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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
An intellectual is someone whose mind...

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 2 weeks ago
If not reason, then the devil.

If not reason, then the devil.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
"Then those people are right who...

"Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?" "Hush," he said sternly. "Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind - ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly."

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
Custom reconciles us to every thing....

Custom reconciles us to every thing.

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Part IV Section XVIII
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 weeks ago
The plague of man is boasting...

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

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Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 2 weeks ago
But the extraordinary insight which some...

But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 1 day ago
I mean to lead a simple...

I mean to lead a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily - like a hermit crab. But I do not. I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. My husband and five children must make their way in the world. The life I have chosen as a wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 1 week ago
And seeing every man is presumed...

And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.

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The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 78
Philosophical Maxims
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Fodor
2 weeks 2 days ago
I hate relativism. I hate relativism...

I hate relativism. I hate relativism more than I hate anything else, excepting, maybe, fiberglass powerboats... surely, surely, no one but a relativist would drive a fiberglass powerboat.

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Précis of The Modularity of Mind, 1985.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
Reason has discovered the struggle for...

Reason has discovered the struggle for existence and the law that I must throttle all those who hinder the satisfaction of my desires. That is the deduction reason makes. But the law of loving others could not be discovered by reason, because it is unreasonable.

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Pt. VIII, ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
The man who comes back through...

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

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Page 191
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
Always remember that it is impossible...

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
It's not too much to say...

It's not too much to say that every indication of Design in the Kosmos is evidence against the Omnipotence of the Designer. For what is meant by Design? Contrivance: the adaptation of means to an end. But the necessity for contrivance - the need of employing means - is a consequence of the limitation of power. Who would have recourse to means if to attain his end his mere word was sufficient? The very idea of means implies that the means have an efficacy which the direct action of the being who employs them has not. ...

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
We may define "faith" as a...

We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions.

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p. 215
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is, in fact, far easier...

It is, in fact, far easier to act under conditions of tyranny than it is to think.

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The Human Condition
Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
3 months 2 weeks ago
To be or not to be...

To be or not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of being's other, of the otherwise than being, claims to state a difference over and beyond that which separates being from nothingness - the very difference of the beyond, the difference of transcendence.

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Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence (1974) Chapter I, Section 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 2 weeks ago
Democracy does not contain any force...

Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
The hell to be endured hereafter,...

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioning our characters in the wrong way.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
it is absurd ... to hope...

it is absurd ... to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise, to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass

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("Dialectic of Teleological Judgment" §75)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
2 weeks 1 day ago
The particular conception of ideology operates...

The particular conception of ideology operates primarily with a psychology of interests, while the total conception uses a more formal functional analysis, without any reference to motivations, confining itself to an objective description of the structural differences in minds operating in different social settings. The former assumes that this or that interest is the cause of a given lie or deception. The latter presupposes simply that there is a correspondence between a given social situation and a given perspective, point of view, or apperception mass. In this case, while an analysis of constellations of interests may often be necessary it is not to establish causal connections but to characterize the total situation. Thus interest psychology tends to be displaced by an analysis of the correspondence between the situation to be known and the forms of knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 2 weeks ago
Once it's been proved to you...

Once it's been proved to you that you're descended from an ape, it's no use pulling a face; just accept it. Once they've proved to you that a single droplet of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow human beings and consequently that all so-called virtues and duties are nothing but ravings and prejudices, then accept that too, because there's nothing to be done.

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Part 1 Chapter 3 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 days ago
No man expects…

No man expects such exact fidelity as a traitor.

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De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 28, line 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
They indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis,...

They indicate the saddest spiritual paralysis, and mere death-life of the souls of men: more godless theory, I think, was never promulgated in this Earth. A false man found a religion? Why, a false man cannot build a brick house!

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
It's a bit embarrassing to have...

It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'

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As quoted in Huston Smith, "Aldous Huxley--A Tribute," The Psychedelic Review, (1964) Vol I, No.3, (Aldous Huxley Memorial Issue), p. 264-5
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
5 months 1 week ago
Corpses are...

Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 days ago
For we are mistaken…

For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

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Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 1 week ago
[after quoting from Lucretius] In the...

[after quoting from Lucretius] In the face of warfare and inevitable death, there is no wisdom but in ataraxia, "to look on all things with a mind at peace"." Here, clearly, the old pagan joy of life is gone, and an almost exotic spirit touches a broken lyre. History, which is nothing if not humorous, was never so facetious as when she gave to this abstemious and epic pessimist the name of Epicurean.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 1 week ago
In politics continental Europe was infantile...

In politics continental Europe was infantile - horrifying. What America lacked, for all its political stability, was the capacity to enjoy intellectual pleasures as though they were sensual pleasures. This is what Europe offered, or was said to offer.

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"My Paris" (1983), p. 235
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
We can pool information about experiences....

We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.

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Page 159
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 day ago
The period of the actual revolution,...

The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 day ago
The reward in heaven is the...

The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder...Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
4 months 1 week ago
My principal motive is the belief...

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have ... "an ambition of transcendence."

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Introduction to Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume I (1991).
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
An armed insurrection ... would hinder...

An armed insurrection ... would hinder and bring into disrepute this spiritual insurrection.

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p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Perhaps I am more than usually...

Perhaps I am more than usually jealous with respect to my freedom. I feel that my connection with and obligation to society are still very slight and transient. Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and by which it is allowed that I am to some extent serviceable to my contemporaries, are as yet commonly a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that they are a necessity. So far I am successful. But I foresee, that, if my wants should be much increased, the labor required to supply them would become a drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I am sure, that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.

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p. 486
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 5 days ago
And thus the soul pities God...

And thus the soul pities God and feels itself pitied by him; loves Him and feels loved by Him, sheltering its misery in the bosom of the eternal and infinite misery, which, in eternalizing itself and infinitizing itself, is the supreme happiness itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 days ago
The new tinge to modern minds...

The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", pp. 3-4
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 2 days ago
For on these matters we should...

For on these matters we should not trust the multitude who say that none ought to be educated but the free, but rather to philosophers, who say that the educated alone are free.

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Book II, ch. 1, 22.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months ago
Take not thine enemy for thy...

Take not thine enemy for thy friend; nor thy friend for thine enemy!

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
The pistol and dagger may as...

The pistol and dagger may as easily be made the auxiliaries of vice, as of virtue.

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Book IV, "Of Tyrannicide"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
Is that to say we are...

Is that to say we are against Free Trade? No, we are for Free Trade, because by Free Trade all economical laws, with their most astounding contradictions, will act upon a larger scale, upon the territory of the whole earth; and because from the uniting of all these contradictions in a single group, where they will stand face to face, will result the struggle which will itself eventuate in the emancipation of the proletariat.

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Writing in the Chartist newspaper (1847), in Marx Engels Collected Works Vol 6, pg 290.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 4 days ago
Et illa erant fercula, in quibus...

And these were the dishes wherein to me, hunger-starven for thee, they served up the sun and the moon.

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III, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 4 days ago
It is quite true that, to...

It is quite true that, to the best of my judgment, the argumentation which applies to brutes holds equally good of men; and, therefore, that all states of consciousness in us, as in them, are immediately caused by molecular changes of the brain-substance. It seems to me that in men, as in brutes, there is no proof that any state of consciousness is the cause of change in the motion of the matter of the organism. If these positions are well based, it follows that our mental conditions are simply the symbols in consciousness of the changes which takes place automatically in the organism; and that, to take an extreme illustration, the feeling we call volition is not the cause of a voluntary act, but the symbol of that state of the brain which is the immediate cause of that act.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering...

Piecemeal social engineering resembles physical engineering in regarding the ends as beyond the province of technology. (All that technology may say about ends is whether they are compatible with each other or realizable.)

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The Poverty of Historicism (1957) Ch. 22 The Unholy Alliance with Utopianism
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 4 days ago
Nobody should ever doubt that in...

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

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229E:2
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 1 week ago
Conservatism is itself a modernism, and...

Conservatism is itself a modernism, and in this lies the secret of its success.

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"Eliot and Conservatism" (p. 194)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 6 days ago
With regard to the abuse of...

With regard to the abuse of authority, this also may come about in two ways. First, when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted (if, for example, some sinful action is commanded or one which is contrary to virtue, when it is precisely for the protection and fostering of virtue that authority is instituted). In such a case, not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants. Secondly, when those who bear such authority command things which exceed the competence of such authority; as, for example, when a master demands payment from a servant which the latter is not bound to make, and other similar cases. In this instance the subject is free to obey or disobey.

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in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Basil Blackwell: 1974), p. 183
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 days ago
In the past human life was...

In the past human life was lived in a bullock cart; in the future it will be lived in an aeroplane; and the change of speed amounts to a difference in quality.

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Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 137
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
The man whom Nature has appointed...

The man whom Nature has appointed to do great things is, first of all, furnished with that openness to Nature which renders him incapable of being insincere! To his large, open, deep-feeling heart Nature is a Fact: all hearsay is hearsay; the unspeakable greatness of this Mystery of Life, let him acknowledge it or not, nay even though he seem to forget it or deny it, is ever present to him,-fearful and wonderful, on this hand and on that.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 3 days ago
It is not society's....
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Main Content / General
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 2 weeks ago
The ideal form for a poem,...

The ideal form for a poem, essay, or fiction, is that which the ideal writer would evolve spontaneously. One in whom the powers of expression fully responded to the state of feeling, would unconsciously use that variety in the mode of presenting his thoughts, which Art demands.

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Pt. II, sec. 4, "The Ideal Writer"
Philosophical Maxims
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