Bicklandia

Mostly quotes from things I am reading. Twitter/Instagram/Goodreads = Bicklandia

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A decent number of you would become better critics and theorists almost immediately if you were forbidden from diagnosing by means of broad categories (eg. "capitalism", "wokeness", "toxic masculinity", "culture") and were instead forced to explain what you actually Mean By That.

Klaus Zynski

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The passage from one cycle to another can take place only in darkness.

The Crisis of the Modern World, Rene Guernon, 1927

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Even if you are living where your forefathers have lived for generations, you can bet that the smartphone you gave your child will unmoor them more effectively than any bulldozer could.

Against the Machine, Paul Kingsnorth

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One small garden of a free gardener was all his need and due, not a garden swollen to a realm; his own hands to use, not the hands of others to command.

The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien

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It is a tendency in Anglo-American analytic philosophy to think you can't get anywhere until you define your terms. I think that's jumping the gun. I think that what the terms mean emerges only when one begins to think; argue different positions about it, and starting with a hard and fast definition is rather like a mistake you would make in changing a car's wheel... you don't tighten up one bolt at the start. You tighten it up a bit, then you tighten up some other ones, and then come back until finally you get the thing right.

Iain McGilchrist

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The universe is not to be narrowed down to the limits of the understanding which has been men's practice until now, but the understanding must be stretched and enlarged to take in the image of the universe as it is discovered.

Sir Fancis Bacon

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Some of the major disasters of mankind have been produced by the narrowness of men with good methodology.

Alfred North Whitehead, 1929

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[C]onclusions true within strict limitations have been generalised dogmatically into a fallacious universality.

Alfred North Whitehead, 1929

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And in this silence of the dumb and these speeches of the blind, in this medley of people bound together by the same grief, terror and hope, in this hatred and lack of understanding between men who spoke the same tongue, you could see much of the tragedy of the twentieth century.

Life and Fate, Vasily Grosman

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Yes, this was the main difference between the present and the years he had spent in prison as a young man: in those days he had been able to understand and love everything about his friends and comrades, while the least word or thought of his enemies had seemed alien and monstrous; now, however, he would sometimes glimpse in the thoughts of an enemy what he had once found important himself, and discover something strangely alien in the thoughts of his friends. 'I must be getting old!' he said to himself.

Life and Fate, Vasily Grosman

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Lest we forget—that we are not the measure of all things. That reality has a force which we cannot legislate or legislate away. Lest we forget—that we are all carried out into the deep. I dream of escape, of swimming or floating or rafting away. And I dream of staying, of building monuments and religions and civilisations. But in the end we can’t stay and we can’t escape. So here I sit silent and restless

Desmond Manderson

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"In short: a legal brief is neither."

- Desmond Manderson

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"To look for ideas of justice in a courtroom is like looking for health in a morgue."

- Desmond Manderson

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'Law continues to write as if, like the Victorians, it's being paid by the word or as if the fear of letting a word in edgeways would undo it utterly.'

- Desmond Manderson

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"Never wake a sleeping baby or a sleeping ocean." -Desmond Manderson

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Set thou, therefore, thy senses in harmony, and then slay thou sinful desire, the destroyer of vision and wisdom.

The Bhagavad Gita

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But teach me a new word To hang like an earring On my lover's ear.

Nizar Qabbani