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…just as there is only one “real” chair, its ideal Form, there can be only one ideal standard of charity, by which we measure all the imperfect copies.20 The Forms reveal to us what a true equilateral triangle looks like, or a perfect game of tennis, or a perfectly turned urn, so that we can judge the less-than-perfect examples in our midst…they also teach us what loyalty is, as well as disloyalty, and allow us to understand the true nature of justice and laws. They lead us to do what we know is right and to avoid doing what is clearly wrong—in short, to make virtue an exact science.

The Forms have a real existence, Plato tells us in the dialogues, but outside time and space. They are not part of the realm of the senses or the world we normally describe as reality. They are the models from which that world is built; so they must be prior to, and higher than, that world we engage in on a daily basis.

To the Pythagoreans, numbers were both living entities and universal principles, permeating everything from the heavens to human ethics…on one hand, [numbers] had a tangible physical existence; on the other, they were abstract prescriptions on which everything was founded.

Statistics published by the [Oakland] police department showed year-to-year crime had dropped by 33% overall... But a new Chronicle review of Oakland police data found that the city overstated the improvements...

Capitalism holds integrity and trustworthiness as cardinal virtues and makes them pay off in the marketplace, thus demanding that men survive by means of virtues, not of vices.

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it… Not merely the validity of the experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

Since only an individual man can possess rights…‘individual rights’ is a redundancy. But…“collective rights” is a contradiction in terms.

The difference between an exchange of ideas and an exchange of blows is self-evident. The line of demarcation between freedom of speech and freedom of action is established by the ban of the initiation of physical force.

Once again, people are pretending to be frightened over the fact that Joe Biden stumbled going up stairs at age 80. I literally stumble going up the stairs at least twice a week. I even fell down my spiral staircase a couple weeks ago. I’m 41 years old, workout daily, and actually use the stair-stepper at the gym 5 days a week. Should I be concerned?

Had this report been subject to a normal DOJ review these remarks would undoubtedly have been excised.

Since nature does not provide man with an automatic form of survival, since he has to support his life by his own effort, the doctrine that concern with one’s own interests is evil means that man’s desire to live is evil—that man’s life, as such, is evil. No doctrine could be more evil than that. Yet that is the meaning of altruism.

We have a duty to be optimistic. Because the future is open, not predetermined and therefore cannot just be accepted: we are all responsible for what it holds. Thus it is our duty to fight for a better world.

[John Searle argues] there is no more reason to expect the brain to be a computer than a steam engine. But there is. A steam engine is not a universal simulator. But a computer is, so expecting it to be able to do whatever neurons can is not a metaphor: it is a known and proven property of the laws of physics as best we know them.

It's the spirit that you want to loot.

Money is only a tool […]. It will take you wherever you wish.  But it will not replace you as the driver.

political democracy can remain if it confines itself to all but economic matter

Paris ist ein Ort, an den ich längst hinstrebe, für den ich mich schon längst in einem unwillkürlichen Drange, indem ich das Französische schon früher und besonders seither betrieb, vorbereitet, ein Ort, der ganz zu meiner Individualität, zu meiner Philosophie passt, an dem sich daher meine Kräfte entwickeln und selbst solche, die ich noch nicht kenne, hervortreten koennen.

Wie der Architekt ein Bauwerk, bevor eine Hand zur Ausführung sich rührt, schon im Geist vollendet hat, nur unter Beihilfe von Zeichenstift und Feder zur Fixierung seiner Idee, so muss auch das komplizierte Gebilde von Glas und Metal sich aufbauen lassen rein verstandesmässig, in allen Elementen bis ins letzte vorausbestimmt, in rein geistiger Arbeit, durch theoretische Ermittlung der Wirkung aller Teile, bevor diese Teile noch körperlich ausgeführt sind. Der arbeitenden Hand darf dabei keine andere Funktion mehr verbleiben als die genaue Verwirklichung der durch die Rechnungen bestimmten Formen und Abmessungen aller Konstruktionselemente, und der praktischen Erfahrung keine andere Aufgabe als die Beherrschung der Methoden und Hilfsmittel, die für letzteres, die körperliche Verwirklichung, geeignet sind

Hier ist es wo uns das merkwürdige, vielleicht das merkwürdigste Problem der Sozialwissenschaften entgegentritt: Wieso vermögen dem Gemeinwohl dienende und für dessen Entwicklung höchst bedeutsame Institutionen ohne einen auf ihre Begründung gerichteten Gemeinwillen zu entstehen?

[T]here is something obscene in the attitude of those […] who are willing to condone the slaughter of defenseless victims, but march in protest against wars between the well-armed.

Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Leave them alone.

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail—but the King of England cannot enter!

That a tiny number, a few hundred out of a student body of more than 27,000, was able to disrupt the campus is the consequence of more than vigor and skill in agitation. This minuscule group could not have succeeded in getting so many students into motion without three other, at times unwitting, sources of support: off-campus assistance of various kinds, the University administration, and the faculty. Everyone who has seen the efficient, almost military organization of the agitators’ program has a reasonable basis for believing that skilled personnel and money are being dispatched into the Berkeley battle. . . . Around the Berkeley community a dozen “ad hoc committees to support” this or that element of the student revolt sprang up spontaneously, as though out of nowhere. The course followed by the University administration . . . could hardly have better fostered a rebellious student body if it had been devised to do so. To establish dubious regulations and when they are attacked to defend them by unreasonable argument is bad enough; worse still, the University did not impose on the students any sanctions that did not finally evaporate. . . . Obedience to norms is developed when it is suitably rewarded, and when noncompliance is suitably punished. That professional educators should need to be reminded of this axiom indicates how deep the roots of the Berkeley crisis lie. But the most important reason that the extremists won so many supporters among the students was the attitude of the faculty. Perhaps their most notorious capitulation to the F.S.M. was a resolution passed by the Academic Senate on December 8, by which the faculty notified the campus not only that they supported all of the radicals’ demands but also that, in effect, they were willing to fight for them against the Board of Regents, should that become necessary. When that resolution passed by an overwhelming majority—824 to 115 votes—it effectively silenced the anti-F.S.M. student organizations.

The opposite of education is not ignorance. It is education in the social sciences.

Soak the rich? Higher taxes imposed on the rich will not come out of their consumption expenditures, but out of their investment capital. Such taxes will mean less investment, I.E., less production, fewer jobs, higher prices.