A Dictionary of Thought

Dagobert D. Runes

• Publisher: Philosophical Library/Open Road
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781504064392
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Ethics & Moral Philosophy

An A-to-Z collection of thoughtful aphorisms and ruminations by the philosopher and founder of the Philosophical Library. In this unique dictionary, philosopher Dagobert D. Runes attempts to define the contours of human thinking and morality. In a series of terms organized alphabetically, Runes systematically sets out his own musings on topics ranging from Abhorrence and Ability to Zeal, Zen, and Zero. Each word is followed by up to several single-sentence aphorisms and occasionally a short essay. In his search for real verities and true humanity, Runes takes the reader on a thought-provoking voyage through the depths of the human mind. This is philosophy as intellectual soul-searching, unburdened by traditional manner and terminology. Sometimes baffling and frequently melancholy, it is always fascinating and inspiring.

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CARE

Who does not care has no care.

CATHEDRAL

The most imposing cathedrals are never too far from slums.

CAUSALITY

There are two causes of every effect; the visible one, and the real one.

CAUSE

It is a Cause that separates men from the mere mass.

CABBALAH

The secret book of Hebrew tradition had no single author, nor had Torah nor Talmud. Its many authors wrote with sagacity which was not theirs but rather the reflection of the Divine Intellect they venerated.

The Cabbalah teaches that in the realm of cognition and inner being there are ten different spheres. Not even all those who speak for truth see it on the same level.

CALMNESS

Let not the calm of indifference be mistaken for a mastered temper!

CANDOR

Some who wouldn’t suffer a breeze delight in sending forth a tempest.

Candor is insolence in a Sunday suit.

CAPITALISM

Has the rich and the poor; Communism, the poor and the poorer.

I would rather take capitalism without a soul than Communism without a heart.

CEREMONY

Is the outward sign of an inward duty. Some who deride ceremonials are merely covering up the tracks of their own egotism.

CHABAD

To understand the forces of the world is not enough. To gain access to the creative powers, the Cabbalah teaches, one must have wisdom and intuition (chochma and bina). Only the three combined—chochma, bina, da-at (chabad)—raise man above the material world.

CHANGE

Friends, work, leisure, convictions—man moves in a circle. Happy the man who can when need be jump his track for a wider orbit.

You may change man’s conduct but not his conscience.

No man is the same for more than a fortnight.

CHANCE

Throws people together, man and woman, friend and foe. Chance makes kin and kings, a turned-up nose or a dusky skin, and places one’s cradle in a mansion or a tent in the desert. From this unsorted mixture in the caldron of fate man draws his lot, his life and his luck. Yet some still like to think their dish was set out for them with deliberate intent by a providential hand.

CHARACTER

Is hard to determine, there are so many layers of pretense and prejudice hiding the core. Scratch the surface and you’ll find the good are not so good, the bad not so bad.

Character gets no better with age, only more pronounced.

Character shows its color by our sins, not our virtues. The latter are too bland and lily-like.

Suffering may not make character, but kindness will.

Character must be seen in everyday life, not just in its Sunday best.

Tell me what you read and I’ll tell you what you are.

It is when a man is in power that he shows his true direction and the measure of his patience.

CHARITY

Is not the effect of faith, it is faith.

Charity is the common denominator of all religions.

There is no charity so noble the cynic cannot impugn its motivation.

CHASTITY

Is honorable but charity is virtue come alive.

CHEERFULNESS

May be only a mood, but one for the better.

CHILDHOOD

The premature fruit may be much inferior to the slowly ripening.

CHILDREN

Perpetuate the prejudices and superstitions of their parents, rarely their wisdom.

The newborn starts off with a score of notches on which to hang the good things in life. Watch the community load him with prejudice, malice and superstition.

The wondrous adventures a child’s mind can experience on a walk through a deserted, littered lot set between two old houses!

Our ancestors called their newborn boy Kaddish, the Holy One. The child was their link to living eternity. Those who spend their existence without a child have no share in the fate of tomorrow’s world. They circle around themselves with their backs to the future generations.

To a child, its games of make-believe are as serious as our realities are to us. I sometimes wonder which of the two has more substance.

There are no children, only young people.

CHOICE

At so many crossroads it’s not a choice between good and bad, but between evil and greater evil.

CHOSEN PEOPLE

The pagans and gentiles begrudge the Jews their claim to a heritage which they themselves have been rejecting for thousands of years.

The Jews chose God when no one else wanted Him.

The Lord is not selective; the people are.

CHRIST

The greatest number of books have been written about one whom we know the least: Jesus Christ.

One cannot be a Christian while living the life of a pagan. If your heart is pagan and your deeds are pagan, you remain outside the Circle of Christ, which means Church of Christ, no matter what prayers your lips speak, nor what the ikon before which you kneel.

The Jews always have denied and forever will oppose the concept of God besides God. God is Echod, and One stands eternally for no more and no less, no picture of Him, no son of Him. This philosophy unendingly separates Judaism from Christianity.

If He came to earth today, He would never forgive us, in all His celestial beatitude, for the unspeakable atrocities perpetrated on His kin and the kin of His mother and His faithful believers. All the paternosters and all the hymns of all fifty thousand saints and all fifty thousand theologians and all the genuflecting of a billion Christian knees, those alive today and those interred since the night of the catacombs, could not wear away the Jewish blood that is on Christian hands. If Jesus came to earth today, He would shrink from the Gothic cathedrals and the forest of church spires that carry the cross He took upon Himself that man might live a loving creature. Perhaps He would slink away to some little ghetto street in New York City, where there is a tiny ten-by-ten synagogue. And He would sit down with the other bearded Jews on the hard benches in this true house of worship. And He would read with the others from the ancient book of Moses, which, as He said, He came to fulfill and not to destroy—the book of Moses, written in the script He could understand, written in the spirit in which He lived and for which He died.

God lived with the world and its people for a million years before Jesus was born, so why begin time with the Son of God? Why not with God, the Father? There must have been good and evil before Christ came to earth; there must have been sin and repentance, devotion and derision, helpfulness and viciousness, manliness and gentleness and godliness; there must have been saints and thieves, Falstaffs and ascetics, foul men and sound men, naïve men and critics, the Lord’s servants and the Devil’s henchmen.

There was a God before Jesus.

Millions have died for Him, but only a few lived for Him.

Jesus may have risen, but His followers stayed down.

It is the same family in Little Rock that genuflects to Christ in front of the altar and to Satan in front of the schoolhouse.

They suffer the cross He bore and go forth to impose His pains upon others.

If His followers had been won by the point of a sentence instead of a sword, Europe’s history were less sanguinary.

CHRISTIANS

Have failed for two thousand years to prove what Christ’s teachings could do. From auto-da-fé to Auschwitz, a chain of Miserabilia. Nowhere else in history were such saintly words turned to such abuse.

CHURCHES

Are like umbrellas: a torn one is still better than none.

Churches have lost the touch of the Divine and turned to book reviews and politics.

CITIES

Are like people: some are noisy and soon forgotten, others live on for a hundred generations after their homes and temples and streets are covered by silent sands.

CIVIL RIGHTS

Those who strain to hear a whisper from freedom infringed in our country seem to have a deaf ear for the screams of freedom outraged abroad.

Civil rights do not include the privilege of undermining the inherent civility of democratic society.

Civil rights are limited by civil duties.

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Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Y
• Z
• Copyright Page