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Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 6 days ago
Reason has never really directed social...

Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.

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p. 9.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 1 week ago
Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind...

Women becoming, consequently weaker, in mind and body, than they ought to be...have not sufficient strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to lasciviousness the parental affection...either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast if off when born. Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her laws seldom violate them with impunity.

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Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 6 days ago
Let the superior man never fail...

Let the superior man never fail reverentially to order his own conduct, and let him be respectful to others and observant of propriety: then all within the four seas, all men are brothers. What has the superior man to do with being distressed because he has no brothers?

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
5 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
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
In order to abolish the idea...

In order to abolish the idea of private property, the idea of communism is completely sufficient. It takes actual communist action to abolish actual private property. History will com to it; and this movement, which in theory we already know to be a self-transcending movement, will constitute in actual fact a very severe and protracted process. But we must regard it as a real advance to have gained beforehand a consciousness of the limited character a well as of the goal of this historical movement - and a consciousness which reaches out beyond it.

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p. 99, The Marx-Engels Reader
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 4 weeks ago
To-day is the parent of to-morrow....

To-day is the parent of to-morrow. The present casts its shadow far into the future. That is the law of life, individual and social. Revolution that divests itself of ethical values thereby lays the foundation of injustice, deceit, and oppression for the future society. The means used to prepare the future become its cornerstone.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 6 days ago
When some one reminded him that...

When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
A young man who wishes to...

A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere... God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

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p. 191
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 2 days ago
With all these blessings, what more...

With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens,-A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 1 week ago
Liberalism - it is well to...

Liberalism - it is well to recall this today-is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak. It was incredible that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined, so acrobatic, so anti-natural. Hence, it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should soon appear anxious to get rid of it. It is a discipline too difficult and complex to take firm root on earth.

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Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
3 weeks 4 days ago
In the same manner therefore as...

In the same manner therefore as we have laid it down that the Sun holds the supremacy in the Intelligible world, having round about his own being, in one species, a vast multitude of gods (supposing him to have the same in the Sensible world), all of which move along their everlasting and most felicitous course in a circle, so do we prove him to be Leader and Lord, imparting to and filling the whole heaven, as he does, with his own splendour, likewise with infinite other blessings that be invisible to us: whilst the benefits commenced by the other deities are brought to perfection by him; nay, more, before this, these gods themselves were rendered perfect through his spontaneous and divine operation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 week ago
What is important...

What is important is that sex was not only a question of sensation and pleasure, of law and interdiction, but also of the true and the false.

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Vol. I, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 1 week ago
My dear Kepler, what would you...

My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?

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Letter to Johannes Kepler (1610), as quoted in The Crime of Galileo (1955) by Giorgio De Santillana
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Every book is a quotation...

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
3 months 1 week ago
A word is a bud attempting...

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

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Introduction, sect. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
"Detect quacks"? Yes do, for Heaven's...

"Detect quacks"? Yes do, for Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as "detect"? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, and "detects" in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Cut not fire with a sword....

Cut not fire with a sword. Symbol 9 Variant translation: Poke not the fire with a sword.

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As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes‎ (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 455
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 weeks ago
I thanke God for my happy...

I thanke God for my happy Dreams|dreames, as I doe for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happinesse; and surely it is not a melancholy conceite to thinke we are all asleepe in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as meare dreames to those of the next, as the Phantasmes of the night, to the conceit of the day. There is an equall delusion in both, and the one doth but seeme to bee the embleme or picture of the other;

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Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
[W]hen the ricochets of atomic billiards...

[W]hen the ricochets of atomic billiards chance to put together an object that has a certain, seemingly innocent property, something momentous happens in the universe. That property is an ability to self-replicate; that is, the object is able to use the surrounding materials to make exact copies of itself, including replicas of such minor flaws in copying as may occasionally arise. What will follow from this singular occurrence, anywhere in the universe, is Darwinian selection and hence the baroque extravaganza that, on this planet, we call life. Never were so many facts explained by so few assumptions. Not only does the Darwinian theory command superabundant power to explain. Its economy in doing so has a sinewy elegance, a poetic beauty that outclasses even the most haunting of the world's origin myths. Preface

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 1 week ago
The invasion... exhibits in stark terms,...

The invasion... exhibits in stark terms, the choice that is before us today between maintaining a liberal government that respects the rights of individuals, or moving over to a form of centralized illiberal dictatorship, even if that... illiberal government is somehow democratically legitimated. ...That's the central issue in global politics today. ...That's basically what the... Ukraine invasion is about, and that's why... all liberal societies that care about those individual freedoms... have a very powerful interest in the outcome of that war, because Putin and Russia are at the center of an international network of illiberal forces that are seeking to overturn liberal values in virtually every part of the world, and therefore... that's all part of a larger global struggle over our fundamental liberal values.

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26:50 Question & Answer period follows
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 weeks 2 days ago
Alas for him who seeks salvation...

Alas for him who seeks salvation in good only!Balanced on God's strong shoulders, Good and Evil flaptogether like two mighty wings and lift him high.

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Odysseus, Book VIII, line 770
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 1 week ago
Philosophy will not be able to...

Philosophy will not be able to bring about a direct change of the present state of the world. This is true not only of philosophy but of all merely human meditations and endeavors. Only a god can still save us. I think the only possibility of salvation left to us is to prepare readiness, through thinking and poetry, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god during the decline; so that we do not, simply put, die meaningless deaths, but that when we decline, we decline in the face of the absent god.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 2 weeks ago
I do not know what I...

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

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Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27).
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 1 week ago
People will do anything, no matter...

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world-all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls. Thus the soul has gradually been turned into a Nazareth from which nothing good can come.

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CW 12, par. 126 (p 99)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
The virtue of frugality lies in...

The virtue of frugality lies in a middle between avarice and profusion, of which the one consists in an excess, the other in a defect of the proper attention to the objects of self-interest.

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Section II, Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 2 weeks ago
The power of the people and...

The power of the people and the power of reason are one.

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Act III.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
I have no doubt that the...

I have no doubt that the present Prime Minister, for instance, is a most sincere Christian, but I should not advise any of you to go and smite him on one cheek. I think you might find that he thought this text was intended in a figurative sense.

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"The Character of Christ"
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 2 weeks ago
The circumstances of justice may be...

The circumstances of justice may be described as the normal conditions under which human cooperation is both possible and necessary.

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Chapter III, Section 22, pg. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months ago
Education is the acquisition of the...

Education is the acquisition of the art of the utilisation of knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 2 weeks ago
We certainly must contend by every...

We certainly must contend by every argument against him who does away with knowledge or reason or mind and then makes any dogmatic assertion about anything. The philosopher, who pays the highest honor to these things, must necessarily, as it seems, because of them refuse to accept the theory of those who say the universe is at rest, whether as a unity or in many forms, and must also refuse utterly to listen to those who say that being is universal motion; he must say that being and the universe consist of both.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
People are scarcely aware that it...

People are scarcely aware that it is a slavery they are creating; they forget this in their zeal to make people free by overthrowing dominions. They are scarcely aware that it is slavery; how could it be possible to be a slave in relation to equals?

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 2 weeks ago
That immense framework and planking of...
That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.
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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong,...

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is unjust that the whole...

It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.

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Chapter I, Part IV, Conclusion, p. 881.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
I have changed my mind about...

I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
A witty saying…

A witty saying proves nothing.

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Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Deuxième Entretien
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 5 days ago
A prudent man, in order to...

A prudent man, in order to secure his tranquility, will consult his natural disposition in the choice of his plan of life. If, for example, he be persuaded that he should be happier in a state of marriage than in celibacy, he ought to marry; but if he be convinced that matrimony would be an impediment to his happiness, he ought to remain single.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 2 weeks ago
Be kind. Don't kill for any...

Be kind. Don't kill for any reason. Don't even kill out of self-defense. Really - I mean that. Don't take any more than you need of anything. Help others.

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From a speech given on 20 January 1969 at the University of Michigan, about two months before Slaughterhouse Five was published
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 6 days ago
Everything is in a state of...

Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

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Meditations. ix. 19.
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
2 months 3 weeks ago
From any vocabulary of ideas we...

From any vocabulary of ideas we can build other ideas by formal combinations of signs. But not any set of ideas will be instructive. One must have the right ideas.

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Chapter 15, Inductive Logic, p. 139.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
The government of an exclusive company...

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

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Chapter VII, Part Second, p. 619.
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 2 weeks ago
Someday, someday, this crazy world will...

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God, Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
As I take up my pen...

As I take up my pen I feel myself so full, so equal to my subject, and see my book so clearly before me in embryo, I would almost like to try to say it all in a single word.

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E 52
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Paradox is the technique for seizing...

Paradox is the technique for seizing the conflicting aspects of any problem. Paradox coalesces or telescopes various facets of a complex process in a single instant.

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(p. 106)
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
3 months 6 days ago
When we cannot obtain a thing,...

When we cannot obtain a thing, we comfort ourselves with the reassuring thought that it is not worth nearly as much as we believed.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
6 days ago
Try and penetrate with our...

Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible concatenations, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in point of fact, religious.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 1 week ago
It is astounding that man, the...

It is astounding that man, the instigator, inventor and vehicle of all these developments, the originator of all judgements and decisions and the planner of the future, must make himself such a quantité negligeable.

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p 45
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 1 week ago
Operational analysis ... cannot raise the...

Operational analysis ... cannot raise the decisive question whether the consent itself was not the work of manipulation-a question for which the actual state of affairs provides ample justification. The analysis cannot raise it because it would transcend its terms toward transitive meaning-toward a concept of democracy which would reveal the democratic election as a rather limited democratic process. Precisely such a non-operational concept is the one rejected by the authors as "unrealistic" because it defines democracy on too articulate a level as the clear-cut control of representation by the electorate-popular control as popular sovereignty.

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p. 116
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 5 days ago
Practice no sloth...
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Main Content / General
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
Before one blames, one should always...

Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.

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K 39 Variant translation: Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
Philosophical Maxims
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