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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
To become god....
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Main Content / General
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 6 days ago
But man is a Noble Animal,...

But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of Bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Reality is a creation of our...

Reality is a creation of our excesses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
What an incitation to hilarity, hearing...

What an incitation to hilarity, hearing the word goal while following a funeral procession!

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 day ago
It shews the anxiety of the...

It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

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Referring to the Glorious Revolution of 1688
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 days ago
In early youth, as we contemplate...

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 day ago
Man flows at once to God...

Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 1 day ago
The doctrine of the transmigration of...

The doctrine of the transmigration of souls was indigenous to India and was brought into Greece by Pythagoras.

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quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
1 week 4 days ago
Socrates' way of life is the...

Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

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Western Civ, p. 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months ago
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies....

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

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Plato; or, The Philosopher
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
When you love someone, you hope...

When you love someone, you hope - the more closely to be attached - that a catastrophe will strike your beloved.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Herschel
John Herschel
1 week 2 days ago
The question "cui bono" to what...

The question "cui bono" to what practical end and advantage do your researches tend? is one which the speculative philosopher who loves knowledge for its own sake, and enjoys, as a rational being should enjoy, the mere contemplation of harmonious and mutually dependent truths, can seldom hear without a sense of humiliation. He feels that there is a lofty and disinterested pleasure in his speculations which ought to exempt them from such questioning; communicating as they do to his own mind the purest happiness (after the exercise of the benevolent and moral feelings) of which human nature is susceptible, and tending to the injury of no one, he might surely allege this as a sufficient and direct reply to those who, having themselves little capacity, and less relish for intellectual pursuits, are constantly repeating upon him this enquiry.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
3 weeks 2 days ago
A modern philosopher who has never...

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

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Metaphysical Horror
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
Just now
Attractions take place between bodies, affinities...

Attractions take place between bodies, affinities between the particles of a body. The former may be compared to the alliances of states, the latter to the ties of family.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 6 days ago
Throwing away the veils

In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence... the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
How many valiant men we have...

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 1 week ago
Coulson Turnbull in Life and Teachings...

Coulson Turnbull in Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno : Philosopher, Martyr, Mystic 1548 - 1600 (1913), p. 41

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
What makes our poetry so contemptible...

What makes our poetry so contemptible nowadays is its paucity of ideas. If you want to be read, invent. Who the Devil wouldn't like to read something new?

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D 62
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
Just now
It might be said to the...

It might be said to the agitator, "However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public attack upon any man's character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care." In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man's belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 2 days ago
The telling of jokes is an...

The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

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Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous", McSweeny's
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Pleasure, or pain, is not only...

Pleasure, or pain, is not only good, or evil, in itself, but the measure of what is good or evil, in every object of desire or aversion; for the ultimate reason why we pursue one thing, and avoid another, is because we expect pleasure from the former, and apprehend pain from the latter. If we sometimes decline a present pleasure, it is not because we are averse to pleasure itself, but because we conceive, that in the present instance, it will be necessarily connected with a greater pain. In like manner, if we sometimes voluntarily submit to a present pain, it is because we judge that it is necessarily connected with a greater pleasure.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 day ago
When I found myself regarded as...

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection. Interview with Irwin Ross, September 1957;If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

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Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell (2005), p. 385
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 4 weeks ago
You want to know whether I...

You want to know whether I can make a long speech, such as you are in the habit of hearing; but that is not my way. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 3 weeks ago
The need of black conservatives to...

The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis.

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(p52)
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 weeks 6 days ago
...Lucretius talked epicureanism stoically (like Heine's...

...Lucretius talked epicureanism stoically (like Heine's Englishman taking his pleasures sadly), and concluded on his stren gospel of pleasure by committing suicide. His noble epic "on the Nature of Things", follows Epicurus in damning pleasure with faint praise. Almost contemporary with Caesar and Pompey, he lived in the midst of turmoil and alarms; his nervous pen is forever inditing prayers to tranquility and peace. One pictures him as a timid soul whose youth had been darkened with religious fears; for he never tires of telling his readers that there's no hell, except here, and there are no gods except gentlemanly ones who live in a garden of Epicurus in the clouds, and never intrude in the affairs of men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 days ago
Whoever heard me assert that the...

Whoever heard me assert that the grey cat playing just now in the yard is the same one that did jumps and tricks there five hundred years ago will think whatever he likes of me, but it is a stranger form of madness to imagine that the present-day cat is fundamentally an entirely different one.

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Quoted by Jorge Luis Borges in his essay "A History of Eternity"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 4 weeks ago
A rationalist, as I use the...

A rationalist, as I use the word, is a man who attempts to reach decisions by argument and perhaps, in certain cases, by compromise, rather than by violence. He is a man who would rather be unsuccessful in convincing another man by argument than successful in crushing him by force, by intimidation and threats, or even by persuasive propaganda.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is the vital asserting itself,...

It is the vital asserting itself, and in order to assert itself it creates, with the help of its enemy, the rational, a complete dogmatic structure, and this the Church defends against rationalism, against Protestantism, and against Modernism. The Church defends life. It stood up against Galileo, and it did right; for his discovery, in its inception and until it became assimilated to the general body of human knowledge, tended to shatter the anthropomorphic belief that the universe was created for man. It opposed Darwin, and it did right, for Darwinism tends to shatter our belief that man is an exceptional animal, created expressly to be eternalized. And lastly, Pius IX, the first Pontiff to be proclaimed infallible, declared he was irreconcilable with the so-called modern civilization. And he did right.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 days ago
Life is a task to be...

Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 1 week ago
I do not believe that civilizations...

I do not believe that civilizations have to die...Civilization is not an organism. It is a product of wills.

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In "Prophet of Hope & Fear" [Review of A Study of History, Vols. 7-10] TIME (18 October 1954) p. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 week 1 day ago
I am absolutely prepared to talk...

I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless.

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As quoted in a letter written from J. Kalckar to John A. Wheeler dated June 10, 1977, which appears in Wheeler's "Law Without Law," pg 207.
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
3 weeks 2 days ago
It seems to us that the...

It seems to us that the past is our property. Well, on the contrary - we are its property, because we are not able to make changes in it, while it fills the whole of our existence.

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Original: "Otóż przeciwnie - to my jesteśmy jej własnością, ponieważ nie jesteśmy w stanie dokonać w niej zmian, ona natomiast wypełnia całość naszego istnienia." Klucz niebieski albo opowieści biblijne zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 weeks ago
People never remember but the computer...

People never remember but the computer never forgets.

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(p. 69)
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Those who have a well-ordered character...

Those who have a well-ordered character lead also a well-ordered life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
Astronomy is perhaps the science whose...

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

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C 23
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 3 weeks ago
At midday the daily food of...

At midday the daily food of all Spaniards was the puchero or cocido, as the dish is really called which the foreigners call pot-pourri or olla podrida. This contains principally yellow chick-peas, with a little bacon, some potatoes or other vegetables and normally also small pieces of beef or sausage, all boiled in one pot at a very slow fire; the liquid of the same makes the substantial broth that is served first.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
This is how I recognize an...

This is how I recognize an authentic poet: by frequenting him, living a long time in the intimacy of his work, something changes in myself, not so much my inclinations or my tastes as my very blood, as if a subtle disease had been injected to alter its course, its density and nature. To live around a true poet is to feel your blood run thin, to dream a paradise of anemia, and to hear, in your veins, the rustle of tears.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
There is geometry in the humming...

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

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As quoted in The Mystery of Matter‎ (1965) edited by Louise B. Young, p. 113
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
One who seeks will find, and...

One who seeks will find, and for one who knocks it will be opened.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 day ago
The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes...

The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals even I am a yogi .

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Quoted in R. Malhotra and V. Viswanathan, Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0., 2022
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 2 days ago
The ethical and political practice of...

The ethical and political practice of nonviolence can rely neither exclusively on the dyadic encounter, nor on the bolstering of a prohibition; it requires a political opposition to the biopolitical forms of racism and war logics that rely on phantasmagoric inversions that occlude the binding and interdependent character of the social bond. It requires, as well, an account of why, and under what conditions, the frameworks for understanding violence and nonviolence, or violence and self-defense, seem to invert into one another, causing confusion about how best to pin down those terms.

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p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 weeks ago
But supposing one tries to live...

But supposing one tries to live by Pantheistic philosophy? Does it lead to a complacent Hegelian optimism?

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Pilgrim's Regress 132-133
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 5 days ago
There is no good father who...

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

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No. 51
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is no accident that all...

It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

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"The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy," Manual Training and Vocational Education17 (1916); also Middle Works 10: 137-143.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 days ago
I opened with that which good...

I opened with that which good Catholics have more than once made to Huguenots. "My dear sir," said I, "were you ever baptized?" "No, friend," replied the Quaker, "nor any of my brethren." "Zounds!" said I to him, "you are not Christians then!" "Friend," replied the old man, in a soft tone of voice, "do not swear; we are Christians, but we do not think that sprinkling a few drops of water on a child's head makes him a Christian." "My God!" exclaimed I, shocked at his impiety, "have you then forgotten that Christ was baptized by St. John?" "Friend," replied the mild Quaker, "once again, do not swear. Christ was baptized by John, but He Himself never baptized any one; now we profess ourselves disciples of Christ, and not of John." "Mercy on us," cried I, "what a fine subject you would be for the holy inquisitor! In the name of God, my good old man, let me baptize you."

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Voltaire's account of his conversations with Andrew Pit
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 2 weeks ago
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
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 weeks ago
Admit it, it is your youth...

Admit it, it is your youth that you regret, more even than your crime; it is my youth you hate, even more than my innocence.

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Electra to her mother Clytemnestra, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 1 week ago
Confusion of sapience with sentience can...

Confusion of sapience with sentience can be ethically catastrophic.

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Social Media Unsorted Postings 2016
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 weeks 2 days ago
For the time being, the ominous...

For the time being, the ominous peril of the communist parties in the West lies in their stand on foreign affairs. The distinctive mark of all present-day communist parties is their devotion to the aggressive foreign policy of the Soviets. Whenever they must choose between Russia and their own country, they do not hesitate to prefer Russia. Their principle is: Right or wrong, my Russia. They strictly obey all orders issued from Moscow. When Russia was an ally of Hitler, the French communists sabotaged their own country's war effort and the American communists passionately opposed President Roosevelt's plans to aid England and France in their struggle against the Nazis.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 2 weeks ago
I would not give up the...

I would not give up the keys to the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn scarcity into a famine.

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Sullivan, p. 266
Philosophical Maxims
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