THE GREAT IDEAS, A SYNTOPICON, VOL. 1
Mortimer J. Adler, editor
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"Human kingdoms are established by divine providence." St. Augustine
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"Although the essences or forms of things are many, yet the truth of the divine intellect is one." Thomas Aquinas
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"Man's nature as a social being tends to make him feel it one of his natural wants that there should be harmony between his feelings and aims and those of his fellow-creatures."
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"Justice is esential to the very life and health of the soul."
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"The ancients did not doubt that men could choose and, through choice, exercise some control over the disposition of their lives. Tacitus, for example…claims that 'the wisest of the ancients leave us the capacity of choosing our life."
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"Whatever the soul possesses, to that she comes bearing life." Socrates, quoted in Plato's 'Phaedo'
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"God is sovranly [sovereignly] present through all. We cannot think of something of God here and something else there,…there is an instantaneous presence everywhere….everything therefore [is] fully held by the divine." Plotinus
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"As God is the supernatural efficient cause of all created things, so God is also the supernatural final cause – the end or ultimate good toward which all creatures tend." Baruch Spinoza
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"Every act of understanding or thought involves imagination."
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"If we attentively consider the constant regularity, order, and concatenation of natural things, the surprising magnificence, beauty, and perfection of the larger, and the exquisite contrivance of the smaller parts of the creation, together with the exact harmony and correspondence of the whole,….I say if we consider all these things, and at the same time attend to the meaning and import of the attributes, one, eternal, infinitely wise, good, and perfect, we shall clearly perceive that they belong to the Spirit who 'works all in all', and 'by whom all things consist.'" George Berkeley (1685-1745), 'The Principles of Human Knowledge'
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"The good of nothing less than the whole collectively or of all distributively can be taken as the common or general good."
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"In Aristotle's cosmology, the circular motions of the celestial spheres, and through them all other cycles of natural change, are sustained eternally by the prime mover, which moves all things by the attraction of its perfect being."
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"The moral law is universally and equally binding on all persons….the moral law commands us to respect the dignity of the human person, ourselves and others alike,"
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"Love is everywhere in the universe – in all things which have their being from the bounty and generosity of God's creative love and which in return obey the law of love in seeking God or in whatever they do to magnify God's glory."
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"From self-evident propositions, by necessary consequences, as incontestible as those in mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out, to any one that will apply himself with the same indifferency and attention to the one as he does to the other of these sciences." John Locke (1629-1695)
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"The ancient philosophers, constrained as it were by the truth, when they asserted an infinite principle, asserted likewise that there was only one such principle." Thomas Aquinas
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"All things partake of The One in absolute dependence."
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"Only God, only an infinite being, can satisfy man's infinite craving for all the good there is."
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"Spirit is immortal; with it there is no past, no future, but an essential now. This necessarily implies that the present form of Spirit comprehends within it all earlier steps….The grades which Spirit seems to have left behind it, it still possesses in the depths of its present." Georg Hegel (1770-1831),
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"Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions." John Locke (1629-1695)
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"Charity, according to its very nature, causes peace; for love is a unitive force." Thomas Aquinas
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"The absolute good is, as in the 'Divine Comedy', the final cause or ultimate end of the motions of the universe. It is 'the Alpha and Omega', Dante says, 'of every scripture that Love reads to me.'"
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"Whatever exists...has some share in the effulgent beauty of the One."
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"Immortality is, in a way, enjoyed in this life, for it is a present participation in eternity through the mind's knowledge of God."
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"The divine being is all being simultaneously." Thomas Aquinas
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