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St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 3 weeks ago
Nobody should ever doubt that in...

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

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229E:2
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Of all things the worst to...

Of all things the worst to teach the young is dalliance, for it is this that is the parent of those pleasures from which wickedness springs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 week ago
One can only live while one...

One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! Ch. 4 Variant: It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 2 weeks ago
The disastrous feature of our civilization...

The disastrous feature of our civilization is that it is far more developed materially than spiritually. Its balance is disturbed ... Now come the facts to summon us to reflect. They tell us in terribly harsh language that a civilization which develops only on its material side, and not in the sphere of the spirit ... heads for disaster.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 months 1 week ago
Driving is a spectacular form of...

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology.

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Vanishing Point (pp. 9-10)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 1 week ago
Nothing seems at first sight less...

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

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Book Three, Chapter XIV.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 days ago
Obviously God was a solution, and...

Obviously God was a solution, and obviously none so satisfactory that will ever be found again.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 4 days ago
For anyone who is alone, without...

For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months ago
Why trouble ye the woman? for...

Why trouble ye the woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always. For in that she hath poured this ointment on my body, she did it for my burial. Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman hath done, be told for a memorial of her.

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26:10-13 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
3 months 3 weeks ago
Deniers do not get their views...

Deniers do not get their views just from simple mistakes about language and truth. Rather, they believe that there is something to worry about in important areas of our thought and in traditional interpretations of those areas; they sense that it has something to do with truth; and (no doubt driven by the familiar desire to say something at once hugely general, deeply important, and reassuringly simple) they extend their worry to the notion of truth itself.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 1 week ago
An early morning walk is a...

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

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April 20, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 4 days ago
The universal intelligence puts itself in...

The universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect... or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of a sequence in a manner; or individual elements are the origin of all things. In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou be governed by it.

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IX, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 5 days ago
The work of each individual contributes...

The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives - past and present and to come - forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. Even the Spacers are an offshoot of the tapestry and they, too, add to the elaborateness and beauty of the pattern. An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 4 days ago
Man cannot do without beauty, and...

Man cannot do without beauty, and this is what our era pretends to want to disregard. It steels itself to attain the absolute and authority; it wants to transfigure the world before having exhausted it, to set it to rights before having understood it. Whatever it may say, our era is deserting this world.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 4 days ago
The way of the world....
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Main Content / General
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
Creatures extremely low in the intellectual...

Creatures extremely low in the intellectual scale may have conception. All that is required is that they should recognize the same experience again. A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of 'Hello! thingumbob again!' ever flitted through its mind.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
Now as we call every thing...

Now as we call every thing custom, which proceeds from a past repetition, without any new reasoning or conclusion, we may establish it as a certain truth, that all the belief, which follows upon any present impression, is deriv'd solely from that origin.

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Part 3, Section 8
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 3 days ago
I do feel visceral revulsion at...

I do feel visceral revulsion at the burka because for me it is a symbol of the oppression of women.

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As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 2 weeks ago
Concerning the female sorcerer. Roman law...

Concerning the female sorcerer. Roman law also prescribes this. Why does the law name women more than men here, even though men are also guilty of this? Because women are more susceptible to those superstitions of Satan; take Eve, for example. They are commonly called "wise women." Let them be killed.

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Sermon on Exodus, 1526, WA XVI, p. 551 as quoted in Luther on Women: A Sourcebook, edited by Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, (2003), p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in...

Practice yourself, for heaven's sake, in little things; and thence proceed to greater.

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Book I, ch. 18, 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
9 months 1 week ago
The symptom is automatically dissolved

Precisely as an enigma, the symptom, so to speak, announces its dissolution through interpretation: the aim of psychoanalysis is to re-establish the broken network of communication by allowing the patient to verbalize the meaning of his symptom: through this verbalization the symptom is automatically dissolved. This, then is the basic point: in its very construction, the symptom implies the field of the big Other as consistent, complete, because its very function is an appeal to the Other which contains its meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 1 week ago
There never, gentlemen, was a period...

There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the steadfastness of some men has been nut to so sore a trial. It is not very difficult for well-formed minds to abandon their interest; but the separation of fame and virtue is an harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 2 weeks ago
Asceticism is the trifling of an...

Asceticism is the trifling of an enthusiast with his power, a puerile coquetting with his selfishness or his vanity, in the absence of any sufficiently great object to employ the first or overcome the last.

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Letter (5 September 1857), quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 369
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 3 days ago
The Bolsheviks themselves will not want,...

The Bolsheviks themselves will not want, with hand on heart, to deny that, step by step, they have to feel out the ground, try out, experiment, test now one way now another, and that a good many of their measures do not represent priceless pearls of wisdom. Thus it must and will be with all of us when we get to the same point-even if the same difficult circumstances may not prevail everywhere.

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Chapter Six, "The Problem of Dictatorship"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months ago
The Interpretation of the Laws of...

The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

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The Second Part, Chapter 26, p. 143
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 weeks ago
They hate not to make use...

They hate not to make use of their abilities... they do not necessarily work for their own self-interest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 2 days ago
My aim is not to provide...

My aim is not to provide excuses for black behavior or to absolve blacks of personal responsibility. But when the new black conservatives accent black behavior and responsibility in such a way that the cultural realities of black people are ignored, they are playing a deceptive and dangerous intellectual game with the lives and fortunes of disadvantaged people. We indeed must criticize and condemn immoral acts of black people, but we must do so cognizant of the circumstances into which people are born and under which they live. By overlooking these circumstances, the new black conservatives fall into the trap of blaming black poor people for their predicament. It is imperative to steer a course between the Scylla of environmental determinism and the Charybdis of a blaming-the-victims perspective.

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(p56)
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 3 weeks ago
After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at...

After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends: "I came, I saw, I conquered."

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Cæsar
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 2 weeks ago
Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost...

Saturninus said, "Comrades, you have lost a good captain to make him an ill general."

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Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
In capitalist society however where social...

In capitalist society however where social reason always asserts itself only post festum great disturbances may and must constantly occur.

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Vol. II, Ch. XVI, p. 319.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 5 days ago
There's something about a pious man...

There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 4 weeks ago
Whoever desires to live among men...

Whoever desires to live among men has to obey their laws-this is what the secular morality of Western civilization comes down to. ... Rationality in the form of such obedience swallows up everything, even the freedom to think.

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p. 29.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 weeks 6 days ago
The most beautiful fate of...

The most beautiful fate of a physical theory is to point the way to the establishment of a more inclusive theory, in which it lives on as a limiting case.

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(1917) as quoted by , The Advancement of Science, and Its Burdens: the Jefferson Lecture and Other Essays (1986)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 3 weeks ago
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach...

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

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Vol. I, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 2 weeks ago
Envy has been, is, and shall...

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is very difficult to understand...

It is very difficult to understand proletarian violence as long as we try to think in terms of the ideas disseminated by bourgeois philosophy; according to this philosophy, violence is a relic of barbarism which is bound to disappear under the progress of enlightenment.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 1 week ago
I was brought up in the...

I was brought up in the Christian religion, and although I can scarcely sanction all the improper attempts to gain the emancipation of woman, all paganlike reminiscences also seem foolish to me. My brief and simple opinion is that woman is certainly as good as man-period. Any more discursive elaboration of the difference between the sexes or deliberation on which sex is superior is an idle intellectual occupation for loafers and bachelors.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 6 days ago
No one has the right….

No one has the right to obey.

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in a radio interview with Joachim Fest (9 November 1964)
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 5 days ago
The greatest and noblest conceptions have...

The greatest and noblest conceptions have no image wrought plainly for human vision, which he who wishes to satisfy the mind of the inquirer can apply to some one of his senses and by mere exhibition satisfy the mind. We must therefore endeavor by practice to acquire the power of giving and understanding a rational definition of each one of them; for immaterial things, which are the noblest and greatest, can be exhibited by reason only, and it is for their sake that all we are saying is said. But it is always easier to practice in small matters than in greater ones.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
Note that Unitarianism….

Note that Unitarianism rejects concepts such as Hell, the Trinity, Original Sin, the infallability of the Bible, as well as claims that any one religion has a monopoly on theological truth and the Holy Spirit. At the same time, it accepts the notion that reason, rational thought, science, and philosophy can coexist with faith in God.

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Thomas Jefferson, letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (26 June 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12, pp. 241-243.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 days ago
Lucidity's task: to attain a correct...

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 week ago
We measure the earth, sun, stars,...

We measure the earth, sun, stars, and ocean depths. We burrow into the depths of the earth for gold. We search for rivers and mountains on the moon. We discover new stars and know their magnitudes. We sound the depths of gorges and build clever machines. Each day brings a new invention. What don't we think of! What can't we do! But there is something else, the most important thing of all, that we are missing. We do not know exactly what it is. We are like a small child who knows he does not feel well but cannot explain why. We are uneasy, because we know a lot of superfluous facts; but we do not know what is really important-ourselves.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 5 days ago
There's nothing like deduction. We've determined...

There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 6 days ago
Everything is a subject on which...

Everything is a subject on which there is not much to be said.

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Studies in Words (1960), ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 1 day ago
If all the parts….

If all the parts of the universe are interchained in a certain measure, any one phenomenon will not be the effect of a single cause, but the resultant of causes infinitely numerous; it is, one often says, the consequence of the state of the universe the moment before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
2 months ago
...shall we say that the difference...

...shall we say that the difference between a vegetarian and a cannibal is just a matter of taste?

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"The Idolatry of Politics", New Republic, 1986-June-16, page 31.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
There is always a best way...

There is always a best way of doing everything, if it be to boil an egg. Manners are the happy ways of doing things; each once a stroke of genius or of love, - now repeated and hardened into usage. They form at last a rich varnish, with which the routine of life is washed, and its details adorned.

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Behavior
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 4 weeks ago
[L]ife, individual or collective, personal or...

Life, individual or collective, personal or historic, is the one entity in the universe whose substance is compact of danger, of adventure. It is, in the strict sense of the word, drama. ... The primary, radical meaning of life appears when it is employed in the sense not of biology, but of biography. For the very strong reason that the whole of biology is quite definitely only a chapter in certain biographies, it is what biologists do in the portion of their lives open to biography.

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Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 2 weeks ago
Knighthood, instead, appeared as a superterritorial...

Knighthood, instead, appeared as a superterritorial and supernational community in which its members, who were consecrated to military priesthood, no longer had a homeland and thus were bound by faithfulness not to people but, on the one hand, to an ethics that had as its fundamental values honor, truth, courage, and loyalty and, on the other hand, to a spiritual authority of a universal type, which was essentially that of the Empire.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 6 days ago
If there is equality, it is...

If there is equality, it is in His love, not in us.

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Philosophical Maxims
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