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Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 2 weeks ago
Life is bristling…

Life is bristling with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to cultivate one's garden.

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Letter to Pierre-Joseph Luneau de Boisjermain (21 October 1769), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1882], vol. XIV, letter # 7692 (p. 478)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 weeks 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
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
The slave is doomed to worship...

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 2 days ago
Basic justice

Basic justice is based on everything we as humans share that is the same. It extends to nature also, but, if we can't keep it straight amongst ourselves, of course we'll never have the traction to extend it to the larger context we are a part of.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 1 week ago
Science does not rest upon solid...

Science does not rest upon solid bedrock. The bold structure of its theories arises, as it were, above a swamp. It is like a building erected on piles. The piles are driven down from above into the swamp, but not down to any natural or 'given' base; and if we stop driving the piles deeper, it is not because we have reached firm ground. We simply stop when we are satisfied that the piles are firm enough to carry the structure, at least for the time being.

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Ch. 5 "The Problem of the Empirical Basis", Section 30: Theory and Experiment, p. 94.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
Just now
The foundation of morality is to...

The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

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Science and Morals
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
Generally speaking there is no irreducible...

Generally speaking there is no irreducible taste or inclination. They all represent a certain appropriative choice of being. It is up to existential psychoanalysis to compare and classify them. Ontology abandons us here; it has merely enabled us to determine the ultimate ends of human reality, its fundamental possibilities, and the value which haunts it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 1 week ago
A person is strong only when...

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well - in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

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"Appendix A"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
I myself believe that the evidence...

I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.

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Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
It is clear that the causal...

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
The person who is going to...

The person who is going to preach ought to live in the Christian thoughts and ideas: they ought to be his daily life. If so, this is the view of Christianity, then you, too, will have eloquence enough and precisely that which is needed when you speak extemporaneously without specific preparation. However, it is fallacious eloquence if someone, without otherwise occupying himself with, without living in these thoughts, once in a while sits down and laboriously collects such thoughts, perhaps in the field of literature, and then works them into a well-composed discourse, which is then committed to memory and delivered superbly, with respect both to voice and diction and gestures.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
No one has the audacity to...

No one has the audacity to exclaim: "I don't want to do anything!" - we are more indulgent with a murderer than with a mind emancipated from actions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
Bad laws are the worst sort...

Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.

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Speech at Bristol Previous to the Election (6 September 1780), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II (1855), p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 5 days ago
By surpassing writing, we have regained...

By surpassing writing, we have regained our wholeness, not on a national or cultural but cosmic plane.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
Just now
History warns us, however, that it...

History warns us, however, that it is the customary fate of new truths to begin as heresies and to end as superstitions; and, as matters now stand, it is hardly rash to anticipate that, in another twenty years, the new generation, educated under the influences of the present day, will be in danger of accepting the main doctrines of the 'Origin of Species' with as little reflection, and it may be with as little justification, as so many of our contemporaries, twenty years ago, rejected them. Against any such a consummation let us all devoutly pray; for the scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.

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The Coming of Age of The Origin of Species (1880); Collected Essays, vol. 2
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
I think He made one law...

I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His will, but not only because they are his will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless he bids you do something for which His bidding is the only reason?

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
China is a much richer country...

China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

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Chapter XI, Part III, (First Period) p. 221.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on...

Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

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"Bruno Rontini"
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 weeks ago
There certainly is self division. The...

There certainly is self division. The man who watches a woman undressing has the red eyes of an ape; yet the man who sees two young lovers, really alone for the first time, who brings out all the pathos, the tenderness and uncertainty when he tells about it, is no brute; he is very much human. And the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the ape's desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by the man, who is disgusted with the ape's appetite.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters....

Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

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Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 4 days ago
Fine words and an insinuating...

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue. 

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Variant: Someone who is a clever speaker and maintains a 'too-smiley' face is seldom considered a humane person.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is not, what a lawyer...

It is not, what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
That fear which gives birth to...

That fear which gives birth to thoughts, and the fear of thoughts...

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
It is no one's privilege to...

It is no one's privilege to despise another. It is only a hard-won right after long experience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is difficult for the isolated...

It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him. He has even become fond of it and for the time being is incapable of employing his own intelligence, because he has never been allowed to make the attempt. Statutes and formulas, these mechanical tools of a serviceable use, or rather misuse, of his natural faculties, are the ankle-chains of a continuous immaturity. Whoever threw it off would make an uncertain jump over the smallest trench because he is not accustomed to such free movement. Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
Somebody ought to make a historical...

Somebody ought to make a historical study of the relations between theology and corporal punishment in childhood. I have a theory that, wherever little boys and girls are systematically flagellated, the victims grow up to think of God as - 'Wholly Other'... A people's theology reflects the state of its children's bottoms. Look at the Hebrews - enthusiastic child-beaters. And so were all good Christians in the Age of Faith. Hence Jehovah, hence Original Sin and the infinitely offended Father of Roman and Protestant orthodoxy. Whereas among Buddhists and Hindus education has always been nonviolent. No laceration of little buttocks - therefore Tat tvam asi, thou art That, mind from Mind is not divided.... Major premise: God is Wholly Other. Minor premise: man is totally depraved. Conclusion: Do to your children's bottoms what was done to yours, what your Heavenly Father has been doing to the collective bottom of humanity ever since the Fall: whip, whip, whip!

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
A democratic government is the only...

A democratic government is the only one in which those who vote for a tax can escape the obligation to pay it.

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Chapter XIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 weeks 4 days ago
God created everything by number, weight...

God created everything by number, weight and measure.

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As quoted in Symmetry in Plants (1998) by Roger V. Jean and Denis Barabé, p. xxxvii
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
Only it takes....

Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
Few men have been admired by...

Few men have been admired by their own domestics.

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Book iii. Chap 2. Of Repentance
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
The rules of logic are to...

The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months ago
I have read in Plato and...

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden."

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p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month ago
The thesis of the identity of...

The thesis of the identity of concept and thing is in general the vital nerve of idealist thought, and indeed traditional thought in general. ... Negative dialectics as critique means above all criticism of precisely this claim to identity.

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p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is also a study peculiarly...

It is also a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philosophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their own.

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(pp. 19-20)
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
2 months 5 days ago
Commit no lustfulness, so that harm...

Commit no lustfulness, so that harm and regret may not reach thee from thine own actions.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 days ago
Familiar things happen....
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Main Content / General
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
From the Christian point of view...

From the Christian point of view it stands firm that the truly Christian venturing requires probability.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
In fact, contempt for happiness is...

In fact, contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

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p. 198
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 1 week ago
No, you cannot expect people to...

No, you cannot expect people to understand the higher reaches of philosophy. Culture should be taken out of the hands of the dollar chasers. We need a national subsidy for literature. It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art works have to be sold like soap.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
2 months 1 week 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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Habermas (1993) "Further reflections on the public sphere", in: Craig Calhoun Eds. Habermas and the Public Sphere. MIT Press. p. 441
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
What can only be taught by...

What can only be taught by the rod and with blows will not lead to much good; they will not remain pious any longer than the rod is behind them.

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The Great Catechism. Second Command
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
Such taxes [upon the necessaries of...

Such taxes [upon the necessaries of life], when they have grown up to a certain height, are a curse equal to the barrenness of the earth and the inclemency of the heavens; and yet it is in the richest and most industrious countries that they have been most generally imposed. No other countries could support so great a disorder.

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Chapter II, paragraph 36, p. 500.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
If you fast, you will give...

If you fast, you will give rise to sin for yourselves; and if you pray, you will be condemned; and if you give alms, you will do harm to your spirits. When you go into any land and walk about in the districts, if they receive you, eat what they will set before you, and heal the sick among them. For what goes into your mouth will not defile you, but that which issues from your mouth—it is that which will defile you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the course of evolution nature...

In the course of evolution nature has gone to endless trouble to see that every individual is unlike every other individual.... Physically and mentally, each one of us is unique. Any culture which, in the interests of efficiency or in the name of some political or religious dogma, seeks to standardize the human individual, commits an outrage against man's biological nature.

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Chapter 3 (p. 21)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy is by its nature something...

Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.

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Introduction to the Critical Journal of Philosophy, cited in W. Kaufmann, Hegel (1966), p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
The conviction that it is important...

The conviction that it is important to believe this or that, even if a free inquiry would not support the belief, is one which is common to almost all religions and which inspires all systems of state education. The consequence is that the minds of the young are stunted and are filled with fanatical hostility both to those who have other fanaticisms, and, even more virulently, to those who object to all fanaticisms.

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preface xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
To understand oneself in existence is...

To understand oneself in existence is the Christian principle, except that this self has received much richer and much more profound qualifications that are even more difficult to understand together with existing. The believer is a subjective thinker, and the difference, is only between the simple person and the simple wise person. Here again the oneself is not humanity in general, subjectivity in general, and other such things, whereas everything becomes easy inasmuch as the difficulty is removed and the whole matter is shifted over into the shadow play of abstraction.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
If the Russians still adhered to...

If the Russians still adhered to the Greek Orthodox religion, if they had instituted parliamentary government, and if they had a completely free press which daily vituperated us, then - provided they still had armed forces as powerful as they have now - we should still hate them if they gave us ground for thinking them hostile.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 2 weeks ago
One common false conclusion is that...
One common false conclusion is that because someone is truthful and upright towards us he is spreading the truth. Thus the child believes his parents' judgements, the Christian believes the claims of the church's founders. Likewise, people do not want to admit that all those things which men defended with the sacrifice of their lives and happiness in earlier centuries were nothing but errors.
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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 2 weeks ago
When... in the course of all...

When... in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

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Part 1, Chapter 7
Philosophical Maxims
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