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Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 5 days ago
The idea of creating a national...

The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.

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Letter to Thomas Law, 1813. FE 9:433
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 3 days ago
Practice is the best of all...

Practice is the best of all instructors.

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Maxim 439
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 3 days ago
The tyrant has arisen, and the...

The tyrant has arisen, and the king and oligarchy and aristocracy and democracy, because men are not contented with that one perfect ruler, and do not believe that there could ever be any one worthy of such power or willing and able by ruling with virtue and knowledge to dispense justice and equity rightly to all, but that he will harm and kill and injure any one of us whom he chooses on any occasion, since they admit that if such a man as we describe should really arise, he would be welcomed and would continue to dwell among them, directing to their weal as sole ruler a perfectly right form of government. But, as the case now stands, since, as we claim, no king is produced in our states who is, like the ruler of the bees in their hives, by birth pre-eminently fitted from the beginning in body and mind, we are obliged, as it seems, to follow in the track of the perfect and true form of government by coming together and making written laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 6 days ago
It is an advantage to all...

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
One ought to fast, watch, and...

One ought to fast, watch, and labor to the extent that such activities are needed to harness the body's desires and longings; however, those who presume that they are justified by works pay no attention to the need for self-discipline but see the works themselves as the way to righteousness. They believe that if they do a great number of impressive works all will be well and righteousness will be the result. Sometimes this is pursued with such zeal that they become mentally unstable and their bodies are sapped of all strength. Such disastrous consequences demonstrate that the belief that we are justified and saved by works without faith is extremely foolish.

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p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
5 months 1 week ago
Everything that is possible…

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

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1686
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 3 weeks ago
About Pontus there are some creatures...

About Pontus there are some creatures of such an extempore being that the whole term of their life is confined within the space of a day; for they are brought forth in the morning, are in the prime of their existence at noon, grow old at night, and then die.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Why is it so hard to...

Why is it so hard to keep the mind concentrated, and to live up to our good resolutions? The problem is the basically mechanical nature of our left-brain consciousness. We have a kind of robot servant who does things for us: we learn to type or drive a car, painfully and consciously, then our robot takes over, and does it far more quickly and efficiently. Because man is the most complex creature on Earth, he is forced to rely on his robot far more than other animals. The result is that, whenever he gets tired, the robot takes over. For the modern city dweller, most of his everyday living is done by the robot. This is why it takes an emergency to concentrate the mind 'wonderfully', and why we forget so quickly.

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p. 344
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 5 days ago
In order to be able to...

In order to be able to meet a general combination of the banks against us in a critical emergency, could we not make a beginning towards an independent use of our own money, towards holding our own bank in all the deposits where it is received, and letting the treasurer give his draft or note for payment at any particular place, which, in a well-conducted government, ought to have as much credit as any private draft or bank note or bill, and would give us the same facilities which we derive from the banks?

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Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1803. ME 10:439
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 4 weeks ago
Liberalism has merely cleared a field...

Liberalism has merely cleared a field in which every soul and every corporate interest may fight with every other for domination. Whoever is victorious in this struggle will make an end of liberalism; and the new order, which will deem itself saved, will have to defend itself in the following age against a new crop of rebels.

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"The Irony of Liberalism"
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 3 weeks ago
If thou shouldst say, 'It is...

If thou shouldst say, 'It is enough, I have reached perfection,' all is lost. For it is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.

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Quoted by Aldous Huxley, in The Perennial Philosophy (1945)
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 6 days ago
Society should treat all equally well...

Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge.

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Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 1 day ago
In every part and corner of...

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.

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Old Mortality (1884).
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
And thus the soul pities God...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 1 day ago
Suppose a surface to be part...

Suppose a surface to be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course, no part can be both red and blue. What then, is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point. ...it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time... Thus, the present is half past and half time to come. ...Take another case: the velocity of a particle at any instant of time is its mean velocity during an infinitesimal instant in which that time is consumed. Just so, my immediate feeling is my feeling through an infinitesimal duration containing the present instant.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 2 weeks ago
Basic justice

Basic justice is based on everything we as humans share that is the same. It extends to nature also, but, if we can't keep it straight amongst ourselves, of course we'll never have the traction to extend it to the larger context we are a part of.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Crowley wanted to be a magician...

Crowley wanted to be a magician because he wanted power -- power over other people.

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p. 157
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
Yes, truly, it is a great...

Yes, truly, it is a great thing for a Nation that it get an articulate voice; that it produce a man who will speak forth melodiously what the heart of it means!

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 weeks ago
Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not...

Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.

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Ch. 43, November 11, 1947.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Ethics is inescapable…

Ethics is inescapable.

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Preface, p. xv
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 months 3 weeks ago
No tyranny is more...

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.

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See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 5 days ago
There is no more miserable human...

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months 2 weeks ago
It's easier to be faithful to...

It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.

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Fidelity
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 3 weeks ago
If historical experience could teach us...

If historical experience could teach us anything, it would be that private property is inextricably linked with civilization.

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Chapter XV. The Market, § 4 The Scope and Method of Catallactics
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
3 months 4 weeks ago
The eyes see only what the...

The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

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Robertson Davies as quoted in The White Bedouin‎ (2007) by George Potter, p. 241
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 5 days ago
How we hate this solemn Ego...

How we hate this solemn Ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes.

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1839
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 5 days ago
The Present Age, according to my...

The Present Age, according to my view of it, stands in that Epoch which in my former lecture I named the THIRD, and which I characterized as the Epoch of Liberation-directly from the external ruling Authority, indirectly from the power of Reason as Instinct, and generally from Reason in any form; the Age of absolute indifference towards all truth, and of entire and unrestrained licentiousness:-the state of completed sinfulness.

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p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 6 days ago
They made and recorded a sort...

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary principles as would have disgraced boys at school; but this declaration of rights was worse than trifling and pedantic in them; as by their name and authority they systematically destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration they subverted the state; and brought on such calamities as no country, without a long war, has ever been known to suffer, and which may in the end produce such a war, and perhaps, many such.

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Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1790), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 358
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 weeks ago
In all philosophic theory there is...

In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed creativity; and [[God] is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed The Absolute. In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 1 week ago
You need to know enough of...

You need to know enough of the natural sciences so that you are not a stranger in the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 3 weeks ago
It suffices to remember how many...

It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.

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p. 286
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 2 weeks ago
Like a plague, the mad spirit...

Like a plague, the mad spirit is sweeping the country, infesting the clearest heads and staunchest hearts with the deathly germ of militarism.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 4 days ago
Among these Jews there suddenly turns...

Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside of the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 4 days ago
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule...

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

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Part 3, Ch. 13, § 3
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 4 weeks ago
When you make the two into...

When you make the two into one, you will become children of Adam, and when you say, 'Mountain, move from here!' it will move.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 1 day ago
Children are nowhere....
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Main Content / General
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 4 weeks ago
At the classical origins of philosophic...

At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.

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pp. 134-135
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
4 months 3 weeks ago
The pleasure is only for a...

The pleasure is only for a little moment, and it [passes] like a dream, and a man at the end thereof finds death through knowing it.

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Maxim no. 18. Translated by Sir E. A. Wallis Budge, Teaching Of Amenem Apt Son Of Kanekht (London: Martin Hopkinson and Company Ltd, 1924) p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 1 week ago
To this I answer: That force...

To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man...

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. XVIII, sec. 204
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
1 month 1 day ago
Now a man need not be...

Now a man need not be very conversant in the writings of Chymists to observe, in how Laxe, Indefinite, and almost Arbitrary Senses they employ the Terms of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury; of which I could never find that they were agreed upon any certain Definitions or setled Notions; not onely differing Authors, but not unfrequently one and the same, and perhaps in the same Book, employing them in very differing senses.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 5 days ago
As we take, in fact, a...

As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 5 days ago
We have unmistakable proof that throughout...

We have unmistakable proof that throughout all past time, there has been a ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.

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Vol. I, Part III, Ch. 2 General Aspects of the Special-Creation-Hypothesis
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 1 week ago
The surface of American society is...

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

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Chapter II.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
An eternal purgatory, then, rather than...

An eternal purgatory, then, rather than a heaven of glory; an eternal ascent. If there is an end to all suffering, however pure and spiritualized we may suppose it to be, if there is an end to all desire, what is it that makes the blessed in paradise go on living? If in paradise they do not suffer for want of God, how shall they love Him? And if there, in the heaven of glory, while they behold God little by little and closer and closer, yet without ever wholly attaining Him, there does not always remain something more for them to know and desire, if there does not always remain a substratum of doubt, how shall they not fall asleep?

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
He who establishes his argument by...

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
Every candid eye, I think, will...

Every candid eye, I think, will read the Koran far otherwise than so. It is the confused ferment of a great rude human soul; rude, untutored, that cannot even read; but fervent, earnest, struggling vehemently to utter itself in words. With a kind of breathless intensity he strives to utter himself; the thoughts crowd on him pell-mell: for very multitude of things to say, he can get nothing said. The meaning that is in him shapes itself into no form of composition, is stated in no sequence, method, or coherence;-they are not shaped at all, these thoughts of his; flung out unshaped, as they struggle and tumble there, in their chaotic inarticulate state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months ago
The need of black conservatives to...

The need of black conservatives to gain the respect of their white peers deeply shapes certain elements of their conservatism. In this regard, they simply want what most people want, to be judged by the quality of their skills, not by the color of their skin. But the black conservatives overlook the fact that affirmative action policies were political responses to the pervasive refusal of most white Americans to judge black Americans on that basis.

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(p52)
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
5 months 1 week ago
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are...

If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. No doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and children, than between masters and slaves ; yet it advances not the art of household management to change a father's right into a right of property, and count children but as slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered by handing the whole authority to one man.

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Ch. 6, On Monarchy
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have been overcome by the...

I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light. ... Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 days ago
Take away your opinion, and there...

Take away your opinion, and there is taken away the complaint. Take away the complaint, and the hurt is gone.

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IV. 7, trans. George Long
Philosophical Maxims
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