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Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
A man who is free is...

A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.

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King Aegistheus, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
During such calm sunshine of the...

During such calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of false divinity never make their appearance.

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Part XIV - Bad influence of popular religions on morality
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
2 months 2 weeks ago
M. Desargues puts me under obligations...

M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind, and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.

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Letter to Marin Mersenne (July 27, 1638) as quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893) letter dated in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, The Correspondence (1991) ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 1 week ago
Since the management of industry by...

Since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement - in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 days ago
The man of virtue makes the...

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Act, if you like,-but you do...

Act, if you like,-but you do it at your peril. Men's actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action. What they have done commits and enforces them to do the same again. The first act, which was to be an experiment, becomes a sacrament. The fiery reformer embodies his aspiration in some rite or covenant, and he and his friends cleave to the form, and lose the aspiration. The Quaker has established Quakerism, the Shaker has established his monastery and his dance; and, although each prates of spirit, there is no spirit, but repetition, which is anti-spiritual.

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Goethe; or, the Writer
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists...

Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists who can no longer be . . . optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why should they have any to die?

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 5 days ago
...whoever is not against us is...

...whoever is not against us is for us.

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9:40
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
There is a sort of enthusiasm...

There is a sort of enthusiasm in all projectors, absolutely necessary for their affairs, which makes them proof against the most fatiguing delays, the most mortifying disappointments, the most shocking insults; and what is severer than all, the presumptuous judgments of the ignorant upon their designs.

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Volume I, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is a mistake to classify...

It is a mistake to classify the passions as lawful and unlawful, so as to yield to the one and refuse the other. All alike are good if we are their masters; all alike are bad if we abandon ourselves to them. Nature forbids us to extend our relations beyond the limits of our strength; reason forbids us to want what we cannot get, conscience forbids us, not to be tempted, but to yield to temptation. To feel or not to feel a passion is beyond our control, but we can control ourselves. Every sentiment under our own control is lawful; those which control us are criminal. A man is not guilty if he loves his neighbour's wife, provided he keeps this unhappy passion under the control of the law of duty; he is guilty if he loves his own wife so greatly as to sacrifice everything to that love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 1 week ago
The blues is relevant today because...

The blues is relevant today because when we look down through the corridors of time, the black American interpretation of tragicomic hope in the face of dehumanizing hate and oppression will be seen as the only kind of hope that has any kind of maturity in a world of overwhelming barbarity and bestiality. That barbarity is found not just in the form of terrorism but in the form of the emptiness of our lives - in terms of the wasted human potential that we see around the world. In this sense, the blues is a great democratic contribution of black people to world history.

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(p20)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
When one admits that nothing is...

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

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"Skepticism"
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 days ago
The direction of society has been...

The direction of society has been taken over by a type of man who is not interested in the principles of civilisation. Not of this or that civilisation but - from what we can judge to-day - of any civilisation. ...The type of man dominant to-day is a primitive one, a Naturmensch rising up in the midst of a civilised world.

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Chap.IX: The Primitive and the Technical
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
Man has to awaken to wonder...

Man has to awaken to wonder - and so perhaps do peoples. Science is a way of sending him to sleep again.

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p. 5e
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 5 days ago
Every moment celebrates obsequies over the...

Every moment celebrates obsequies over the virtues of its predecessor.

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Ch. XIV
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
There is no mystery in humans...

There is no mystery in humans creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
The growth of the mind is...

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and ... each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

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p. 340
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 week 3 days ago
It takes a long time to...

It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

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Maxim 780
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 3 days ago
It is precisely the essential feature...

It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Self-directedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 96
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 4 weeks ago
Let us rejoice and give thanks....

Let us rejoice and give thanks. Not only are we become Christians, but we are become Christ. My brothers, do you understand the grace of God that is given us? Wonder, rejoice, for we are made Christ! If He is the Head, and we the members, then together He and we are the whole man.... This would be foolish pride on our part, were it not a gift of his bounty. But this is what He promised by the mouth of the Apostle: You are the body of Christ, and severally His members.

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(1 Cor. 12:27). p. 415
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks 1 day ago
A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate...

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

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J 10
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
To be happy, we must not...

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 2 weeks ago
Truth is a standard…

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

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Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Like the body the soul can...

Like the body the soul can be healthy, youthful, and so on. It can undergo pain, thirst, and hunger. In this physical life, that is, in the visible world, we avoid whatever would defile or deform the body; how much more, then, ought we to avoid that which would tarnish the soul?

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
If there is anything in the...

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

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Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
2 months 2 weeks ago
Cunning and deceit will every time...

Cunning and deceit will every time serve a man better than force to rise from a base condition to great fortune.

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Book 2, Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
Look for yourself, and you will...

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

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Book IV, Chapter 10, "The New Men"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
As a rule we disbelieve all...

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

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"The Will to Believe" p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
Lightly men talk of saying what...

Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words." A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

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Orual
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
The heroes in paganism correspond exactly...

The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saints in popery, and holy dervises in MAHOMETANISM. The place of, HERCULES, THESEUS, HECTOR, ROMULUS, is now supplied by DOMINIC, FRANCIS, ANTHONY, and BENEDICT. Instead of the destruction of monsters, the subduing of tyrants, the defence of our native country; whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abject submission and slavish obedience, are become the means of obtaining celestial honours among mankind.

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Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
The men of England - the...

The men of England - the men, I mean of light and leading in England.

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Volume iii, p. 365
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 3 days ago
The highest and ultimate personality values...

The highest and ultimate personality values are declared to be independent of contrasts like rich and poor, healthy and sick, etc. The world had become accustomed to considering the social hierarchy, based on status, wealth, vital strength, and power, as an exact image of the ultimate values of morality and personality. The only way to disclose the discovery of anew and higher sphere of being and life, of the "kingdom of God" whose order is independent of that worldly and vital hierarchy, was to stress the vanity of the old values in this higher order.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 98
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 weeks 6 days ago
The philosophy of physics is continuous...

The philosophy of physics is continuous with physics itself. Just as certain issues in the Foundations of Mathematics have been discussed by both mathematicians and by philosophers of mathematics, so certain issues in the philosophy of physics have been discussed by both physicists and by philosophers of physics. And just as there are issues of a more epistemological kind that tend to concern philosophers of mathematics more than they do working mathematicians, so there are issues that concern philosophers of physics more than they do working physicists.

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Philosophy of physics
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 1 week ago
"For many, abstract thinking is toil;...

"For many, abstract thinking is toil; for me, on good days, it is feast and frenzy." (XIV, 24) Abstract thinking a feast? The highest form of human existence? ... "The feast implies: pride, exuberance, frivolity; mockery of all earnestness and respectability; a divine affirmation of oneself, out of animal plenitude and perfection-all obviously states to which the Christian may not honestly say Yes. The feast is paganism par excellence." (WM, 916). For that reason, we might add that thinking never takes place in Christianity. That is to say, there is no Christian philosophy. There is no true philosophy that could be determined anywhere else than from within itself.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 2 days ago
Every state....
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Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 days ago
Virtuous, worthy, wise and capable people...

Virtuous, worthy, wise and capable people are chosen as leaders.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
1 month 1 week ago
On its pass through finitude, the...

On its pass through finitude, the being-for-itself of the counter-image expresses itself most potently as ""I-ness", as self-identical individuality. Just as a planet in its orbit no sooner reaches its farthest distance from the center than it returns to its closest proximity, so the point of the farthest distance from God, the I-ness, is also the moment of its return to the Absolute, of the re-absorption into the ideal.

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P. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 weeks ago
The telling of jokes is an...

The telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful.

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Interviewed by J. Rentilly, "The Best Jokes Are Dangerous", McSweeny's
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 1 week ago
To be ignorant of the past...

To be ignorant of the past is to remain a child.

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Cicero
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 2 weeks ago
When someone hides something behind a...
When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man.
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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
Out of my experience, such as...

Out of my experience, such as it is (and it is limited enough) one fixed conclusion dogmatically emerges, and that is this, that we with our lives are like islands in the sea, or like trees in the forest. The maple and the pine may whisper to each other with their leaves. ... But the trees also commingle their roots in the darkness underground, and the islands also hang together through the ocean's bottom. Just so there is a continuum of cosmic consciousness, against which our individuality builds but accidental fences, and into which our several minds plunge as into a mother-sea or reservoir.

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"Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher'", in The American Magazine, Vol. 68 (1909), p. 589
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
For the history of the centuries...

For the history of the centuries that have passed since the birth of Christ nowhere reveals conditions like those of the present. There has never been such building and planting in the world. There has never been such gluttonous and varied eating and drinking as now. Wearing apparel has reached its limit in costliness. Who has ever heard of such commerce as now encircles the earth? There have arisen all kinds of art and sculpture, embroidery and engraving, the like of which has not been seen during the whole Christian era. In addition men are so delving into the mysteries of things that today a boy of twenty knows more than twenty doctors formerly knew.

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Sermon for the Second Sunday in Advent, Luke 21:25-36 (1522), as translated in The Precious and Sacred Writings of Martin Luther (1905) edited by John Nicholas Lenker
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 weeks 4 days ago
The reason that people take selfies...

The reason that people take selfies is not narcissism. Rather, it is inner emptiness. There is no meaning to stabilize the ego. Faced with its inner emptiness, the ego constantly produces itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 2 weeks ago
Heroic love is the property of...

Heroic love is the property of those superior natures who are called insane not because they do not know, but because they over-know.

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As quoted in The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), by Miguel de Unamuno, as translated by J. E. Crawford
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 weeks 4 days ago
The erotic is never free of...

The erotic is never free of secrecy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
6 days ago
It is therefore, the interest of...

It is therefore, the interest of all, that every one, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, - that everyone should be placed in the midst of those external circumstances that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be thus prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium.

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A Development of the Principles & Plans on which to establish self-supporting Home Colonies
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 weeks ago
So rolling time….

So rolling time changes the seasons of things. What was of value, becomes in turn of no worth.

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Book V, lines 1276-1277 (tr. Bailey)
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
3 months 2 days ago
The wise is one only.

The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
Man, being the servant and interpreter...

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

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Aphorism 1
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
The value of life lies not...

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

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Book I, Ch. 20
Philosophical Maxims
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