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Confucius
Confucius
1 month 3 weeks ago
When we see men of...

When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
1 week 1 day ago
What is the wisdom of a...

What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 weeks 6 days ago
As for me…

As for me, when you want a good laugh, you will find me in fine state... fat and sleek, a true hog of Epicurus' herd.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 2 days ago
What we are destroying is nothing...

What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 week 4 days ago
There are three principal means of...

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 1 week ago
If a workman can conveniently spare...

If a workman can conveniently spare those three halfpence, he buys a pot of porter. If he cannot, he contents himself with a pint, and, as a penny saved is a penny got, he thus gains a farthing by his temperance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 days ago
Impossible to spend sleepless nights and...

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Men are at variance with the...

Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 1 week ago
[W]e hold, that the moral obligation...

[W]e hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 1 week ago
A false science makes atheists, a...

A false science makes atheists, a true science prostrates men before the Deity.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 1 week ago
Whatever is known to us by...

Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is a plague on Man,...

There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 weeks 6 days ago
Ah, Postumus! They fleet away….

Ah, Postumus! they fleet away, our years, nor piety one hour can win from wrinkles and decay, and Death's indomitable power.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 1 week ago
It is not to be supposed...

It is not to be supposed that she was, or that any one, at the age at which I first saw her, could be, all that she afterwards became. Least of all could this be true of her, with whom self-improvement, progress in the highest and in all senses, was a law of her nature; a necessity equally from the ardour with which she sought it, and from the spontaneous tendency of faculties which could not receive an impression or an experience without making it the source or the occasion of an accession of wisdom. Up to the time when I first saw her, her rich and powerful nature had chiefly unfolded itself according to the received type of feminine genius. To her outer circle she was a beauty and a wit, with an air of natural distinction, felt by all who approached her: to the inner, a woman of deep and strong feeling, of penetrating and intuitive intelligence, and of an eminently meditative and poetic nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
3 weeks 3 days ago
It is indifferent to me where...

It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
The Indian teaching, through its clouds...

The Indian teaching, through its clouds of legends, has yet a simple and grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. It teaches to speak truth, love others, and to dispose trifles. The East is grand - and makes Europe appear the land of trifles .... all is soul and the soul is Vishnu ... cheerful and noble is the genius of this cosmogony. Hari is always gentle and serene - he translates to heaven the hunter who has accidentally shot him in his human form, he pursues his sport with boors and milkmaids at the cow pens; all his games are benevolent and he enters into flesh to relieve the burdens of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
1 month 3 weeks ago
The superior man, even when he...

The superior man, even when he is not moving, has a feeling of reverence, and while he speaks not, he has the feeling of truthfulness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 6 days ago
Absurd, irreducible; nothing - not even...

Absurd, irreducible; nothing - not even a profound and secret delirium of nature - could explain it. Obviously I did not know everything, I had not seen the seeds sprout, or the tree grow. But faced with this great wrinkled paw, neither ignorance nor knowledge was important: the world of explanations and reasons is not the world of existence. A circle is not absurd, it is clearly explained by the rotation of a straight segment around one of its extremities. But neither does a circle exist. This root, on the other hand, existed in such a way that I could not explain it. Reflections on a chestnut tree root.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 6 days ago
I will take it all: tongs,...

I will take it all: tongs, molten lead, prongs, garrotes, all that burns, all that tears, I want to truly suffer. Better one hundred bites, better the whip, vitriol, than this suffering in the head, this ghost of suffering which grazes and caresses and never hurts enough.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 2 weeks ago
Mother Mary, like us, was born...

Mother Mary, like us, was born in sin of sinful parents, but the Holy Spirit covered her, sanctified and purified her so that this child was born of flesh and blood, but not with sinful flesh and blood. The Holy Spirit permitted the Virgin Mary to remain a true, natural human being of flesh and blood, just as we. However, he warded off sin from her flesh and blood so that she became the mother of a pure child, not poisoned by sin as we are. For in that moment when she conceived, she was a holy mother filled with the Holy Spirit and her fruit is a holy pure fruit, at once God and truly man, in one person.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 1 week ago
Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best...

Let sanguine healthy-mindedness do its best with its strange power of living in the moment and ignoring and forgetting, still the evil background is really there to be thought of, and the skull will grin in at the banquet.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 6 days ago
[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering,...

[Mortals] say of some temporal suffering, "No future bliss can make up for it," not knowing Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 2 weeks ago
A theologian is born by living,...

A theologian is born by living, nay dying and being damned, not by thinking, reading, or speculating.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 week ago
They had no temples, but they...

They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 week ago
This education, therefore, results at the...

This education, therefore, results at the very outset in knowledge which transcends all experience, which is abstract, absolute, and strictly universal, and which includes within itself beforehand all subsequently possible experience. On the other hand, the old education was concerned, as a rule, only with the actual qualities of things as they are and as they should be believed and rioted, without anyone being able to assign a reason for them. It aimed, therefore, at purely passive reception by means of the power of memory, which was completely at the service of things. It was, therefore, impossible to have any idea of the mind as an independent original principle of things themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 1 week ago
Is dogmatic or scholastic theology less...

Is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 6 days ago
The First [Friend] is the alter...

The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything... Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. he has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one... How can he be so nearly right, and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 2 days ago
A hero looks death in the...

A hero looks death in the face, real death, not just the image of death. Behaving honourably in a crisis doesn't mean being able to act the part of a hero well, as in the theatre, it means being able to look death itself in the eye. For an actor may play lots of different roles, but at the end of it all he himself, the human being, is the one who has to die.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 2 weeks ago
Who does not in some sort...

Who does not in some sort live to others, does not live much to himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 1 week ago
And how does the God's existence...

And how does the God's existence emerge from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of continuity? Or have we not here an analogy to the behavior of the little Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll it stands on its head. As soon as I let it go, I must therefore let it go. So also with the proof. As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i.e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that I am engaged in proving it; but when I let the proof go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be taken into the account, this little moment, brief as it may be – it need not be long, for it is a leap. However brief this moment, if only an instantaneous now, this "now" must be included in the reckoning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 week 5 days ago
For the world, I count it...

For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
Daughter, be of good comfort; thy...

Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole. 9:22 (KJV) Said to a woman, diseased with an issue of blood, who touched the hem of his garment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
The word liberty in the mouth...

The word liberty in the mouth of Mr. Webster sounds like the word love in the mouth of a courtesan.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 2 days ago
If you want to go down...

If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don't have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 1 week ago
A truer image of the world,...

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 week ago
...my extreme anxiety about the Object...

...my extreme anxiety about the Object of our common sollicitude and my clear and decided conviction, that there is one part of the War, which instead of being postponed and considered in a secondary light, ought to have priority over every other, and requires our most early and our most careful attention; I mean La Vendée. ... This is a War directly against Jacobinism and its principles. It strikes at the Enemy in his weakest and most vulnerable part. At La Vendée with infinitely less Charge, we may make an impression likely to be decisive. This goes to the heart of the Business.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 1 week ago
The philosophy of Plotinus has the...

The philosophy of Plotinus has the defect of encouraging men to look within rather than to look without: when we look within we see nous, which is divine, while when we look without we see the imperfections of the sensible world. This kind of subjectivity was a gradual growth; it is to be found in the doctrines of Protagoras, Socrates, and Plato, as well as in the Stoics and Epicureans. But at first it was only doctrinal, not temperamental; for a long time it failed to kill scientific curiosity. [...] Plotinus is both an end and a beginning-an end as regards the Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 1 week ago
My hearers, this discourse has not...

My hearers, this discourse has not wandered out into the world to look for conflict, it has not tried to get the better of anybody, it has not even tried to uphold anybody, as though there was battle without. It has spoken to you; not by way of explaining anything to you, but trying to speak secretly with you about your relationship to that secret wisdom mentioned in our text. Oh that nothing may upset you in respect to this, “neither life nor death nor things present nor things to come nor any other creature” (Romans 8:38) –not this discourse, which, though it may have profited you nothing, yet has striven for what after all is the first and the last, to help you have what the Scripture calls “faith in yourself before God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 week 1 day ago
...no Monarchy limited or unlimited, nor...

...no Monarchy limited or unlimited, nor any of the old Republics, can possibly be safe as long as this strange, nameless, wild, enthusiastic thing is established in the Center of Europe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 1 week ago
To require that a so-called layman...

To require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
2 months 1 week ago
We often contradict an opinion for...
We often contradict an opinion for no other reason than that we do not like the tone in which it is expressed.
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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 1 week ago
It is difficult, if not impossible,...

It is difficult, if not impossible, to define the limit of our reasonable desires in respect of possessions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
The world is his, who has...

The world is his, who has money to go over it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 1 week ago
I wish to propose for the...

I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
1 month 3 weeks ago
Do not despair: one thief was...

Do not despair: one thief was saved. Do not presume: one thief was damned.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 2 weeks 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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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
1 month 2 days ago
I would in fact tend to...

I would in fact tend to have more confidence in the outcome of a democratic decision if there was a minority that voted against it, than if it was unanimous... Social psychology has amply shown the strength of this bandwagon effect.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
He is a dreamer...
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Main Content / General
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 2 weeks ago
If it had pleased them [the...

If it had pleased them [the legislators] to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
3 weeks 6 days ago
And since these things are so,...

And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours.

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Philosophical Maxims
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