The Art of Tetman Callis

“I do not recollect in all the animal kingdom a single species but man which is eternally & systematically engaged in the destruction of its own species. What is called civilization seems to have no other effect on him than to teach him to pursue the principle of bellum omnium in omnia on a larger […]

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“The discovery that individual events are irreducibly random is probably one of the most significant findings of the twentieth century. Before this, one could find comfort in the assumption that random events only seem random because of our ignorance. For example, although the brownian motion of a particle appears random, it can still be causally […]

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“I have sometimes asked myself whether my country is the better for my having lived at all? I do not know that it is.” – Thomas Jefferson, “A Memorandum (Services to My Country)”

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“To pass once along a public road thro’ a country, & in one direction only, to put up at it’s taverns, and get into conversation with the idle, drunken individuals who pass their time lounging in these taverns, is not the way to know a country, it’s inhabitants, or manners.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on […]

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Thomas Jefferson on the objects of higher education (usage and punctuation in original): To form the statesmen, legislators and judges, on which public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend; To expound the principles and structure of government, the laws which regulate the intercourse of nations, those formed municipally for our own government, […]

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Thomas Jefferson on the objects of primary education (usage and punctuation in original): To give every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; To enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts, in writing; To improve, by reading, his morals and […]

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“Instead of embarrassing commerce under piles of regulating laws, duties, and prohibitions, could it be relieved from all its shackles in all parts of the world, could every country be employed in producing that which nature has best fitted it to produce, and each be free to exchange with others mutual surplusses for mutual wants, […]

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“It is demonstrated in natural law that he who promises another confers on him a perfect right to require the thing promised, & that, consequently, not to observe a perfect promise, is to violate the right of another; it is as manifest injustice as to plunder any one of their right. All the tranquility, the […]

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“Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.” – Mary Harris “Mother” Jones

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“In 2013, Wayne Jones, a black man experiencing homelessness, was stopped by law enforcement in Martinsburg, West Virginia for walking alongside, rather than on, the sidewalk. By the end of this encounter, Jones would be dead. Armed only with a knife tucked into his sleeve, he was tased four times, hit in the brachial plexus, […]

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“On March 29, 1779, Congress recommended that Georgia and South Carolina recruit 3,000 slaves to serve in separate battalions under white officers. Slaveowners would receive up to $1,000 for each slave who enlisted, and at the end of the war, the slaves would be freed and paid $50 for their service. The proposal was rejected […]

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“This letter, my very dear Eliza, will not be delivered to you, unless I shall first have terminated my earthly career; to begin, as I humbly hope from redeeming grace and divine mercy, a happy immortality. If it had been possible for me to have avoided the interview, my love for you and my precious […]

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“Arm yourself with resignation. We live in a world full of evil. In the later period of life misfortunes seem to thicken around us.” – Alexander Hamilton, “Letter to Elizabeth Hamilton,” March 17, 1803

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“Nothing is more fallacious than to expect to produce any valuable or permanent results, in political projects, by relying merely upon the reason of men. Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.” – Alexander Hamilton, “Letter to James A. Bayard,” April 1802

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“If the laws are not suffered to controul the passions of individuals, thro the organs of an extended, firm and independent judiciary, the bayonet must. There is no alternative.” – Alexander Hamilton, “Remarks on the Repeal of the Judiciary Act,” February 11, 1802 (emphasis in original)

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“Beware, my Dear Sir, of magnifying a riot into an insurrection, by employing in the first instance an inadequate force. Tis better far to err on the other side. Whenever the Government appears in arms it ought to appear like a Hercules, and inspire respect by the display of strength. The consideration of expence is […]

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“I have rape-colored skin. My light-brown-blackness is a living testament to the rules, the practices, the causes of the Old South. If there are those who want to remember the legacy of the Confederacy, if they want monuments, well, then, my body is a monument. My skin is a monument. Dead Confederates are honored all […]

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“To be free from repulsion and attraction, or from the wish to take or to avoid—to enter in the mood of complete impartiality—is the most profound of arts.” – The Tibetan Book of the Dead (trans. Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup)

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“That nation, which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to it animosity or to its affection—either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and interest.” – Alexander Hamilton, “Letter to George Washington,” July 30, 1796

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“No man is without his personal enemies. Pre-eminence even in talents and virtue is a cause of envy and hatred of its possessor. Bad men are the natural enemies of virtuous men. Good men sometimes mistake and dislike each other.” – Alexander Hamilton, “The Defence No. I”

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“Government is frequently and aptly classed under two descriptions, a government of FORCE and a government of LAWS; the first is the definition of despotism—the last, of liberty. But how can a government of laws exist where the laws are disrespected and disobeyed? Government supposes controul. It is the POWER by which individuals in society […]

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“If it were to be asked, What is the most sacred duty and the greatest source of security in a Republic? the answer would be, An inviolable respect for the Constitution and Laws—the first growing out of the last. It is by this, in a great degree, that the rich and powerful are to be […]

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To the Honorable Council & House of Representatives for the State of Massachusetts-Bay in General Court assembled January 13th 1777— The Petition of a great number of Negroes who are detained in a state of Slavery in the Bowels of a free & Christian Country Humbly Shewing— That your Petitioners apprehend that they have, in […]

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“Religion operates in different ways in different persons. It hardens some natures to pride and bigotry; it softens others to sentimentality and a refusal to confront life’s sterner demands. Some it inexplicably irradiates; some it brutalizes. Religion may be as Professor Freud said, civilization’s greatest illusion. If that is so, it may be thought of […]

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“Fools admire everything in an author of reputation.” – Voltaire, Candide (trans. The Modern Library)

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“My innocence would not have saved me if I had not been good-looking.” – Voltaire, Candide (trans. The Modern Library)

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“To find pleasure in the calamities of other nations, would be criminal; but to benefit ourselves, by opening an asylum to those who suffer, in consequence of them, is as justifiable as it is politic.” – Alexander Hamilton, “Report on the Subject of Manufactures,” December 5, 1791

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“The desire to order does not live far from the urge to destroy.” – Ben Ehrenreich, “When Animals Conspire”

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“With love one can live even without happiness.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground (trans. unknown)

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“The writer has lost a great deal of his influence, and he is situated now, if anywhere, on the margins of the culture. But isn’t this where he belongs? How could it be any other way? And in my personal view this is a perfect place to observe what’s happening at the dead center of […]

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