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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 3 days ago
The source of our actions resides...

The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, the cause, and the conclusion of time. Our reflexes and our pride transform into a planet the parcel of flesh and consciousness we are. If we had the right sense of our position in the world, if to compare were inseparable from to live, the revelation of our infinitesimal presence would crush us. But to live is to blind ourselves to our own dimensions. . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 days ago
Every living creature is happy when...

Every living creature is happy when he fulfills his destiny, that is, when he realizes himself, when he is being that which in truth he is. For this reason, Schlegel, inverting the relationship between pleasure and destiny, said, "We have a genius for what we like." Genius, man's superlative gift for doing something, always carries a look of supreme pleasure.

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pp. 16-17
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
I deny that anyone knows, or...

I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing - the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
Now I say this to keep...

Now I say this to keep the conscience free from mischievous laws and fictitious sins, and not because I would defend images. Nor would I condemn those who have destroyed them, especially those who destroy divine and idolatrous images. But images for memorial and witness, such as crucifixes and images of saints, are to be tolerated.

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p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 2 weeks ago
A command can express no more...

A command can express no more than an ought or a shall, because it is a universal, but it does not express an 'is'; and this at once makes plain its deficiency. Against such commands Jesus sets virtue, i.e., a loving disposition, which makes the content of the command superfluous and destroys its form as a command, because that form implies an opposition between a commander and something resisting the command.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
What I see is teeming cohesion,...

What I see is teeming cohesion, contained dispersal.... For him, to sculpt is to take the fat off space.

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On Alberto Giacometti's work, Situations, in Braziller
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 weeks ago
The ideal form for a poem,...

The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.

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Pt. II, sec. 4, "The Ideal Writer"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Standing on the bare ground, -...

Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

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Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 1 day ago
...the French business is no light...

...the French business is no light or trivial thing, or such as has commonly occurd in the course of political Events. At present the whole political State of Europe hinges upon it. On the Continent there is little doubt; every thing will take is future shape and colour from the good or ill success of the Duke of Brunswick. In my opinion, it is the most important crisis that ever existed in the World. ... My poor opinion is, that these principles...cannot possibly be realized in practice in France, without an absolute certainty and that at no remote period, of overturning the whole fabrick of the British Constitution.

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Letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville (19 September 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792-August 1794 (1968), pp. 218-219
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
The natural philosophy of Democritus and...

The natural philosophy of Democritus and some others, who did not suppose a mind or reason in the frame of things, but attributed the form thereof able to maintain itself to infinite essays or proofs of nature, which they term fortune, seemeth to me... in particularities of physical causes more real and better inquired than that of Aristotle and Plato; whereof both intermingled final causes, the one as a part of theology, and the other as a part of logic, which were the favourite studies respectively of both those persons. Not because those final causes are not true, and worthy to be inquired, being kept within their own province; but because their excursions into the limits of physical causes hath bred a vastness and solitude in that tract.

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Book VII, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
Something that is merely negative creates...

Something that is merely negative creates nothing.

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Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 532.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
The labour-power is a commodity, not...

The labour-power is a commodity, not capital, in the hands of the labourer, and it constitutes for him a revenue so long as he can continuously repeat its sale; it functions as capital after its sale, in the hands of the capitalist, during the process of production itself.

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Vol. II, Ch. XIX, p. 384.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 weeks 5 days ago
Time is the soul of this...

Time is the soul of this world.

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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 week 5 days ago
The best thing about the sciences...

The best thing about the sciences is their philosophical ingredient, like life for an organic body. If one dephilosophizes the sciences, what remains left? Earth, air, and water.

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Fragment No. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 1 week ago
Nothing is so difficult as not...

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

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p. 39e
Philosophical Maxims
G. E. Moore
G. E. Moore
1 week 2 days ago
By far the most valuable things,...

By far the most valuable things, which we know or can imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may roughly be described as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects. No one, probably, who has asked himself the question, has ever doubted that personal affection and the appreciation of what is beautiful in Art or Nature, are good in themselves; nor, if we consider strictly what things are worth having purely for their own sakes, does it appear probable that any one will think that anything else has nearly so much value as the things which are included under these two heads.

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Principia Ethica (1903; revised edition, Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
5 days ago
In most cases the esthetic objection...

In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in.

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p. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 day ago
The man of flesh and bone;...

The man of flesh and bone; the man who is born, suffers, and dies-above all, who dies; the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks and wills; the man who is seen and heard; the brother, the real brother.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
Hegel once observed that comedy is...

Hegel once observed that comedy is in act superior to tragedy and humourous reasoning superior to grandiloquent reasoning. Although Lincoln does not possess the grandiloquence of historical action, as an average man of the people he has its humour.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 5 days ago
Philosophy is not politics, and we...

Philosophy is not politics, and we do our best, within our all-too-human limitations, to seek the truth, not to score points against opponents. There is little satisfaction in gaining an easy triumph over a weak opponent while ignoring better arguments against your views. 

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'Last Generation': A Response, The New York Times, June 16, 2010.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 weeks ago
The mind understands something only insofar...

The mind understands something only insofar as it absorbs it like a seed into itself, nurtures it, and lets it grow into blossom and fruit. Therefore scatter holy seeds into the soil of the spirit.

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"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 5
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 1 week ago
'God!' said the Ghost, glancing around...

God!' said the Ghost, glancing around the landscape. 'God what?' asked the Spirit. 'What do you mean, "God what"?' asked the Ghost. 'In our grammar God is a noun' said the Spirit.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 weeks 5 days ago
I have no hesitation in saying...

I have no hesitation in saying that although the American woman never leaves her domestic sphere and is in some respects very dependent within it, nowhere does she enjoy a higher station. And if anyone asks me what I think the chief cause of the extraordinary prosperity and growing power of this nation, I should answer that it is due to the superiority of their women.

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Book Three, Chapter XII.
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is necessary to show that...

It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known [as the above rules], nothing more difficult to practice, or nothing more useful and universal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 3 days ago
But, braggart demons, we postpone our...

But, braggart demons, we postpone our end: how could we renounce the display of our freedom, the show of our pride?

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 1 week ago
Diogenes...
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Main Content / General
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity...

Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.

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p. 219
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
With despair, true optimism begins: the...

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
The present hour is always wealthiest...

The present hour is always wealthiest when it is poorer than the future ones, as that is the pleasantest site which affords the pleasantest prospect.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 210
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks ago
They had no temples, but they...

They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
6 days ago
Few new truths have ever won...

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated. 

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As quoted in Communications and History : Theories of Knowledge, Media and Civilization (1988) by Paul Heyer, p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
For legislators make the citizens good...

For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
Just now
The politician being interviewed clearly takes...

The politician being interviewed clearly takes a great deal of trouble to imagine an ending to his sentence: and if he stopped short? His entire policy would be jeopardized!

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Sentence, in The Pleasure of the Text
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
I was looking at my furniture,...

I was looking at my furniture, not as the utilitarian who has to sit on chairs, to write at desks and tables, and not as the cameraman or scientific recorder, but as the pure aesthete whose concern is only with forms and their relationships within the field of vision or the picture space. But as I looked, this purely aesthetic, Cubist's-eye view gave place to what I can only describe as the sacramental vision of reality. I was back where I had been when I was looking at the flowers-back in a world where everything shone with the Inner Light, and was infinite in its significance.

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describing his experiment with mescaline, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 2 days ago
Rent-Seeking Economy

Companies increasingly profit not from creating value but from controlling access to necessities. Patents on life-saving medicine, copyrights extending decades, monopolies on infrastructure - rent-seeking extracts wealth through ownership rather than production. Parasitic capitalism where controllers profit while producers struggle.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 1 week ago
Even atheists rebel and express, like...

Even atheists rebel and express, like Hardy and Housman, their rage against God although (or because) He does not, on their view, exist...

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
The fate of the country does...

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

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"Slavery in Massachusetts", 1854
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
Who loves not woman, wine, and...

Who loves not woman, wine, and song / Remains a fool his whole life long.

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As quoted by Anonymous, "On Luther's Love for and Knowledge of Music" in The Musical World. Vol VII, No. 83 (Oct 13, 1837).
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 1 week ago
Justice does not require that men...

Justice does not require that men must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.

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Chapter IV, Section 35, p. 218
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 weeks 5 days ago
Americans combine to give fêtes, found...

Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.

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Book Two, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 weeks 5 days ago
There is geometry in the humming...

There is geometry in the humming of the strings. There is music in the spacings of the spheres.

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As quoted in the preface of the book entitled Music of the Spheres by Guy Murchie
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
There is no power relation without...

There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
When you are reading God's Word,...

When you are reading God's Word, it is not the obscure passages that bind you but what you understand, and with that you comply at once. If you understood only one single passage in all of Holy Scripture, well, then you must do that first of all, but you do not first have to sit down and ponder the obscure passages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
1 month 2 weeks ago
An honest man nearly always thinks...

An honest man nearly always thinks justly.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts: Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, Both Ancient and Modern (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 277.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The original scriptures of most religions...

The original scriptures of most religions are poetical and unsystematic. Theology, which generally takes the form of a reasoned commentary on the parables and aphorisms of the scriptures, tends to make its appearance at a later stage of religious history. The Bhagavad-Gita occupies an intermediate position between scripture and theology; for it combines the poetical qualities of the first with the clear-cut methodicalness of the second... one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the Perennial Philosophy ever to have been made. Hence its enduring value, not only for Indians, but for all mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
1 month 4 days ago
He used to reason as follows:...

He used to reason as follows: 'Everything belongs to the gods; the wise are friends of the gods; friends hold all things in common; ergo, everything belongs to the wise.'

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 37, as reported in Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes as translated by Robin Hard (Oxford: 2012), p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 1 week ago
The characters of self-restrained officials are...

The characters of self-restrained officials are exceedingly careful and just and conservative, but they lack keenness and a certain quick and active boldness. The courageous natures, on the other hand, are deficient in justice and caution in comparison with the former, but excel in boldness of action; and unless both these qualities are present it is impossible for a state to be entirely prosperous in public and private matters.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 week ago
One must always maintain one's connection...

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.

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A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 day ago
Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes...

Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes away, for in some way or another everything is perpetuated; and everything, after passing through time, returns to eternity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 3 days ago
Only those are happy who never...

Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.

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Philosophical Maxims
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