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Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
4 months 3 weeks ago
If women be educated for dependence;...

If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 3 weeks ago
Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that...

Marxism is a revolutionary worldview that must always struggle for new revelations. Marxism must abhor nothing so much as the possibility that it becomes congealed in its current form. It is at its best when butting heads in self-criticism, and in historical thunder and lightning, it retains its strength.

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As quoted in Quote Junkie : Political Edition (2008) by Hagopian Institute
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 1 week ago
My conduct must be the best...

My conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supreme desire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds of the ultimate and irremediable uncertainty of the truth of what I hope for, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue, therefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is not faith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is no security or repose - so far as security and repose are obtainable in this life, so essentially insecure and unreposeful - save in conduct that is passionately good.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
I know. I know that I...

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 2 weeks ago
Happy the people whose annals are...

Happy the people whose annals are blank in history books!

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Life of Frederick the Great, Bk. XVI, ch. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As...

Earth proudly wears the Parthenon As the best gem upon her zone.

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The Problem, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
Anyone who speaks in the name...

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months ago
POLITICAL economy, considered as a branch...

POLITICAL economy, considered as a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator, proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people, or more properly to enable them to provide such a revenue or subsistence for themselves; and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services. It proposes to enrich both the people and the sovereign.

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Introduction, p. 459.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 3 weeks ago
The victory of vivisection marks a...

The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements.

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"Vivisection" (1947), p. 228
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 1 week ago
If a young girl is being...

If a young girl is being forced into a brothel she will not talk about her rights. In such a situation the word would sound ludicrously inadequate.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 3 weeks ago
The direction of the world overwhelms...

The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 months 1 week ago
The dressing up and puffing up...

The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.

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p. 283
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 4 weeks ago
In general, the art of government…

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

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"Money", 1770
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 months 5 days ago
The good effects that emanate from...

The good effects that emanate from the same source are equally diffused upon the earth. Different regions become partakers in these benefits in different ways; so that neither their production comes to an end, nor does the Deity confer his blessings upon the recipient world with any degree of variation. For where the substance is the same, so is the action thereof, in the case of Divine Powers; especially with him who is king of them all, namely, the Sun; of whom the motion is the most simple amongst all the bodies that move in a contrary direction to the world, which fact that most excellent philosopher, Aristotle, adduces to prove the superiority of that luminary to the others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months ago
The government of an exclusive company...

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

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Chapter VII, Part Second, p. 619.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 4 days ago
Saying is one thing and doing...

Saying is one thing and doing is another.

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Ch. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 weeks ago
Few people can be happy unless...

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

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Attributed to Russell in Prochnow's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 4 days ago
Amongst so many borrowed things, I...

Amongst so many borrowed things, I am glad if I can steal one, disguising and altering it for some new service.

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Book III, Ch. 12. Of Physiognomy
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 2 weeks ago
For is not a Symbol ever,...

For is not a Symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God-like? B

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k. III, ch. 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 3 weeks ago
Value, therefore, does not stalk about...

Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 85.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 weeks ago
Those who give and those who...

Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world. It is a crime to bear it, when it can be rationally shaken off. Nothing but absolute impotence can justify men in not resisting it to the utmost of their ability.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 458
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 weeks ago
I assert, that the ancient Whigs...

I assert, that the ancient Whigs held doctrines, totally different from those I have last mentioned. I assert, that the foundations laid down by the Commons, on the trial of Doctor Sacheverel, for justifying the revolution of 1688, are the very same laid down in Mr. Burke's Reflections; that is to say,-a breach of the original contract, implied and expressed in the constitution of this country, as a scheme of government fundamentally and inviolably fixed in King, Lords, and Commons.-That the fundamental subversion of this antient constitution, by one of its parts, having been attempted, and in effect accomplished, justified the Revolution. That it was justified only upon the necessity of the case; as the only means left for the recovery of that antient constitution, formed by the original contract of the British state; as well as for the future preservation of the same government. These are, the points to be proved.

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p. 411
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months ago
IV. Every tax ought to be...

IV. Every tax ought to be contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.

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Chapter II, Part II, p. 893.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 3 weeks ago
Only puny secrets need protection. Big...

Only puny secrets need protection. Big secrets are protected by public incredulity. You can actually dissipate a situation by giving it maximal coverage. As to alarming people, that's done by rumours, not by coverage.

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(p. 92)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 weeks ago
The moment a sovereign removes the...

The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then declares war upon them: he is no longer sovereign; they are no longer subjects.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 459
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
6 months 1 week ago
By protracting life…

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

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Book III, lines 1087-1088 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
He chooses the most feared, most...

He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.

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p. 165
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 weeks ago
If things are ever to move...

If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 weeks ago
Thee will find out in time...

Thee will find out in time that I have a great love of professing vile sentiments, I don't know why, unless it springs from long efforts to avoid priggery.

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Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894). Smith was a Quaker, thus the archaic use of "Thee" in this and other letters to her.
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
6 months 4 days ago
Fear of evil…

Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.

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Act III, scene xi
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou...

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

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16:23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Alas! in the clothes of the...

Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?

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The Suicide Club, Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 3 weeks ago
It's been suggested that if the...

It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 weeks ago
Every man would like to be...

Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

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Ch. 1: The Impulse to Power
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 3 weeks ago
Instead of insanity eliminating the crime...

Instead of insanity eliminating the crime according to the original meaning of article 64,every crime and even every offense now carries within it, as a legitimate suspicion, but also as a right that may be claimed, the hypothesis of insanity, in any case of anomaly. And the sentence that condemns or acquits is not simply a judgement of guily, a legal decision that lays down punishment; it bears within it an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization Today the judge- magistrate or juror0 certainly does more than 'judge'.

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pp. 20-21
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
2 months 4 days ago
All states in the world, large...

All states in the world, large or small, are cities of Heaven, and all people, young or old, honourable or humble, are its subjects; for they all graze oxen and sheep, feed dogs and pigs, and prepare clean wine and cakes to sacrifice to Heaven. Does this not mean that Heaven claims all and accepts offerings from all? Since Heaven does claim all and accepts offerings from all, what then can make us say that it does not desire men to love and benefit one another? Hence those who love and benefit others Heaven will bless. Those who hate and harm others Heaven will curse, for it is said that he who murders the innocent will be visited by misfortune. How else can we explain the fact that men, murdering each other, will be cursed by Heaven? Thus we are certain that Heaven desires to have men love and benefit one another and abominates to have them hate and harm one another.

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Book 1; On the necessity of standards
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
5 months 2 weeks ago
He was going into a theatre,...

He was going into a theatre, meeting face to face those who were coming out, and being asked why, "This," he said, "is what I practise doing all my life."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
5 months 2 weeks ago
He was breakfasting in the marketplace,...

He was breakfasting in the marketplace, and the bystanders gathered round him with cries of "dog." "It is you who are dogs," cried he, "when you stand round and watch me at my breakfast."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 61
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 4 weeks ago
The foundations on which several duties...

The foundations on which several duties are built, and the foundations of right and wrong from which they spring, are not perhaps easily to be let into the minds of grown men, not us'd to abstract their thoughts from common received opinions. Much less are children capable of reasonings from remote principles. They cannot conceive the force of long deductions. The reasons that move them must be obvious, and level to their thoughts, and such as may be felt and touched. But yet, if their age, temper, and inclination be consider'd, they will never want such motives as may be sufficient to convince them.

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Sec. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 months 2 weeks ago
Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in...

Oh! wherefore come ye forth, in triumph from the North,With your hands, and your feet, and your raiment all red? And wherefore doth your rout send forth a joyous shout? And whence be the grapes of the wine-press which ye tread?

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The Battle of Naseby (1824), quoted in The Works of Lord Macaulay Complete, Vol. VIII, ed. Lady Trevelyan (1866), p. 551
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 3 weeks ago
Law could never, by determining exactly...

Law could never, by determining exactly what is noblest and must just for one and all, enjoin upon them that which is best; for the differences of men and of actions and the fact that nothing, I may say, in human life is ever at rest, forbid any science whatsoever to promulgate any simple rule for everything and for all time. So, that which is persistently simple is inapplicable to things which are never simple.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
The sublime is excited in me...

The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 months 1 week ago
Violence may capture space, but it...

Violence may capture space, but it does not create space.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 5 days ago
What remains is....
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John Locke
John Locke
5 months 4 weeks ago
Men being, as has been said,...

Men being, as has been said, by nature, all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subjected to the political power of another, without his own consent.

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. VIII, sec. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
4 months 3 weeks ago
The revolutionary government is the despotism...

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
4 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing, I am sure, calls forth...

Nothing, I am sure, calls forth the faculties so much as the being obliged to struggle with the world; and this is not a woman's province in a married state. Her sphere of action is not large, and if she is not taught to look into her own heart, how trivial are her occupations and pursuits! What little arts engross and narrow her mind!

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Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (1787), "Matrimony", p. 100
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 1 week ago
And what is its moral proof?...

And what is its moral proof? We may formulate it thus: Act so that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that you may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to die tomorrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of morality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; to discover the finality that belongs to it - if indeed it has any finality - and to discover it by acting.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 4 weeks ago
That the outer man is a...

That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous .... Photography ... offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 29, § 377
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The sabbath was made for man,...

The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.

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Mark 2:27 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
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