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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
The feeling of being ten thousand...

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
Do we call this the land...

Do we call this the land of the free? What is it to be free from King George and continue the slaves of King Prejudice? What is it to be born free and not to live free? What is the value of any political freedom, but as a means to moral freedom? Is it a freedom to be slaves, or a freedom to be free, of which we boast? We are a nation of politicians, concerned about the outmost defences only of freedom. It is our children's children who may perchance be really free.

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p. 493
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Friends are not primarily absorbed in...

Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up - painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other - that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
We must frankly confess, then, using...

We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
The will is a unity of...

The will is a unity of two different aspects or moments: first, the individual's ability to abstract from every specific condition and, by negating it, to return to the absolute liberty of the pure ego; secondly, the individual's act of freely adopting a concrete condition, freely affirming his existence as a particular, limited ego.

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P. 185
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 6 days ago
The "dreams of youth" have become...

The "dreams of youth" have become a proverb. That organisations, early rich, fall far short of their promise has been repeated to satiety. But is it extraordinary that it should be so? For do we ever utilise this heroism? Look how it lives upon itself and perishes for lack of food. We do not know what to do with it. We had rather that it should not be there. Often we laugh at it. Always we find it troublesome. Look at the poverty of our life! Can we expect anything else but poor creatures to come out of it?

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months ago
The medium of the chorus

In his seminar on The Ethic of Psychoanalysis, Lacan speaks of the role of the Chorus in classical tragedy: we, the spectators, came to the theatre worried, full of everyday problems, unable to adjust without reserve to the problems of the play, that is to feel the required fears and compassions - but not problem, there is a chorus, who feels the sorrow and the compassion instead of us - or, more precisely, we feel the required emotions through the medium of the chorus: 'You are then relieved of all worries, even if you do not feel anything, the Chorus will do so in your place.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
2 months 2 weeks ago
Practice no sloth, so that the...

Practice no sloth, so that the duty and good work, which it is necessary for thee to do, may not remain undone.

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(p. 59)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
The superior man, when resting...

The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
Philosophy is the science of truth.

Philosophy is the science of truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
There never was a bad man...

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 1 week ago
The uniting of Orthodoxy with state...

The uniting of Orthodoxy with state absolutism came about on the soil of a non-belief in the Divineness of the earth, in the earthly future of mankind; Orthodoxy gave away the earth into the hands of the state because of its own non-belief in man and mankind, because of its nihilistic attitude towards the world. Orthodoxy does not believe in the religious ordering of human life upon the earth, and it compensates for its own hopeless pessimism by a call for the forceful ordering of it by state authority.

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Nihilism On A Religious Soil
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 6 days ago
I use the word nursing for...

I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet - all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.

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Notes on Nursing
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
He tried to recall what he...

He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one actually sees him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
Bourgeois political economy ... never gets...

Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

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"The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
If your brother sins against you,...

If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.

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(Matthew 18:15) (NIV)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are moments of sentimental and...

There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience. . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end.

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Lecture I, "Religion and Neurology"
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
It belongs to the imperfection of...

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 days ago
We were halves throughout, and to...

We were halves throughout, and to that degree that, methinks, by outliving him I defraud him of his part.

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Ch. 27. Of Friendship, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 3 weeks ago
Using the scoundrels...
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Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 6 days ago
I believe that freedom is not...

I believe that freedom is not a constant attribute that "we have" or "we don't have"; perhaps there is only one reality: the act of liberating ourselves in the process of using choices. Every step in life that heightens the maturity of man heightens his ability to choose the freeing alternative. I believe that "freedom of choice" is not always equal for all men at every moment. The man with an exclusively necrophilic orientation; who is narcissistic; or who is symbiotic-incestuous, can only make a regressive choice. The free man, freed from irrational ties, can no longer make a regressive choice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 4 weeks ago
Secrets in manufactures are capable of...

Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.

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Chapter VII, p. 72.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week 6 days ago
I would not give up the...

I would not give up the keys to the granary, because I know that, by doing so, I should turn scarcity into a famine.

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Sullivan, p. 266
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is clear that the causal...

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is no knowledge that is...

There is no knowledge that is not power.

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Old Age
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 1 week ago
God only pours out his light...

God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
The dreamer must contaminate the others...

The dreamer must contaminate the others by his dream, he must make them fall into it.

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p. 399
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
If I were to imagine a...

If I were to imagine a girl deeply in love and some man who wanted to use all his reasoning powers and knowledge to ridicule her passion, well, there's surely no question of the enamoured girl having to choose between keeping her wealth and being ridiculed. No, but if some extremely cool and calculating man calmly told the young girl, "I will explain to you what love is," and the girl admitted that everything he told her was quite correct, I wonder if she wouldn't choose his miserable common sense rather than her wealth?

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 4 weeks ago
By liberty, then, we can only...

By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.

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§ 8.23
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
If death had only negative aspects,...

If death had only negative aspects, dying would be an unmanageable action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
2 months 2 weeks ago
Purity is for man, next to...

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

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(Extracts, p. 57)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness....

To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness. Not ceasing, it continues long. Continuing long, it evidences itself. Evidencing itself, it reaches far. Reaching far, it becomes large and substantial. Large and substantial, it becomes high and brilliant. Large and substantial; this is how it contains all things. High and brilliant; this is how it overspreads all things. Reaching far and continuing long; this is how it perfects all things. So large and substantial, the individual possessing it is the co-equal of Earth. So high and brilliant, it makes him the co-equal of Heaven. So far-reaching and long-continuing, it makes him infinite. Such being its nature, without any display, it becomes manifested; without any movement, it produces changes; and without any effort, it accomplishes its ends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week 6 days ago
If...we look at the essential characteristics...

If...we look at the essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may consider each of them as the representative of a great principle, essential to the welfare of nations. One is, in an especial manner, the guardian of liberty, and the other, of order. One is the moving power, and the other the steadying power of the state. One is the sail, without which society would make no progress, the other the ballast, without which there would be small safety in a tempest.

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The Earl of Chatham', The Edinburgh Review (October 1844), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review: A New Edition (1852), p. 725
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
Entertainment and learning are not opposites;...

Entertainment and learning are not opposites; entertainment may be the most effective mode of learning.

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pp. 66-67
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are uncertain truths....

There are uncertain truths - even true statements that we may take to be false - but there are no uncertain certainties. Since we can never know anything for sure, it is simply not worth searching for certainty; but it is well worth searching for truth; and we do this chiefly by searching for mistakes, so that we have to correct them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The mass of men lead lives...

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
2 months 2 weeks ago
Thought is something limitless and independent,...

Thought is something limitless and independent, and has been mixed with no thing but is alone by itself. ... What was mingled with it would have prevented it from having power over anything in the way in which it does. ... For it is the finest of all things and the purest.

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Frag. B12, in Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (1984), p. 190.
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
2 months 1 day ago
Seeing therefore they are both [heat...

Seeing therefore they are both [heat and pain] immediately perceived at the same time, and the fire affects you only with one simple, or uncompounded idea, it follows that this same simple idea is both the intense heat immediately perceived, and the pain; and consequently, that the intense heat immediately perceived, is nothing distinct from a particular sort of pain.

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Philonous to Hylas
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 2 weeks ago
Let hopes and sorrows….

Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be, and think each day that dawns the last you'll see; For so the hour that greets you unforeseen, will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.

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Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 4 days ago
I have written a good number...

I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.

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B 29
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
He could almost wish he were...

He could almost wish he were superstitious. He could then console himself with the thought that the casual meaningless meeting had really been directed by a knowing and purposeful Fate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
United States! the ages plead, -...

United States! the ages plead, - Present and Past in under-song, - Go put your creed into your deed, Nor speak with double tongue.

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Ode, st. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
La force, c'est ce qui fait...

Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse.

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in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 153
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
Art is naturally concerned with man...

Art is naturally concerned with man in his existential aspect, not in his scientific aspect. For the scientist, questions about man's stature and significance, suffering and power, are not really scientific questions; consequently he is inclined to regard art as an inferior recreation. Unfortunately, the artist has come to accept the scientist's view of himself. The result, I contend, is that art in the twentieth century - literary art in particular - has ceased to take itself seriously as the primary instrument of existential philosophy. It has ceased to regard itself as an instrument for probing questions of human significance. Art is the science of human destiny. Science is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of nature; art is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of man. At its best, it evokes unifying emotions; it makes the reader see the world momentarily as a unity.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
A great affliction of all Philistines...

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 345
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 weeks 6 days ago
For nothing can be greater than...

For nothing can be greater than seduction itself, not even the order that destroys it.

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Seduction
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1 week ago
Good communication is as stimulating as...

Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after. Variant: Good communication is just as stimulating as...

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Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
2 months 1 week ago
A transition, therefore, is not undeservedly...

A transition, therefore, is not undeservedly made from sense to consideration, and from this to the nobler energies of intellect. Hence, as the certain knowledge of numbers received its origin among the Phœnicians, on account of merchandise and commerce, so geometry was found out among the Egyptians from the distribution of land. When Thales, therefore, first went into Egypt, he transferred this knowledge from thence into Greece: and he invented many things himself, and communicated to his successors the principles of many. Some of which were, indeed, more universal, but others extended to sensibles.

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Chap. IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
'Tis very certain that each man...

Tis very certain that each man carries in his eye the exact indication of his rank in the immense scale of men, and we are always learning to read it. A complete man should need no auxiliaries to his personal presence.

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Behavior
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
To have failed in everything, always,...

To have failed in everything, always, out of a love of discouragement.

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Philosophical Maxims
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