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Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
The surface of American society is...

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

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Chapter II.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 weeks 3 days ago
Every start upon an untrodden path...

Every start upon an untrodden path is a venture which only in unusual circumstances looks sensible and likely to be successful.

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Ch. 9 : I Resolve to Become a Jungle Doctor
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
The best authorities are unanimous in...

The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration. Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 2 weeks ago
If you look at the graph...

If you look at the graph of the growth of G.M.O.s, the growth of application of glyphosate and autism, it's literally a one-to-one correspondence. And you could make that graph for kidney failure, you could make that graph for diabetes, you could make that graph even for Alzheimer's.

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On the correlation of autism, kidney failure, diabetes and Alzheimer's with GMOs and glyphosate, as quoted in "Seeds of Doubt" by Michael Specter, The New Yorker
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
I am not afraid to appeal...

I am not afraid to appeal to the nation at large, to posterity, and still less to that Being Who sees Himself our motives, Who will judge us from His own knowledge of them.

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Writings (1904), Vol. XI, p. 44, to Abigail Adams on July 22, 1804.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
Direct action, having proven effective along...

Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 1 week ago
There are only a few images...

There are only a few images that are not forced to provide meaning, or have to go through the filter of a specific idea.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 4 weeks 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
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 6 days ago
All honour to those who can...

All honour to those who can abnegate for themselves the personal enjoyment of life, when by such renunciation they contribute worthily to increase the amount of happiness in the world; but he who does it, or professes to do it, for any other purpose, is no more deserving of admiration than the ascetic mounted on his pillar. He may be an inspiriting proof of what men can do, but assuredly not an example of what they should.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 1 week ago
As the Genesis story teaches, knowledge...

As the Genesis story teaches, knowledge cannot save us from ourselves. If we know more than before, it means only that we have greater scope to enact our fantasies. But - as the Genesis myth also teaches - there is no way we can rid ourselves of what we know. If we try to regain a state of innocence, the result can only be a worse madness. The message of Genesis is that in the most vital areas of human life there can be no progress, only an unending struggle with our own nature.

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An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (pp. 79-80)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
By virtue of depression, we recall...

By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 4 weeks ago
A free society is a community...

A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral constraint-for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no hope of economic, let alone social, order.

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"The Limits of Liberty," The American Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 days ago
Of all the books I have...

Of all the books I have ever worked on, I think Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare gave me the most pleasure, day in, day out. For months and months I lived and thought Shakespeare, and I don't see how there can be any greater pleasure in the world, any pleasure, that is, that one can indulge in for as much as ten hours without pause, day after day indefinitely.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 1 day ago
It is no longer a question...

It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.

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Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
So long as one can use...

So long as one can use scented candy to abate the foul breath of hypocrisy, Puritanism is triumphant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
When Confucius and the Indian Scriptures...

When Confucius and the Indian Scriptures were made known, no claim to monopoly of ethical wisdom could be thought of... It is only within this century [the 1800 's] that England and America discovered that their nursery tales were old German and Scandinavian stories; and now it appears that they came from India, and are therefore the property of all the nations.

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Quoted in S. Londhe, A Tribute to Hinduism, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month ago
It is by logic…

It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover. To know how to criticize is good, to know how to create is better.

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Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 129
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 6 days ago
Through the emancipation of private property...

Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but is it nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.

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Part One The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 week ago
One has attained to mastery when...
One has attained to mastery when one neither goes wrong nor hesitates in the performance.
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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 4 weeks ago
"Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as...

Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 153
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is no such thing as...

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

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Abridgement of Vols. 7-10 by D. C. Somervell
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
Choose your parents....
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Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
6 days ago
Contend with the powers of nature,...

Contend with the powers of nature, force them to the yoke of superior purpose. Free that spirit which struggles within them and longs to mingle with that spirit which struggles within you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 days ago
Q. You do not consider your...

Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Seek after the good, and with...

Seek after the good, and with much toil shall ye find it; the evil turns up of itself without your seeking it.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 4 weeks ago
The Bible is literature, not dogma.

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 6 days ago
Consider, for example, the state of...

Consider, for example, the state of Science generally, in Europe, at this period. It is admitted, on all sides, that the Metaphysical and Moral Sciences are falling into decay, while the Physical are engrossing, every day, more respect and attention. In most of the European nations there is now no such thing as a Science of Mind; only more or less advancement in the general science, or the special sciences, of matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 4 weeks ago
In discussing tradition, we are not...

In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions.

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(p. 21)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 1 day ago
If in Nietzsche's thinking the prior...

If in Nietzsche's thinking the prior tradition of Western thought is gathered and completed in a decisive respect, then the confrontation with Nietzsche becomes one with all Western thought hitherto.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 4 weeks ago
Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be...

Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the "conquest of transcendence" achieved by the one-dimensional society. Just as this society tends to reduce, and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail.

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p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
The whole art of government consists...

The whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 3 days ago
Knowledge is the food of the...

Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 4 weeks ago
Wherefore by their fruits ye shall...

Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

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Matthew 7:20 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 2 weeks ago
Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X,...

Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Stokely Carmichael, Amiri Baraka and other black male leaders have righteously supported patriarchy. They have all argued that it is absolutely necessary for black men to relegate black women to a subordinate position both in the political sphere and in home life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
3 months 3 weeks ago
For it is the same thing...

For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

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Frag. B 3, quoted by Plotinus, Enneads V, i.8
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 days ago
Eros is a superhuman power which,...

Eros is a superhuman power which, like nature herself, allows itself to be conquered and exploited as though it were impotent. But triumph over nature is dearly paid for. Nature requires no explanations of principle, but asks only for tolerance and wise measure. "Eros is a mighty daemon," as the wise Diotima said to Socrates. We shall never get the better of him, or only to our own hurt. He is not the whole of our inward nature, though he is at least one of its essential aspects.

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Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, CW 7 (1957). "On the Psychology of the Unconscious" P.32f
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
The unfortunate thing about public misfortunes...

The unfortunate thing about public misfortunes is that everyone regards himself as qualified to talk about them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
Without the faculty of forgetting, our...

Without the faculty of forgetting, our past would weigh so heavily on our present that we should not have the strength to confront another moment, still less to live through it. Life would be bearable only to frivolous natures, those in fact who do not remember.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 6 days ago
No man ought to glory except...

No man ought to glory except in that which is his own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 3 days ago
No one should be judge in...

No one should be judge in his own cause.

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Maxim 545
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 3 weeks ago
A society like the Church, which...

A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license.

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Devil disguised. p. 122
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 6 days ago
The bodies of which the world...

The bodies of which the world is composed are solids, and therefore have three dimensions. Now, three is the most perfect number, it is the first of numbers, for of one we do not speak as a number, of two we say both, but three is the first number of which we say all. Moreover, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the...

Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the mind," Manicheism "root of the tree of death." I know this, but what good does it do me to know?

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
4 months 1 week ago
Nature has placed mankind under the...

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection, will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

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Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
2 weeks ago
Human life can be lived like...

Human life can be lived like a poem.

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p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 3 weeks ago
The concept of positivity in itself,...

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 days ago
You, masters of the earth -...

You, masters of the earth - princes, kings, emperors, powerful majesties, invincible conquerors - simply try to make the people go on such-and-such a day each year to a given place to dance. I ask little of you, but I dare give you a solemn challenge to succeed, whereas the humblest missionary will succeed and be obeyed two thousand years after his death. Every year the people gather around some rustic temple in the name of St John, St Martin, St Benedict, etc.; they come, animated by a feverish and yet innocent eagerness; religion sanctifies their joy and the joy embellishes religion; they forget their troubles; on leaving they think of the pleasure that they will have on the same day the following year, and the date is set in their minds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
The point I wish to make...

The point I wish to make is that I became aware that we discipline our minds to see only certain aspects of the world; life is complicated, and we need all our wits about us to deal with its complexities. There would be no great point in having second sight or thaumaturgic powers for most of us. But it is worth observing that they can generally be developed where needed.

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p. 240
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
A mother gave her children Aesop's...

A mother gave her children Aesop's fables to read, in the hope of educating and improving their minds; but they very soon brought the book back, and the eldest, wise beyond his years, delivered himself as follows: This is no book for us; it's much too childish and stupid. You can't make us believe that foxes and wolves and ravens are able to talk; we've got beyond stories of that kind! In these young hopefuls you have the enlightened Rationalists of the future.

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"Similes, Parables and Fables" Parerga and Paralipomena
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 6 days ago
Who would govern that can get...

Who would govern that can get along without governing? He that is fittest for it, is of all men the unwillingest unless constrained.

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Philosophical Maxims
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