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Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 3 weeks ago
The laws of conscience, which we...

The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom.

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Ch. 22. Of Custom, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
6 months 4 days ago
We assume that our own advances...

We assume that our own advances in objectivity are steps along a path that extends beyond them and beyond all our capacities. But even allowing unlimited time, or an unlimited number of generations, to take as many successive steps as we like, the process can never be completed. ... What is wanted is some way of making the most objective standpoint the basis of action.

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pp. 128-129.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 1 week ago
If we remembered everything, we should...

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take as long for us to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of the facts which filled them.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is the private dominion over...

It is the private dominion over things that condemns millions of people to be mere nonentities, living corpses without originality or power of initiative, human machines of flesh and blood, who pile up mountains of wealth for others and pay for it with a gray, dull and wretched existence for themselves. I believe that there can be no real wealth, social wealth, so long as it rests on human lives - young lives, old lives and lives in the making.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 2 weeks ago
Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest...

Shakespeare's fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 months 1 week ago
Old and young, we are all...

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

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Crabbed Age and Youth.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
5 months 6 days ago
A philosopher worthy...

A philosopher worthy of the name has never said more than a single thing: and even then it is something he has tried to say, rather than actually said. And he has said only one thing because he has seen only one point: and at that it was not so much a vision as a contact...

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"L'intuition philosophique (Philosophical Intuition)" (10 April 1911); translated by Mabelle L. Andison in: Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics, Courier Dover Publications, 2012, p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
6 months 2 weeks ago
The ordinary surroundings of life which...

The ordinary surroundings of life which are esteemed by men (as their actions testify) to be the highest good, may be classed under the three heads - Riches, Fame, and the Pleasures of Sense: with these three the mind is so absorbed that it has little power to reflect on any different good.

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I, 3 Variant translation: The things which ... are esteemed as the greatest good of all ... can be reduced to these three headings, to wit : Riches, Fame, and Pleasure. With these three the mind is so engrossed that it cannot scarcely think of any other
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 months 4 days ago
He [the "specialist"] is one who,...

He [the "specialist"] is one who, out of all that has to be known in order to be a man of judgment, is only acquainted with one science, and even of that one only knows the small corner in which he is an active investigator. He even proclaims it as a virtue that he takes no cognisance of what lies outside the narrow territory specially cultivated by himself, and gives the name of "dilettantism" to any curiosity for the general scheme of knowledge.

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Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 2 weeks ago
"Do not die that we may...

"Do not die that we may not die," the dead cry out within you. "We had no time to enjoy the women we desired; be in time, sleep with them! We had no time to turn our thoughts into deeds; turn them into deeds! We had no time to grasp and to crystallize the face of our hope; make it firm!" ... But you must choose with care whom to hurl down again into the chasms of your blood, and whom you shall permit to mount once more into the light and the earth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 3 days ago
There is nothing more visible than...

There is nothing more visible than what is secret, and nothing more manifest than what is minute. Therefore the superior man is watchful over himself, when he is alone.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 5 days ago
Our mass media have little difficulty...

Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.

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p. xli
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 2 weeks ago
This body which…

This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

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Essai sur l'histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, Chapter 70, 1756
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 1 week ago
Without an anti-environment, all environments are...

Without an anti-environment, all environments are invisible.

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(p. 33)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 2 weeks ago
Thee might observe incidentally that if...

Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child - this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.

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Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884-1914)
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
5 months ago
Of all kind of authors there...

Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?"

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No. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 4 days ago
I care little about the sword:...

I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 months 3 weeks ago
Civilizations die from suicide, not by...

Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.

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In Mark Steyn, "It's the Demography, Stupid!", Opinion Journal, WSJ (2006).
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 1 week ago
A sect or party is an...

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

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June 20, 1831
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 3 weeks ago
What of a truth…

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 1 week ago
Good health is the best weapon...

Good health is the best weapon against religion. Healthy bodies and healthy minds have never been shaken by religious fears.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 3 days ago
To give one's self earnestly...

To give one's self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months 3 weeks ago
But plants, though they have not...

But plants, though they have not powers of perception, yet, as they have life, certainly approach very nearly to those things which are endowed with sentient faculties. What then is so completely insensible as stony substance? yet even in this, there appears to be a desire of union. Thus the loadstone attracts iron to it, and holds it fast in its embrace, when so attracted. Indeed, the attraction of cohesion, as a law of love, takes place throughout all inanimate nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
4 months 3 weeks ago
A further turn is to be...

A further turn is to be found in some "unmasking" accounts of natural science, which aim to show that its pretensions to deliver the truth are unfounded, because of social forces that control its activities. Unlike the case of history, these do not use truths of the same kind; they do not apply science to the criticism of science. They apply the social sciences, and typically depend on the remarkable assumption that the sociology of knowledge is in a better position to deliver truth about science than science is to deliver truth about the world.

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p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 3 days ago
A man's character is formed by...

A man's character is formed by the Odes, developed by the Rites and perfected by music.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 months 2 weeks ago
Where there is happiness, there is...
Where there is happiness, there is found pleasure in nonsense. The transformation of experience into its opposite, of the suitable into the unsuitable, the obligatory into the optional (but in such a manner that this process produces no injury and is only imagined in jest), is a pleasure; ...
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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
6 months 3 days ago
'Tis not in strength of body...

'Tis not in strength of body nor in gold that men find happiness, but in uprightness and in fulness of understanding.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 4 days ago
I am fast becoming a patriot...

I am fast becoming a patriot of the most decided stamp. Scornfully as I used to speak and think of Scotland in my hours of bitterness and irritation, I never fail to stand up manfully in defence of it thro' thick and thin, whenever a renegade Scot takes upon him to abuse it.

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Letter to Thomas Murray (24 August 1824), quoted in Fred Kaplan, Thomas Carlyle: A Biography (1983), p. 100
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 1 week ago
It is an odd circumstance that...

It is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting; the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new makes no appeal at all. The old in the new is what claims the attention,-the old with a slightly new turn.

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Chapter XI: Attention
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 4 days ago
The uttered part of a man's...

The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious part a small unknown proportion. He himself never knows it, much less do others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months 2 weeks ago
The inscrutable wisdom through which we...

The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 days ago
Natural justice is.....
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Main Content / General
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 1 week ago
Once the first radical attack on...

Once the first radical attack on private property has been launched, the proletariat will find itself forced to go ever further, to concentrate increasingly in the hands of the state all capital, all agriculture, all transport, all trade. All the foregoing measures are directed to this end; and they will become practicable and feasible, capable of producing their centralizing effects to precisely the degree that the proletariat, through its labor, multiplies the country's productive forces.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 6 days ago
For thought and speech are of...

For thought and speech are of a thinking and speaking subject, and if the life of the latter depends on the performance of a superimposed function, it depends on fulfilling the requirements of this function - thus it depends on those who control these requirements.

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p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 1 week ago
No matter how outrageous a lie...

No matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 4 weeks ago
An imaginary perfection is automatically at...

An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it - neither higher nor lower.

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p. 240
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 2 weeks ago
Strange incongruities....

Strange incongruities must ever perplex those, who confound the unhappiness of civil dissensions with the crime of treason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 1 week ago
As for life, it is a...

As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

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II, 17
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months 3 weeks ago
I have turned my entire….

I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.

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Letter to Jacob Batt (12 April 1500); Collected Works of Erasmus Vol 1 (1974)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
5 months 5 days ago
I am normally said to be...

I am normally said to be free to the degree to which no man or body of men interferes with my activity. Political liberty in this sense is simply the area within which a man can act unobstructed by others. If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved. Coercion is not, however, a term that covers every form of inability. If I say that I am unable to jump more than ten feet in the air, or cannot read because I am blind, or cannot understand the darker pages of Hegel, it would be eccentric to say that I am to that degree enslaved or coerced. Coercion implies the deliberate interference of other human beings within the area in which I could otherwise act.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 3 weeks ago
The power of God is the...

The power of God is the worship He inspires. The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", pp. 268-269
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months 3 weeks ago
He that gives quickly….

He that gives quickly gives twice.

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Adagia, 1508
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 week ago
Under the ideal measure of values...

Under the ideal measure of values there lurks the hard cash.

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Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 1, pg. 116.
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
4 months 6 days ago
To teach virtue we must educate...

To teach virtue we must educate the emotions, and this means learning "what to feel" in the various circumstances that prompt them.

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"Knowledge and Feeling" (p. 37)
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 3 weeks ago
Fertilisation of the soul is the...

Fertilisation of the soul is the reason for the necessity of art.

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Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 283
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 2 weeks ago
Because people have no thoughts to...

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another's money. Idiots!

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
5 months 6 days ago
Every good mathematician is at least...

Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.

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Attributed to Frege in: A. A. B. Aspeitia (2000), Mathematics as grammar: 'Grammar' in Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics during the Middle Period, Indiana University, p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 1 week ago
Need and struggle are what excite...

Need and struggle are what excite and inspire us; our hour of triumph is what brings the void. Not the Jews of the captivity, but those of the days of Solomon's glory are those from whom the pessimistic utterances in our Bible come.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 1 week ago
...this Jewish doctrine of the primacy...

...this Jewish doctrine of the primacy of economic values has found the widest acceptance and been most whole-heartedly acted upon. From America it has begun to infect the rest of the world. We may be pardoned for wishing that the Jews had remained not forty, but four thousand years in their repulsive wilderness.

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"One and Many," pp. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
3 months 3 weeks ago
A created thing is never invented...

A created thing is never invented and it is never true: it is always and ever itself.

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Creation
Philosophical Maxims
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