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Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 1 week ago
Reason is immortal, all else mortal....

Reason is immortal, all else mortal.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Sect. 30, as translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 weeks ago
Each of us lives only now,...

Each of us lives only now, this brief instant.

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(Hays translation) III, 10
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is simply too much to...

There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless - too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume responsibility for so much. This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.

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There Is Simply Too Much to Think About (1992), pp. 173-174
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 5 days ago
To expect, indeed, that the freedom...

To expect, indeed, that the freedom of trade should ever be entirely restored in Great Britain, is as absurd as to expect that an Oceana or Utopia should never be established in it.

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Chapter II, p. 505.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
I should say sincerity, a deep,...

I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
Age imprints more wrinkles in the...

Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.

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Book III, Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 5 days ago
Any question of philosophy ... which...

Any question of philosophy ... which is so obscure and uncertain, that human reason can reach no fixed determination with regard to it; if it should be treated at all; seems to lead us naturally into the style of dialogue and conversation.

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Pamphilus to Hermippus, Prologue
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 1 week ago
People do not go into the...

People do not go into the company of their fellow-creatures for what would seem a very sufficient reason, namely, that they have something to say to them, or something that they want to hear from them; but in the vague hope that they may find something to say.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 5 days ago
We do not, however, reckon that...

We do not, however, reckon that trade disadvantageous which consists in the exchange of the hard-ware of England for the wines of France;and yet hard-ware is a very durable commodity, and were it not for this continual exportation, might too be accumulated for ages together, to the incredible augmentation of the pots and pans of the country. But it readily occurs that the number of such utensils is in every country necessarily limited by the use which there is for them;that it would be absurd to have more pots and pans than were necessary for cooking the victuals usually consumed there;and that if the quantity of victuals were to increase, the number of pots and pans would readily increase along with it, apart of the increased quantity of victuals being employed in purchasing them, or in maintaining an additional number of workman whose business it was to make them.

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Chapter I, p. 471.
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is sweet and honorable…

It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country.

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Book III, ode ii, line 13
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 4 weeks ago
Society in shipwreck is a comfort...

Society in shipwreck is a comfort to all.

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Maxim 144
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 5 days ago
In public, as well as in...

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

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Chapter V, p. 563.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 day ago
Of all the systems of morality,...

Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.

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Letter to William Canby
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months ago
Lord, you have cursed Cain and...

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 weeks ago
When thou art offended at any...

When thou art offended at any man's fault, forthwith turn to thyself and reflect in what manner thou doest error thyself... For by attending to this thou wilt quickly forget thy anger, if this consideration is also added, that the man is compelled; for what else could he do? or, if thou art able, take away from him the compulsion.

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X, 30
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 days ago
This day I heard from Laurence...

This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous State of France-where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be producd in the place of it-where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable.

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Letter to Richard Burke (c. 10 October 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
3 months 3 weeks ago
Language transcends us and yet, we...

Language transcends us and yet, we speak.

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p. 349
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 3 weeks ago
Were art to redeem man, it...

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world.

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"Art a Thing of No Consequence"
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 3 days ago
There are 80,000 prostitutes in London...

There are 80,000 prostitutes in London alone and what are they, if not bloody sacrifices on the altar of monogamy?

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"Of Women"
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 3 weeks ago
With a few glorious and glaring...

With a few glorious and glaring exceptions, the shadow of Jim Crow was cast in its new glittering form expressed in the language of superficial diversity... The disarray of a scattered curriculum, the disenchantment of talented yet deferential faculty, and the disorientation of precious students loom large... To witness a faculty enthusiastically support a candidate for tenure then timidly defer to a rejection based on the Harvard administration's hostility to the Palestinian cause was disgusting... We all know the mendacious reasons given had nothing to do with academic standards... This kind of narcissistic academic professionalism, cowardly deference to the anti-Palestinian prejudices of the Harvard administration, and indifference to my Mother's death constitutes an intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep deaths...

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Quoted in Civil rights activist Cornel West resigns from Harvard, By Jackie Salo, New York Post, July 13, 2021
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is the greatest of all...

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

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Lecture XIX : On the Conduct of the Understanding, Part II
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
Religion in most countries, more or...

Religion in most countries, more or less in every country, is no longer what it was, and should be,-a thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of Man to his invisible Father, the fountain of all Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and revealed in every revelation of these; but for the most part, a wise prudential feeling grounded on mere calculation; a matter, as all others now are, of Expediency and Utility; whereby some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. Thus Religion too is Profit, a working for wages; not Reverence, but vulgar Hope or Fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 3 weeks ago
If what we are discussing were...

If what we are discussing were a point of law or of the humanities, in which neither true nor false exists, one might trust in subtlety of mind and readiness of tongue and in the greater experience of the writers, and expect him who excelled in those things to make his reasoning most plausible, and one might judge it to be the best. But in the natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will, one must take care not to place oneself in the defense of error; for here a thousand Demostheneses and a thousand Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit upon the truth for himself. Therefore, Simplicio, give up this idea and this hope of yours that there may be men so much more learned, erudite, and well-read than the rest of us as to be able to make that which is false become true in defiance of nature.

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Salviati, p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 week ago
It is manifest that there is...

It is manifest that there is no danger at all in the proportion or quantity of knowledge, how large soever, lest it should make it swell or out-compass itself; no, but it is merely the quality of knowledge, which, be it in quantity more or less, if it be taken without the true corrective thereof, hath in it some nature of venom or malignity, and some effects of that venom, which is ventosity or swelling. This corrective spice, the mixture whereof maketh knowledge so sovereign, is charity, which the Apostle immediately addeth to the former clause; for so he saith, "Knowledge bloweth up, but charity buildeth up".

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Book I
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 2 weeks ago
Marriage is tough, because it is...

Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. "In love-ness" is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about "happy" and "unhappy" marriages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
Let us keep to Christ, and...

Let us keep to Christ, and cling to Him, and hang on Him, so that no power can remove us.

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p. 433
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 2 days ago
The sky was horribly dark, but...

The sky was horribly dark, but one could distinctly see tattered clouds, and between them fathomless black patches. Suddenly I noticed in one of these patches a star, and began watching it intently. That was because that star had given me an idea: I decided to kill myself that night.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 1 week ago
Man's biological weakness is the condition...

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 day ago
Facts do not cease to exist...

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

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"Note on Dogma"
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
You have heard that it was...

You have heard that it was said to those of old, 'You shall not commit adultery.' But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell.

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Exodus 20:14, Seventh Commandment Matthew 5:27-30 (NKJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 day ago
Nature magically suits the man to...

Nature magically suits the man to his fortunes, by making these the fruit of his character.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 2 weeks ago
Government spending cannot create additional jobs....

Government spending cannot create additional jobs. If the government provides the funds required by taxing the citizens or by borrowing from the public, it abolishes on the one hand as many jobs as it creates on the other. If government spending is financed by borrowing from the commercial banks, it means credit expansion and inflation. If in the course of such an inflation the rise in commodity prices exceeds the rise in nominal wage rates, unemployment will drop. But what makes unemployment shrink is precisely the fact that real wage rates are falling.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 4 days ago
We forfeit....
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Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
4 months 1 week ago
The proximity between the counterfeit and...

The proximity between the counterfeit and the good coin does not make the good coin counterfeit nor the counterfeit good. In the same way the proximity between truth and falsehood does not make truth falsehood nor falsehood truth.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 33.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
The bourgeoisie is charitable out of...

The bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: "If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen."

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months ago
'It comes, it comes!' they sang....

It comes, it comes!' they sang. 'Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.' One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed - not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots Time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming, I buried my face in the fold of the Teacher's robe. 'The morning! The morning!' I cried. 'I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.'

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Ch. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 1 week ago
As soon as laws are necessary...

As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.

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As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes‎ (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 454
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 3 weeks ago
There's nothing nonsensical about saying that...

There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 4 weeks ago
It is by the Imperial Capital...

It is by the Imperial Capital that contemporaries (and posterity, too) judge an Empire, and its magnificence impresses them mightily and leads them to judge the Emperor a great man and hero, even though it may all be based on robbery, and though the provinces of the Empire may be sunk in misery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 4 weeks ago
The space of early Greek cosmology...

The space of early Greek cosmology was structured by logos - resonant utterance or word.

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p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 3 weeks ago
The principles of great men illuminate...

The principles of great men illuminate the universe.

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Discipline and Character, no. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 2 weeks ago
Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence....

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

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John Cumming trans., p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
Faith looks to the word and...

Faith looks to the word and the promise; that is, to the truth. But hope looks to that which the word has promised, to the gift.

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p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 2 weeks ago
Pyrrhus said, "If I should overcome...

Pyrrhus said, "If I should overcome the Romans in another fight, I were undone."

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47 Pyrrhus
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks 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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 day ago
Children are all foreigners. September 25,...

Children are all foreigners.

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September 25, 1839
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Outsider's case against society is...

The Outsider's case against society is very clear. All men and women have these dangerous, unnamable impulses, yet they keep up a pretense, to themselves, to others; their respectability, their philosophy, their religion, are all attempts to gloss over, to make civilized and rational something that is savage, unorganized, irrational. He is an Outsider because he stands for truth.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 3 weeks ago
Man alone has the power of...

Man alone has the power of self-realization, the power to be a self-determining subject in all processes of becoming, for he alone has an understanding of potentialities and a knowledge of 'notions.' His very existence is the process of actualizing his potentialities, of molding his life according to the notions of reason.

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P. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 3 weeks ago
Boasting, like gilded armour, is very...

Boasting, like gilded armour, is very different inside from outside.

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Stobaeus, iii. 22. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 3 days ago
Most shocking of all is alledging...

Most shocking of all is alledging the Sacred Scriptures to favour this wicked practice. One would have thought none but infidel cavillers would endeavour to make them appear contrary to the plain dictates of natural light, and Conscience, in a matter of common Justice and Humanity; which they cannot be. Such worthy men, as referred to before, judged otherways; Mr. Baxter declared, the Slave-Traders should be called Devils, rather than Christians; and that it is a heinous crime to buy them.

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Philosophical Maxims
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