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Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 2 weeks ago
When one rational being affects another...

When one rational being affects another rational being as mere matter, then the lower sense of that being is also affected, it is true, and is so affected necessarily and altogether independently of the freedom of that being, (as the lower sense is indeed always affected;) but it is not to be assumed that this affection was in the intention of the person who produced it. His intention was merely to attain his purpose, to express his conception in matter, and he never took into consideration whether that matter would feel it or not. Hence, the reciprocal influence of rational beings upon each other, as such, always occurs by means of the higher sense; for only the higher sense is one which cannot be affected without having been presupposed. Our criterion of this reciprocal influence remains, therefore, correct.

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P. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
The most elementary form of rebellion,...

The most elementary form of rebellion, paradoxically, expresses an aspiration for order.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
One recognizes one's course by discovering...

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months ago
You cannot think without abstractions; accordingly,...

You cannot think without abstractions; accordingly, it is of the utmost importance to be vigilant in critically revising your modes of abstraction. It is here that philosophy finds its niche as essential to the healthy progress of society. It is the critic of abstractions. A civilisation which cannot burst through its current abstractions is doomed to sterility.

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Ch. 4: "The Eighteenth Century", pp. 82-83
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
1 month 4 weeks ago
There is no getting around authority...

There is no getting around authority and power, and no getting around the intellectual's relationship to them. How does the intellectual address authority: as a professional supplicant or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?

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p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 1 week ago
Korell is that frequent phenomenon in...

Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal, honor and court etiquette.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 5 days ago
The wise find pleasure in...

The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills. The wise are active; the virtuous are tranquil. The wise are joyful; the virtuous are long-lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 week 5 days ago
Ideals are imaginative understanding of that...

Ideals are imaginative understanding of that which is desirable in that which is possible.

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Ch. XII: "The Business of the Great Society", §9, p. 259
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
I deny that anyone knows, or...

I deny that anyone knows, or can know, the nature of the two sexes, as long as they have only been seen in their present relation to one another. If men had ever been found in society without women, or women without men, or if there had been a society of men and women in which the women were not under the control of the men, something might have been positively known about the mental and moral differences which may be inherent in the nature of each. What is now called the nature of women is an eminently artificial thing - the result of forced repression in some directions, unnatural stimulation in others.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
In our science and philosophy, even,...

In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 3 weeks ago
The sun, which passeth through pollutions...

The sun, which passeth through pollutions and itself remains as pure as before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 1 day ago
The method of scientific investigation is...

The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind.

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Our Knowledge of the Causes of the Phenomena of Organic Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Things added to things, as statistics,...

Things added to things, as statistics, civil history, are inventories. Things used as language are inexhaustibly attractive.

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Plato; or, The Philosopher
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 1 week ago
All a writer has to do...

All a writer has to do to get a woman is to say he's a writer. It's an aphrodisiac.

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As quoted in "Dailer's Choice" by Harriet Van Horne, in New York Magazine Vol. 10, No. 13 (28 March 1977), p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 weeks 3 days ago
Getting rid of predation isn't a...

Getting rid of predation isn't a matter of moralising. A python who kills a small human child isn't morally blameworthy. Nor is a lion who hunts and kills a terrified zebra. In both cases, the victim suffers horribly. But the predator lacks the empathetic and mind-reading skills needed to understand the implications of what s/he is doing. Some humans still display a similar deficit. From the perspective of the victim, the moral status or (lack of) guilty intent of a human or nonhuman predator is irrelevant. Either way, to stand by and watch the snake asphyxiate a child would be almost as morally abhorrent as to kill the child yourself. So why turn this principle on its head with beings of comparable sentience to human infants and toddlers? With power comes complicity.

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"The Radical Plan to Phase out Earth's Predatory Species", io9, 30 Jul. 2014
Philosophical Maxims
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
3 months 5 days ago
The sun provides the moon with...

The sun provides the moon with its brightness.

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Fragment in Plutarch De facie in orbe lunae, 929b, as quoted in The Riverside Dictionary of Biography (2005), p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 5 days ago
Lifetime is a child at play,...

Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is not as a child...

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

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As quoted in Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane (1950) by Harold Victor Martin.
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
1 month 3 weeks ago
We favor hypotheses for their simplicity...

We favor hypotheses for their simplicity and explanatory power, much as the architect of the world might have done in choosing which possibility to create.

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Chapter 15, Inductive Logic, p. 142.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
Aristotle's view that philosophy begins with...

Aristotle's view that philosophy begins with wonder, not as in our day with doubt, is a positive point of departure for philosophy. Indeed, the world will no doubt learn that it does not do to begin with the negative, and the reason for success up to the present is that philosophers have never quite surrendered to the negative and thus have never earnestly done what they have said. They merely flirt with doubt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 5 days ago
Force without wisdom…

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 weeks ago
For the trouble with lying and...

For the trouble with lying and deceiving is that their efficiency depends entirely upon a clear notion of the truth that the liar and deceiver wishes to hide. In this sense, truth, even if it does not prevail in public, possesses an ineradicable primacy over all falsehoods.

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"Lying in Politics"
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
Peace is more important than all...

Peace is more important than all justice; and peace was not made for the sake of justice, but justice for the sake of peace.

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On Marriage
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
So it is that after each...

So it is that after each night, facing a new day, the impossible necessity of dealing with it fills us with dread; exiled in light as if the world had just started, inventing the sun, we flee from tears-just one of which would be enough to wash us out of time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
I think of death only with...

I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
When you know quite absolutely that...

When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
All honour to those who can...

All honour to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may be an inspiriting proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an example of what they should.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 6 days ago
No human acquisition is stable. Even...

No human acquisition is stable. Even what appears to us most completely won and consolidated can disappear in a few generations. This thing we call "civilization" - all these physical and moral comforts, all these conveniences, all these shelters, all these virtues and disciplines which have become habit now, on which we count, and which in effect constitute a repertory or system of securities which man made for himself like a raft in the initial shipwreck which living always is - all these securities are insecure securities which in the twinkling of an eye, at the least carelessness, escape from man's hands and vanish like phantoms.

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p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nature has willed that man should,...

Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.

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Third Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 day ago
It is no advantage to be...

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

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p. 607
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I...

"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I made you so little happy as that?"

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Orual
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and...

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!

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Vol. I, Ch. 24, Section 3, pg. 652.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 4 weeks ago
Man is as much a slave...

Man is as much a slave to his immediate surroundings now as he was when he lived in tree-huts. Give him the highest, the most exciting thoughts about man's place in the universe, the meaning of history; they can all be snuffed out in a moment if he wants his dinner, or feels irritated by a child squalling on a bus. He is bound by pettiness.

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Chapter Two, World Without Values
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
As if there could be true...

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am much more open about...

I am much more open about categories of gender, and my feminism has been about women's safety from violence, increased literacy, decreased poverty and more equality. I was never against the category of men. "As a Jew, I was taught it was ethically imperative to speak up" in Haaretz.

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24-Feb-10
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Solvency is maintained by means of...

Solvency is maintained by means of the national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"

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Ability
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 2 weeks ago
Lying... is so ill a quality,...

Lying... is so ill a quality, and the mother of so many ill ones that spawn from it, and take shelter under it, that a child should be brought up in the greatest abhorrence of it imaginable. It should be always spoke of before him with the utmost detestation, as a quality so wholly inconsistent with the name and character of a gentleman, that no body of any credit can bear the imputation of a lie; a mark that is judg'd in utmost disgrace, which debases a man to the lowest degree of a shameful meanness, and ranks him with the most contemptible part of mankind and the abhorred rascality; and is not to be endured in any one who would converse with people of condition, or have any esteem or reputation in the world.

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Sec. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 4 weeks ago
The reason that people take selfies...

The reason that people take selfies is not narcissism. Rather, it is inner emptiness. There is no meaning to stabilize the ego. Faced with its inner emptiness, the ego constantly produces itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 2 weeks ago
What most astonishes me in the...

What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

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Book Two, Chapter XIX.
Philosophical Maxims
Chrysippus
Chrysippus
3 months 5 days ago
He who is running a race...

He who is running a race ought to endeavor and strive to the utmost of his ability to come off victor; but it is utterly wrong for him to trip up his competitor, or to push him aside. So in life it is not unfair for one to seek for himself what may accrue to his benefit; but it is not right to take it from another.

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As quoted in De Officiis by Cicero, iii. 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
1 month 4 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
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 week 3 days ago
The polarization has a number of...

The polarization has a number of different roots. The economic... fact that many working class voters have been left behind by the prosperity of globalization. ...The more important division is a cultural one ...the feeling on the part of many populist voters, that they are not being respected by the elites that are running the country... [H]ere, all of the identity issues... play themselves out.

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22:57
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Genius borrows nobly...

Genius borrows nobly. When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies: "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 5 days ago
Although the Law of Reason is...

Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of their own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
3 months 5 days ago
Plato had defined Man as an...

Plato had defined Man as an animal, biped and featherless, and was applauded. Diogenes plucked a fowl and brought it into the lecture-room with the words, "Behold Plato's man!"

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 2 weeks ago
Since men in their endeavors behave,...

Since men in their endeavors behave, on the whole, not just instinctively, like the brutes, nor yet like rational citizens of the world according to some agreed-on plan, no history of man conceived according to a plan seems to be possible, as it might be possible to have such a history of bees or beavers. One cannot suppress a certain indignation when one sees men's actions on the great world-stage and finds, beside the wisdom that appears here and there among individuals, everything in the large woven together from folly, childish vanity, even from childish malice and destructiveness. In the end, one does not know what to think of the human race, so conceited in its gifts.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
There has been a general trend...

There has been a general trend in recent times toward a Unitarian mythology and the worship of one God. This is the tendency which it is customary to regard as spiritual progress. On what grounds? Chiefly, so far as one can see, because we in the Twentieth Century West are officially the worshippers of a single divinity. A movement whose consummation is Us must be progressive. Quod erat demonstrandum.

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"One and Many," p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
Just now
You will thus understand that what...

You will thus understand that what you fear is either insignificant or short-lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
In most cases....
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Main Content / General
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 2 weeks ago
My theory is that all women...

My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside.

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On difficulties with women, as quoted in "Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84" by Dinitia Smith in The New York Times
Philosophical Maxims
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