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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
"This is the truth," we say....

"This is the truth," we say. "You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right."

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 weeks ago
Men that look upon my outside,...

Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition, and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

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Section 11
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 5 days ago
For if a thing is not...

For if a thing is not diminished by being shared with others, it is not rightly owned if it is only owned and not shared.

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1:1:1 English Latin Latin: Omnis enim res quae dando non deficit, dum habetur et non datur, nondum habetur quomodo habenda est.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 3 weeks ago
He who lives as children live
He who lives as children live who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance remains childlike.
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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 2 days ago
In spite of the universalistic spirit...

In spite of the universalistic spirit of the monotheistic Western religions and of the progressive political concepts that are expressed in the idea "that all men are created equal," love for mankind has not become a common experience. Love for mankind is looked upon as an achievement which, at best, follows love for an individual or as an abstract concept to be realized only in the future. But love for man cannot be separated from love for one individual. To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 weeks ago
When Fortune is on our side,...

When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.

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Maxim 275
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 3 days ago
Maslow explained that, some time in...

Maslow explained that, some time in the late thirties, he had been struck by the thought that modern psychology is based on the study of sick people. But since there are more healthy people around than sick people, how can this psychology give a fair idea of the workings of the human mind? It struck him that it might be worthwhile to devote some time to the study of healthy people.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
2 weeks 2 days ago
Among Latin writers, the acceptations of...

Among Latin writers, the acceptations of the word nature are so many, that I remember, one author reckons up no less than fourteen or fifteen. Hence we see how easy 'tis for the generality of men, without excepting those who write of natural things, to impose upon others and themselves, in the use of a word so apt to be mis-employ'd. ..the very great ambiguity of this term, and the promiscuous use made of it, without sufficiently attending to its different significations, render many of the expressions wherein 'tis employ'd either unintelligible, improper, or false.

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Sect. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
2 weeks 2 days ago
If democracy has become superfluous or...

If democracy has become superfluous or annoying to the bourgeoisie, it is on the contrary necessary and indispensable to the working class. It is necessary to the working class because it creates the political forms (autonomous administration, electoral rights, etc.) which will serve the proletariat as fulcrums in its task of transforming bourgeois society. Democracy is indispensable to the working class because only through the exercise of its democratic rights, in the struggle for democracy, can the proletariat become aware of its class interests and its historic task.

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Ch.8
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Mahomet was only fourteen; had no...

Mahomet was only fourteen; had no language but his own: much in Syria must have been a strange unintelligible whirlpool to him. But the eyes of the lad were open; glimpses of many things would doubtless be taken in, and lie very enigmatic as yet, which were to ripen in a strange way into views, into beliefs and insights one day. These journeys to Syria were probably the beginning of much to Mahomet. One other circumstance we must not forget: that he had no school-learning; of the thing we call school-learning none at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
Little can be hoped for from...

Little can be hoped for from a ruler... who has not at some time or other been preoccupied, even if only confusedly, with the first beginning and ultimate end of all things, and above all of man, with the "why" of his origin and the "wherefore" of his destiny.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 6 days ago
The state of conformity is an...

The state of conformity is an imitation of grace. By a strange mystery - which is connected with the power of the social element - a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints. But the power of the social element makes these virtues natural.

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Accordingly they need a compensation. p. 124
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 months 1 week ago
In old days the plastic arts,...

In old days the plastic arts, music, and poesy were so germane to man in his totality that his Transcendence plainly manifest in them. ... What is to-day obvious to all is a decay in the essence of art. ... the opposition to man's true nature as man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 4 weeks ago
I need not repeat, that the...

I need not repeat, that the most savage of the savage tribes in the forest, live among each other in amity. Lions show no fierceness to the lion race. The boar does not brandish his deadly tooth against his brother boar. The lynx lives in peace with the lynx. The serpent shews no venom in his intercourse with his fellow serpent; and the loving kindness of wolf to wolf is proverbial.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
All that is Life in me...

All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 2 weeks ago
The gesture that divides madness is...

The gesture that divides madness is the constitutive one, not the science that grows up in the calm that returns after the division has been made.

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Preface to 1961 edition
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 2 weeks ago
Social and economic...
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 3 days ago
Constantly and, if it be possible,...

Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic.

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VIII, 13
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 5 days ago
Whatever can happen at any time...

Whatever can happen at any time can happen today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 5 days ago
If the church had deadly sins,...

If the church had deadly sins, the state has capital crimes; if the one had heretics, the other has traitors; the one ecclesiastical penalties, the other criminal penalties; the one inquisitorial processes, the other fiscal; in short, there sins, here crimes, there inquisition and here - inquisition. Will the sanctity of the state not fall like the church's? The awe of its laws, the reverence for its highness, the humility of its 'subjects', will this remain? Will the 'saint's' face not be stripped of its adornment?

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Cambridge 1995, p. 211, 212
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in...

The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.

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April 26, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 2 weeks ago
If the ability to tell...

If the ability to tell right from wrong should turn out to have anything to do with the ability to think, then we must be able to "demand" its exercise from every sane person, no matter how erudite or ignorant, intelligent or stupid, he may happen to be. Kant-in this respect almost alone among the philosophers-was much bothered by the common opinion that philosophy is only for the few, precisely because of its moral implications.

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p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
We are as much as we...

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.

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April 9, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 3 weeks ago
Indeed it may be only by...

Indeed it may be only by risking the incoherence of identity that connection is possible.

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Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 4 weeks ago
What does it mean to have...

What does it mean to have a god? or, what is God? Answer: A god means that from which we are to expect all good and to which we are to take refuge in all distress, so that to have a God is nothing else than to trust and believe Him from the [whole] heart; as I have often said that the confidence and faith of the heart alone make both God and an idol. If your faith and trust be right, then is your god also true; and, on the other hand, if your trust be false and wrong, then you have not the true God; for these two belong together faith and God. That now, I say, upon which you set your heart and put your trust is properly your god.

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Large Catechism 1.1-3, F. Bente and W.H.T. Dau, tr. Triglot Concordia: The Symbolical Books of the Ev. Lutheran Church(St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 565.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 week 3 days ago
But to return to the...

But to return to the Jewish question. Other groups and nations cultivate their individual traditions. There is no reason why we should sacrifice ours. Standardization robs life of its spice. To deprive every ethnic group of its special traditions is to convert the world into a huge Ford plant. I believe in standardizing automobiles. I do not believe in standardizing human beings. Standardization is a great peril which threatens American culture.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
3 months 1 week ago
To a lesser degree, a secret...

To a lesser degree, a secret ressentiment underlies every way of thinking which attributes creative power to mere negation and criticism. Thus modern philosophy is deeply penetrated by a whole type of thinking which is nourished by ressentiment. I am referring to the view that the "true" and the "given" is not that which is self-evident, but rather that which is "indubitable" or "incontestable," which can be maintained against doubt and criticism.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 67
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
"We may ignore, but we can...

"We may ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito."

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 5 days ago
Things that were hard….

Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.

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lines 656-657;
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
Her face seems ravaged by both...

Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
3 months 1 week ago
The "kingdom of God" has become...

The "kingdom of God" has become the "other world," which stands mechanically beside "this world"-an opposition unknown to the strongest periods of Christianity.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
In order that men should embrace...

In order that men should embrace the truth - not in the vague way they did in childhood, nor in the one-sided and perverted way presented to them by their religious and scientific teachers, but embrace it as their highest law the complete liberation of this truth from all and every superstition (both pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific) by which it is still obscured is essential: not a partial, timid attempt, reckoning with traditions sanctified by age and with the habits of the people - not such as was effected in the religious sphere by Guru Nanak, the founder of the sect of the Sikhs, and in the Christian world by Luther, and by similar reformers in other religions - but a fundamental cleansing of religious consciousness from all ancient religious and modern scientific superstitions.

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VI
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha,...

Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, are names for a great variety of human virtues, human mystical experiences, human remorses, human compensatory fantasies, human terrors, human cruelties. If all men were alike, all the world would worship the same God.

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"One and Many," p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 3 weeks ago
Nonviolence is perhaps best described as...

Nonviolence is perhaps best described as a practice of resistance that becomes possible, if not mandatory, precisely at the moment when doing violence seems most justified and obvious. In this way, it can be understood as a practice that not only stops a violent act, or a violent process, but requires a form of sustained action, sometimes aggressively pursued. So, one suggestion I will make is that we can think of nonviolence not simply as the absence of violence, or as the act of refraining from committing violence, but as a sustained commitment, even a way of rerouting aggression for the purposes of affirming ideals of equality and freedom.

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p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
4 months 1 week ago
He who abhors and shuns the...

He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun, He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God, He who leads the good to wickedness, He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate, He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent, An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 32, 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 4 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
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
In effect, to follow, not to...

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 4 weeks ago
A speech comes alive only if...

A speech comes alive only if it rises from the heart, not if it floats on the lips.

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in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Invention is the mother of all...

Invention is the mother of all necessities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 6 days ago
I say, the earth belongs to...

I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.

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Letter to James Madison (6 September 1789) ME 7:455, Papers 15:393
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Pursued by our origins...we all are.

Pursued by our origins...we all are.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 months 1 week ago
Imminent seems the collapse of that...

Imminent seems the collapse of that which for millennium has constituted man's universe. The new world which has arisen as an apparatus for supply of the necessaries of life compels everything and everyone to serve it. It annihilates whatever it has no place for person seems to be going undergoing absorption into that which is nothing more than a means to an end, into that which is devoid of purpose of significance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is so characteristic, that just...

It is so characteristic, that just when the mechanics of reproduction are so vastly improved, there are fewer and fewer people who know how the music should be played.

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p. 96
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 3 days ago
The other reason is that what...

The other reason is that what happens to the individual is a cause of well-being in what directs the world--of its well-being, its fulfillment, or its very existence, even. Because the whole is damaged if you cut away anything--anything at all--from its continuity and its coherence. Not only its parts, but its purposes. And that's what you're doing when you complain: hacking and destroying.

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(Hays translation) V, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
What would we really know the...

What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; - show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it instantly on an eternal law; and the shop, the plough, and the ledger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing; - and the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room, but has form and order; there is no trifle; there is no puzzle; but one design unites and animates the farthest pinnacle and the lowest trench.

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par. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is manifest... that every soul...

It is manifest... that every soul and spirit hath a certain continuity with the spirit of the universe, so that it must be understood to exist and to be included not only there where it liveth and feeleth, but it is also by its essence and substance diffused throughout immensity... The power of each soul is itself somehow present afar in the universe... Naught is mixed, yet is there some presence. Anything we take in the universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 days ago
When, in the course of human...

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 weeks ago
The territorial aristocracy of former ages...

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.

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Book Two, Chapter XX.
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 2 weeks ago
Being happy involves both a certain...

Being happy involves both a certain achievement in action and a rational assurance about the outcome.

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Chapter IX, Section 83, p. 549
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 2 days ago
These philosophers of the world place...

These philosophers of the world place contrarieties in the same subject; for the one attributed greatness to nature and the other weakness to this same nature, which could not subsist; whilst faith teaches us to place them in different subjects: all that is infirm belonging to nature, all that is powerful belonging to grace. Such is the marvelous and novel union which God alone could teach, and which he alone could make, and which is only a type and an effect of the ineffable union of two natures in the single person of a Man-God.

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Philosophical Maxims
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