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Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
In any case, if you ever...

In any case, if you ever leave me with a handsome man, do not tell me that you trust me because, let me warn you: that is not what will prevent me from deceiving you, if I want to. On the contrary.

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Jessica to her husband Hugo, Act 3, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Men who are unhappy, like men...

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 1 week ago
A sensible man takes pleasure in...

A sensible man takes pleasure in what he has instead of pining for what he has not.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 4 days ago
For if a thing is not...

For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.

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1:1:1 English Latin Latin: Omnis enim res quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur quomodo habenda est.
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 week 5 days ago
Reading Decline of the West I...

Reading Decline of the West I learned that in Spengler's view ours was a Faustian civilization and that we, the Jews, were Magians, the survivors and representatives of an earlier type, totally incapable of comprehending the Faustian spirit that had created the great civilization of the West. ... What Magians were to Faustians, Faustians might very well be to Americans.

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Part I, p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
I do like clarity and exact...

I do like clarity and exact thinking and I believe that very important to mankind because when you allow yourself to think inexactly your prejudices, your bias, your self interest comes in in ways you don't notice and you do bad things without knowing that you are doing them: self deception is very easy. So that I do think clear thinking immensely important.

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Television interview ("On clarity and exact thinking" - available on youtube)
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 2 weeks ago
Situation seems to be the mould...

Situation seems to be the mould in which men's characters are formed.

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Letter 23
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 3 weeks ago
We term sleep a death, and...

We term sleep a death, and yet it is waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life.

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Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
3 months 1 week ago
Into the same rivers we step...

Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Do not be too timid and...

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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November 11, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 weeks 6 days ago
The philosophy of physics is continuous...

The philosophy of physics is continuous with physics itself. Just as certain issues in the Foundations of Mathematics have been discussed by both mathematicians and by philosophers of mathematics, so certain issues in the philosophy of physics have been discussed by both physicists and by philosophers of physics. And just as there are issues of a more epistemological kind that tend to concern philosophers of mathematics more than they do working mathematicians, so there are issues that concern philosophers of physics more than they do working physicists.

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Philosophy of physics
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Only in thought is man a...

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

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Letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 1 day ago
Govern your tongue before all other...

Govern your tongue before all other things, following the gods.

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Symbol 7
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
Thought depends largely….

Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.

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Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert, 20 August 1770
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 2 weeks ago
The reasons for legal intervention in...

The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals.

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Book V, Chapter 11, Section 9
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
1 month 1 week ago
Why did we obey? The question...

Why did we obey? The question hardly occurred to us. We had formed the habit of deferring to our parents and teachers. All the same we knew very well that it was because they were our parents, because they were our teachers. Therefore, in our eyes, their authority came less from themselves than from their status in relation to us.

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Chapter I: Moral Obligation
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
What do I know about God...

What do I know about God and the purpose of life? I know that this world exists. That I am placed in it like my eye in its visual field. That something about it is problematic, which we call its meaning. This meaning does not lie in it but outside of it. That life is the world. That my will penetrates the world. That my will is good or evil. Therefore that good and evil are somehow connected with the meaning of the world. The meaning of life, i.e. the meaning of the world, we can call God. And connect with this the comparison of God to a father. To pray is to think about the meaning of life.

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Journal entry (11 June 1916), p. 72e and 73e
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
The public execution, then, has a...

The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.

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Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 5 days ago
Christ's whole body groans in pain....

Christ's whole body groans in pain. Until the end of the world, when pain will pass away, this man groans and cries to God. And each one of us has part in the cry of that whole body. Thou didst cry out in thy day, and thy days have passed away; another took thy place and cried out in his day. Thou here, he there, and another there. The body of Christ ceases not to cry out all the day, one member replacing the other whose voice is hushed. Thus there is but one man who reaches unto the end of time, and those that cry are always His members.

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p.423
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 2 weeks ago
If you are penitent, you love....

If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.

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Book II, Chapter 3 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to a devout widow afraid of death
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 5 days ago
I too have a growing inner...

I too have a growing inner certainty that there is a deposit of pure gold in me which ought to be passed on. The trouble is that I am more and more convinced by my experience and observation of my contemporaries that there is no one to receive it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
I like mathematics because it is...

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe - because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.

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Letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell, March, 1912, as quoted in Gaither's Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (2012), p. 1318
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
1 month 5 days ago
Necessity resides in the way we...

Necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about.

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Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (1976), p. 174
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
Sincerity is the way of Heaven....

Sincerity is the way of Heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the way of men. He who possesses sincerity is he who, without an effort, hits what is right, and apprehends, without the exercise of thought — he is the sage who naturally and easily embodies the right way. He who attains to sincerity is he who chooses what is good, and firmly holds it fast. To this attainment there are requisite the extensive study of what is good, accurate inquiry about it, careful reflection on it, the clear discrimination of it, and the earnest practice of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 2 weeks ago
"Here is the chalk."

"Here is the chalk." This is a truth; and here and the now hereby characterize the chalk so that we emphasize by saying; the chalk, which means "this." We take a scrap of paper and we write the truth down: "Here is the chalk." We lay this written statement beside the thing of which it is the truth. After the lecture is finished both doors are opened, the classroom is aired, there will be a draft, and the scrap of paper, let us suppose, will flutter out into the corridor. A student finds it on his way to the cafeteria, reads the sentence. "Here is the chalk," and ascertains that this is not true at all. Through the draft the truth has become an untruth. Strange that a truth should depend on a gust of wind. ... We have made the truth about the chalk independent of us and entrusted it to a scrap of paper.

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p. 29-30
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 6 days ago
Consciousness, the craving for more, more,...

Consciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger of eternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God - these are never satisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and all other consciousnesses without ceasing to be itself; it seeks to be God. And matter, unconsciousness, tends to be less and less, tends to be nothing, its thirst being a thirst for repose. Spirit says: I wish to be! and matter answers: I wish not to be!

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 days ago
When, in the course of human...

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 2 days ago
There are hardly any truths upon...

There are hardly any truths upon which we always remain agreed, and still fewer objects of pleasure which we do not change every hour, I do not know whether there is a means of giving fixed rules for adapting discourse to the inconstancy of our caprices.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Spontaneous love can reach the point...

Spontaneous love can reach the point of despair, shows that it is in despair, that even when it is happy it loves with the power of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
5 days ago
The question of questions for mankind-the...

The question of questions for mankind-the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other-is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.

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Ch.2, p. 71
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 3 weeks ago
Divinity reveals herself in all things......

Divinity reveals herself in all things... everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 2 weeks ago
Social and economic inequalities, for example...

Social and economic inequalities, for example inequalities of wealth and authority, are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, and in particular for the least advantaged members of society.

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p. 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
4 weeks 1 day ago
Popular presentation today is all too...

Popular presentation today is all too often that which puts the mob in a position to talk about something without understanding it.

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G 32
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
1 month 2 weeks ago
Expect nothing more from philosophy than...

Expect nothing more from philosophy than a voice, language and grammar of the instinct for Godliness that lies at its origin, and, essentially, is philosophy itself.

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"On Philosophy: To Dorothea," in Theory as Practice (1997), p. 421
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 1 week ago
And as in other things, so...

And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.

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The First Part, Chapter 10, p. 42
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
I do not wish to force...

I do not wish to force my thoughts upon you, but I feel forced myself. Little as I know of Captain Brown, I would fain do my part to correct the tone and the statements of the newspapers, and of my countrymen generally, respecting his character and actions. It costs us nothing to be just. We can at least express our sympathy with, and admiration of, him and his companions, and that is what I now propose to do.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 2 weeks ago
The seat of the soul is...

The seat of the soul is where the inner world and the outer world meet. Where they overlap, it is in every point of the overlap.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
Act as if what you do...

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

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Correspondence with Helen Keller, 1908, in The Correspondence of William James: April 1908-August 1910, Vol. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
In the fact of being born...

In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left...with a foolish grin.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
No matter that we…

No matter that we may mount on stilts, we still must walk on our own legs. And on the highest throne in the world, we still sit only on our own bottom.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 2 weeks ago
The true is the whole…

The true is the whole.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 3 days ago
Color is not so much a...

Color is not so much a visual as a tactile medium.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
1 month 2 weeks ago
Scientists believe there is a hierarchy...

Scientists believe there is a hierarchy of facts and that among them may be made a judicious choice. They are right, since otherwise there would be no science... One need only open the eyes to see that the conquests of industry which have enriched so many practical men would never have seen the light, if these practical men alone had existed and if they had not been preceded by unselfish devotees who died poor, who never thought of utility, and yet had a guide far other than caprice.As Mach says, these devotees have spared their successors the trouble of thinking.

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Henri Poincaré, The Value of Science (1907) Author's Essay Prefatory to the Translation: "The Choice of Facts," p.4, Tr. George Bruce Halsted
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Science, ever since the time of...

Science, ever since the time of the Arabs, has had two functions: (1) to enable us to know things, and (2) to enable us to do things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 5 days ago
In the upper, rich, more educated...

In the upper, rich, more educated classes of European society doubt arose as to the truth of that understanding of life which was expressed by Church Christianity. When, after the Crusades and the maximum development of papal power and its abuses, people of the rich classes became acquainted with the wisdom of the classics and saw, on the one hand, the reasonable lucidity of the teachings of the ancient sages, and on the other hand, the incompatibility of the Church doctrine with the teaching of Christ, they found it impossible to continue to believe the Church teaching.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 3 days ago
Each new technology is a reprogramming...

Each new technology is a reprogramming of sensory life.

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(p. 33)
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 1 week ago
The more the concept of reason...

The more the concept of reason becomes emasculated, the more easily it lends itself to ideological manipulation and to propagation of even the most blatant lies. ... Subjective reason conforms to anything.

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pp. 24-25.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 weeks ago
What! the inventors of ancient civilisations,...
What! the inventors of ancient civilisations, the first makers of tools and tape lines, the first builders of vehicles, ships, and houses, the first observers of the laws of the heavens and the multiplication tables is it contended that they were entirely different from the inventors and observers of our own time, and superior to them? And that the first slow steps forward were of a value which has not been equalled by the discoveries we have made with all our travels and circumnavigations of the earth?
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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 days ago
"Why do you not say how...

"Why do you not say how things will be operated under Anarchism?" is a question I have had to meet thousands of times. Because I believe that Anarchism can not consistently impose an iron-clad program or method on the future. The things every new generation has to fight, and which it can least overcome, are the burdens of the past, which holds us all as in a net. Anarchism, at least as I understand it, leaves posterity free to develop its own particular systems, in harmony with its needs. Our most vivid imagination can not foresee the potentialities of a race set free from external restraints. How, then, can any one assume to map out a line of conduct for those to come? We, who pay dearly for every breath of pure, fresh air, must guard against the tendency to fetter the future. If we succeed in clearing the soil from the rubbish of the past and present, we will leave to posterity the greatest and safest heritage of all ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 6 days ago
It is not that...
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