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David Hume
David Hume
4 months 6 days ago
Where men are the most sure...

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.

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§ 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 week 3 days ago
It is not enough to be...

It is not enough to be wrong, one must also be polite.

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As quoted in The Genius of Science: A Portrait Gallery (2000) by Abraham Pais, p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 1 week ago
In order to survive, the organization...

In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the contributions necessary to sustain it. Hence, organization objectives are constantly adapted to conform to the changing values of customers, or to secure new groups of customers in place of customers who have dropped away. The organization may also undertake special activities to induce acceptance of its objectives by customers - advertising, missionary work, and propaganda of all sorts.

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p. 114.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 4 weeks ago
There is one particular property of...

There is one particular property of living things, however, that I want to single out as explicable only by Darwinian selection. This property is the one that has been the recurring topic of this book: adaptive complexity.

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Chapter 11 "Doomed Rivals" (p. 288)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 3 weeks ago
The question here is the same...

The question here is the same as the question I addressed with regard to madness, disease, delinquency and sexuality. In all of these cases, it was not a question of showing how these objects were for a long time hidden before being finally discovered, nor of showing how all these objects are only wicked illusions or ideological products to be dispelled in the light of reason finally having reached its zenith. It was a matter of showing by what conjunctions a whole set of practices-from the moment they become coordinated with a regime of truth-was able to make what does not exist (madness, disease, delinquency, sexuality, etcetera), nonetheless become something.

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Lecture 1, January 10, 1979, p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 2 days ago
Feuerbach is saying: No, wait a...

Feuerbach is saying: No, wait a minute - if you are going to be allowed to go on living as you are living, then you also have to admit that you are not Christians. Feuerbach has understood the requirements but cannot force himself to submit to them - ergo, he prefers to renounce being a Christian. And now, no matter how great a responsibility he must bear, he takes a position that is not unsound, that is, it is wrong of established Christendom to say that Feuerbach is attacking Christianity; it is not true, he is attacking the Christians by demonstrating that their lives do not correspond to the teachings of Christianity.

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Soren Kierkegaard, Journals X2A 163
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
I thought that the only action...

I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 days ago
There lies before us, if we...

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 5 days ago
There is needed, no doubt, a...

There is needed, no doubt, a body of servants (ministerium) of the invisible church, but not officials (officiales), in other words, teachers but not dignitaries, because in the rational religion of every individual there does not yet exist a church as a universal union (omnitudo collectiva).

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Book IV, Part 1, Section 1, "The Christian religion as a natural religion"
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have never said that human...

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

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Chap.II: The Rise Of The Historic Level
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 3 days ago
Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What...

Fathers and teachers, I ponder, "What is hell?" I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.

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Book VI, Chapter 3 (trans. Constance Garnett)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
2 months 3 weeks ago
The masses are our masters; and...

The masses are our masters; and for every one who looks facts in the face his existence has become dependent on them, so that the thought of them must control his doings, his cares, and his duties. Even an articulated mass always tends to become unspiritual and inhuman. It is life without existence, superstitions without faith. It may stamp all flat; it is disinclined to tolerate independence and greatness, but prone to constrain people to become as automatic as ants.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months ago
Audacity augments courage…

Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.

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Maxim 63 Variant translation: "Valour grows by daring, fear by holding back."
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 2 weeks ago
Morally, it is wrong to suppose...

Morally, it is wrong to suppose the source of evil is outside oneself, that one is a vessel of holiness running over with virtue. Such a disposition is the best soil for a hateful and cruel fanaticism. It is as wrong to impute every wickedness to Jews, Freemasons, "intellectuals," as it is to blame all crimes on the bourgeoisie, the nobility, and the powers that were. No; the root of evil is in me as well, and I must take my share of the responsibility and the blame. That was true before the revolution and it is true still.

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p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 days ago
When governments fear the people, there...

When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.

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Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia. It first appears in 1914, in Barnhill, John Basil (1914). "Indictment of Socialism No. 3" (PDF). Barnhill-Tichenor Debate on Socialism. Saint Louis, Missouri: National Rip-Saw Publishing. pp. p. 34. Retrieved on 2008-10-16.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
It is hardly to be believed...

It is hardly to be believed how spiritual reflections when mixed with a little physics can hold people's attention and give them a livelier idea of God than do the often ill-applied examples of his wrath.

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A 11
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
2 months 2 weeks ago
Theory is taught so as to...

Theory is taught so as to make the student believe that he or she can become a Marxist, a feminist, an Afrocentrist, or a deconstructionist with about the same effort and commitment required in choosing items from a menu.

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Chap 4, Sect 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 2 days ago
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a...

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity. (Often shortened to "can't stand prosperity" as an unknown quote).

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Be not swept off your feet...

Be not swept off your feet by the vividness of the impression, but say, "Impression, wait for me a little. Let me see what you are and what you represent. Let me try you."

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Book II, ch. 18, § 24, Reported in Bartlett's Quotations (1919) as "Be not hurried away by excitement, but say, "Semblance, wait for me a little".
Philosophical Maxims
Chrysippus
Chrysippus
3 months 3 weeks ago
He who is running a race...

He who is running a race ought to endeavor and strive to the utmost of his ability to come off victor; but it is utterly wrong for him to trip up his competitor, or to push him aside. So in life it is not unfair for one to seek for himself what may accrue to his benefit; but it is not right to take it from another.

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As quoted in De Officiis by Cicero, iii. 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 days ago
Saying that what we call our...

Saying that what we call our "selves" consist only of our bodies and that reason, soul, and love arise only from the body, is like saying that what we call our body is equivalent to the food that feeds the body. It is true that my body is only made up of digested food and that my body would not exist without food, but my body is not the same as food. Food is what the body needs for life, but it is not the body itself. The same thing is true of my soul. It is true that without my body there would not be that which I call my soul, but my soul is not my body. The soul may need the body, but the body is not the soul.

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p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 5 days ago
Young man! Deny yourself satisfaction (of...

Young man! Deny yourself satisfaction (of amusement, of debauchery, of love, etc.), not with the Stoical intention of complete abstinence, but with the refined Epicurean intention of having in view an ever-growing pleasure. This stinginess with the cash of your vital urge makes you definitely richer through the postponement of pleasure, even if you should, for the most part, renounce the indulgence of it until the end of your life. The awareness of having pleasure under your control is, like everything idealistic, more fruitful and more abundant than everything that satisfies the sense through indulgence because it is thereby simultaneously consumed and consequently lost from the aggregate of totality.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 54.
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 1 day ago
Ideally a just constitution would be...

Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.

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Chapter IV, Section 31, pg. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 days ago
They who know of no purer...

They who know of no purer sources of truth, who have traced up its stream no higher, stand, and wisely stand, by the Bible and the Constitution, and drink at it there with reverence and humility; but they who behold where it comes trickling into this lake or that pool, gird up their loins once more, and continue their pilgrimage toward its fountain-head.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Imagine a book of unexplained mysteries...

Imagine a book of unexplained mysteries written by a contemporary of Shakespeare. It might include the mystery of the falling stars that sweep through the sky foretelling disaster; the mystery of the Kraken, the giant sea devil with 50-foot tentacles; the mystery of monster bones, sometimes found in caves or on beaches. Such a book would be a curious mixture of truth and absurdity, fact and legend. We would all feel superior as we turned its pages and murmured: "Of course, they didn't know about comets and giant squids and dinosaurs." If this book should happen to find its way into the hands of our remote descendants, they may smile pityingly and say: "It's incredible to think that they knew nothing about epsilon fields or multiple psychic feedback or cross gravitational energies. They didn't even know about the ineluctability of time." But let us hope that such a descendant is in a charitable mood, and might add: "And yet they managed to ask a few of the right questions."

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p. 142
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
4 weeks 1 day ago
The self-evident truth which makes men...

The self-evident truth which makes men invincible is that inalienably they are inviolate persons.

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Ch. XVII: "On This Rock", §2, p. 375
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 days ago
That power should be exercised over...

That power should be exercised over any portion of mankind without any obligation of consulting them, is only tolerable while they are in an infantine, or a semi-barbarous state. In any civilized condition, power ought never to be exempt from the necessity of appealing to the reason, and recommending itself by motives which justify it to the conscience and feelings, of the governed.

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Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 2 days ago
I warmly second the advice of...

I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men-"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 6 days ago
I've upgraded...
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Main Content / General
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months ago
In tetrad form, the artefact is...

In tetrad form, the artefact is seen to be not netural or passive, but an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground.

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p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 3 weeks ago
The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem...

The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

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p. 785
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
In the United States a man...

In the United States a man builds a house to spend his latter years in it and he sells it before the roof is on. He plants a garden and lets it just as the trees are coming into bearing. He brings a field into tillage and leaves other men to gather the crops. He embraces a profession and gives it up. He settles in a place which he soon afterward leaves to carry his changeable longings elsewhere. If his private affairs leave him any leisure he instantly plunges into the vortex of politics and if at the end of a year of unremitting labour he finds he has a few days' vacation, his eager curiosity whirls him over the vast extent of the United States, and he will travel fifteen hundred miles in a few days to shake off his happiness.

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Chapter XXIX.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
Lying and guile need only to...

Lying and guile need only to be revealed and recognized to be undone. When once lying is recognized as such, it needs no second stroke; it falls of itself and vanishes in shame.

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p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
With prophecies the commentator is often...

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

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H 23
Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Platonic doctrine of Ideas has...

The Platonic doctrine of Ideas has been, in all ages, the derision of the vulgar, and the admiration of the wife. Indeed, if we consider that ideas are the most sublime objects of speculation, and that their nature is no less bright in itself, than difficult to investigate, this opposition in the conduct of mankind will be natural and necessary; for, from our connection with a material nature, our intellectual eye, previous to the irradiations of science, is as ill adapted to objects the most splendid of all, "as the eyes of bats to the light of day.

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A Dissertation on the Doctrine of Ideas, &c." Footnote: see second book of Aristotle's Metaphysics.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 3 days ago
What say you…

"What," say you, "are you giving me advice? Indeed, have you already advised yourself, already corrected your own faults? Is this the reason why you have leisure to reform other men?" No, I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure my fellow-men when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months ago
The people should never be deceived,...

The people should never be deceived, under any pretext or for any purpose. It would not only be criminal but detrimental to the revolutionary cause, for deception of any kind, by its very nature, is shortsighted, petty, narrow, always sewn with rotten threads, so that it inevitably tears and is exposed.

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"Appendix A"
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months ago
The undramatic fact is that I...

The undramatic fact is that I just think and think and think until I have something [for a story], and there is nothing marvelous or artistic about the phenomenon.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 3 weeks ago
To be honest, I was somewhat...

To be honest, I was somewhat disappointed... It's had effects around the margins, of course, but they have mostly been minor. When I wrote it, I really thought the book would change the world. I know it sounds a little grand now, but at the time the sixties still existed for us. It looked as if real changes were possible, and I let myself believe that this would be one of them. All you have to do is walk around the corner to McDonald's to see how successful I have been.

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Quoted by Michael Specter on the impact of the book Animal Liberation, "The Dangerous Philosopher", The New Yorker, 6 September 1999.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Man is a universe in little...

Man is a universe in little [Microcosm].

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Freeman (1948), p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 days ago
We boil at different degrees. Eloquence

We boil at different degrees.

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Eloquence
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
Laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio...

Man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.

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I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months ago
Executions, far from being useful examples...

Executions, far from being useful examples to the survivors, have, I am persuaded, a quite contrary effect, by hardening the heart they ought to terrify. Besides, the fear of an ignominious death, I believe, never deterred anyone from the commission of a crime, because in committing it the mind is roused to activity about present circumstances.

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Letter 19
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 days ago
This is the value of the...

This is the value of the Communities; not what they have done, but the revolution which they indicate as on the way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 days ago
After all, it is my principle...

After all, it is my principle that the will of the Majority should always prevail.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months ago
Sentimentality, like pornography, is fragmented emotion;...

Sentimentality, like pornography, is fragmented emotion; a natural consequence of a high visual gradient in any culture.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Chance seldom interferes with the wise...

Chance seldom interferes with the wise man; his greatest and highest interests have been, are, and will be, directed by reason throughout his whole life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months ago
Electricity does not centralize, but decentralizes.

Electricity does not centralize, but decentralizes.

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(p. 36)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 2 days ago
To the wild deep-hearted man all...

To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;-that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 4 days ago
A man of intellect is like...

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument - a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself - in solitude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

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Philosophical Maxims
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