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Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week 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
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is often said, mainly by...

It is often said, mainly by the 'no-contests', that although there is no positive evidence for the existence of God, nor is there evidence against his existence. So it is best to keep an open mind and be agnostic. At first sight that seems an unassailable position, at least in the weak sense of Pascal's wager. But on second thoughts it seems a cop-out, because the same could be said of Father Christmas and tooth fairies. There may be fairies at the bottom of the garden. There is no evidence for it, but you can't prove that there aren't any, so shouldn't we be agnostic with respect to fairies?

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From speech at the Edinburgh International Science Festival, 1992-04-15.
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 3 weeks ago
Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues...

Metaphysical fallacies contain the only clues we have to what thinking means to those who engage in it.

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p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 2 days ago
I may not be as unambiguously...

I may not be as unambiguously hostile to capitalism as many people are, but what I don't like about it is the commodification of personal experiences, it turns everyone into actors.

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Quoted in Will Self, "John Gray: Forget everything you know," The Independent
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 4 weeks ago
People no longer look at each...

People no longer look at each other, but there are institutes for that. They no longer touch each other, but there is contactotherapy. They no longer walk, but they go jogging, etc. Everywhere one recycles lost faculties, or lost bodies, or lost sociality, or the lost taste for food.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
To dream of an enterprise of...

To dream of an enterprise of demolition that would spare none of the traces of the original Big Bang.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 4 weeks ago
A philosophical attempt to work out...

A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.

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Ninth Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 1 week ago
The mediaeval university looked backwards: it...

The mediaeval university looked backwards: it professed to be a storehouse of old knowledge... The modern university looks forward: it is a factory of new knowledge.

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Letter to E. Ray Lankester (11 April 1892) Huxley Papers, Imperial College: 30.448
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 weeks 1 day ago
Here and everywhere is the struggle...

Here and everywhere is the struggle for existence, life inextricably enmeshed with war. All life living at the expense of life, every organism eating other organisms forever.

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Ch. 4 : On Old Age
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
All people respect and love their...

All people respect and love their own parents and children, as well as the parents and children of others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 2 weeks ago
Our mass media have little difficulty...

Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.

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p. xli
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 1 week ago
What could be a better indication...

What could be a better indication of man's continued dependence on nature than the fact that today's so-called post-industrial societies satisfy most of their food needs through imports from so-called underdeveloped countries?

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Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
McDonald: Now a lot of people...

McDonald: Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are - well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good - not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort.Dawkins: There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting - it might be more comforting, for all I know. But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 2 days ago
What you see, yet can not...

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.

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Bk. II, ch. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
I wouldn't give an astrologer the...

I wouldn't give an astrologer the time of day.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months ago
I think that democratic communities have...

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

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Book Two, Chapter I.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 3 weeks ago
Even those who have renounced Christianity...

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
4 months 1 week ago
We can open our hearts to...

We can open our hearts to God, but only with Divine help.

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q. 24, art. 15, ad 2
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 1 week ago
Do not mistake yourself by believing...

Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Maybe suffering has no more justification...

Maybe suffering has no more justification than life.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
At the present day, civilized opinion...

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
3 days ago
Isolated material particles are abstractions, their...

Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.

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"Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 3 weeks ago
I sometimes wondered what the use...

I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.

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Physicist, Purge Thyself in the Chicago Tribune Magazine
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 day ago
But the Quincunx of Heaven runs...

But the Quincunx of Heaven runs low, and 'tis time to close the five ports of knowledge. We are unwilling to spin out our awaking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth præcogitations; making Cables of Cobwebbes and Wildernesses of handsome Groves. Beside Hippocrates hath spoke so little and the Oneirocriticall Masters, have left such frigid Interpretations from plants, that there is little encouragement to dream of Paradise it self. Nor will the sweetest delight of Gardens afford much comfort in sleep; wherein the dulnesse of that sense shakes hands with delectable odours; and though in the Bed of Cleopatra, can hardly with any delight raise up the ghost of a Rose.

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Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened...

Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs.

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Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 months 2 weeks ago
The world is not divine sport,...

The world is not divine sport, it is divine destiny. There is divine meaning in the life of the world, of man, of human persons, of you and of me. Creation happens to us, burns itself into us, recasts us in burning - we tremble and are faint, we submit. We take part in creation, meet the Creator, reach out to Him, helpers and companions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 week 3 days ago
Men who prefer any load of...

Men who prefer any load of infamy, however great, to any pressure of taxation, however light.

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The Humble Petition of the Rev. Sydney Smith to the House of Congress at Washington (May 18, 1843), in Letters on American Debts (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1843), p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
You can take away a man's...

You can take away a man's gods, but only to give him others in return.

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p 63
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 3 weeks ago
A book can never be anything...

A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author's thoughts [Ein Buch kann nie mehr seyn, als der Abdruck der Gedanken des Verfassers]. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter - that is to say, what he has thought about it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 weeks 5 days ago
I have never met a man...

I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.

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As quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 605
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
Mark what 'tis his mind aims...

Mark what 'tis his mind aims at in the question, and not what words he expresses it in: and when you have informed and satisfied him in that, you shall see how his thoughts will enlarge themselves, and how by fit answers he may be led on farther than perhaps you could have imagine. For knowledge is grateful to the understanding, as light to the eyes.

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Sec. 118
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
Nicias, do you think you can...

Nicias, do you think you can erase with good deeds the wrongs you committed against your mother? What good deed will ever reach her? Her soul is a scorching noon time, without a single breath of a breeze, nothing moves, nothing changes, nothing lives there; a great emaciated sun, an immobile sun eternally consumes her.

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King Aegistheus, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 4 weeks ago
For do our Theologians pretend to...

For do our Theologians pretend to make a monopoly of the word, action, and may not the atheists likewise take possession of it, and affirm that plants, animals, men, &c. are nothing but particular actions of one simple universal substance, which exerts itself from a blind and absolute necessity?

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Part 4, Section 5
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
5 days ago
Every social occurrence as such, consists...

Every social occurrence as such, consists of an interaction between individuals. In other words, each individual is at the same time an active and a passive agent in a transaction. In case of superiority and inferiority, however, the relation assumes the appearance of a one-sided operation ; the one party appears to exert, while the other seems merely to receive an influence.

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p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
Violence, whether...
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Main Content / General
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Fortune is lavish with her favors,...

Fortune is lavish with her favors, but not to be depended on. Nature on the other hand is self-sufficing, and therefore with her feebler but trustworthy [resources] she wins the greater [meed] of hope.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months ago
When one compares the talents one...

When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.

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Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
3 months 2 days ago
The man who makes his religion...

The man who makes his religion a means to the gaining of this world, will lose both worlds alike; whereas the man who gives up this world for the sake of religion, will get both worlds alike.

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The Faith and Practice of Al-Ghazali, Allen & Unwin (1963), p. 152.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
[M]y friend Professor Tolkien asked me...

My friend Professor Tolkien asked me the very simple question, "What class of men would you expect to be most preoccupied with, and most hostile to, the idea of escape?" and gave the obvious answer: jailers.

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"On Science Fiction". Of Other Worlds: Essays and Stories. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (2002). p. 67.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
"You're a bitter man," said Candide....

"You're a bitter man," said Candide. "That's because I've lived," said Martin.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
One right-thinking man thinks like all...

One right-thinking man thinks like all other right-thinking men of his time-that is to say, in most cases, like some wrong-thinking man of another time.

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"One and Many," p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 2 weeks ago
Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against...

Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes and the Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel's system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV 'to destroy the dragon seed' of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophical spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840.

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P. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
5 days ago
All relationships of people to each...

All relationships of people to each other rest, as a matter of course, upon the precondition that they know something about each other. The merchant knows that his correspondent wants to buy at the lowest price and to sell at the highest price. The teacher knows that he may credit to the pupil a certain quality and quantity of information. Within each social stratum the individual knows approximately what measure of culture he has to presuppose in each other individual.

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p. 441: First lines of the article.
Philosophical Maxims
David Wood
David Wood
1 month 4 days ago
Philosophy is said to have taken...

Philosophy is said to have taken the 'linguistic turn' in this century. One hundred years ago, a philosopher would think in terms of mind, spirit, experience, consciousness; now the by-word is language.

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Chapter 2, Metaphysics and Metaphor, p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
4 weeks 1 day ago
Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment...

Utopia is a meta-utopia: the environment in which Utopian experiments may be tried out; the environment in which people are free to do their own thing; the environment which must, to a great extent, be realized first if more particular Utopian visions are to be realized stably.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework, p. 312
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
What a monstrous thing that a...

What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.

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Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
A habit of basing convictions upon...

A habit of basing convictions upon evidence, and of giving to them only that degree of certainty which the evidence warrants, would, if it became general, cure most of the ills from which the world is suffering. But at present, in most countries, education aims at preventing the growth of such a habit, and men who refuse to profess belief in some system of unfounded dogmas are not considered suitable as teachers of the young.

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preface xxiii-xxiv
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 3 days ago
But both courses are to be...

But both courses are to be avoided; you should not copy the bad simply because they are many, nor should you hate the many because they are unlike you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Through a wise and salutary neglect...

Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
People must be governed in a...

People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 76.
Philosophical Maxims
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