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Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
5 months 2 weeks ago
In a word, we reject all...

In a word, we reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged, licensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from universal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of a dominant minority of exploiters against the interest of the immense majority in subjection to them. This is the sense in which we are really Anarchists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 2 weeks ago
All state obligations are against the...

All state obligations are against the conscience of a Christian: the oath of allegiance, taxes, law proceedings and military service.

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Chapter VII, Significance of Compulsory Service
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 2 weeks ago
What is a weed? A plant...

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

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Fortune of the Republic, 1878
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 2 weeks ago
It was the addition of status...

It was the addition of status that brought the little things: a more comfortable seat here, a better cut of meat there, a shorter wait in line at the other place. To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire.Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 2 weeks ago
Then he tried to recall the...

Then he tried to recall the lessons of Mr. Wisdom. "it is I myself, eternal Spirit, who drives this Me, the slave, along that ledge. I ought not to care whether he falls and breaks his neck or not. It is not he that is real, it is I - I - I.

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Pilgrim's Regress 137
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
4 months 4 weeks ago
To conclude: there are two well-known...

To conclude: there are two well-known minor ways in which language has mattered to philosophy. On the one hand there is a belief that if only we produce good definitions, often marking out different senses of words that are confused in common speech, we will avoid the conceptual traps that ensnared our forefathers. On the other hand is a belief that if only we attend sufficiently closely to our mother tongue and make explicit the distinctions there implicit, we shall avoid the conceptual traps. One or the other of these curiously contrary beliefs may nowadays be most often thought of as an answer to the question Why does language matter to philosophy? Neither seems to me enough.

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Ian Hacking (1975), Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy?, p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 2 weeks 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
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 2 weeks ago
Quite often a man goes on...

Quite often a man goes on for years imagining that the religious teaching that had been imparted to him since childhood is still intact, while all the time there is not a trace of it left in him.

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Pt. I, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 1 week ago
Heaven, in the production of things,...

Heaven, in the production of things, is sure to be bountiful to them, according to their qualities. Hence the tree that is flourishing, it nourishes, while that which is ready to fall, it overthrows.

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Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
6 months 1 week ago
The only roads of enquiry there...

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

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Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
7 months 1 week ago
I have always been..

I have always been of the opinion that infamy earned by doing what is right is not infamy at all, but glory.

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Speech I
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 2 weeks ago
Understand however that every man is...

Understand however that every man is worth just so much as the things are worth about which he busies himself.

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VII, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 weeks ago
People are said to believe in...

People are said to believe in God, or to disbelieve in Adam and Eve. But in such cases what is believed or disbelieved is that there is an entity answering a certain description. This, which can be believed or disbelieved is quite different from the actual entity (if any) which does answer the description. Thus the matter of belief is, in all cases, different in kind from the matter of sensation or presentation, and error is in no way analogous to hallucination. A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

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On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism, 1914
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
4 months 1 week ago
To sum up the whole, we...

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable.

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'Lord Bacon', The Edinburgh Review (July 1837), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 395
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
5 months 6 days ago
The bourgeoisie hides the fact that...

The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth.

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p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 1 week ago
In a valiant suffering for others,...

In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 months 1 week ago
The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set...

The nineteenth century, utilitarian throughout, set up a utilitarian interpretation of the phenomenon of life which has come down to us and may still be considered as the commonplace of everyday thinking. ... An innate blindness seems to have closed the eyes of this epoch to all but those facts which show life as a phenomenon of utility.

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p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
5 months 1 week ago
Reason is like an open secret...

Reason is like an open secret that can become known to anyone at any time; it is the quiet space into which everyone can enter through his own thought.

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As quoted in Philosophy for a Time of Crisis : An Interpretation, with Key Writings by Fifteen Great Modern Thinkers (1959) by Adrienne Koch, Ch. 18, "Karl Jaspers : A New Humanism"
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 3 weeks ago
The composer reveals the innermost nature...

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

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Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 weeks ago
It is generally admitted that most...

It is generally admitted that most grown-up people, however regrettably, will try to have a good time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
5 months 3 days ago
The Outsider wants to cease to...

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be 'balanced'. He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway) He would also like to understand the human soul and its working and, be 'possessed' by a Will topower, to more life. (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov) He would like to escape triviality forever. Above all, he would like to know how to express himself because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and hi unknown possibilities.

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Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 6 days ago
I too have a growing inner...

I too have a growing inner certainty that there is a deposit of pure gold in me which ought to be passed on. The trouble is that I am more and more convinced by my experience and observation of my contemporaries that there is no one to receive it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
6 months 2 days ago
By Silence, the discretion of a...

By Silence, the discretion of a man is known: and a fool, keeping Silence, seemeth to be wise.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
7 months 5 days ago
Why, what is weeping and sighing?...

Why, what is weeping and sighing? A judgement. What is misfortune? A judgement. What are strife, disagreement, fault-finding, accusing, impiety, foolishness? They are all judgements.

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Book III, ch. 3, 18, 19.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
5 months ago
Man can acquire accomplishments or he...

Man can acquire accomplishments or he can become an animal, whichever he wants. God makes the animals, man makes himself.

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F 49
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
5 months 5 days ago
A race preserves its vigour so...

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real contrast between what has been and what may be, and so long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the safeties of the past. Without adventure, civilization is in full decay.

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p. 360.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 6 days ago
Whether we take these characters then,...

Whether we take these characters then, or such minor ones as those which are derivable from the proportional length of the spines in the cervical vertebrae, and the like, there is no doubt whatsoever as to the marked difference between Man and the Gorilla; but there is as little, that equally marked differences, of the very same order, obtain between the Gorilla and the lower apes.

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Ch.2, p. 92
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 3 weeks ago
It is very strange that men...

It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.

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From the Philosophic Dictionary, as quoted in The life of Pasteur, 1902
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 2 weeks ago
In fine, I repeat, you must...

In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it. Your own reason is the only oracle given you by heaven, and you are answerable, not for the rightness, but uprightness of the decision.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 4 weeks ago
Credulity in arts and opinions...

Credulity in arts and opinions is likewise of two kinds viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the imagination more than the reason are principally three viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy. Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light.

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De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623) as quoted by Edward Thorpe, History of Chemistry, Vol. 1, p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 2 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
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes,...

Crocodiles sweetly shut their lidded eyes, and yawned,for the blond meat had been quite good, and in slow rainsnew flesh would sprout once more and then be munched anew.

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Book XI, line 652
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 4 weeks ago
The strangest, most generous, and proudest...

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 4 weeks ago
All the passages in the Holy...

All the passages in the Holy Scriptures that mention assistance are they that do away with "free-will", and these are countless...For grace is needed, and the help of grace is given, because "free-will" can do nothing.

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p. 270
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
If one only wished.....
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Main Content / General
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 3 weeks ago
To care only for well-being seems...

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

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Part 1, Chapter 9
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
6 months 2 days ago
Tell not abroad what thou intendest...

Tell not abroad what thou intendest to do; for if thou speed not, thou shalt be mocked!

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 1 week ago
It is the very joy of...

It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 2 weeks ago
It built itself up endlessly, like...

It built itself up endlessly, like a chess game, and the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 5 days ago
Of all these experiences that seem...

Of all these experiences that seem so frightful, none is insuperable. Separate trials have been over- come by many: fire by Mucius, crucifixion by Regulus, poison by Socrates, exile by Rutilius, and a sword-inflicted death by Cato; therefore, let us also overcome something.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 months 3 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
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 3 weeks ago
All men are liable to error;...

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it.

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Book IV, Ch. 20, sec. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 1 week ago
This mutual dependencies no longer the...

This mutual dependencies no longer the dialectical relationship between master and servant, which has been broken in the struggle for mutual recognition, but rather a vicious circle which encloses both the master and the servant. Do the technicians rule, or is their rule that of the others, who rely on the technicians as their planners and executors?

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 1 week 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
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 3 weeks ago
If I seem happy to you...

If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.

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Book II, Chapter 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 months 2 weeks ago
Copernicus never discusses matters of religion...

Copernicus never discusses matters of religion or faith, nor does he use argument that depend in any way upon the authority of sacred writings which he might have interpreted erroneously. ... He did not ignore the Bible, but he knew very well that if his doctrine were proved, then it could not contradict the Scriptures when they were rightly understood.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
7 months 1 week ago
Since our leading men think themselves...

since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish-ponds that will come to hand for food, and neglect everything else, do not you think that I am doing no mean service if I secure that those who have the power, should not have the will, to do any harm?

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Letters to Atticus, Book II, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 months 6 days ago
"Freedom" awakens your rage against everything...

"Freedom" awakens your rage against everything that is not you; "egoism" calls you to joy over yourselves, to self-enjoyment.

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Dover 2005, p. 163
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 months 3 weeks ago
But let us not forget this...
But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things."
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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 2 weeks ago
Lassalle. It would be a pity...

Lassalle. It would be a pity about the fellow because of his great ability, but these goings-on are really too bad. He was always a man one had to keep a devilish sharp eye on and as a real Jew from the Slav border was always to exploit anyone for his own private ends on party pretexts. And then his urge to push his way into polite society, de parvenir, if only for appearance's sake, to disguise the greasy Breslau Jew with all kinds of pomade and paint was always repulsive.

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Letter to Karl Marx (7 March 1856), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
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