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Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
War is not a courtesy but...

War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.

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Bk. X, ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
This body which…

This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

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Essai sur l'histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, Chapter 70, 1756
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 3 weeks ago
War is sweet….

War is sweet to them that know it not.

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Though Erasmus quoted this proverb in Latin at the start of his essay Bellum [War], and it is sometimes attributed to him, it originates with the Greek poet Pindar
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
If you're going to write a...

If you're going to write a story, avoid contemporary references. They date a story and they have no staying power.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 1 week ago
This world is empty to him...

This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 2 days ago
That we are overdone with banking...

That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.

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Letter to Abbe Salimankis (1810) ME 12:379 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 12, p. 379
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 weeks 6 days ago
Every individual is a unique manifestation...

Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree. To manifest individuality, every branch must have a sensitive connection with the tree, just as our independently moving and differentiated fingers must have a sensitive connection with the whole body. The point, which can hardly be repeated too often, is that differentiation is not separation. The head and the feet are different, but not separate, and though man is not connected to the universe by exactly the same physical relation as branch to tree or feet to head, he is nonetheless connected-and by physical relations of fascinating complexity. The death of the individual is not disconnection but simply withdrawal. The corpse is like a footprint or an echo-the dissolving trace of something which the Self has ceased to do.

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p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 1 week ago
So it is that you come...

So it is that you come to know what a real God is. ... The God wants my life. He wants to go with me, sit at the table with me, work with me. Above all he wants to be ever-present.

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P. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 day ago
More and more it is becoming...

More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, wherever there is a rational society.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
None can be an impartial or...

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 2 weeks ago
When men hire themselves out to...

When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.

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"Patriotism", p. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
2 weeks 1 day ago
The friend, enemy, and combat concepts...

The friend, enemy, and combat concepts receive their real meaning precisely because they refer to the real possibility of physical killing. War follows from enmity. War is the existential negation of the enemy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 days ago
Man is said to be a...

Man is said to be a reasoning animal. I do not know why he has not been defined as an affective or feeling animal. Perhaps that which differentiates him from other animals is feeling rather than reason. More often I have seen a cat reason than laugh or weep. Perhaps it weeps or laughs inwardly - but then perhaps, also inwardly, the crab resolves equations of the second degree.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 6 days ago
Heaven, in the production of things,...

Heaven, in the production of things, is sure to be bountiful to them, according to their qualities. Hence the tree that is flourishing, it nourishes, while that which is ready to fall, it overthrows.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
The people never give up their...

The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion.

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Speech at a County Meeting of Buckinghamshire
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Every man I meet is in...

Every man I meet is in some way my superior, and in that, I can learn of him.

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As quoted in Think, Vol. 4-5 (1938), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 1 week ago
If the king loves music, there...

If the king loves music, there is little wrong in the land.

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Discourses, as quoted in "I Want to Know!" by Ivan Gogol Esipoff, The Etude, Vol. LXIII, No. 9 (September 1945), p. 496
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 2 weeks ago
The general nature of the speech...

The general nature of the speech act fallacy can be stated as follows, using "good" as our example. Calling something good is characteristically praising or commending or recommending it, etc. But it is a fallacy to infer from this that the meaning of "good" is explained by saying it is used to perform the act of commendation.

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P. 139.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
If one advances confidently in the...

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
No position is so false as...

No position is so false as having understood and still remaining alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 2 weeks ago
In all sectors of society there...

In all sectors of society there should be roughly equal prospects of culture and achievement for everyone similarly motivated and endowed. The expectations of those with the same abilities and aspirations should not be affected by their social class.

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Chapter II, Section 12, pg. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 months 2 days ago
I do not think discursively. It...

I do not think discursively. It is not so much that I arrive at truth as that I take my start from it.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 weeks ago
We are no nearer heaven on...

We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
1 week 6 days ago
As long as one does not...

As long as one does not call his own position into question but regards it as absolute, while interpreting his opponents' ideas as a mere function of the social positions they occupy, the decisive step forward has not yet been taken.

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Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
1 month 3 weeks ago
Treat your kid like a darling...

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 1 day ago
When I see someone in anxiety,...

When I see someone in anxiety, I say to myself, What can it be that this fellow wants? For if he did not want something that was outside of his control, how could he still remain in anxiety?

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Book II, ch. 13, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 2 weeks ago
Opinion is ultimately determined by the...

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

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Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 1 week ago
Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the...

Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively demonic passion that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background. Such a development naturally ends in profound psychological disunion, in short, in a neurosis.

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P.245
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
2 weeks 2 days ago
The Sensations are the 'Objective', the...

The Sensations are the 'Objective', the Ideas the 'Subjective' part of every act of perception or knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
The discarnate TV user lives in...

The discarnate TV user lives in a world between fantasy and dream, and is in a typically hypnotic state, which is the ultimate form and level of participation.

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"A Last Look at the Tube." New York Magazine, 17 March 1978, p. 45-48
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
3 months 3 weeks ago
If man's love for himself be...

If man's love for himself be necessary, then his love for Him through whom, first his coming-to-be, and second, his continuance in his essential being with all his inward and outward traits, his substance and his accidents, occur must also be necessary. Whoever is so besotted by his fleshy appetites as to lack this love neglects his Lord and Creator. He possesses no authentic knowledge of Him; his gaze is limited to his cravings and to things of sense. 

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Al-Ghazali on Love, Longing, Intimacy & Contentment, Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby. Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society (2011), p. 25.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
What does it mean to have...

What does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.

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Large Catechism 1.1-3, F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau, tr. Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 565.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 days ago
When I read the catechism of...

When I read the catechism of the Council of Trent, it seems as though I had nothing in common with the religion there set forth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 1 day ago
If a man has reported to...

If a man has reported to you, that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make any defense (answer) to what has been told you: but reply, The man did not know the rest of my faults, for he would not have mentioned these only.

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(33) [tr. George Long (1888)].
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 1 week ago
Every definition…

Every definition implies an axiom, since it asserts the existence of the object defined. The definition then will not be justified, from the purely logical point of view, until we have proved that it involves no contradiction either in its terms or with the truths previously admitted.

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Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 2 days ago
Scientific men get an awkward habit...

Scientific men get an awkward habit - no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit - of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral.

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Thomas Henry Huxley. "Lectures on Evolution Title: This is Essay# 3 from" Science and Hebrew Tradition." (1882); as cited in: William Trufant Foster, (1908) Argumentation and debating, p. 55
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 1 week ago
If by enlightenment and intellectual progress...

If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate-in short, emancipation of fear-then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 2 weeks ago
All religions, with their gods, their...

All religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets, their messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of men who had not attained the full development and full possession of their faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a mirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own image, but enlarged and reversed - that is, divinized. The history of religion, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have succeeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the development of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 2 weeks ago
Being silent is something one completely...
Being silent is something one completely unlearns if, like him, one has been for so long a solitary mole.
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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 weeks ago
Never have nations been civilized, except...

Never have nations been civilized, except by religion.

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XXXIII, p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
We should have....
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Main Content / General
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
Art, at least, teaches us that...

Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason for his existence in the order of nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 2 weeks ago
If every strategy today is that...

If every strategy today is that of mental terror and of deterrence tied to the suspension and the eternal simulation of catastrophe, then the only means of mitigating this scenario would be to make the catastrophe arrive, to produce or to reproduce a real catastrophe. To which Nature is at times given: in its inspired moments, it is God who through his cataclysms unknots the equilibrium of terror in which humans are imprisoned. Closer to us, this is what terrorism is occupied with as well: making real, palpable violence surface in opposition to the invisible violence of security. Besides, therein lies terrorism's ambiguity.

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"The China Syndrome," p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
Just then another visitor entered the...

Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew Bolkónski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pávlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.

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Bk. I, Ch. IV
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 4 days ago
Rest gives relish...

Rest gives relish to labour.

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Of the Training of Children, 9 (Tr. Babbitt)
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 4 weeks ago
Water is the first principle of...

Water is the first principle of everything.

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As quoted in Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983b
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 3 weeks ago
To a body of infinite size...

To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither centre nor boundary... Thus the Earth no more than any other world is at the centre.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 2 days ago
We are not to expect to...

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

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Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
Courtiers don't take wagers against the...

Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are...

Alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine are weak dilutions. The surest poison is time.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
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