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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
Many agnostics (including myself) are quite...

Many agnostics (including myself) are quite as doubtful of the body as they are of the soul, but this is a long story taking one into difficult metaphysics. Mind and matter alike, I should say, are only convenient symbol in discourse, not actually existing things.

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What is an Agnostic?, 1953
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
Tous les autres peuples ont commis...

All of the other people have committed crimes, the Jews are the only ones who have boasted about committing them. They are, all of them, born with raging fanaticism in their hearts, just as the Bretons and the Germans are born with blond hair. I would not be in the least bit surprised if these people would not some day become deadly to the human race.

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Lettres de Memmius a Cicéron, 1771
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 1 week ago
American life is a powerful solvent....

American life is a powerful solvent. As it stamps the immigrant, almost before he can speak English, with an unmistakable muscular tension, cheery self-confidence and habitual challenge in the voice and eyes, so it seems to neutralize every intellectual element, however tough and alien it may be, and to fuse it in the native good-will, complacency, thoughtlessness, and optimism.

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"The Academic Environment" p. 47 (Hathi Trust)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The direction of the world overwhelms...

The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
Because we cannot discover God's throne...

Because we cannot discover God's throne in the sky with a radiotelescope or establish (for certain) that a beloved father or mother is still about in a more or less corporeal form, people assume that such ideas are "not true." I would rather say that they are not "true" enough, for these are conceptions of a kind that have accompanied human life from prehistoric times, and that still break through into consciousness at any provocation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
God offers to every mind its...

God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose.

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Intellect
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 2 weeks ago
Confession frees, but power reduces one...

Confession frees, but power reduces one to silence; truth does not belong to the order of power, but shares an original affinity with freedom: traditional themes in philosophy, which a political history of truth would have to overturn by showing that truth is not by nature free--nor error servile--but that its production is thoroughly imbued with relations of power. The confession is an example of this.

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Vol. I, p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Just now
Listen intently to a voice singing...

Listen intently to a voice singing without words. It may charm you into crying, force you to dance, fill you with rage, or make you jump for joy. You can't tell where the music ends and the emotions begin, for the whole thing is a kind of music-the voice playing on your nerves as the breath plays on a flute. All experience is just that, except that its music has many more dimensions than sound. It vibrates in the dimensions of sight, touch, taste, and smell, and in the intellectual dimension of symbols and words-all evoking and playing upon each other.

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p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 1 week ago
Many evils, no doubt, were produced...

Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
Why do I think that we,...

Why do I think that we, the intellectuals, are able to help? Simply because we, the intellectuals, have done the most terrible harm for thousands of years. Mass murder in the name of an idea, a doctrine, a theory, a religion - that is all our doing, our invention: the invention of the intellectuals. If only we would stop setting man against man - often with the best intentions - much would be gained. Nobody can say that it is impossible for us to stop doing this.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
Thank you for your letter and...

Thank you for your letter and for the enclosure which I return herewith. I have been wondering whether there is any means of preventing the confusion between you and me, and I half-thought that we might write a joint letter to The Times in the following terms: Sir, To prevent the continuation of confusions which frequently occur, we beg to state that neither of us is the other. Do you think this would be a good plan?

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Letter to Lord Russell of Liverpool, February 18, 1959
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
In tetrad form, the artefact is...

In tetrad form, the artefact is seen to be not netural or passive, but an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground.

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p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
3 months 1 week ago
When asked why people give to...

When asked why people give to beggars but not to philosophers, he replied, 'Because they expect they may become lame and blind, but never that they will become philosophers.'

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 56, as reported in Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes as translated by Robin Hard (Oxford: 2012), p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 2 weeks ago
Here then is what we understand...

Here then is what we understand by these words: "the equalization of the classes." It would perhaps have been better to say suppression of the classes, the unification of society by the abolition of economic and social inequality. But we have also demanded the equalization of the individuals, and it is there especially that we attract all the thunderbolts of outraged eloquence from our adversaries. One has made use of that part of our proposition to prove in a conclusive manner that we are nothing but communists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
I wanted certainty in the kind...

I wanted certainty in the kind of way in which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere. But I discovered that many mathematical demonstrations, which my teachers expected me to accept, were full of fallacies, and that, if certainty were indeed discoverable in mathematics, it would be in a new field of mathematics, with more solid foundations than those that had hitherto been thought secure. But as the work proceeded, I was continually reminded of the fable about the elephant and the tortoise. having constructed an elephant upon which the mathematical world could rest, I found the elephant tottering, and proceeded to construct a tortoise to keep the elephant from falling. But the tortoise was no more secure than the elephant, and after some twenty years of very arduous toil, I came to the conclusion that there was nothing more that I could do in the way of making mathematical knowledge indubitable.

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p. 53
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 1 week ago
To covet truth is a very...

To covet truth is a very distinguished passion.

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p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
The undramatic fact is that I...

The undramatic fact is that I just think and think and think until I have something [for a story], and there is nothing marvelous or artistic about the phenomenon.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
2 weeks 1 day ago
There was very little that prevented...

There was very little that prevented the vandalism of 1793 from suddenly producing a second revolution as marvelous as the first was horrible. The whole human race was approaching its release; the civilized, barbarian, and savage order would have disappeared forever if the Convention, which trampled down all prejudices, had not bowed down before the only one that had to be destroyed, the institution of marriage.

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Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World, J. Beecher (1986), p. 304-5
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 1 week ago
But Aversion wee have for things,...

But Aversion wee have for things, not only which we know have hurt us; but also that we do not know whether they will hurt us, or not.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 2 weeks ago
We are near awakening when we...

We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 days ago
When we are lulled into somnolence...

When we are lulled into somnolence by lack of challenge every molehill tends to become a mountain, every minor inconvenience an intolerable imposition. For a self-chosen reality tends to become a prison. The factors that protect and insulate civilized man can easily end by suffocating him unless he possesses a high degree of self-discipline, the 'highly developed vital sense' that Shaw speaks of. And since clever and sensitive people are inclined to lack self-discipline, a high degree of culture usually involves a high degree of pessimism. This is what has happened to Western civilisation over the past two centuries. It explains why so many distinguished artists, writers and musicians have taken such a negative view of the human situation.

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Introduction, p. xiii
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
The hidden significance of these fables...

The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
By the disposition of a stupendous...

By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 1 week 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. War is the father and king of all, and has produced some as gods and some as men, and has made some slaves and some free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
We seek and offer ourselves to...

We seek and offer ourselves to be gulled.

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Book III, Ch. 11. Of Cripples
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Old age, after all, is merely...

Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
5 days ago
The will is not fundamentally right,...

The will is not fundamentally right, as the practical ones would like very much to assure us; one may not pass over the desire for knowledge in order to stand immediately in the will, but knowledge perfects itself to will when it desensualizes itself and creates itself as a spirit "which builds its own body."

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Every cause produces more than one...

Every cause produces more than one effect.

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On Progress: Its Law and Cause
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
The newspaper is a corporate symbolist...

The newspaper is a corporate symbolist poem, environmental and invisible, as poem.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 3 days ago
The stupendous Fourth Estate, whose wide...

The stupendous Fourth Estate, whose wide world-embracing influences what eye can take in?

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Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
2 months 3 weeks ago
We indeed, who are beings of...

We indeed, who are beings of finite powers, are forced to make use of instruments. And the use of an instrument sheweth the agent to be limited by rules of another's prescription, and that he cannot obtain his end but in such a way, and by such conditions. Whence it seems a clear consequence, that the supreme unlimited agent useth no tool or instrument at all. The will of an Omnipotent Spirit is no sooner exerted than executed, without the application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the First Cause, who is Himself above all limitation or prescription whatsoever.

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Philonous to Hylas. The Second Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
The Son of man shall be...

The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again.

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17:22-23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 weeks ago
Men are eager...
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Main Content / General
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 4 weeks ago
Just as the performance of the...

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

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F 87
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 day ago
Dear youths, I warn you cherish...

Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.

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As reported by Heraclides, son of Sarapion, and Diogenes Laërtius, in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 7, in the translation of C. D. Yonge
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 week 6 days ago
Have we really the right to...

Have we really the right to speak of the cause of a phenomenon?

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Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 5 days ago
The bourgeoisie hides the fact that...

The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth.

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p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 2 weeks ago
The divine origin of man, as...

The divine origin of man, as taught by Vedanta, IS continually inculcated, to stimulate his efforts to return, to animate him in the struggle, and incite him to consider a reunion and reincorporation with Divinity as the one primary object of every action and reaction. Even the loftiest philosophy of the European, the idealism of reason as it is set forth by the Greek philosophers, appears in comparison with the abundant light and vigor of Oriental idealism like a feeble Promethean spark in the full flood of heavenly glory of the noonday sun, faltering and feeble and ever ready to be extinguished.

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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
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
The pursuit of knowledge is, I...

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. In politics, also, a reformer may have just as strong a love of power as a despot. It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 2 weeks ago
My point is not that everything...

My point is not that everything is bad, but that everything is danger­ous, which is not exactly the same as bad. If everything is dangerous, then we always have something to do. So my position leads not to apa­thy but to a hyper- and pessimistic activism. I think that the ethico-political choice we have to make every day is to determine which is the main danger. "

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On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress." Afterword, in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
Legal and economic equality are absolutely...

Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
5 days ago
Whoso is full of sacred (religious,...

Whoso is full of sacred (religious, moral, humane) love loves only the spook, the "true man," and persecutes with dull mercilessness the individual, the real man.

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S. Byington, trans. (1913), p. 383
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 4 weeks ago
Though I certainly deserve no ill...

Though I certainly deserve no ill treatment from mortals, yet if the insults and repulses I receive were attended with any advantage to them, I would content myself with lamenting in silence my own unmerited indignities and man's injustice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 days ago
You can tell…

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he gives and receives praise.

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Line 12.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 2 weeks ago
But the extraordinary insight which some...

But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Just now
If you get the message, hang...

If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen.

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p. 26 (This statement was redacted from later editions.)
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 1 week ago
Life cannot wait until the sciences...

Life cannot wait until the sciences may have explained the universe scientifically. We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, "here and now" without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank. And culture, which is but its interpretation, cannot wait any more than can life itself.

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Mission of the University [Misión de la Universidad (PDF)] (1930; translation © 1944, first published 1946), p. 73 [p. 15 in Spanish PDF], translated by Howard Lee Nostrand. ISBN 978-1-56000-560-5
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
Eros is a superhuman power which,...

Eros is a superhuman power which, like nature herself, allows itself to be conquered and exploited as though it were impotent. But triumph over nature is dearly paid for. Nature requires no explanations of principle, but asks only for tolerance and wise measure. "Eros is a mighty daemon," as the wise Diotima said to Socrates. We shall never get the better of him, or only to our own hurt. He is not the whole of our inward nature, though he is at least one of its essential aspects.

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Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7 (1957). "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" P.32f
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 day ago
In anger…

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23-24, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 370
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 6 days ago
And this God, the living God,...

And this God, the living God, your God, our God, is in me, is in you, lives in us, and we live and move and have our being in Him. And he is in us by virtue of the hunger, the longing, which we have for Him, He is Himself creating the longing for Himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
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