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Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
And yet this might not necessarily...

And yet this might not necessarily involve the conversion of the Trinity into a Quaternity. If... in Greek, spirit, instead of being neuter had been feminine, who can say that the Virgin Mary might not already have become an incarnation or humanization of the Holy Spirit? ...And thus a dogmatic evolution would have been effected parallel to that of the divinization of Jesus, the Son, and his identification with the Word.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks ago
Freedom of person, securing every one...

Freedom of person, securing every one from imprisonment, or other bodily restraint, but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the well-known law of habeas corpus.

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Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
1 month 2 weeks ago
I do not admire myself as...

I do not admire myself as a person. My successes do not override my shortcomings.

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Journal of Humanistic Psychology (Spring 1991) Vol. 31 No. 2, p. 112
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 2 weeks ago
The advanced members of the medical...

The advanced members of the medical profession know that the health of society is not to be obtained or maintained by medicines; - that it is far better, far more easy and far wiser, to adopt substantive measures to prevent disease of body or mind, than to allow substantive measure to remain continually to generate causes to produce physical and mental disorders.

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3rd Part
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
They made me take cod liver...

They made me take cod liver oil: that is the height of luxury: a medicine to make you hungry while the others, in the street, would have sold themselves for a beefsteak. I saw them passing my window with their signs: "Give me bread".

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Act 3, sc. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The flesh spreads, further and further,...

The flesh spreads, further and further, like a gangrene upon the surface of the globe. It cannot impose limits upon itself, it continues to be rife despite its rebuffs, it takes its defeats for conquests, it has never learned anything. It belongs above all to the realm of the Creator, and it is indeed in the flesh that He has projected His maleficent instincts.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 4 weeks ago
The true goal of the bourgeois...

The true goal of the bourgeois life, in other words, is not self-enactment, but diversion. Most people need the organised distraction of work (if they can find it). Idleness - the life of the playboy who doesn't answer the phone - is simply too demanding. "

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A difficult business," New Statesman
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Every man takes the limits of...

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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"Psychological Observations"
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 1 week ago
The great man is the...

The great man is the one who does not lose his child's heart.

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Book 4, pt. 2, v. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
4 weeks 1 day ago
If life is all subjective, why...

If life is all subjective, why not be subjectively happy rather than subjectively sad?

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On the Wisdom of America (1950), p. 155
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 5 days ago
The first-beginnings…

The first-beginnings of things cannot be seen by the eyes.

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Book I, line 268 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
Since in the Middle Ages the...

Since in the Middle Ages the psychic relation to woman was expressed in the collective worship of Mary, the image of woman lost a value to which human beings had a natural right. This value could find its natural expression only through individual choice, and it sank into the unconscious when the individual form of expression was replaced by a collective one. In the unconscious the image of woman received an energy charge that activated the archaic and infantile dominants. And since all unconscious contents, when activated by dissociated libido, are projected upon the external object, the devaluation of the real woman was compensated by daemonic features. She no longer appeared as an object of love, but as a persecutor or witch. The consequence of increasing Mariolatry was the witch hunt, that indelible blot on the later Middle Ages.

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Psychological Types (1921), CW 6. P.344
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months ago
There is no end. There is...

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

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Fellini on Fellini (1976) edited by Anna Keel and Christian Strich; translated by Isabel Quigly.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 5 days ago
All science must start with some...

All science must start with some assumptions as to the ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals. These assumptions are justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success in representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc suppositions.

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Ch. 8: "The Quantum Theory", p. 189
Philosophical Maxims
Iamblichus
Iamblichus
2 weeks 5 days ago
It is necessary that every man...

It is necessary that every man be surpassingly temperate. That person would most of all be a man of this sort if he were superior to money, which is what corrupts all men, and if, without caring about his life, he bestowed his pains on things that are just and pursued virtue.

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p. 149
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly...

Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.

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p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is better to lose health...

It is better to lose health like a spendthrift than to waste it like a miser. It is better to live and be done with it, than to die daily in the sick-room.

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315
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Writing turned a spotlight on the...

Writing turned a spotlight on the high, dim Sierras of speech; writing was the visualization of acoustic space. It lit up the dark.

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(p. 14)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 4 weeks ago
A faithful and good servant is...

A faithful and good servant is a real godsend; but truly 'tis a rare bird in the land.

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156
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Turks teach women that they...

The Turks teach women that they have no souls, and are unworthy to enter paradise. The French would persuade them that they have no intellects, and are not made to engage in mental labors, and to tread the paths of art and science.

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The Theory of Social Organization
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 2 weeks ago
Even when labor is subjugated by...

Even when labor is subjugated by capital it always necessarily maintains its own autonomy, and this ever more clearly true today with respect to the new immaterial, cooperative and collaborative forms of labor. This relationship is not isolated to the economic terrain but, as we will argue later, spills over into the biopolitical terrain of society as a hole, including military conflicts. In any case, we should recognize here that even in asymmetrical conflicts victory in terms of complete domination is not possible. All that can be achieved is a provisional and limited maintenance of control and order that must constantly be policed and preserved. Counterinsurgency is a full-time job.

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54
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 4 weeks ago
Many people today hold to a...

Many people today hold to a Gnostic view of things without realizing the fact. Believing that human beings can be fully understood in the terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition. Throughout much of the world, and particularly in western countries, the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion.

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The Faith of Puppets: The Freedom of the Marionette (p. 9)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
There ought to be system of...

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Few people can be happy unless...

Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.

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Attributed to Russell in Prochnow's Speakers Handbook of Epigrams and Witticisms (1955), p. 132
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
To know something is to make...

To know something is to make this something that I know myself; but to avail myself of it, to dominate it, it has to remain distinct from myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months ago
To be content with life -...

To be content with life - or to live merrily, rather - all that is required is that we bestow on all things only a fleeting, superficial glance; the more thoughtful we become the more earnest we grow.

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K 29
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 2 weeks ago
I have assumed throughout that the...

I have assumed throughout that the persons in the original position are rational.

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Chapter III, Section 25, pg. 142
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
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
4 months 2 days ago
Placing your stick at the end...

Placing your stick at the end of the shadow of the pyramid, you made by the sun's rays two triangles, and so proved that the pyramid [height] was to the stick [height] as the shadow of the pyramid to the shadow of the stick.

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W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 1 week ago
Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven...

Cicero said loud-bawling orators were driven by their weakness to noise, as lame men to take horse.

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Cicero
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
Eating and reading are two pleasures...

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
Writing is hard work. The fact...

Writing is hard work. The fact that I love doing it doesn't make it less hard work. People who love tennis will sweat themselves to exhaustion playing it, and the love of the game doesn't stop the sweating. The casual assumption that writers are unemployed bums because they don't go to the office and don't have a boss is something every writer has to live with. I have never known a writer who hasn't suffered as a result of this, hasn't resented it, and hasn't dreamed of murdering the next person who says "Boy, you've sure got it made. You just sit there and toss off a story or something whenever you feel like it."

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 1 week ago
Neither art nor wisdom may be...

Neither art nor wisdom may be attained without learning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
Quite a heavy weight…

Quite a heavy weight, a name too quickly famous.

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La Henriade, chant troisième, l.41, 1722
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
3 weeks ago
We perceive by 'means' of a...

We perceive by 'means' of a medium and 'by means' of impressions on the nerves: but we do not (by our senses,) perceive either the medium or the impressions on the nerves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy's error is to be too...

Philosophy's error is to be too endurable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
Who could believe in prophecies of...

Who could believe in prophecies of Daniel or of Miller that the world would end this summer, while one milkweed with faith matured its seeds?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 3 weeks ago
God, I have said, is the...

God, I have said, is the fulfiller, or the reality, of the human desires for happiness, perfection, and immortality. From this it may be inferred that to deprive man of God is to tear the heart out of his breast. But I contest the premises from which religion and theology deduce the necessity and existence of God, or of immortality, which is the same thing. I maintain that desires which are fulfilled only in the imagination, or from which the existence of an imaginary being is deduced, are imaginary desires, and not the real desires of the human heart; I maintain that the limitations which the religious imagination annuls in the idea of God or immortality, are necessary determinations of the human essence, which cannot be dissociated from it, and therefore no limitations at all, except precisely in man's imagination.

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Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 3 weeks ago
When the world fails us, when...

When the world fails us, when we ourselves become worldless in the social sense, the body suffers and shows its precarity; that mode of demonstrating precarity is itself, or carries with it, a political demand and even an expression of outrage. To be a body differentially exposed to harm or to death is precisely to exhibit a form of precarity, but also to suffer a form of inequality that is unjust. So, the situation of many populations who are increasingly subject to unlivable precarity raises for us the question of global obligations. If we ask why any of us should care about those who suffer at a distance from us, the answer is not to be found in paternalistic justifications, but in the fact that we inhabit the world together in relations of interdependency. Our fates are, as it were, given over to one another.

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p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
Man is useless passion…

Man is a useless passion.

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Part 4, Chapter 2, III
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
The man-like Apes... have certain characters...

The man-like Apes... have certain characters of structure and of distribution in common.

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Ch.1, p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 5 days ago
All greatness is....
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Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 1 week ago
At last I have attained true...

At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's window with the following label: "Only 2l. 2s. Hume's History of England in eight volumes, highly valuable as an introduction to Macaulay." I laughed so convulsively that the other people who were staring at the books took me for a poor demented gentleman.

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Alas for poor David! Journal entry (8 March 1849), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), p. 253
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 4 weeks ago
One must never…

One must never forget to look at the aim of a matter.

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Act III, scene xi
Philosophical Maxims
Polybius
Polybius
1 month 1 week ago
How highly should we honor the...

How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?

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Histories, IX, 35:2 (Loeb)
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 5 days ago
The English, generally remarkable for doing...

The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit.

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Vol. I, ch. 3, p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 2 weeks ago
The introduction of free competition is...

The introduction of free competition is thus public declaration that from now on the members of society are unequal only to the extent that their capitals are unequal, that capital is the decisive power, and that therefore the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, have become the first class in society. Free competition is necessary for the establishment of big industry, because it is the only condition of society in which big industry can make its way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
What is not heartrending is superfluous,...

What is not heartrending is superfluous, at least in music.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Every rebellion implies some kind of...

Every rebellion implies some kind of unity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 3 weeks ago
The public health authorities never mention...

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.

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Preface (p. xi)
Philosophical Maxims
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