freedom, the truth which lies in power.' These words .
. . contain the clearest and most ruthless program of
fascism that has ever been propounded . . . "1a
The Philosophy of
Symbolic Forms.
"
. . . [T]he scientific value of a formula consists not only in its
summing up of given empirical facts but in its power . . . to call
forth new facts. The formula states relationships,
connections, series which far outdistance direct observation.
It becomes one of the most outstanding instruments of what Leibniz
called the 'logic of discovery,' the logica inventionis."2a
"The true standard for the
evaluation of a physical hypothesis . . . can never be sought in
its intuitive reference but only in its efficacy. It is not the
simplicity of the image that is decisive, but the unity of
the explanation, the subsumption of the totality of natural
phenomena under supreme comprehensive rules."2b
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Ideas and
Opinions.
"The ideals which
have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage
to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth.
. . "1a
" . . .
[T]he scientific
method can teach us nothing else beyond how facts are related
to, and conditioned by, each other."1b
" . . . [S]cience
can only ascertain what is, but not what should
be . . . Religion . . . deals only with evaluations
of human thought and action . . . science
can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the
aspirations toward truth and understanding. This
source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion.
To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the
regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that
is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive of a
genuine scientist without that profound faith. The situation may
be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind."1c*
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Being and Time.
"The
'Being-true' . . . means . . . the entities of which one is
talking must be taken out of their hiddenness; one must let them be
seen as something unhidden; that is, they must be discovered.
Similarly, 'Being false' . . . amounts
to deceiving in the sense of covering up [verdecken]:
putting something in front of something (in such a way as to let it
be seen) and thereby passing it off as
something which it is not."1*
Pathmarks.
"The essence of truth reveals itself as freedom."2a*
The Metaphysical
Foundations of Logic.
"We need another logic solely because what is called logic
is not a logic at all and has nothing in common anymore with
philosophy."3a
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Galileo.
"Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and
to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He
must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed;
the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the
skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment
to select those
in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth
among such persons."1
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Nineteen
Eighty-Four.
"TWO AND TWO MAKE FIVE."1a*
"Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc,
since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious
deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes
with complete honesty. . . It need hardly be said that the
subtlest practitioners of doublethink are those who
invented doublethink and know that it is a vast
system of mental cheating."1b*
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The
Crisis of Global Capitalism.
"Why
bother about the truth when a proposition does not need to be
true to be effective? Why be honest when it is success,
not honesty or virtue that
gains people's respect? . . . We are ready to enter the Age of
Fallibility."1a
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Shadows
of the Mind.
"Understanding is, after all, what
science is all about -- and science is a great deal more than
mere mindless computation."1a
"Gödel's
argument does not argue in favour of there being inaccessible
mathematical truths. What it does argue for, on the other
hand, is that human insight lies beyond formal argument
and beyond computable procedures. Moreover, it argues
powerfully for the very existence of the Platonic mathematical
world. Mathematical truth is not determined arbitrarily
by the rules of some 'man-made' formal system, but has an absolute
nature, and lies beyond any such system of specifiable
rules."1c*
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*
Italics in the original.
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1
Plato.
Republic. Translated by Robin
Waterfield. Robin Waterfield, 1993. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
a Primary Education for the Guardians (382a-382c), at
77-78.
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1
Aristotle.
The
Metaphysics.
Books I-IX. Translation by Hugh Tredennick. G.P. Goold, ed.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1933, 1989. (The Loeb
Classical Library.)
a
Book II, at 87.
b
Book IV, at 147.
c
Book IV, at 201.
d
Book VII, at 311.
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1 Geza Vermes.
The Dead Sea Scrolls.
4th ed. G. Vermes, 1962, 1965, 1968, 1975, 1987, 1995. Penguin Group. London, England: Penguin
Books Ltd., at 185. (The liturgical curse identified as 4Q286-7 was published by
J.T. Milik, Journal of Jewish Studies 23, 1972, 126-35.)
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1
The Holy Bible.
The New Testament. King James Version. London, England: Collins'
Clear-Type Press, 1957.
a St. Matthew 10:26.
b St.
John
8:31-34. |
1 Saint Augustine
(354-430).
On Free Choice of the
Will.
Translated by Anna S. Benjamin and L.H. Hackstaff. With an
Introduction by L.H. Hackstaff. Englewood, NJ: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1964.
a Book I, at 8.
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1 Niccolo Machiavelli
(1469-1527). The
Prince (1531). Translated by Luigi Ricci. Revised by
E.R.P. Vincent. Introduction by
Christian Gauss. New York, NY: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.,
1952. (Reprint of a hardcover edition published by Oxford University Press, Inc.)
a In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith, at 93.
2 Niccolo Machiavelli. The
Discourses. Edited with an Introduction by Bernard
Crick using the translation of Leslie J. Walker, S.J. Revisions by
Brian Richardson. Bernard Crick, 1970. London, UK: Penguin Books
Ltd. (Penguin Classics.)
a Book Two, Discourse 13, at 310.
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1 Rene
Descartes (1596-1650). Discourse on
Method and the Meditations (1637). Translated with an
Introduction by F.E. Sutcliffe. F.E. Sutcliffe, 1968. London, UK:
Penguin Books Ltd.
a First Meditation: About the Things We May Doubt, at
96.
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1 Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677). The
Ethics. Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect. Selected
Letters . Translated by Samuel Shirley. Edited,
with Introductions, by Seymour Feldman. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 1992.
a Proposition 43, Part II, at 91.
b Proposition 72, Part IV, at 194.
c Proposition 24, Part IV, at 166-167.
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1 G.W. Leibniz (1646-1716).
Discourse
on Metaphysics. Correspondence with Arnauld. Monadology.
Introduction by Paul Janet. Translated by George Montgomery. Lasalle,
IL: Open Court Publishing Company, 1902, 1995.
a
Monadology,
at 258.
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1 G. W. F. Hegel.
Hegel's
Philosophy
of Mind.
Part Three of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences
(1830). Translated by William Wallace. Together with the Zus�tze in
Boumann's Text (1845) translated by A.V. Miller. Foreword by J.N.
Findlay. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1971.
a Self-Consciousness, at 165.
b Reason, at 178.
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1 John
Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Utilitarianism
and Other
Essays. Edited with an Introduction by Alan Ryan. Alan
Ryan, 1987. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd., 1987.
a Utilitarianism, at 273.
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1 Charles Darwin
(1809-1882). The Descent of Man (1871). In Darwin,
Philip
Appleman (ed.), 2nd ed., New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company,
Inc., 1970, 1979.
a General Summary and Conclusion, at 196.
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1 Bertrand Russell.
Bertrand Russell on
God and Religion.
Edited by Al
Sekel.
a An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, at 225.
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1
Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945).
The
Myth of the State.
Yale University Press, 1946. Henry Cassirer and Anne Applebaum,
1974. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
a
Hegel's Theory of the State,
267.
2
Ernst Cassirer.
The
Philosophy of Symbolic Forms.
Volume
3: The Phenomenology of Knowledge. Translated by Ralph Manheim.
Introductory Note by Charles W. Hendel. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1957, 1985.
a
The Foundations of Scientific
Knowledge, at 440.
b
The Foundations of Scientific
Knowledge, at 463.
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1 Albert Einstein (1879-1955). Ideas
and Opinions. Based on Mein
Weltbild, edited by Carl Seelig, and other sources.
New translations and revisions by Sonja Bargmann. New York, NY: Crown
Publishers, Inc., 1954.
a The World as I See It., at 8-11. Originally
published in Forum and Century, Vol. 84, pp. 193-194, the
13th in the Forum series, "Living Philosophies";
included also in Living Philosophies (pp. 3-7), New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1931.
b Science and Religion, Part I, at 41-44. From an
address at Princeton Theological Seminary, May 19, 1939; published
in Out of My Later Years, New York: Philosophical Library,
1950.
c Science and Religion, Part II, at 44-49. From Science,
Philosophy and Religion, A Symposium, published by the
Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion in Their Relation
to the Democratic Way of Life, Inc., New York, 1941.
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1 Martin Heidegger. Being
and Time. A
translation of Sein und Zeit (7th ed., Neomarius Verlag,
T�bingen) by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York, NY:
Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 1962 [HarperSanFrancisco].
(The Concept of the Logos, at 55-58.)
2 Martin Heidegger.
Pathmarks.
Edited by William
McNeill. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Originally published as Wegmarken by Vittorio Klostermann
GmbH, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 1967.
a On the Essence
of Truth, translated by John Sallis, at 136-154. (Originally
published in Marting Heidegger: Basic Writings, edited by
David Farrell Krell (2nd revised and expanded ed.) (New York, NY:
HarperCollins, 1993), at 115-138.)
3 Martin Heidegger. The
Metaphysical Foundations of Logic. Translated by
Michael Heim.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1984.
a
On the Traditional conception
of logic, at 5.
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1 Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956).
"Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties." Translated by Richard Winston. Originally published in the United
States in Twice A Year (New York), Tenth Anniversary Issue, 1948.
a Translation reprinted in Bertolt Brecht,
Galileo. Edited and with an
Introduction by Eric Bentley, 1966. English version by Charles Laughton. Arvid Englind,
1940. Bertolt Brecht, 1952 (Indiana University Press). New York, NY: Grove Press.
(Appendix A, at 133-150.)
b The first version of Brecht's essay was first published in the Pariser
Tagebaltt, December 12, 1934, under the title "Dichter sollen die Wahrheit
schreiben" ("Poets Are to Tell the Truth"). The final version of Brecht's
essay was published in Unsere Zeit (Paris), VIII, Nos. 2/3, April 1935, at 23-24.
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1 George Orwell (1903-1950). Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Eric Blair, 1949. Estate of the late Sonia Brownwell Orwell, 1987.
Note on the Text by
Peter Davison, 1989.London, UK: Penguin Group, 1989, 1990. (First
published by Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1949.)
a
"2+2=5,"
at 290 and 303.
b
Doublethink
and the "secret of rulership," at 223-224.
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1
George Soros. The
Crisis of Global Capitalism [Open Society Endangered].
George Soros, 1998. New York, NY: Public Affairs.
a
The Enlightenment, at 89-90.
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1 Roger
Penrose. Shadows of the Mind: A Search
for the Missing Science of Consciousness. Roger
Penrose, 1994. London, UK: Vintage, Random House UK Limited, 1995.
First published by Oxford University Press, 1994.
a Preface, at vii.
b What New Physics We Need to Understand the Mind: The
Quest for a Non-computational Physics of Mind, at 225.
c What New Physics We Need to Understand the Mind:
Implications?, at 418.
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