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John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 6 days ago
In all sectors of society there...

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.

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Chapter II, Section 12, pg. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 weeks ago
By protracting life…

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

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Book III, lines 1087-1088 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
What strength belongs to every plant...

What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 6 days ago
The most dangerous thing you can...

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity", and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

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Book I, Chapter 2, "Some Objections"
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
There's only one corner of the...

There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 days ago
The young are really the heirs...

The young are really the heirs to a generation of incompetence.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
First, you know, a new theory...

First, you know, a new theory is attacked as absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen to be so important that its adversaries claim that they themselves discovered it.

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 5 days ago
There is nothing so eternally adhesive...

There is nothing so eternally adhesive as the memory of power.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 1 week ago
Visions are a feeble resource, you...

Visions are a feeble resource, you will say, against great adversity! Oh Sir, these visions may possibly have more reality than all those apparent goods about which men make so much ado, for they never bring a true feeling of happiness to the soul, and those who possess them are equally forced to project themselves into the future for want of finding enjoyments that satisfy them, in the present.

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Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 week 3 days ago
We will never know if an...

We will never know if an advertisement or opinion poll has had a real influence on individual or collective wills, but we will never know either what would have happened if there had been no opinion poll or advertisement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
To require that a so-called layman...

To require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 94-95
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
I have distinctly announced the grounds...

I have distinctly announced the grounds upon which I regard the Apostle John as the only teacher of true Christianity:-namely, that the Apostle Paul and his party, as the authors of the opposite system of Christianity, remained half Jews, and left unaltered the fundamental error of Judaism as well as of Heathenism, which we must afterwards notice. For the present the following may be enough: -It is only with John that the philosopher can deal, for he alone has respect for Reason, and appeals to that evidence which alone has weight with the philosopher-the internal. "If any man will do the will of him that sent me, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God." But this Will of God, accord ing to John, is, that we should truly believe in God, and in Jesus Christ whom he hath sent. The other promulgators of Christianity, however, rely upon the external evidence of Miracle, which, to us at least, proves nothing.

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P. 96-97
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
One may discover the root of...

One may discover the root of a Hindoo religion in his own private history, when, in the silent intervals of the day or night, he does sometimes inflict on himself like austerities with a stern satisfaction.

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Snakes in the Ganga, 2022
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
In anger…

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 23-24, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 370
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 3 days ago
The human being is not the...

The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being.

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Letter on Humanism
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
A third illusion haunts us, that...

A third illusion haunts us, that a long duration, as a year, a decade, a century, is valuable. But an old French sentence says, "God works in moments," - "En peu d'heure Dieu labeure." We ask for long life, but 't is deep life, or grand moments, that signify. Let the measure of time be spiritual, not mechanical. Life is unnecessarily long. Moments of insight, of fine personal relation, a smile, a glance, - what ample borrowers of eternity they are! Life culminates and concentrates; and Homer said, "The Gods ever give to mortals their appointed share of reason only on one day."

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Works and Days
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 5 days ago
All exercise of authority perverts, and...

All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates.

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As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937), E.H. Carr, p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
Psychoanalysis will be entirely discredited one...

Psychoanalysis will be entirely discredited one of these days, no doubt about it. Which will not keep it from destroying our last vestiges of naivete. After psychoanalysis, we can never again be innocent.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 5 days ago
Well, it was healthy to miss...

Well, it was healthy to miss once in a while. It kept self-confidence balanced at a point safely short of arrogance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
Only the idiot is equipped to...

Only the idiot is equipped to breathe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 day ago
Is it not the interest of...

Is it not the interest of the human race, that every one should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour?

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Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America (1841) 17th of "20 Questions to the Human Race"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
The cup of life is not...

The cup of life is not so shallow

That we have drained the best 

That all the wine at once we swallow 

And lees make all the rest.

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1827
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 1 week ago
To oppose the torrent of scholastic...

To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble maxims as these, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that the whole is greater than a part, that two and three make five; is pretending to stop the ocean with a bullrush. Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires, which were kindled for heretics, will serve also for the destruction of philosophers.

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Part XI - With regard to reason or absurdity
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
A man fits out a ship...

A man fits out a ship at a great expense and sends it to the West Indies with a crew of men and boys, and after six months or a year, it comes back with a load of pine-apples; now, if no more gets accomplished than the speculator commonly aims at, if it simply turns out what is called a successful venture, I am less interested in this expedition than in some child's first excursions a-huckleberrying, in which it is introduced into a new world, experiences a new development, though it brings home only a gill of berries in its basket.

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Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
1 month 3 weeks ago
Do not let habit, born from...

Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much contested proof which I have spoken.

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Frag. B 7.3-8.1, quoted by Sextus Empiricus, Against the Mathematicians, vii. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 weeks 3 days ago
Only the feeble resign themselves to...

Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 month 1 week ago
The revolutionary government is the despotism...

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 1 week ago
The education of the child must...

The education of the child must accord both in mode and arrangement with the education of mankind, considered historically. In other words, the genesis of knowledge in the individual, must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race. In strictness, this principle may be considered as already expressed by implication; since both being processes of evolution, must conform to those same general laws of evolution... and must therefore agree with each other. Nevertheless this particular parallelism is of value for the specific guidance it affords. To M. Comte we believe society owes the enunciation of it; and we may accept this item of his philosophy without at all committing ourselves to the rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
Like rowers, who advance backward. Book...

Like rowers, who advance backward.

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Book III, Ch. 1. Of Profit and Honesty
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
I seem to myself, among civilised...

I seem to myself, among civilised men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month 4 weeks ago
The resolute one who moved by...

The resolute one who moved by the principles of Thy FaithExtends the prosperity of order to his neighbors And works the land the evil now hold desolate, Earns through Righteousness, the Blessed Recompense Thy Good Mind has promised in Thy Kingdom of Heaven.

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Spenta Mainyu Gatha; Yasna 50, 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing is ever gotten….

Nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power.

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Book I, line 150 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 days ago
The patient typically finds himself impelled...

The patient typically finds himself impelled by some deep, inner conviction that something is true, or right, or virtuous: a conviction that doesn't seem to owe anything to evidence or reason, but which, nevertheless, he feels as totally compelling and convincing. We doctors refer to such a belief as "faith".

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 3 weeks ago
He is a fool who lets...

He is a fool who lets slip a bird in the hand for a bird in the bush.

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Of Garrulity (Tr. Goodwin)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 3 weeks ago
The way of Heaven and Earth...

The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
Life consists with wildness. The most...

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 weeks 6 days ago
Christianity is most admirably adapted to...

Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day.... The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Among the celestial...
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St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
If there is something more excellent...

If there is something more excellent than the truth, then that is God; if not, then truth itself is God.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Freedom is only necessity understood. The...

Freedom is only necessity understood.

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The Dilemma of Determinism, 1884
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 3 weeks ago
In the weightiest matters we must...

In the weightiest matters we must go to school to the animals, and learn spinning and weaving from the spider, building from the swallow, singing from the birds,-from the swan and the nightingale, imitating their art.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 1 week ago
The French are ... the most...

The French are ... the most brilliant and the most dangerous nation of Europe, and the one that is surest to inspire admiration, hatred, terror, or pity, but never indifference.

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p. 245
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
How can great minds be produced...

How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?

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As quoted in Egoists: A Book of Supermen (1909) by James Huneker, p. 367
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Leave this hypocritical prating about the...

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 weeks ago
The State is always, whatever be...

The State is always, whatever be its form - primitive, ancient, medieval, modern - an invitation issued by one group of men to other human groups to carry out some enterprise in common. That enterprise, be its intermediate processes what they may, consists in the long run in the organisation of a certain type of common life. ... [As Renan says,] "To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to wish to do greater; these are the essential conditions which make up a people.... In the past, an inheritance of glories and regrets; in the future, one and the same programme to carry out.... The existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite."

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Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
The concept of space is not...

The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week ago
The whole plan of our order...

The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of conviction-aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice.

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Book VI, Chapter VII
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 weeks 1 day ago
All the cases in which means...

All the cases in which means and ends are external to one another are non-esthetic.

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p. 205
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 days ago
The audience, as ground, shapes and...

The audience, as ground, shapes and controls the work of art.

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p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Character is destiny....

Character is destiny.

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Philosophical Maxims
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