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Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 2 weeks ago
To the rational being only the...

To the rational being only the irrational is unendurable, but the rational is endurable.

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Variant translation: To a reasonable creature, that alone is insupportable which is unreasonable; but everything reasonable may be supported. Book I, ch. 2,1.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 1 week ago
Hath God obliged himself not to...

Hath God obliged himself not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge?

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Book II, Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 1 week ago
Let us not flutter too high,...

Let us not flutter too high, but remain by the manger and the swaddling clothes of Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

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50
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
The wisest among us is very...

The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.

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Ceci n'est pas un conte [This Is No Tale] (1796),
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month ago
If I were to go blind,...

If I were to go blind, what would bother me the most would be no longer to be able to stare idiotically at the passing clouds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 1 week ago
And surely, he that hath taken...

And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 days ago
An act has no ethical quality...

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 1 week ago
There is another ground of hope...

There is another ground of hope that must not be omitted. Let men but think over their infinite expenditure of understanding, time, and means on matters and pursuits of far less use and value; whereof, if but a small part were directed to sound and solid studies, there is no difficulty that might not be overcome.

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Aphorism 111
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
3 weeks 5 days ago
Childhood lasts all through life. It...

Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.

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Introduction, sect. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
Anger begins in folly, and ends...

Anger begins in folly, and ends in repentance.

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As quoted in Treasury of Thought: Forming an Encyclopædia of Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors (1894) by Maturin Murray Ballou
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 4 days ago
A friend is one soul abiding...

A friend is one soul abiding in two bodies. p. 188; also reported in various sources as:Friendship is a single soul dwelling in two bodies. A true friend is one soul in two bodies. Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 weeks 5 days ago
The pint would call the quart...

The pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him.

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p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 4 days ago
Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense,...

Mere parsimony is not economy. Expense, and great expense, may be an essential part in true economy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 1 week ago
You are the buyer of your own life

They are trying as directly as possible to sell you experiences, i.e. what you are able to do with the car, not the car as a product itself. An extreme example of this is this existing economic marketing concept, which basically evaluates the value of you as a potential consumer of your own life. Like how much are you worth, in the sense of all you will spend to buy back your own life as a certain quality life. You will spend so much in doctors, so much in beauty, so much in transcendental meditation, so much for music, and so on. What you are buying is a certain image and practice of your life. So what is your market potential, as a buyer of your own life in this sense?

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 weeks 3 days ago
Thinking is an expedition into quietness.

Thinking is an expedition into quietness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 1 week ago
All of the days go toward...

All of the days go toward death and the last one arrives there.

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Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 3 days ago
The world and life....
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 4 days ago
A world without delight and without...

A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.

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The Scientific Outlook, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 days ago
Science is not a system of...

Science is not a system of certain, or well established, statements; nor is it a statement which steadily advances towards state of finality. Our science is not knowledge (epistēmē): it can newer claim to have attained truth, or even substitute for it, such as probability. . . . We do not know; we can only guess.

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Ch. 10 "Corroboration, or How a Theory Stands up to Tests", section 85: The Path of Science, p. 278.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 day ago
Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them....

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.

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Maxim 872
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 weeks 3 days ago
Reason as an organ for perceiving...

Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded as obsolete.

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p. 18.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 days ago
In modern eyes, precious though wars...

In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 4 days ago
This is approximately the way Christendom...

This is approximately the way Christendom relates to the essentially Christian, the unconditioned. After seventeen, eighteen detours and running all around someone finally has his finite existence assured, and then we receive a sermon about Seek first the kingdom of God. Is this sobriety or is this intoxication?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 4 days ago
Great men are they who see...

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfillment. 

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July 18, 1867, Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 weeks 1 day ago
By incestuous symbiosis is meant the...

By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents - blood, family, tribe - to fly from the unbearable weight of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness, and to be protected and loved in a state of certainty dependence that the individual pays for with the ceasing of his own human development.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
6 days ago
Seduction is the world's elementary dynamic......

Seduction is the world's elementary dynamic... All this has changed significantly for us, at least in appearance. For what has happened to good and evil? Seduction hurls them against one another, and unites them beyond meaning, in a paroxysm [sudden outbreak of emotion] of intensity and charm.

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(p. 59)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 weeks 2 days ago
When I was in my teens,...

When I was in my teens, I invented a term to describe them. I call it 'holiday consciousness' . . . because I often experienced this sense of optimism and wide-awakeness when setting out on a journey or a holiday. It was always the feeling that the world is self-evidently complex and beautiful, and that life is so obviously good that man's boredom and defeat is an absurdity . . . And then I used to ask: Why do men forget this so easily? And the answer seemed obvious: because the human will is so flabby and weak. Instead of being self-controlled, self-driven creatures, most men are little more than leaves on a stream, they drift along hoping for the best. I once wrote that men are like grandfather clocks driven by watchsprings.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
1 month 2 weeks ago
Animals are rational; in most of...

Animals are rational; in most of them logos is imperfect, but it is certainly not wholly lacking. So if, as our opponents say, justice applies to rational beings, why should not justice, for us, also apply to animals?

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3, 18, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month ago
Awareness of time: assault on time...

Awareness of time: assault on time . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 5 days ago
The husband who decides…

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.

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La Femme Qui a Raison, Act 1, scene 2, 1759
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 weeks 2 days ago
We all observe that the reality...

We all observe that the reality of sexual intercourse is far from perfect; yet this does not convince us that sex is a greatly overrated occupation. Every time a man glimpses a pretty girl pulling up her stocking, he catches a glimpse of what might be called the "primal sexual vision." It is unfortunate that there seems to be a certain disparity between this primal vision and most ordinary sexual experience. But it dances in front of us like a will-o'-the-wisp, luring us into tormented effort. It can lead novelists to write novels, poets to write poems, and musicians to write symphonies.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
1 month 4 days ago
If there is to be any...

If there is to be any philosophy at all, this contradiction must be resolved - and the solution of this problem, or answer to the question: how can we think both of Presentations as conforming to objects, and objects as conforming to presentations? is, not the first, but the highest task of transcendental philosophy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 weeks 3 days ago
The pathfinders of modern thought did...

The pathfinders of modern thought did not derive what is good from the law. ... Their role in history was not that of adapting their words and actions to the text of old documents or generally accepted doctrines: they themselves created the documents and brought about the acceptance of their doctrines.

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p. 33.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 week 6 days ago
People nowadays have such high hopes...

People nowadays have such high hopes of America and the political conditions obtaining there that one might say the desires, at least the secret desires, of all enlightened Europeans are deflected to the west, like our magnetic needles.

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G 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 weeks 2 days ago
The real pioneers in ideas, in...

The real pioneers in ideas, in art and in literature have remained aliens to their time, misunderstood and repudiated.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 month 4 days ago
Revolution is like the daughters of...

Revolution is like the daughters of Pelias: it cuts humanity to pieces in order to rejuvenate it.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 5 days ago
Faith consists…

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

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"The Flood", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month ago
If there is anyone who owes...

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 1 week ago
I have greater confidence in my...

I have greater confidence in my wife and my pupils than I have in Christ.

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2397
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 days ago
In the long run the answer...

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
1 month 3 weeks 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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Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 weeks 4 days ago
It is a familiar and significant...

It is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well-put is half-solved.

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"The Pattern of Inquiry"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
6 days ago
"If he is this good at...

"If he is this good at acting crazy, it's because he is." Nor is military psychology mistaken in this regard: in this sense, all crazy people simulate, and this lack of distinction is the worst kind of subversion. It is against this lack of distinction that classical reason armed itself in all its categories. But it is what today again outflanks them, submerging the principle of truth.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 6 days ago
What alone has value is the...

What alone has value is the use to which life is put and the end to which it is directed. The value of life has to be created by man, it cannot be obtained through luck but only through wisdom. He who is anxiously concerned over losing his life will never enjoy life.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 141
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 week 6 days ago
It is we who are the...

It is we who are the measure of what is strange and miraculous: if we sought a universal measure the strange and miraculous would not occur and all things would be equal.

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A 26
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 days ago
I appeal to the philosophers of...

I appeal to the philosophers of all countries to unite and never again mention Heidegger or talk to another philosopher who defends Heidegger. This man was a devil. I mean, he behaved like a devil to his beloved teacher, and he has a devilish influence on Germany. ... One has to read Heidegger in the original to see what a swindler he was.

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As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 4 days ago
Nor knowest thou what argument Thy...

Nor knowest thou what argument Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent: All are needed by each one, Nothing is fair or good alone.

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Each and All, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 days ago
It is terrible when people do...

It is terrible when people do not know God, but it is worse when people identify as God what is not God.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 6 days ago
The reasons and purposes for habits...
The reasons and purposes for habits are always lies that are added only after some people begin to attack these habits and to ask for reasons and purposes. At this point the conservatives of all ages are thoroughly dishonest: they add lies.
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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 4 weeks ago
"It is necessary to be given...

"It is necessary to be given the prop that all elementary props are given." This is not necessary because it is even impossible. There is no such prop! That all elementary props are given is SHOWN by there being none having an elementary sense which is not given.

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Notes of 1919, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : The Duty of Genius (1990) by Ray Monk
Philosophical Maxims
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