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Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 weeks 3 days ago
The French symbolists had a special...

The French symbolists had a special term to express their love for things that had lost their objective significance, namely, 'spleen.' The conscious, challenging arbitrariness in the choice of objects, its 'absurdity' and 'perverseness,' as if by a silent gesture discloses the irrationality of utilitarian logic, which it then slaps in the face in order to demonstrate its inadequacy with regard to human experience. And while making it conscious, by this shock, of the fact that it forgets the subject, the gesture simultaneously expresses the subject's sorrow over his inability to achieve an objective order. Twentieth-century society is not troubled by such inconsistencies. For it, meaning can be achieved in only one way-service for a purpose.

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p. 38.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
Catherine: Why commit Evil?

Catherine: Why commit Evil? Goetz: Because Good has already been done. Catherine: Who has done it? Goetz: God the Father. I, on the other hand, am improvising.

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Act 3, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how...

Time is heavy sometimes; imagine how heavy eternity must be.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no spiritual sustenance in...

There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values - offers food to some need which we have starved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 3 weeks ago
A line by Thomas à Kempis...

A line by Thomas à Kempis which perhaps could be used as a motto sometime. He says of Paul: Therefore he turned everything over to God, who knows all, and defended himself solely by means of patience and humility . . . . He did defend himself now and then so that the weak would not be offended by his silence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 weeks 5 days ago
As in the presence of the...

As in the presence of the Master, the Servants are equall, and without any honour at all; So are the Subjects, in the presence of the Soveraign. And though they shine some more, some lesse, when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more than the Starres in presence of the Sun.

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The Second Part, Chapter 18, p. 93
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 1 week ago
If thy fellows hurt thee in...

If thy fellows hurt thee in small things, suffer it! and be as bold with them!

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 3 weeks ago
A utopia of judicial reticence: take...

A utopia of judicial reticence: take away life, but prevent the patient from feeling it; deprive the prisoner of all rights, but do not inflict pain; impose penalties free of all pain. Recourse to psycho-pharmacology and to various physiological 'disconnectors', even if it is temporary, is a logical consequence of this 'non-corporal' penalty.

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Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 6 days ago
Social and economic...
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Main Content / General
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 4 weeks ago
National character is only another name...

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right. Variant translation: Every nation criticizes every other one - and they are all correct.

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As quoted by Wolfgang Pauli in a letter to Abraham Pais (17 August 1950) published in The Genius of Science (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 242
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
Communism... is the genuine resolution of...

Communism... is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.

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Private Property and Communism, p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 week 5 days ago
There are two atheisms of which...

There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.

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As quoted in The New Christianity (1967) edited by William Robert Miller
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 2 weeks ago
Suppose a person entering a house...

Suppose a person entering a house were to feel heat on the porch, and going further, were to feel the heat increasing, the more they penetrated within. Doubtless, such a person would believe there was a fire in the house, even though they did not see the fire that must be causing all this heat. A similar thing will happen to anyone who considers this world in detail: one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and excellence, and that the nearer they are to God, the more beautiful and better they are.

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Art. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 6 days ago
All the time that this horrid...

All the time that this horrid scene was acting or avenging, as well as for some time before, and ever since, the wicked instigators of this unhappy multitude, guilty, with every aggravation, of all their crimes, and screened in a cowardly darkness from their punishment, continued without interruption, pity, or remorse, to blow up the blind rage of the populace, with a continued blast of pestilential libels, which infected and poisoned the very air we breathed in.

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Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election, referring to the Gordon Riots (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), pp. 158-159
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months ago
Extreme pride or dejection….

Extreme pride or dejection indicates extreme ignorance of self.

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Part IV, Prop. LV
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 4 weeks ago
Inuring children gently to suffer some...

Inuring children gently to suffer some degrees of pain without shrinking, is a way to gain firmness to their minds, and lay a foundation for courage and resolution in the future part of their lives.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
2 months 2 weeks ago
War is the father and king...

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 weeks 2 days ago
The secret is that only that...

The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive.

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Psychology and Alchemy
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
Now in all of us, however...

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us - they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.

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Lecture VIII, "The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
When we are young, we take...

When we are young, we take a certain pleasure in our infirmities. They seem so new, so rich! With age, they no longer surprise us, we know them too well. Now, without anything unexpected in them, they do not deserve to be endured.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 2 days ago
The haste of day rules over...

The haste of day rules over the night as empty form.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 3 weeks ago
What, exactly, have the errors of...

What, exactly, have the errors of exegesis and philosophy done in order to confuse Christianity, and how have they confused Christianity? Quite briefly and categorically, they have simply forced back the sphere of paradox-religion into the sphere of aesthetics, and in consequence have succeeded in brings Christian terminology to such a pass that terms which, so long as they remain within their sphere, are qualitative categories, can be put to almost any use as clever expressions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
The criticism of religion ends with...

The criticism of religion ends with the doctrine that man is the supreme being for man, hence the categorical imperative to overthrow all those conditions in which man is degraded, enslaved, neglected, contemptible being-conditions which can hardly be better described than in the exclamation of a Frenchman on the occasion of a proposed tax upon dogs: 'Wretched dogs! They want to treat you like men!'

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 week 5 days ago
Nobody is bound to have an...

Nobody is bound to have an optimistic outlook on the future: that is not a precept of the Christian religion. ... It is a matter of immense importance that illusions should be dispelled and man come face to face with positive realities.

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p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is but one indefectibly certain...

There is but one indefectibly certain truth, and that is the truth that pyrrhonistic scepticism itself leaves standing, - the truth that the present phenomenon of consciousness exists.

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The Will to Believe, 1897
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
I think that there is nothing,...

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

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p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 weeks 5 days ago
Injustice in this world is not...

Injustice in this world is not something comparative; the wrong is deep, clear, and absolute in each private fate.

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Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime...

I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species. But the Gods have been against me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 6 days ago
We want no foreign examples to...

We want no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty. The example of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of freedom in its full vigour, and to qualify it in all its exertions. The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom, is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree reputable or safe. Our fabric is so constituted; one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts, are so made for one another, and for nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it, is to destroy it.

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p. 471
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
1 month 2 weeks ago
He was going into a theatre,...

He was going into a theatre, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, "This," he said, "is what I practise doing all my life."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 4 weeks ago
Certainly one may, with as much...

Certainly one may, with as much reason and decency, plead for murder, robbery, lewdness, and barbarity, as for this practice: They are not more contrary to the natural dictates of Conscience, and feelings of Humanity; nay, they are all comprehended in it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2 weeks 3 days ago
Language transcends us and yet, we...

Language transcends us and yet, we speak.

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p. 349
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
Philosophy is like trying to open...

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

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Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993) edited by James Carl Klagge and Alfred Nordmann
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
None but a coward dares to...

None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

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Attributed to Russell in M. Kumar Dictionary of Quotations, p. 76, but actually said by Marshal Lannes, according to The London Literary Gazette and Journal of Belles Lettres, Arts, Sciences (1824), p. 664
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 weeks 5 days ago
The ultimate result of shielding men...

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly, is to fill the world with fools.

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Vol. 3, Ch. IX, State-Tamperings with Money and Banks
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
The plain fact is that men's...

The plain fact is that men's minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments. Religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to religion's account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion's wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their turn chargeable to religion's wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoretic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months ago
The love of God consists in...

The love of God consists in an ardent desire to procure the general welfare, and reason teaches me that there is nothing which contributes more to the general welfare of mankind than the perfection of reason.

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Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677) (in P. Wiener (ed.), Leibniz Selections, Macmilland Press Ltd, 1951).
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 3 weeks ago
.... In a word, acts of...

.... In a word, acts of any kind produce habits or characters of the same kind. Hence we ought to make sure that our acts are of a certain kind; for the resulting character varies as they vary. It makes no small difference, therefore, whether a man be trained in his youth up in this way or that, but a great difference, or rather all the difference.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 weeks 5 days ago
Influences of various kinds conspire to...

Influences of various kinds conspire to increase corporate action and decrease individual action. And the change is being on all sides aided by schemers, each of whom thinks only of his pet plan and not at all of the general reorganization which his plan, joined with others such, are working out. It is said that the French Revolution devoured its own children. Here, an analogous catastrophe seems not unlikely. The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with the numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State-socialism-swallowed in the vast wave which they have little by little raised."But why is this change described as 'the coming slavery'?," is a question which many will still ask. The reply is simple. All socialism involves slavery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
I believe in the salvation of...

I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 2 days ago
The task of power is to...

The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month 2 weeks ago
Suffer no anxiety, for he who...

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 weeks 3 days ago
I see not the shadow of...

I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

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-26
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
Life consists with wildness. The most...

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is my own experience ......

It is my own experience ... that commentators are far more ingenious at finding meaning than authors are at inserting it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
A philosopher is a man who...

A philosopher is a man who has to cure many intellectual diseases in himself before he can arrive at the notions of common sense.

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p. 44e
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a...

Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts.

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Chapter 5 (p. 43)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is clear that the causal...

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 day ago
Wandering in a vast..

Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: "My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly." This stranger is a theologian.

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Number VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 week 5 days ago
Alexander is to a peasant proprietor...

Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband.

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p. 78,
Philosophical Maxims
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