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Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 3 weeks ago
Antagoras the poet was boiling a...

Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?"

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46 Antigonus I
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
May we not return….

May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?

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Letter to Frederick II of Prussia (December 1740), published in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 7 (1869), edited by Georges Avenel, p. 105; as translated by Richard Aldington
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample...

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

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53
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month 4 days ago
A large plural society cannot be...

A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.

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pp. 106-107
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months ago
O woman, great is thy faith:...

O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.

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15:28 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
4 months 3 weeks ago
This is one of the most...

This is one of the most intricate problems of religion. For if you look into the traditional arguments (Hadith) about this problem you will find them contradictory; such also being the case with arguments of reason. The contradiction in the arguments of the first kind is found in the Qur'an and the Hadith.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 1 day ago
Revolution is like...
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Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 weeks ago
Emptiness simply prevents what is individual...

Emptiness simply prevents what is individual from insisting on itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 weeks ago
As the neurobiological basis of feeling...

As the neurobiological basis of feeling and emotion is unravelled, and the human genome decoded and rewritten, it will become purely an issue of post-human decision whether negative modes of consciousness are generated in any form or texture whatsoever. "The Hedonistic Imperative: Heaven on Earth", BLTC Research

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 4 weeks ago
Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through...

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through life; for death comes upon thee at last, and the perishable part falls to the ground.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 4 weeks ago
The evidence of our own eyes...

The evidence of our own eyes makes it more plausible to believe that the world was not created by any god at all. If, however, we insist on believing in divine creation, we are forced to admit that the god who made the world cannot be all-powerful and all good. He must be either evil or a bungler.

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The God of Suffering? Project Syndicate, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 4 weeks ago
When there is genuine artistry in...

When there is genuine artistry in scientific inquiry and philosophic speculation, a thinker proceeds neither by rule nor yet blindly, but by means of meaning that exist immediately as feelings having qualitative color.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
God never sends evils…

God never sends evils.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
In skating over thin ice our...

In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.

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Prudence
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
3 days ago
In the history of bourgeois society,...

In the history of bourgeois society, legislative reform served to strengthen progressively the rising class till the latter was sufficiently strong to seize political power, to suppress the existing juridical system and to construct itself a new one.

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Ch.8
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Organic life, we are told, has...

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

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Ch. 6: On the Scientific Method in Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 1 week ago
Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest...

Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 weeks ago
Men's hearts ought not to be...

Men's hearts ought not to be set against one another; but set with one another, and all against the Evil Thing only.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
I intend no Monopoly, but a...

I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.

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Section 3
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 days ago
In a republic, that paradise of...

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 3 days ago
Even when labor is subjugated by...

Even when labor is subjugated by capital it always necessarily maintains its own autonomy, and this ever more clearly true today with respect to the new immaterial, cooperative and collaborative forms of labor. This relationship is not isolated to the economic terrain but, as we will argue later, spills over into the biopolitical terrain of society as a hole, including military conflicts. In any case, we should recognize here that even in asymmetrical conflicts victory in terms of complete domination is not possible. All that can be achieved is a provisional and limited maintenance of control and order that must constantly be policed and preserved. Counterinsurgency is a full-time job.

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54
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 5 days ago
If a work of art is...

If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.

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To Wilfred Watson, October 6 1965. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 325
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
Holy Christendom has, in my judgment,...

Holy Christendom has, in my judgment, no better teacher after the apostles than St. Augustine.

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Luther's Works, American Ed., Robert H. Fischer, Helmut T. Lehman, eds., Concordia Publishing House/Fortress Press, 1959, ISBN 0800603370 (Word and Sacrament III), vol. 37:107
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
1 week ago
Inquiry into the evidence of a...

Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete. "But," says one, "I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments." Then he should have no time to believe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
The student of development finds, not...

The student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division-that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two.

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The history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard, Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story. Ch.2, p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 6 days ago
I want to have her back...

I want to have her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do all over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn't Lazarus the rawer deal?

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
The superfluous…

The superfluous, a very necessary thing. 

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Variant translation: The superfluous is very necessary, Le Mondain, 1736
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
The mystical impulse in men is...

The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

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p. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
In its solitariness the spirit asks,...

In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe.

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Religion is world-loyalty. Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Social progress means a checking of...

Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every step and the substitution for it of another, which may be called the ethical process; the end of which is not the survival of those who may happen to be the fittest, in respect of the whole of the conditions which obtain, but of those who are ethically the best.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
It is the common wonder of...

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike.

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Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
2 months 3 weeks ago
We cannot stem linguistic change, but...

We cannot stem linguistic change, but we can drag our feet. If each of us were to defy Alexander Pope and be the last to lay the old aside, it might not be a better world, but it would be a lovelier language.

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Quiddities: An Intermittently Philosophical Dictionary (1987), p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 5 days ago
Literacy, in translating man out of...

Literacy, in translating man out of the closed world of tribal depth and resonance, gave man an eye for an ear and ushered him into a visual open world of specialized and divided consciousness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
How we hate this solemn Ego...

How we hate this solemn Ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes.

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1839
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months ago
Take heed lest any man deceive...

Take heed lest any man deceive you: For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. And the gospel must first be published among all nations. But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

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13:5b-11 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months ago
He that is not with me...

He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.

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Luke 11:23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 6 days ago
To be ignorant of the past...

To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.

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Cicero
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
I shall cheerfully bear the reproach...

I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having descended below the dignity of history if I can succeed in placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true picture of the life of their ancestors.

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Vol. I, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
Human nature asserts itself regardless of...

Human nature asserts itself regardless of all laws, nor is there any plausible reason why nature should adapt itself to a perverted conception of morality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is unlikely that the good...

It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

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Book I, ch. 20, 17.
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 2 days ago
The only knowledge that can truly...

The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas-in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

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p. 301
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 weeks 3 days ago
Above all, the ominous clouds of...

Above all, the ominous clouds of those phenomena that we are with varying success seeking to explain by means of the quantum of action, are throwing their shadows over the sphere of physical knowledge, threatening no one knows what new revolution.

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Ch. 3 "Relativity of Space and Time"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
One must look into hell before...

One must look into hell before one has any right to speak of heaven.

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Letter to Colette O'Niel, October 23, 1916; published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914-1970, p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months ago
Society is eliminating the prerogatives and...

Society is eliminating the prerogatives and privileges of feudal. aristocratic culture together with its content. The fact that the transcending truths of the fine arts, the aesthetics of life and thought, were accessible only to the few wealthy and educated was the fault of a repressive society. But this fault is not corrected by paperbacks, general education, long-playing records, and the abolition of formal dress in the theater and concert hall. The cultural privileges expressed the injustice of freedom, the contradiction between ideology and reality, the separation of intellectual from material productivity; but they also provided a protected realm in which the tabooed truths could survive in abstract integrity-remote from the society which suppressed them.

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pp. 64-65
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 3 weeks ago
Encratic language (the language produced and...

Encratic language (the language produced and spread under the protection of power) is statutorily a language of repetition; all official institutions of language are repeating machines: schools, sports, advertising, popular songs, news, all continually repeat the same structure, the same meaning, often the same words.

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The Pleasure of the Text
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 6 days ago
The simple-minded positivism that believes it...

The simple-minded positivism that believes it has found a firm ground of certainty if it only excludes all mental phenomena from consideration and holds fast to observable facts.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months ago
The book of the world, so...

The book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the "learned," who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
...if the Catholick religion is destroyd...

...if the Catholick religion is destroyd by the Infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd Idea, that, this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that Event. ... in Ireland particularly, the R[oman] C[atholic] Religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration. ... I am more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion...because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual Barrier, if not the sole Barrier, against Jacobinism.

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Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
2 weeks 1 day ago
What is it that we humans...

What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character ... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.

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Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
The possession and the exercise of...

The possession and the exercise of political, and among others of electoral, rights, is one of the chief instruments both of moral and of intellectual training for the popular mind; and all governments must be regarded as extremely imperfect, until every one who is required to obey the laws, has a voice, or the prospect of a voice, in their enactment and administration.

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Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
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