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if a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.
“If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat.”
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“Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in man's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
“However, all the methods of interventionism are doomed to failure. This means: the interventionist measures must needs result in conditions which from the point of view of their own advocates are more unsatisfactory than the previous state of affairs they were designed to alter. These policies are therefore contrary to purpose.”
― Planned Chaos
― Planned Chaos
“The theory of the transference of the collective will of the people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil wars occur—that is, as soon as history begins—that theory explains nothing.”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
“The presence of the problem of man's free will, though unexpressed, is felt at every step of history. All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the lack of a solution of that question. If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected incidents.”
― War and Peace
― War and Peace
Austin’s 2024 Year in Books
Take a look at Austin’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
772 books
|
90 friends
1,700 books
|
55 friends
848 books
|
58 friends
436 books
|
123 friends
246 books
|
105 friends
419 books
|
66 friends
585 books
|
164 friends
102 books
|
127 friends
More friends…
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