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Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
6 months 4 weeks ago
At the end of Being and...

At the end of Being and Nothingness, ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure.

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Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 116
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
7 months 2 days ago
There is wishful thinking in Hell...

There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 3 days ago
The bitterest tragic element in life...

The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.

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"The Tragic", p. 217. From The Dial (April 1844) p. 515
Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
6 months 3 weeks ago
It's a royal privilege…

It is a royal privilege to do good and be ill spoken of.

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§ 3; quoted also by Marcus Aurelius, vii. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
5 months 1 week ago
Courage, garrulousness and the mob are...

Courage, garrulousness and the mob are on our side. What more do we want?

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E 32
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 4 days ago
An increase in the productivity of...

An increase in the productivity of labour means nothing more than that the same capital creates the same value with less labour, or that less labour creates the same product with more capital.

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Notebook IV, The Chapter on Capital, p. 308.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
6 months 1 week ago
No protracted war can fail to...

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
6 months 3 weeks ago
We appear to be faced with...

We appear to be faced with a general difficulty about psychophysical reduction. In other areas the process of reduction is a move in the direction of greater objectivity, toward a more accurate view of the real nature of things. ... The less it depends on a specifically human viewpoint, the more objective is our description. ...Experience itself, however, does not seem to fit the pattern. ... If the subjective character of experience is fully comprehensible only from one point of view, then any shift to greater objectivity - that is, less attachment to a specific viewpoint - does not take us nearer to the real nature of the phenomenon: it takes us further away from it.

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p. 174.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 months ago
"Those who have forgotten where the...

"Those who have forgotten where the road leads." "They are at odds with what is all around them"-the all-directing logos. And "they find alien what they meet with every day."

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(Hays translation) IV, 46
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 weeks ago
This same Man-of-Letters Hero must be…

This same Man-of-Letters Hero must be regarded as our most important modern person. He, such as he may be, is the soul of all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 4 days ago
Did you not read our articles...

Did you not read our articles about the June revolution, and was not the essence of the June revolution the essence of our paper? Why then your hypocritical phrases, your attempt to find an impossible pretext? We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.

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The final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung (18 May 1849)''Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, Vol. VI, p. 503
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 3 days ago
Sometimes it is said that man...

Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
6 months 1 day ago
Philosophy ... bears witness to the...

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

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"Logological Fragments," Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3 months 2 weeks ago
The clock of communism has stopped...

The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.

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How We Must Rebuild Russia in Komsomolskaya Pravda
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
As an eminent pioneer in...

As an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents... I congratulate you on the great successes of your life's work.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
7 months 1 week ago
From the comparison of theism and...

From the comparison of theism and idolatry, we may form some other observations, which will also confirm the vulgar observation that the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

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Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
7 months 4 days ago
As for my own business, even...

As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.

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p. 486
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
7 months 3 weeks ago
"Do not blame Caesar, blame the...

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the 'new, wonderful good society' which shall now be Rome, interpreted to mean 'more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

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This is also from the 1965 essay by Justice Millard Caldwell. It is not clear if this is based in any specific dialogue.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
3 months 2 days ago
Those who are most to be...

Those who are most to be considered, those for whose help the struggle must be made, if labor is to be enfranchised, and social justice won, are those least able to help or struggle for themselves, those who have no advantage of property or skill or intelligence, - the men and women who are at the very bottom of the social scale. In securing the equal rights of these we shall secure the equal rights of all. Hence it is, as Mazzini said, that it is around the standard of duty rather than around the standard of self-interest that men must rally to win the rights of man. And herein may we see the deep philosophy of Him who bade men love their neighbors as themselves. In that spirit, and in no other, is the power to solve social problems and carry civilization onward.

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Ch. 21 : Conclusion
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 weeks ago
When we know what words are...

When we know what words are worth, the amazing thing is that we try to say anything at all, and that we manage to do so. This requires, it is true, a supernatural nerve.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 3 days ago
Every man is a divinity in...

Every man is a divinity in disguise, a god playing the fool. It seems as if heaven had sent its insane angels into our world as to an asylum. And here they will break out into their native music, and utter at intervals the words they have heard in heaven; then the mad fit returns, and they mope and wallow like dogs!

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p. 165
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
7 months 2 days ago
One is still what one is...

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

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Book 2, "The Melodious Child Dead in Me"
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
7 months 3 weeks ago
The first duty of a man...

The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.

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As quoted in A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity (2007) by John Clippinger, p. 130 Compare: "The distinguishing property of man is to search for and to follow after truth." – De Officiis, Book I, 13
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
3 months 1 week ago
The wise man who has charge...

The wise man who has charge of governing the empire should know the cause of disorder before he can put it in order. Unless he knows its cause, he cannot regulate it.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 months 4 days ago
We, who are dying, are doing...

We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.

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Freedom and Death
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 4 weeks ago
What will be the attitude of...

What will be the attitude of communism to existing nationalities? The nationalities of the peoples associating themselves in accordance with the principle of community will be compelled to mingle with each other as a result of this association and thereby to dissolve themselves, just as the various estate and class distinctions must disappear through the abolition of their basis, private property.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
7 months 3 days ago
Nothing is so fatiguing as the...

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

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To Carl Stumpf, 1 January 1886
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 3 days ago
I can never join Calvin in...

I can never join Calvin in addressing his god. He was indeed an Atheist, which I can never be; or rather his religion was Daemonism. If ever man worshipped a false god, he did. The being described in his 5 points is not the God whom you and I acknowledge and adore, the Creator and benevolent governor of the world; but a daemon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no god at all, than to blaspheme him by the atrocious attributes of Calvin. Indeed I think that every Christian sect gives a great handle to Atheism by their general dogma that, without a revelation, there would not be sufficient proof of the being of a god.

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Letter to John Adams (11 April 1823) (Scan at The Library of Congress)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
7 months 1 week ago
I have seen no more evident...

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

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Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 4 weeks ago
I am sitting with a...

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 3 days ago
Wealth is a great sin in...

Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.

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p. 86
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months 1 day ago
Human perception is literally incarnation. "Catholic...

Human perception is literally incarnation.

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"Catholic Humanism and Modern Letters", in Christian Humanism in Letters, The McAuley Lectures (1954), p. 49-67
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
6 months 4 days ago
When he entered into the Whig...

When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs, than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution; what they had been during the reign of queen Anne; what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.

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p. 409
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 weeks ago
I think of so many people...

I think of so many people who are no more, and I pity them. Yet they are not so much to be pitied, for they have solved every problem, beginning with the problem of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
6 months 4 weeks ago
In the history of madness, two...

In the history of madness, two events signal this change with singular clarity: in 1657, the founding of the Hôpital Général, and the Great Confinement of the poor; and in 1794, the liberation of the mad in chains at Bicêtre. Between these two singular and symmetrical events, something happened, whose ambiguity has perplexed historians of medicine: blind repression in an absolutist regime, according to some, and, according to others, the progressive discovery, by science and philanthropy, of madness in its positive truth. In fact, beneath these reversible meanings, a structure was taking shape, which did not undo that ambiguity but was decisive for it. This structure explains the passage from the medieval and humanist experience of madness to the experience that is our own, which confines madness in mental illness.

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Preface to 1961 edition
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 months ago
Look to the essence of a...

Look to the essence of a thing, whether it be a point of doctrine, of practice, or of interpretation.

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VIII, 22
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
7 months 1 week ago
Lastly, there are Idols which have...

Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.

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Aphorism 44
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
6 months 3 weeks ago
Neither art nor wisdom may be...

Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
7 months 5 days ago
If man in the state of...

If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. IX, sec. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 months 2 weeks ago
Might is a fine thing, and...

Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for 'one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right'. You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might 'stands above the law'. How does this prospect taste to you, you 'law-abiding' people? But you have no taste!

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Cambridge 1995, p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
6 months 3 weeks ago
Suffer no anxiety, for he who...

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
5 months 4 weeks ago
Fear for the Other, fear for...

Fear for the Other, fear for the other man's death is my fear, but is in no way an individual's taking fright.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 84
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 2 weeks ago
There was a time....
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Main Content / General
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
8 months ago
This heart within me I can...

This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
7 months 1 week ago
... a penny saved is better...

... a penny saved is better than a penny earned.

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The Duty of a Husband and Wife (17 March 1539), No. 4408. LW 54:337
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
5 months 1 day ago
When two do the same thing,...

When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.

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Maxim 338
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
6 months 3 days ago
The original thinking force of the...

The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
6 months 1 day ago
The benefit of the governed is...

The benefit of the governed is made to lie on one side and the benefit of the governors on the other.

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Book III, Chapter 9
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
7 months 5 days ago
It is difficult…

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

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Le dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (1767): Troisième Entretien
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 weeks ago
The aphorism is cultivated only by...

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

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Philosophical Maxims
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