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Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
And how does the God's existence...

And how does the God's existence emerge from the proof? Does it follow straightway, without any breach of continuity? Or have we not here an analogy to the behavior of the little Cartesian dolls? As soon as I let go of the doll it stands on its head. As soon as I let it go, I must therefore let it go. So also with the proof. As long as I keep my hold on the proof, i.e., continue to demonstrate, the existence does not come out, if for no other reason than that I am engaged in proving it; but when I let the proof go, the existence is there. But this act of letting go is surely also something; it is indeed a contribution of mine. Must not this also be taken into the account, this little moment, brief as it may be – it need not be long, for it is a leap. However brief this moment, if only an instantaneous now, this "now" must be included in the reckoning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
The government of an exclusive company...

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

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Chapter VII, Part Second, p. 619.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 2 weeks ago
Men have superior strength of body;...

Men have superior strength of body; but were it not for mistaken notions of beauty, women would acquire sufficient to enable them to earn their own subsistence, the true definitions of independence; and to bear those bodily inconveniences and exertions that are requisite to strengthen the mind. Let us then, by being allowed to take the same exercise as boys, not only during infancy, but youth, arrive at perfection of body, that we may know how far the nation superiority of man extends . For what reason or virtue can be expected from a creature when the seed-time of life is neglected? None; did not the winds of heaven casually scatter many useful seeds in fallow ground.

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Ch.5
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 2 weeks ago
In a head-on clash between violence...

In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us. Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

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On Violence
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 1 week ago
In the Gospels, for instance, we...

In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour.

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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
How can he [today's writer] be...

How can he [today's writer] be honored, when he does not honor himself; when he loses himself in the crowd; when he is no longer the lawgiver, but the sycophant, ducking to the giddy opinion of a reckless public.

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Goethe; or, The Writer
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 1 week ago
Man does not exercise his thought...

Man does not exercise his thought because he finds it amusing, but because, obliged as he is to live immersed in the world and to force his way among things, he finds himself under the necessity of organizing his psychic activities, which are not very different from those of the anthropoid, in the form of thought - which is what the animal does not do.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 1 week ago
Men did not...
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Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 1 week ago
One's language is a spiritual location....

One's language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. ... Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.

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Part I, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 2 weeks ago
Maybe somewhere in some other galaxy...

Maybe somewhere in some other galaxy there is a super-intelligence so colossal that from our point of view it would be a god. But it cannot have been the sort of God that we need to explain the origin of the universe, because it cannot have been there that early.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is a serious question…

It is a serious question among them whether they [Africans] are descended from monkeys or whether the monkeys come from them. Our wise men have said that man was created in the image of God. Now here is a lovely image of the Divine Maker: a flat and black nose with little or hardly any intelligence. A time will doubtless come when these animals will know how to cultivate the land well, beautify their houses and gardens, and know the paths of the stars: one needs time for everything.

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Les Lettres d'Amabed (1769): Septième Lettre d'Amabed
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
Americans need rest, but do not...

Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.

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Ch. 13: Freedom in Society.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 4 days ago
These examples... show that, in whatever...

These examples... show that, in whatever proportion of its limbs the Gorilla differs from Man, the other Apes depart still more widely from the Gorilla and that, consequently, such differences of proportion can have no ordinal value.

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Ch.2, p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 1 day ago
No one is ignorant that there...

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 weeks 5 days ago
I am NOT nothing! A vaporous...

I am NOT nothing! A vaporous phosphorescence on a damp meadow, a miserable worm that crawls and loves, that shouts and talks about wings for an hour or two until his mouth is blocked with earth. The dark powers give no other answer. But within me a deathless Cry, superior to me, continues to shout. For whether I want to or not, I am also, without doubt, a part of the visible and the invisible Universe. We are one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months ago
If thou intend to do any...

If thou intend to do any good; tarry not till to-morrow! for thou knowest not what may chance thee this night.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 weeks 4 days ago
What could be more absurd, to...

What could be more absurd, to begin with, than our attitude of high moral outrage against other nations for manufacturing the selfsame weapons that we manufacture? The difference, as our leaders say, is that we will use these weapons virtuously, whereas our enemies will use them maliciously - a proposition that too readily conforms to a proposition of much less dignity: we will use them in our interest, whereas our enemies will use them in theirs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 month 3 weeks ago
Everyone knows that time is Death,...

Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.

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"Death"
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
If there is a sin against...

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 weeks 5 days ago
I possess no weapon but love....

I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me!

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 1 week ago
Were art to redeem man, it...

Were art to redeem man, it could do so only by saving him from the seriousness of life and restoring him to an unexpected boyishness. The symbol of art is seen again in the magic flute of the Great God Pan which makes the young goats frisk at the edge of the grove. All modern art begins to appear comprehensible and in a way great when it is interpreted as an attempt to instill youthfulness into an ancient world.

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"Art a Thing of No Consequence"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 weeks ago
A strong memory is commonly coupled...

A strong memory is commonly coupled with infirm judgment.

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Ch. 9. Of Liars, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 1 day ago
I have been overcome by the...

I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light. ... Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
4 weeks 1 day ago
Listen intently to a voice singing...

Listen intently to a voice singing without words. It may charm you into crying, force you to dance, fill you with rage, or make you jump for joy. You can't tell where the music ends and the emotions begin, for the whole thing is a kind of music-the voice playing on your nerves as the breath plays on a flute. All experience is just that, except that its music has many more dimensions than sound. It vibrates in the dimensions of sight, touch, taste, and smell, and in the intellectual dimension of symbols and words-all evoking and playing upon each other.

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p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
I call this Divine humility because...

I call this Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is "nothing better" now to be had.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 week ago
I disclose my mysteries to those...

I disclose my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 5 days ago
"These Macedonians," said he, "are a...

"These Macedonians," said he, "are a rude and clownish people, that call a spade a spade."

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39 Philip
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
It was a purely Christian satisfaction...

It was a purely Christian satisfaction to me that if ordinarily there was no one else there was one who in action tried a little to do the doctrine about loving the neighbor, alas, one who precisely by his act also received a frightful into what an illusion Christendom is and indeed, particularly later, also into how the common people let themselves be seduced by wretched journalists, whose striving and fighting for equality can only lead, if it leads to anything, since it is in the service of the lie, to making the elite, in self-defense, proud of their aloofness from the common man, and the common man brazen in his rudeness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 3 weeks ago
We still do not yet know...
We still do not yet know where the drive for truth comes from. For so far we have heard only of the duty which society imposes in order to exist: to be truthful means to employ the usual metaphors. Thus, to express it morally, this is the duty to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie with the herd and in a manner binding upon everyone. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth.
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Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
1 month 3 days ago
What maintains the marriage and what...

What maintains the marriage and what is it? Only the knowledge of the hearts, that is its beginning and end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 4 days ago
Conscience is deceived by the social....

Conscience is deceived by the social. Our supplementary energy (imaginative) is to a great extent taken up with the social. It has to be detached from it. That is the most difficult of detachments.

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p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 weeks ago
But men must know that in...

But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

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Book II, xx, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months ago
Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are...

Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the "higher classes," who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere "knowledge of good and evil" leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Reason, if consulted with, would advise,...

Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them when they come to be men, rather than to have their heads stuff'd with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live: and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for.

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Sec. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
4 months ago
Time is the wisest…

Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.

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As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 2 weeks ago
I never knew a writer's wife...

I never knew a writer's wife who wasn't beautiful.

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Preface (p. xi)
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
4 months 1 week ago
With an ignorant man thou shouldst...

With an ignorant man thou shouldst not become a confederate and associate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 1 week ago
The right wing version really sees...

The right wing version really sees community represented either by... religion, or by nation, that these are units that... get dissolved under a liberal world order, through globalization, through the movement of people, goods, ideas and trade between nations, national identity becomes diluted and that sense of national community that held people together in democratic societies appears to be lost. ...Secularism ...is perceived as a loss by people that have religious faith. They believe that there is a form of militant secularism that is not allowing them to practice their religion, and for that reason a lot of religious conservatives in places like the United States, have turned against that liberal order.

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16:18
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 2 weeks ago
Feeling which has not yet emerged...

Feeling which has not yet emerged into immediate consciousness is already affectible and already affected. In fact, this is habit, by virtue of which an idea is brought up into the present consciousness by a bond that has already been established between it and another idea while it was still in futuro.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 5 days ago
Our life is a hope which...

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope. Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like an eternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. Thus do ideas exist in the God-Idea, but not thus do men live in the living God, in the God-Man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 4 days ago
Tried myself in the school of...

Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicines. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more where words are vain.

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Letter to John Adams (13 November 1818) regarding the death of Abigail Adams
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 1 week ago
What each individual wills is obstructed...

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.

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Letter to Jean-Richard Bloch
Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
1 month 2 weeks ago
We admire people to the extent...

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word "admire" then means "marvel at."

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Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Alas! such is the miseducation of...

Alas! such is the miseducation of these days, it is only among those that are called the uneducated classes - those educated by experience - that you can look for a Man. Even among these, such a sight is growing daily rarer. My father, in several respects, has not, that I can think of, left his fellow. Perhaps among Scottish peasants what Samuel Johnson was among English authors. I have a sacred pride in my peasant father, and would not exchange him, even now, for any king known to me. Gold and the guinea stamp - the Man and the clothes of the man. Let me thank God for that greatest of blessings, and strive to live worthily of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 weeks ago
Were a stranger to drop on...

Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

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Demea to Philo, Part X
Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
1 month 2 weeks ago
Society attacks early, when the individual...

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

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Walden Two (1948), p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
Plato... introduces two infinities, because both...

Plato... introduces two infinities, because both in increase and diminution there appears to be transcendency, and a progression to infinity. Though... he did not use them: for neither is there infinity in numbers by diminution or division; since unity is a minimum: nor by increase; for he extends number as far as to the decad.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 1 week ago
We have reached the point where...

We have reached the point where the Objective Logic turns into the Subjective Logic, or, where subjectivity emerges as the true form of objectivity. We may sum up Hegel's analysis in the following schema: The true form of reality requires freedom. Freedom requires self-consciousness and knowledge of the truth. Self-consciousness and knowledge of the truth are the essentials of the subject. The form of reality must be conceived as subject.

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P. 154-155
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Grecian are youthful and erring...

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

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Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
2 weeks 1 day ago
If one's organism is... the preeminent...

If one's organism is... the preeminent advantage, and the source of all others, education is the second. The best made brain would be a total loss without it...

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Philosophical Maxims
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