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Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 weeks 1 day ago
The moral decline we are...

The moral decline we are compelled to witness and the suffering it engenders are so oppressive that one cannot ignore them even for a moment. No matter how deeply one immerses oneself in work, a haunting feeling of inescapable tragedy persists. Still, there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being.

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Letter to Queen Mother Elisabeth of Belgium (9 January 1939), asking for her help in getting an elderly cousin of his out of Germany and into Belgium. Quoted in Einstein on Peace edited by Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden (1960), p. 282
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at...

Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
The real discovery is the one...

The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.

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§ 133
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
What place do we occupy in...

What place do we occupy in the "universe"? A point, if that! Why reproach ourselves when we are evidently so insignificant? Once we make this observation, we grow calm at once: henceforth, no more bother, no more frenzy, metaphysical or otherwise. And then that point dilates, swells, substitutes itself for space. And everything begins all over again.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Better to be an animal than...

Better to be an animal than a man, an insect than an animal, a plant than an insect, and so on. Salvation? Whatever diminishes the kingdom of consciousness and compromises its supremacy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 3 weeks ago
Only a man…

Only a man who is at one with the world can be at one with himself.

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"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 130
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 2 weeks ago
Happily for poor traduced and degraded...

Happily for poor traduced and degraded human nature, the principle for which we now content will speedily divest it of all the ridiculous and absurd mystery with which it has been hitherto enveloped by the ignorance of preceding times: and all the ''complicated'' and ''counteracting'' motives for good conduct, which have been multiplied almost to infinity, will be reduced to ''one single principle of action'', which, by its evident operation and sufficiency, shall render this intricate system ''unnecessary'', and ultimately supersede it in all parts of the earth. That principle is THE HAPPINESS OF SELF CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD AND UNIFORMLY PRACTICED; WHICH CAN ONLY BE ATTAINED BY CONDUCT THAT MUST PROMOTE THE HAPPINESS OF THE COMMUNITY.

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Essay First, The Formation of Human Character.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is better to be unhappy...

It is better to be unhappy and know the worst, than to be happy in a fool's paradise!

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Part 4, Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 4 weeks ago
We obtain the concept, as we...
We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us.
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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever is known to us by...

Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 2 weeks ago
My aim is not to provide...

My aim is not to provide excuses for black behavior or to absolve blacks of personal responsibility. But when the new black conservatives accent black behavior and responsibility in such a way that the cultural realities of black people are ignored, they are playing a deceptive and dangerous intellectual game with the lives and fortunes of disadvantaged people. We indeed must criticize and condemn immoral acts of black people, but we must do so cognizant of the circumstances into which people are born and under which they live. By overlooking these circumstances, the new black conservatives fall into the trap of blaming black poor people for their predicament. It is imperative to steer a course between the Scylla of environmental determinism and the Charybdis of a blaming-the-victims perspective.

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(p56)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
You won't - I really believe...

You won't - I really believe - get too much out of reading it. Because you won't understand it; the content will seem strange to you. In reality, it isn't strange to you, for the point is ethical. I once wanted to give a few words in the foreword which now actually are not in it, which, however, I'll write to you now because they might be a key for you: I wanted to write that my work consists of two parts: of the one which is here, and of everything which I have not written. And precisely this second part is the important one.

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On his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in a letter to Ludwig von Ficker (1919), published in Wittgenstein : Sources and Perspectives (1979) by C. Grant Luckhard
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 1 day ago
Of things that are external, happen...

Of things that are external, happen what will to that which can suffer by external accidents. Those things that suffer let them complain themselves, if they will; as for me, as long as I conceive no such thing, that that which is happened is evil, I have no hurt; and it is in my power not to conceive any such thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Without its assiduity to the ridiculous,...

Without its assiduity to the ridiculous, would the human race have lasted more than a single generation?

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 1 week ago
If, being duke and peer, you...

If, being duke and peer, you would not be contented with my standing uncovered before you, but should also wish that I should esteem you, I should ask you to show me the qualities that merit my esteem. If you did this, you would gain it, and I could not refuse it to you with justice; but if you did not do it, you would be unjust to demand it of me; and assuredly you would not succeed, were you the greatest prince in the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 1 week ago
I remember well a junior seminar...

I remember well a junior seminar I gave with Paul Tillich shortly before the outbreak of the Third Reich. A participant spoke out against the idea of the meaning of existence. She said life did not seem very meaningful to her and she didn't know whether it had a meaning. The very voluble Nazi contingent became very excited by this and scraped the floor noisily with their feet. Now, I do not wish to maintain that this Nazi foot-shuffling proves or refutes anything in particular, but I do find it highly significant. I would say it is a touchstone for the relation of thinking to freedom. It raises the question whether thought can bear the idea that a given reality is meaningless and that mind is unable to orientate itself; or whether the intellect has become so enfeebled that it finds itself paralysed by the idea that all is not well with the world.

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pp. 19-20
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 2 weeks ago
Once a word….

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

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Book I, epistle xviii, line 71
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
Great ages of innovation are the...

Great ages of innovation are the ages in which entire cultures are junked or scrapped.

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(p. 309)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
While speaking in.....
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Main Content / General
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 4 days ago
The acquisition of Canada this year,...

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.

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Statement during an early stage of the War of 1812, in a letter to William Duane
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
3 months 2 weeks ago
The present contains nothing more than...

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

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Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter I, as translated by Arthur Mitchell (1911), p. 14.; italicized in the original.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 weeks ago
A robot may not injure a...

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in...

Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that...

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
A heart without music is like...

A heart without music is like beauty without melancholy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
A true account of the actual...

A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
The preceding merely defines a way...

The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
Every religious practice is an exercise...

Every religious practice is an exercise in attention. A temple is the highest degree of attention.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 1 week ago
Reason not with him, that will...

Reason not with him, that will deny the principal truths!

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
You shall have joy, or you...

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

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October 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
The similarity between Christ and Socrates...

The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
All of this that is happening...

All of this that is happening to me, and happening to others about me, is it reality or is it fiction? May not all of it perhaps be a dream of God, or of whomever it may be, which will vanish as soon as He wakes? And therefore when we pray to Him, and cause canticles and hymns to rise to Him, is it not that we may lull Him to sleep, rocking the cradle of His dreams? Is not the whole liturgy, of all religions, only a way perhaps of soothing God in His dreams, so that He shall not wake and cease to dream us?

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Niebla [Mist]
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 4 weeks ago
'Tis evident, that sympathy, or the...

Tis evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men. Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another [...] And 'tis remarkable, that tho' almost all animals use in play the same member, and nearly the same action as in fighting; a lion, a tyger, a cat their paws; an ox his homs; a dog his teeth; a horse his heels: Yet they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho' they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the sense brutes have of each other's pain and pleasure.

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Part 2, Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
3 months 1 week ago
It isn't at all a matter...

It isn't at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation.

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Preface to 25th anniversary edition of Orientalism (1994), p. xv
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 2 weeks ago
If you are to be kept...

If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will warn you, the other will expose you.

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Plutarch, Moralia, 74C
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
"Fare well!" "A whole world of...

"Fare well!" "A whole world of pain is contained in these words." How can it be contained in them? - It is bound up in them. The words are like an acorn from which an oak tree can grow.

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p. 52e
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
I do wish I believed in...

I do wish I believed in the life eternal, for it makes me quite miserable to think man is merely a kind of machine endowed, unhappily for himself, with consciousness.

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Greek Exercises (1888); at the age of fifteen, Russell used to write down his reflections in this book, for fear that his people should find out what he was thinking.
Philosophical Maxims
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
4 months 1 week ago
All the good are friends of...

All the good are friends of one another.

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As quoted in Stromata, v. 14. by Clement of Alexandria
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is in the social sphere,...

It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.

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Chapter 3 (p. 22)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 days ago
It is good to rub and...

It is good to rub and polish our brain against that of others.

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Book I, Ch. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
I know that my unity with...

I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

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My Religion (1884)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
I am endeavouring to live every...

I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 days ago
'Tis the sharpness of our mind...

Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

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Book I, Ch. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 4 days ago
A community is the mental and...

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each other's lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves.

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The Loss of the Future
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Pursued by our origins...we all are.

Pursued by our origins...we all are.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
If a person tells me he...

If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.

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Conversation of 1930
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 days ago
All the opinions of the world...

All the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end.

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Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The enmity of one's kindred is...

The enmity of one's kindred is far more bitter than the enmity of strangers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Hadst thou not Greek enough to...

Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus much: The end of man is an Action, and not a Thought, though it were the noblest.

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Bk. II, ch. 5 The words Carlyle put in italics are a quotation from Book 1 of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
Twenty-first-century society is no longer a...

Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 5 days ago
Amid all these things, beyond all...

Amid all these things, beyond all these things every man and nation, every plant and animal, every god and demon, charges upward like an army inflamed by an incomprehensible, unconquerable Spirit. We struggle to make this Spirit visible, to give it a face, to encase it in words, in allegories and thoughts and incantations, that it may not escape us. But it cannot be contained in the twentysix letters of an alphabet which we string out in rows; we know that all these words, these allegories, these thoughts, and these incantations are, once more, but a new mask with which to conceal the Abyss.

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Philosophical Maxims
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