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Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
Money is not required to buy...

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

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p. 370
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 2 weeks ago
Throwing away the veils

In the more sophisticated versions of the critics of ideology - that developed by the Frankfurt School, for example - it is not just a question of seeing things (that is, social reality) as they 'really are," of throwing away the distorting spectacles of ideology; the main point is to see how the reality itself cannot reproduce itself without this so-called ideological mystification. The mask is not simply hiding the real state of things; the ideological distortion is written into its very essence... the moment we see it 'as it really is,' this being dissolves itself into nothingness or, more precisely, it changes into another kind of reality. That is why we must avoid simple metaphors of demasking, of throwing away the veils which are supposed to hide the naked reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
It should be noted that children...

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. Variants: It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions. For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

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Book I, Ch. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
Anxiety - or the fanaticism of...

Anxiety - or the fanaticism of the worst.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
On est ce qu'on veut. A...

On est ce qu'on veut. A man is what he wills himself to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 1 day ago
Power as is really divided, and...

Power as is really divided, and as dangerously to all purposes, by sharing with another an Indirect Power, as a Direct one.

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The Third Part, Chapter 42, p. 315
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 3 days ago
In the old system, the body...

In the old system, the body of the condemned man became the king's property, on which the sovereign left his mark and brought down the effects of his power. Now he will be rather the property of society, the object of a collective and useful appropriation.

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Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 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
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
1 month ago
Everyone knows what made Berkeley notorious....

Everyone knows what made Berkeley notorious. He said that there were no material objects. He said the external world was in some sense immaterial, that nothing existed save ideas - ideas and their authors. His contemporaries thought him very ingenious and a little mad.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
It is very important to note...

It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe...

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Voltaire, Fragments historiques sur l'Inde. Quoted in Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
That chastity of honour which felt...

That chastity of honour which felt a stain like a wound.

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Volume iii, p. 332
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 1 day ago
Feelings, the most diverse…

Feelings, the most diverse, very strong and very weak, very significant and very worthless, very bad and very good, if only they infect the reader, the spectator, the listener, constitute the subject of art.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
Since it cannot be overlooked by...

Since it cannot be overlooked by the Doctrine of Knowledge that Actual Knowledge does by no means present itself as a Unity, such as is assumed above but as a multiplicity, there is consequently a second task imposed upon it, - that of setting forth the ground of this apparent Multiplicity. It is of course understood that this ground is not to be derived from any outward source, but must be shown to be contained in the essential Nature of Knowledge itself as such; - and that therefore this problem, although apparently two-fold, is yet but one and the same, - namely, to set forth the essential Nature of Knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
4 weeks 1 day ago
The precepts "Love your enemies, do...

The precepts "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you" ... are born from the Gospel's profound spirit of individualism, which refuses to let one's own actions and conduct depend in any way on somebody else's acts. The Christian refuses to let his acts be mere reactions-such conduct would lower him to the level of his enemy. The act is to grow organically from the person, "as the fruit from the tree." ... What the Gospel demands is not a reaction which is the reverse of the natural reaction, as if it said: "Because he strikes you on the cheek, tend the other"-but a rejection of all reactive activity, of any participation in common and average ways of acting and standards of judgment.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 99-100
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Pacifists ought to enter more deeply...

Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponents. ... So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the utopias they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
Only a very bad theologian would...

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

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Apology for the Abbé de Prades
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 3 days ago
I focus on popular culture because...

I focus on popular culture because I focus on those areas where black humanity is most powerfully expressed, where black people have been able to articulate their sense of the world in a profound manner. And I see this primarily in popular culture. Why not in highbrow culture? Because the access has been so difficult. Why not in more academic forms? Because academic exclusion has been the rule for so long for large numbers of black people that black culture, for me, becomes a search for where black people have left their imprint and fundamentally made a difference in terms of how certain art forms are understood. This is currently in popular culture. And it has been primarily in music, religion, visual arts and fashion.

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"Cornel West interviewed by bell hooks" in Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
What is commonly called friendship even...

What is commonly called friendship even is only a little more honor among rogues.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 3 weeks ago
Being about to pitch his camp...

Being about to pitch his camp in a likely place, and hearing there was no hay to be had for the cattle, "What a life," said he, "is ours, since we must live according to the convenience of asses!"

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37 Philip
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
The believers in the non-natural character...

The believers in the non-natural character of sudden conversion have had practically to admit that there is no unmistakable class-mark distinctive of all true converts. The super-normal incidents, such as voices and visions and overpowering impressions of the meaning of suddenly presented scripture texts, the melting emotions and tumultuous affections connected with the crisis of change, may all come by way of nature, or worse still, be counterfeited by Satan. The real witness of the spirit to the second birth is to be found only in the disposition of the genuine child of God, the permanently patient heart, the love of self eradicated. And this, it has to be admitted, is also found in those who pass no crisis, and may even be found outside of Christianity altogether.

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Lecture X, "Conversion, concluded"
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 weeks 1 day ago
Not all women, in fact, very...

Not all women, in fact, very few, have had the good fortune to live and work among women and men actively involved in the feminist movement. Many of us live in circumstances and environments where we must engage in feminist struggle alone, with only occasional support and affirmation.

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Acknowledgments.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 weeks 4 days ago
Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by...

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

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L 44
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 6 days ago
An atom blaster is a good...

An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month 4 weeks ago
Commit no slander; so that infamy...

Commit no slander; so that infamy and wickedness may not happen unto thee.

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(p. 59)
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 6 days ago
We are near awakening when we...

We are near awakening when we dream that we dream.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 month 1 week ago
Death is the most blessed dream....

Death is the most blessed dream.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 3 days ago
Deconstruction never had meaning or interest...

Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.

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Specters of Marx. Routledge, 1994. p. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 3 weeks ago
The greatness of the human being...

The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe.

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q. 1, art. 2, ad 4
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
I dream of a language whose...

I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
They ask you for facts, proofs,...

They ask you for facts, proofs, works, and all you can show them are transformed tears.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
But what is liberty without wisdom,...

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
I will first discuss images according...

I will first discuss images according to the Law of Moses, and then according to the gospel. And I say at the outset that according to the Law of Moses no other images are forbidden than an image of God which one worships. A crucifix, on the other hand, or any other holy image is not forbidden. Heigh now! you breakers of images, I defy you to prove the opposite!

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pp. 85-86
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Our age is retrospective. It builds...

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 1 day ago
Armies are necessary, before all things,...

Armies are necessary, before all things, for the defense of governments from their own oppressed and enslaved subjects.

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Chapter VII, Significance of Compulsory Service
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is requisite to choose the...

It is requisite to choose the most excellent life; for custom will make it pleasant. Wealth is an infirm anchor, glory is still more infirm; and in a similar manner, the body, dominion, and honour. For all these are imbecile and powerless. What then are powerful anchors. Prudence, magnanimity, fortitude. These no tempest can shake. This is the Law of God, that virtue is the only thing that is strong; and that every thing else is a trifle.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 3 weeks ago
No thing great is created suddenly,...

No thing great is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

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Book I, ch. 15, 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
Let me suggest a theme for...

Let me suggest a theme for you: to state to yourself precisely and completely what that walk over the mountains amounted to for you, - returning to this essay again and again, until you are satisfied that all that was important in your experience is in it. Give this good reason to yourself for having gone over the mountains, for mankind is ever going over a mountain. Don't suppose that you can tell it precisely the first dozen times you try, but at 'em again, especially when, after a sufficient pause, you suspect that you are touching the heart or summit of the matter, reiterate your blows there, and account for the mountain to yourself. Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.

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Letter to Harrison Blake, November 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
I have never yet seen any...

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
1 month 4 weeks ago
To resist him that is set...

To resist him that is set in authority is evil. .

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Maxim no. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
The voice in my soul in...

The voice in my soul in which I will have faith, and for the sake of which I have faith in all else, does not merely command me generally to act, but in every particular situation it declares what I shall do and what leave undone; it accompanies me through every event of my life, and it is impossible for me to contend against it. To listen to it and obey it honestly and impartially, without fear or equivocation, is the business of my existence. My life is no longer an empty I play without truth or significance. It is appointed that what I conscience ordains me shall be done, and for this purpose am I here. I have understanding to know, and power to execute it. By conscience alone comes truth and reality into my representations.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 77
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
As image and apprehension are in...

As image and apprehension are in an organic unity, so, for a Christian, are human body and human soul.

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"Priestesses in the Church?" (1948), p. 237
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
By convention sweet is sweet...
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Main Content / General
Plato
Plato
3 months 6 days ago
I think the most likely...

Socrates: I think the most likely view is, that these ideas exist in nature as patterns, and the other things resemble them and are imitations of them; their participation in ideas is assimilation to them, that and nothing else.Parmenides: It is impossible that anything be like the idea, or the idea like anything; for if they are alike, some further idea, in addition to the first, will always appear, and if that is like anything, still another, and a new idea will always be arising, if the idea is like that which partakes of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 weeks 3 days ago
All the world's not a stage....

All the world's not a stage.

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E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 94
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 days ago
So long as we love we...

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

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"Lay Morals" Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911).
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 days ago
One of the most difficult of...

One of the most difficult of the philosopher's tasks is to find out where the shoe pinches.

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p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 weeks 3 days ago
We will likely also find that...

We will likely also find that the nature of the problem to be solved will be a principal determinant of the mix. With our growing understanding of the organization of judgmental and intuitive processes, of the specific knowledge that of the specific knowledge that is required to perform particular judgmental tasks, and of the cues that evoke such knowledge in situations in which it is relevant, we have a powerful new tool for improving expert judgment. We can specify the knowledge and the recognition capabilities that experts in a domain need to acquire, and use these specifications for designing appropriate learning procedures.

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p. 137.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 6 days ago
It appears to me impossible that...

It appears to me impossible that I should cease to exist, or that this active, restless spirit, equally alive to joy and sorrow, should only be organised dust - ready to fly abroad the moment the spring snaps, or the spark goes out which kept it together. Surely something resides in this heart that is not perishable, and life is more than a dream.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 6 days ago
It would be an endless task...

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 5 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
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