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Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 4 weeks ago
Such night in England ne'er had...

Such night in England ne'er had been, nor ne'er again shall be.

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The Armada, l. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
It is wrong to think that...

It is wrong to think that belief in freedom always leads to victory; we must always be prepared for it to lead to defeat. If we choose freedom, then we must be prepared to perish along with it. Poland fought for freedom as no other country did. The Czech nation was prepared to fight for its freedom in 1938; it was not lack of courage that sealed its fate. The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 - the work of young people with nothing to lose but their chains - triumphed and then ended in failure. ... Democracy and freedom do not guarantee the millennium. No, we do not choose political freedom because it promises us this or that. We choose it because it makes possible the only dignified form of human coexistence, the only form in which we can be fully responsible for ourselves. Whether we realize its possibilities depends on all kinds of things - and above all on ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
1 month 1 week ago
Some anarchists have claimed not merely...

Some anarchists have claimed not merely that we would be better off without a state, but that any state necessarily violates people's moral rights and hence is intrinsically immoral. Our starting point then, though nonpolitical, is by intention far from nonmoral. Moral philosophy sets the background for, and boundaries of, political philosophy. What persons may and may not do to one another limits what they may do through the apparatus of a state, or do to establish such an apparatus.

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Ch. 1 : Why State of Nature Theory?; Political Philosophy, p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 4 days ago
The history of metaphysics, like the...

The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. It's matrix-If you will pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being elliptical in order to come more quickly to my principle theme-is the determination of Being as presence in all sense of this word.

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Structure, Sign and Play
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months ago
The endeavor of scientific research to...

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

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p. 150.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
One of the symptoms of approaching...

One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Concern should drive us into action...

Concern should drive us into action and not into a depression.

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The Collected Works of Karen Horney‎ (1957) by Karen Horney, p. 154: "We may feel genuinely concerned about world conditions, though such a concern should drive us into action and not into a depression."
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 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
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
5 days ago
Legislative reform and revolution are not...

Legislative reform and revolution are not different methods of historic development that can be picked out at the pleasure from the counter of history, just as one chooses hot or cold sausages. Legislative reform and revolution are different factors in the development of class society. They condition and complement each other, and are at the same time reciprocally exclusive, as are the north and south poles, the bourgeoisie and proletariat.

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Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
In its mad passion for power,...

In its mad passion for power, the Communist State even sought to strengthen and deepen the very ideas and conceptions which the Revolution had come to destroy. It supported and encouraged all the worst antisocial qualities and systematically destroyed the already awakened conception of the new revolutionary values.The sense of justice and equality, the love of liberty and of human brotherhood - these fundamentals of the real regeneration of society - the Communist State suppressed to the point of extermination. Man's instinctive sense of equity was branded as weak sentimentality; human dignity and liberty became a bourgeois superstition; the sanctity of life, which is the very essence of social reconstruction, was condemned as unrevolutionary, almost counter-revolutionary. This fearful perversion of fundamental values bore within itself the seed of destruction.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
...what the freedom is that I...

...what the freedom is that I love, and that to which I think all men intitled. It is not solitary, unconnected, individual, selfish Liberty. As if every Man was to regulate the whole of his Conduct by his own will. The Liberty I mean is social freedom. It is that state of things in which Liberty is secured by the equality of Restraint; A Constitution of things in which the liberty of no one Man, and no body of Men and no Number of men, can find Means to trespass on the liberty of any Person, or any description of Persons in the Society. This kind of liberty is indeed but another name for Justice, as ascertained by wise Laws, and secured by well-constructed institutions.

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Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 42
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 3 days ago
Where are these rational practices to...

Where are these rational practices to be taught and acquired? Not within the four walls of a bare building, in which formality predominates... But in the nursery, play-ground, fields, gardens, workshops, manufactures, museums and class-rooms. ...The facts collected from all these sources will be concentrated, explained, discussed, made obvious to all, and shown in their direct application to practice in all the business of life.

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3rd Part
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 1 week ago
The blindness of those who think...

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
This perversion of the ethical values...

This perversion of the ethical values soon crystallized into the all-dominating slogan of the Communist Party: THE END JUSTIFIES ALL MEANS. Similarly in the past the Inquisition and the Jesuits adopted this motto and subordinated to it all morality. It avenged itself upon the Jesuits as it did upon the Russian Revolution. In the wake of this slogan followed lying, deceit, hypocrisy and treachery, murder, open and secret. It should be of utmost interest to students of social psychology that two movements as widely separated in time and ideas as Jesuitism and Bolshevism reached exactly similar results in the evolution of the principle that the end justifies all means. The historic parallel, almost entirely ignored so far, contains a most important lesson for all coming revolutions and for the whole future of mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 5 days ago
We ourselves are the entities to...

We ourselves are the entities to be analyzed.

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Macquarrie & Robinson translation
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
If God has made us…

If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

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Notebooks, c.1735-c.1750
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 2 weeks ago
One must never…

One must never forget to look at the aim of a matter.

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Act III, scene xi
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
books are only what we want...

books are only what we want them to be; rather, what we read into them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
That Man is the product of...

That Man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins - all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
Literacy remains even now the base...

Literacy remains even now the base and model of all programs of industrial mechanization; but, at the same time, locks the minds and senses of its users in the mechanical and fragmentary matrix that is so necessary to the maintenance of mechanized society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 week ago
A thing, moderately good, is not...

A thing, moderately good, is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper, is always a virtue; but moderation in principle, is a species of vice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
The sensuous may be exceedingly distinct,...

The sensuous may be exceedingly distinct, while intellectual concepts are extremely confused. The former we observe in the prototype of sensuous knowledge geometry; the latter, in the organon of all intellectual concepts, metaphysics. It is evident how much toil the latter is expending to dispel the fogs of confusion darkening the common intellect, though not always with the happy success of the former science.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 4 days ago
How can one be late to...

How can one be late to the end of history? A question for today. It is serious because it obliges one to reflect again, as we have been doing since Hegel, on what happens and deserves the name of event, after history; it obliges one to wonder if the end of history is but the end of a certain concept of history.

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Injunctions of Marx
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 1 week ago
Idolatry is a more dangerous crime...

Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.

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Of Idolatry
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Ironclads and Maxim guns must be...

Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.

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Quoted in The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Vol. 209 (1909), p. 387
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
To teach him betimes to love...

To teach him betimes to love and be good-natur'd to others, is to lay early the true foundation of an honest man; all injustice generally springing from too great love of ourselves and too little of others.

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Sec. 139
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
Have you learned the alphabet of...

Have you learned the alphabet of heaven and can count three? Do you know the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? ... Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce thee mad.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
The war against war is going...

The war against war is going to be no holiday excursion or camping party. The military feelings are too deeply grounded to abdicate their place among our ideals until better substitutes are offered than the glory and shame that come to nations as well as to individuals from the ups and downs of politics and the vicissitudes of trade.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 2 weeks ago
If it is permissible to write...

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

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F 1
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 1 week ago
The true philosophical Act is annihilation...

The true philosophical Act is annihilation of self (Selbsttodtung); this is the real beginning of all Philosophy; all requisites for being a Disciple of Philosophy point hither. This Act alone corresponds to all the conditions and characteristics of transcendental conduct.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
All-powerful god, who am I but...

All-powerful god, who am I but the fear that I inspire in others?

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King Aegistheus to Jupiter, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
The public has yet to see...

The public has yet to see TV as TV. Broadcasters have no awareness of its potential. The movie people are just beginning to get a grasp on film.

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quoted in "Marshall McLuhan, Author, Dies; Declared 'Medium Is the Message'" by Alden Whitman, The New York Times, January 1, 1981
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 days ago
Speech and silence. We feel safer...

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
At the present stage in the...

At the present stage in the development of the art of war, there is only way of coping with them, and that is to keep out of war. In all the densely populated countries of Western Europe, it seems almost certain that, within a few days of the outbreak of war, panic will seize the surviving inhabitants of the capitals and the industrial areas, leading to anarchy, starvation, and paralysis of all warlike effort. The only sensible course, therefore, is to prevent war if possible, and to remain neutral if war occurs.

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Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935)
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 weeks 6 days ago
The psychotherapist ... tries to help...

The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
All who are not lunatics are...

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

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"The Science to Save Us from Science," The New York Times Magazine, 3/19/1950
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 5 days ago
All wars today tend to be...

All wars today tend to be netwars.

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55
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
For wherever violence is used, and...

For wherever violence is used, and injury done, though by hands appointed to administer Justice, it is still violence and injury, however colour'd with the Name, Pretences, or Forms of Law, the end whereof being to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, War is made upon the Sufferers, who having no appeal on Earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such Cases, an appeal to Heaven.

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Two Treatises of Government. The Second Treatise. Chapter 3: The State of War, §20 p. 281 books.google
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month ago
Certainly the Art of Writing is...

Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 5 days ago
A man will be imprisoned in...

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push it.

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p. 42e
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
Enough had been thought....
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Main Content / General
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 5 days ago
Philosophy is a battle….

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

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§ 109
Philosophical Maxims
L.P. Jacks
L.P. Jacks
6 days ago
Faith is nothing else than reason...

Faith is nothing else than reason grown courageous - reason raised to its highest power, expanded to its widest vision.

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"Religious Perplexities" (1922), his Hibbert Lecture.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
4 months 3 weeks ago
The highest perfection of human life...

The highest perfection of human life consists in the mind of man being detached from care, for the sake of God.

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III, 130, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
Another theme of the Wake that...

Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is "pastimes are past times". The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy.

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(p.99)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 5 days ago
Irons and the unbreathable air of...

Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 3 weeks ago
If we do not secure the...

If we do not secure the foundation, we cannot secure the edifice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
3 months 2 days ago
The open society...

The open society is one that is deemed in principle to embrace all humanity.

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Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
We are obviously heading for revolution-something...

We are obviously heading for revolution-something I have never once doubted since 1850. The first act will include a by no means gratifying rehash of the stupidities of '48-'49. However, that's how world history runs its course, and one has to take it as one finds it.

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Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (28 December 1862), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860-64 (2010), p. 437
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
2 months 3 weeks ago
Logic chases truth up the tree...

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

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Philosophy of Logic
Philosophical Maxims
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