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Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 weeks ago
I, for my part, do not...

I, for my part, do not conceive an act as having causes, and I consider myself satisfied when I have found in it not its 'factors' but the general themes which it organizes: for our decisions gather into new syntheses and on new occasions the leitmotif that governs our life

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p. 461
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 2 days ago
To the divine providence it has...

To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous shall not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good shall not be tormented. But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both; that we might not too eagerly covet the things which wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills which even good men often suffer. There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events which we call adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world's happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.

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I, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago
We have just seen that, apart...

We have just seen that, apart from money-capital, circulating capital is only another name for commodity-capital. But to the extent that labour power circulates in the market,it is not capital, no form of commodity-capital. It is not capital at all; the labourer is not a capitalist, although he brings a commodity to market, namely his own skin.

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Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 211.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
An individual may perceive a way...

An individual may perceive a way of life, or a method of social organisation, by which more of the desires of mankind could be satisfied than under the existing method. If he perceives truly, and can persuade men to adopt his reform, he is justified. Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable.

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Ch. 15: Power and moral codes
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 2 weeks ago
Unhappily, history proves that war is,...

Unhappily, history proves that war is, in a certain sense, the habitual state of mankind, which is to say that human blood must flow without interruption somewhere or other on the globe, and that for every nation, peace is only a respite.

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Chapter III, p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 2 weeks ago
War is not a courtesy but...

War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.

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Bk. X, ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 months 2 days ago
Jazz is the false liquidation of...

Jazz is the false liquidation of art - instead of utopia becoming reality it disappears from the picture.

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Perennial fashion - Jazz, as quoted in The Sociology of Rock (1978) by Simon Frith
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 3 weeks ago
One is rarely an impulsive innovator...

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

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K 51
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
4 months 1 week ago
Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in...

Ressentiment must therefore be strongest in a society like ours, where approximately equal rights (political and otherwise) or formal social equality, publicly recognized, go hand in hand with wide factual differences in power, property, and education.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 2 days ago
Alexander is to a peasant proprietor...

Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband.

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p. 78,
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
Hitch your wagon to a star....

Hitch your wagon to a star.

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Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
1 month 2 weeks ago
Only an atheist can be a...

Only an atheist can be a good Christian.

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Atheismus im Christentum 1968, english translation: Atheism in Christianity: The Religion of the Exodus and the Kingdom 1972
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 1 week ago
That a man be willing, when...

That a man be willing, when others are so too, as farre-forth, as for Peace, and defence of himself he shall think it necessary, to lay down this right to all things; and be contented with so much liberty against other men, as he would allow other men against himself.

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The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 64-65
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months 1 week ago
The significance of God, cause, number,...

The significance of God, cause, number, substance or soul consists, as James asserts, in nothing but the tendency of the given concept to make us act or think. If the world should reach a point at which it ceases to care not only about such metaphysical entities but also about murders perpetrated behind closed frontiers or simply in the dark, one would have to conclude that the concepts of such murders have no meaning, that they represent no 'distinct ideas' or truths, since they do not make any 'sensible difference to anybody.

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describing the pragmatist view, pp. 46-47.
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
5 months 6 days ago
Brave men...

Brave men were living before Agamemnon. 

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Book IV, ode ix, line 25
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nothing is harder....
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Judith Butler
Judith Butler
3 months 2 weeks ago
There is no practice of nonviolence...

There is no practice of nonviolence that does not negotiate fundamental ethical and political ambiguities, which means that "nonviolence" is not an absolute principle, but the name of an ongoing struggle.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 1 week ago
You can't lead the people if...

You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people.

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Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom (2008); also on "The Way I See It" Starbucks Coffee Cup #284
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 4 weeks ago
Government exists but to maintain special...

Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 2 days ago
When the Head and members are...

When the Head and members are despised, then the whole Christ is despised, for the whole Christ, Head and body, is that just man against whom deceitful lips speak iniquity (Ps. 30:19).

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p.425
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 4 weeks ago
What is it, in your opinion,...

What is it, in your opinion, to be a great nobleman? It is to be master of several objects that men covet, and thus to be able to satisfy the wants and the desires of many. It is these wants and these desires that attract them towards you, and that make them submit to you: were it not for these, they would not even look at you; but they hope, by these services... to obtain from you some part of the good which they desire, and of which they see that you have the disposal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 2 weeks ago
If you suspect that my interest...

If you suspect that my interest in the Bible is going to inspire me with sudden enthusiasm for Judaism and make me a convert of mountain‐moving fervor and that I shall suddenly grow long earlocks and learn Hebrew and go about denouncing the heathen — you little know the effect of the Bible on me. Properly read, it is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 1 day ago
As our acts and our thoughts...

As our acts and our thoughts are, so will our lives be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
5 months 6 days ago
Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either...

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

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Stobaeus, iv. 31c. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 4 weeks ago
It has been said of old,...

It has been said of old, all roads lead to Rome. In paraphrased application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education, especially in their application to the free development of the child; the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by, art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
There is no author to whom...

There is no author to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more frequently recommended to young student. I can bear similar testimony in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibi permissus...

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(pp. 21-22)
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 1 day ago
The safest general characterization of the...

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

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Pt. II, ch. 1, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 months 1 week ago
Never in the history of the...

Never in the history of the world have there been so many migrants. And almost all of them are migrating from regions where nationality is weak or non-existent to the established nation states of the West. They are not migrating because they have discovered some previously dormant feeling of love or loyalty towards the nations in whose territory they seek a home. On the contrary, few of them identify their loyalties in national terms and almost none of them in terms of the nation where they settle. They are migrating in search of citizenship which is the principal gift of national jurisdictions, and the origin of the peace, law, stability and prosperity that still prevail in the West.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set...

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

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Volume iii, p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 3 days ago
There are pretenses which are very...

There are pretenses which are very sincere, and marriage is their school.

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Tres novelas ejemplares y un prólogo [Three Exemplary Novels and a Prologue] (1920); Two Mothers
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 1 week ago
Many, and I think the determining,...

Many, and I think the determining, constitutive facts remain outside the reach of the operational concept. And by virtue of this limitation-this methodological injunction against transitive concepts which might show the facts in their true light and call them by their true name-the descriptive analysis of the facts blocks the apprehension of facts and becomes an element of the ideology that sustains the facts. Proclaiming the existing social reality as its own norm, this sociology fortifies in the individuals the "faithless faith" in the reality whose victims they are.

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p. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
The fact that all Mathematics is...

The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

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Principles of Mathematics (1903), Ch. I: Definition of Pure Mathematics, p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 1 day ago
Would not anyone who is a...

Would not anyone who is a man have his slumbers broken by a war-trumpet rather than by a chorus of serenaders?

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 2 weeks ago
In regard to propaganda the early...

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies-the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distraction.

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Chapter 4 (pp. 35-36)
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 2 weeks ago
The original thinking force of the...

The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 1 week ago
When we make ethical judgments, we...

When we make ethical judgments, we must go beyond a personal or sectional point of view and take into account the interests of all those affected, unless we have sound ethical grounds for doing otherwise. (...) The essence of the principle of equal consideration of interests is that we give equal weight in our moral deliberations to the like interests of all those affected by our actions. (...) an interest is an interest, whoever's interest it may be.

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Ch. 2: Equality and Its Implications
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 1 week 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
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 2 weeks ago
He who is punished is never...
He who is punished is never he who performed the deed. He is always the scapegoat.
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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially...

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

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Ch. XVI: Of Nationality, As Connected with Representative Government (p. 382)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 weeks ago
A testimony is sufficient when it...

A testimony is sufficient when it rests on: 1st. A great number of very sensible witnesses who agree in having seen well. 2d. Who are sane, bodily and mentally. 3d. Who are impartial and disinterested. 4th. Who unanimously agree. 5th. Who solemnly certify to the fact.

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As quoted by H. P. Blavatsky in Isis Unveiled, Vol. I, p. 108, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
Scott does this still better than...

Scott does this still better than Wordsworth, and a very second-rate landscape does it more effectually than any poet. What made Wordsworth's poems a medicine for my state of mind, was that they expressed, not mere outward beauty, but states of feeling, and of thought coloured by feeling, under the excitement of beauty. They seemed to be the very culture of the feelings, which I was in quest of. In them I seemed to draw from a Source of inward joy, of sympathetic and imaginative pleasure, which could be shared in by all human beings; which had no connexion with struggle or imperfection, but would be made richer by every improvement in the physical or social condition of mankind. From them I seemed to learn what would be the perennial sources of happiness, when all the greater evils of life shall have been removed. And I felt myself at once better and happier as I came under their influence.

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(pp. 147-148)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 2 weeks ago
What the age needs is not...

What the age needs is not a genius - it has had geniuses enough, but a martyr, who in order to teach men to obey would himself be obedient unto death. What the age needs is awakening. And therefore someday, not only my writings but my whole life, all the intriguing mystery of the machine will be studied and studied. I never forget how God helps me and it is therefore my last wish that everything may be to his honour.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 4 weeks ago
The mind must not be forced;...

The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
They who have...

They who have compared our lives to a dream were, perhaps, more in the right than they were aware of. When we dream, the soul lives, works, and exercises all its faculties, neither more nor less than when awake; but more largely and obscurely, yet not so much, neither, that the difference should be as great as betwixt night and the meridian brightness of the sun, but as betwixt night and shade; there she sleeps, here she slumbers; but, whether more or less, 'tis still dark, and Cimmerian darkness. We wake sleeping, and sleep waking.

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tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 weeks ago
At the age of five years...

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.

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Vol II: "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life", as translated by R. B. Haldane, and J. Kemp in The World as Will and Idea (1886), p. 389
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 3 weeks ago
There are and can be only...

There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.

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Aphorism 19
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is then unnecessary to investigate...

It is then unnecessary to investigate whether there be beyond the heaven Space, Void or Time. For there is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call Void; in it are innumerable globes like this one on which we live and grow. This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
It appears, accordingly, from the experience...

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.

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Chapter VIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Speak straight and clear! I only...

Speak straight and clear! I only hear that manly prayerwhich like a huge fist breaks my head against the stones.

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Odysseus, Book VIII, line 530
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
Don't tell yourself anything more than...

Don't tell yourself anything more than what the initial impressions report. It's been reported to you that someone is speaking badly about you. This is the report - the report wasn't that you've been harmed. I see that my son is sick - but not that his life is at risk. So always stay within your first impressions, and don't add to them in your head - this way nothing can happen to you.

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VIII. 49:238
Philosophical Maxims
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