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Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
The deceiver is really the fool....

The deceiver is really the fool.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 101
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 5 days ago
Have no fear, little flock, for...

Have no fear, little flock, for your Father has approved of giving you the Kingdom.

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12:32
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
Go into the London Stock Exchange...

Go into the London Stock Exchange - a more respectable place than many a court - and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker.

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Letters on England, letter 6, "On the Presbyterians" as quoted in Trust and Tolerance, Richard H. Dees, Routledge, London and New York, (2004) p. 92, published first in English in 1733.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
As a liberal I would hesitate...

As a liberal I would hesitate to propose a blanket ban on any style of dress because of the implications for individual liberty and freedom of choice.

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As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 2 weeks ago
I am obliged to confess that...

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
The general interest of the masses...

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 2 days ago
The enmity of one's kindred is...

The enmity of one's kindred is far more bitter than the enmity of strangers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Look now, this is the starting...

Look now, this is the starting point of philosophy: the recognition that different people have conflicting opinions, the rejection of mere opinion so that it comes to be viewed with mistrust, an investigation of opinion to determine whether it is rightly held, and the discovery of a standard of judgement, comparable to the balance that we have devised for the determining of weights, or the carpenter's rule for determining whether things are straight or crooked.

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Book II, ch. 11, 13.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 2 days ago
It is not right to vex...

It is not right to vex ourselves at things, For they care not about it.

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VII, 38
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 days ago
All work, even cotton spinning, is...

All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble ... A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.

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Bk. III, ch. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
Marriage, a market which has nothing...

Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 6 days ago
No one ever saw Cato change,...

No one ever saw Cato change, no matter how often the state changed: he kept himself the same in all circumstances-in the praetorship, in defeat, under accusation, in his province, on the platform, in the army, in death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
We think in generalities, but we...

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.

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"The Education of an Englishman" in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 138 (1926), p. 192.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
The pivot round which the religious...

The pivot round which the religious life... revolves, is the interest of the individual in his private personal destiny. Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. The gods believed in-whether by crude savages or by men disciplined intellectually-agree with each other in recognizing personal calls. Religious thought is carried on in terms of personality, this being, in the world of religion, the one fundamental fact. To-day, quite as much as at any previous age, the religious individual tells you that the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns.

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Lecture XX, "Conclusions"
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
When, as a result of what...

When, as a result of what was called Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, the priests had in fact almost entirely lost this function of guidance. Their place was taken by writers and scientists. In both cases it is equally absurd. Mathematics, physics, and biology are as remote from spiritual guidance as the art of arranging words. When that function is usurped by literature and science it proves there is no longer any spiritual life.

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"Morality and literature," pp. 164-165
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
My Lords, to obtain empire is...

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.

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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. 398
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The more we try to wrest...

The more we try to wrest ourselves from our ego, the deeper we sink into it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
Alexander is to a peasant proprietor...

Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband.

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p. 78,
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 2 weeks ago
Haste is universal because everyone is...
Haste is universal because everyone is in flight from himself.
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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
Wealth is a great sin in...

Wealth is a great sin in the eyes of God. Poverty is a great sin in the eyes of man.

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p. 86
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
La reconnaissance est un fardeau, et...

Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
This is a work that cannot...

This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will.

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Article on Encyclopedia, as translated in The Many Faces of Philosophy : Reflections from Plato to Arendt (2001), "Diderot", p. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Ordinary language is totally unsuited for...

Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.

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The Scientific Outlook, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
If anyone possesses this faculty, then...

If anyone possesses this faculty, then his attention is in reality directed beyond the world, whether he is aware of it or not. The link which attaches the human being to the reality outside the world is, like the reality itself, beyond the reach of human faculties. The respect that it makes us feel as soon as it is recognized cannot be shown to us by evidence or testimony.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 2 weeks ago
One common false conclusion is that...
One common false conclusion is that because someone is truthful and upright towards us he is spreading the truth. Thus the child believes his parents' judgements, the Christian believes the claims of the church's founders. Likewise, people do not want to admit that all those things which men defended with the sacrifice of their lives and happiness in earlier centuries were nothing but errors.
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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 weeks 1 day ago
The necessary....
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Main Content / General
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 1 week ago
The bourgeois public sphere may be...

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

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p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 2 weeks ago
The noblest Digladiation is in the...

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.

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Part I, Section XXIV
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
'Try now to answer my third...

Try now to answer my third riddle. By what rule to you tell a copy from an original?'

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Pilgrim's Regress 52
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 4 weeks ago
To fall into a habit is...

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our...

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
I have always - at least,...

I have always - at least, ever since I can remember - had a kind of longing for death. Psyche

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
Do not block the way of...

Do not block the way of inquiry.

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Vol. I, par. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
1 month 2 weeks ago
It goes without saying that any...

It goes without saying that any persons may attempt to unite kindred spirits, but, whatever their hopes and longings, none have the right to impose their vision of unity upon the rest.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 325
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 4 weeks ago
One must give one power a...

One must give one power a ballast, so to speak, to put it in a position to resist another.

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Book V, Chapter 14.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
I did not know the way...

I did not know the way in which, among the ordinary English, the absence of interest in things of an unselfish kind, except occasionally in a special thing here and there, and the habit of not speaking to others, nor much even to themselves, about the things in which they do feel interest, causes both their feelings and their intellectual faculties to remain undeveloped, or to develope themselves only in some single and very limited direction; reducing them, considered as spiritual beings, to a kind of negative existence.

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(p. 59)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
For anyone who is alone, without...

For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 6 days ago
Mathematics have a triple aim. They...

Mathematics have a triple aim. They must furnish an instrument for the study of nature. But that is not all: they have a philosophic aim and, I dare maintain, an esthetic aim. They must aid the philosopher to fathom the notions of number, of space, of time. And above all, their adepts find therein delights analogous to those given by painting and music. They admire the delicate harmony of numbers and forms; they marvel when a new discovery opens to them an unexpected perspective; and has not the joy they thus feel the esthetic character, even though the senses take no part therein? Only a privileged few are called to enjoy it fully, it is true, but is not this the case for all the noblest arts?This is why I do not hesitate to say that mathematics deserve to be cultivated for their own sake, and the theories inapplicable to physics as well as the others. Even if the physical aim and the esthetic aim were not united, we ought not to sacrifice either.

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Ch. 5: Analysis and Physics
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 4 weeks ago
Your own philosophy condemns you and...

Your own philosophy condemns you and supports us.

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Salbatore Mitxelena (1958): Unamuno eta Abendats, Baiona: Darracq
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
2 months 4 weeks ago
Nonbeing must in some sense be,...

Nonbeing must in some sense be, otherwise what is it that there is not? This tangled doctrine might be nicknamed Plato's beard; historically it has proved tough, frequently dulling the edge of Occam's razor.

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"On What There Is"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 1 day ago
It is now time for us...

It is now time for us to pay a decent, a rational, a manly reverence to our ancestors, not by superstitiously adhering to what they, in other circumstances, did, but by doing what they, in our circumstances, would have done.

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Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (2 March 1831), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 3 weeks ago
Therefore death is nothing…

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

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Book III, lines 830-831 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 2 days ago
The news of this barbaric orgy...

The news of this barbaric orgy of military sadism was kept from the world for half a year. A belated commission of inquiry was appointed by the Government. A committee appointed by the Indian National Congress made a more through investigation and reported 1,200 killed, and 3,600 wounded. Gen. Dyer was censured by the House of Commons, exonerated by the House of Lords, and was retired on a pension. Thinking this was insufficient the militarists of the Empire raised a fund of $150,000 for him and presented him with a jeweled sword of honor. (source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p. This book was banned by the British Government. Durant held the view that no part of the world suffered so much poverty andoppression as India did and that this was largely due to British imperialism).

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 6 days ago
Our profound human duty is not...

Our profound human duty is not to interpret or to cast light on the rhythm of God's arch, but to adjust, as much as we can, the rhythm of our small and fleeting life to his. Only thus may we mortals succeed in achieving something immortal, because then we collaborate with One who is Deathless. Only thus may we conquer mortal sin, the concentration on details, the narrowness of our brains; only thus may we transubstantiate into freedom the slavery of earthen matter given us to mold.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 5 days ago
The Bible is literature, not dogma.

The Bible is literature, not dogma.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 3 weeks ago
Since my world picture approximates reality...

Since my world picture approximates reality only crudely, I cannot aspire to optimize anything; at most, I can aim at satisficing. Searching for the best can only dissipate scarce cognitive resources; the best is the enemy of the good.

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(p.361) p. 361; As cited in Ronald J. Baker (2010) Implementing Value Pricing: A Revolutionary Business Model for Professional Firms. p. 122.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 3 weeks ago
The liturgy of emptiness dispels the...

The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 4 days ago
Before a man can do things...

Before a man can do things there must be things he will not do.

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Eugene H. Peterson, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (IVP, 1980), Ch 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 days ago
And so in City after City,...

And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions-students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,-might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
Paradox is the technique for seizing...

Paradox is the technique for seizing the conflicting aspects of any problem. Paradox coalesces or telescopes various facets of a complex process in a single instant.

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(p. 106)
Philosophical Maxims
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