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Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
4 weeks 1 day ago
In death too, there is always...

In death too, there is always something of the rich cat that lets the mouse run before devouring it.

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Traces (1930), p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 6 days ago
No matter what anyone says or...

No matter what anyone says or does, my task is to be good.

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(Hays translation) VII, 15
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 month 3 weeks ago
Woman is degraded and made to...

Woman is degraded and made to believe that nature destined her exclusively to menial domestic labors, which in the combined order will be so abridged as to be performed without oppression to either sex.

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The Theory of Social Organization
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
4 months 1 week ago
The infinity of All ever bringing...

The infinity of All ever bringing forth anew, and even as infinite space is around us, so is infinite potentiality, capacity, reception, malleability, matter.

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I 1 as translated in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought with annotated translation of his work On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 4 weeks ago
The vicomte was a nice-looking young...

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found himself. Anna Pávlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to her guests. As a clever maître d'hôtel serves up as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pávlovna served up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbé, as peculiarly choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

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Bk. I, Ch. III
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months ago
History is mere Empiricism; it has...

History is mere Empiricism; it has only facts to communicate, and all its proofs are founded upon facts alone. To attempt to rise to Primeval History on this foundation of fact, or to argue by this means how such or such a thing might have been, and then to take for granted that it has been so in reality,is to stray beyond the limits of History, and produce an a priori History; just as the Philosophy of Nature, referred to in our preceding lecture, endeavoured to find an a priori Science of Physics.

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p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 2 weeks ago
When one told Plistarchus that a...

When one told Plistarchus that a notorious railer spoke well of him, "I 'll lay my life," said he, "somebody hath told him I am dead, for he can speak well of no man living."

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Of Plistarchus
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 2 weeks ago
Sincerity is that whereby self-completion is...

Sincerity is that whereby self-completion is effected, and its way is that by which man must direct himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
4 weeks 1 day ago
That there is a common cause,...

That there is a common cause, an that it is either what we call material progress or something closely connected with material progress, becomes more than an inference when it is noted that the phenomena we class together and speak of as industrial depression are but intensifications of phenomena which always accompany material progress, and which show themselves more clearly and strongly as material progress goes on. Where the conditions to which material progress everywhere tends are the most fully realized-that is to say, where population is densest, wealth greatest, and the machinery of production and exchange most highly developed - we find the deepest poverty, the sharpest struggle for existence, and the most of enforced idleness.

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Introductory : The Problem
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 week ago
The people are asleep; they remain...

The people are asleep; they remain indifferent. They forge their own chains and do the bidding of their masters to crucify their Christs.

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(p. 304)
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 1 day ago
Philosophy ... is a science, and...

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

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Vol I
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months ago
The voice in my soul in...

The voice in my soul in which I will have faith, and for the sake of which I have faith in all else, does not merely command me generally to act, but in every particular situation it declares what I shall do and what leave undone; it accompanies me through every event of my life, and it is impossible for me to contend against it. To listen to it and obey it honestly and impartially, without fear or equivocation, is the business of my existence. My life is no longer an empty I play without truth or significance. It is appointed that what I conscience ordains me shall be done, and for this purpose am I here. I have understanding to know, and power to execute it. By conscience alone comes truth and reality into my representations.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 77
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Behold, a sower went forth to...

Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

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13:3-9 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 2 weeks ago
"Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an...

"Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young."

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Cæsar Augustus
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
4 weeks 1 day ago
The system becomes more coherent as...

The system becomes more coherent as it is further extended. The elements which we require for explaining a new class of facts are already contained in our system. Different members of the theory run together, and we have thus a constant convergence to unity. In false theories, the contrary is the case.

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Part II Of Knowledge, Book XI Of the Construction of Science, Chap. 5 Of Certain Characteristics of Scientific Induction
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
There is no more important rule...

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.

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F 81
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 1 week ago
It is the fate of 'little...

It is the fate of 'little faiths' of truth that they, true followers of Peter, whether they be Roman or the Protestant observance, cry out and sink in the sea of ideas, where the followers of Paul, believing in the Spirit, walk secure and undismayed.

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p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months ago
What strikes one here above all...

What strikes one here above all is the crudely empirical conception of profit derived from the outlook of the ordinary capitalist, which wholly contradicts the better esoteric understanding of Adam Smith.

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Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 202.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 2 days ago
That which parents should take care...

That which parents should take care of... is to distinguish between the wants of fancy, and those of nature.

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Sec. 107
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 2 days ago
I will argue that in the...

I will argue that in the literal sense the programmed computer understands what the car and the adding machine understand, namely, exactly nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Even before the bomb, one did...

Even before the bomb, one did not breathe too easily in this tortured world. Now we are given a new source of anguish; it has all the promise of being our greatest anguish ever. There can be no doubt that humanity is being offered its last chance. Perhaps this is an occasion for the newspapers to print a special edition. More likely, it should be cause for a certain amount of reflection and a great deal of silence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 3 weeks ago
My purpose is to set forth...

My purpose is to set forth a very new science dealing with a very ancient subject. There is, in nature, perhaps nothing older than motion, concerning which the books written by philosophers are neither few nor small; nevertheless I have discovered by experiment some properties of it which are worth knowing and which have not hitherto been either observed or demonstrated. Some superficial observations have been made, as, for instance, that the free motion [naturalem motum] of a heavy falling body is continuously accelerated; but to just what extent this acceleration occurs has not yet been announced; for so far as I know, no one has yet pointed out that the distances traversed, during equal intervals of time, by a body falling from rest, stand to one another in the same ratio as the odd numbers beginning with unity.

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Author, Third Day. Change of Position
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
By creating the world market, big...

By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whenever a human being, through the...

Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just. This reintegration with the good is what punishment is. Every man who is innocent, or who has finally expiated guilt, needs to be recognized as honourable to the same extent as anyone else.

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Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 1 week ago
Danger reawakens the spirit. p. 66

Danger reawakens the spirit.

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p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
Even truth needs to be clad...

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

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C 33
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months ago
Who looks in the sun will...

Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

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March 10, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 4 days ago
I've upgraded...
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Main Content / General
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
4 weeks 1 day ago
We ought not to teach to...

We ought not to teach to little children, as a known fact, that which is not a known fact.

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[Lectures and essays (1879), vol. 2, p. 294]
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
The members of Christ, many though...

The members of Christ, many though they be, are bound to one another by the ties of charity and peace under the one Head, who is our Saviour Himself, and form one man. Often their voice is heard in the Psalms as the voice of one man; the cry of one is as the cry of all, for all are one in One.

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p.430
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
4 weeks 1 day ago
It might be said to the...

It might be said to the agitator, "However convinced you were of the justice of your cause and the truth of your convictions, you ought not to have made a public attack upon any man's character until you had examined the evidence on both sides with the utmost patience and care." In the first place, let us admit that, so far as it goes, this view of the case is right and necessary; right, because even when a man's belief is so fixed that he cannot think otherwise, he still has a choice in the action suggested by it, and so cannot escape the duty of investigating on the ground of the strength of his convictions; and necessary, because those who are not yet capable of controlling their feelings and thoughts must have a plain rule dealing with overt acts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 3 weeks ago
Perhaps misguided moral passion is better...

Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.

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The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) p. 248.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Blessed are the hearts that can...

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 4 weeks ago
Before we as individuals are even...

Before we as individuals are even conscious of our existence we have been profoundly influenced for a considerable time (since before birth) by our relationship to other individuals who have complicated histories, and are members of a society which has an infinitely more complicated and longer history than they do (and are members of it at a particular time and place in that history); and by the time we are able to make conscious choices we are already making use of categories in a language which has reached a particular degree of development through the lives of countless generations of human beings before us. . . . We are social creatures to the inmost centre of our being. The notion that one can begin anything at all from scratch, free from the past, or unindebted to others, could not conceivably be more wrong.

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As quoted in Popper (1973) by Bryan Magee
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 4 weeks ago
Knowledge is the food of the...

Knowledge is the food of the soul; and we must take care, my friend, that the Sophist does not deceive us when he praises what he sells, like the dealers wholesale or retail who sell the food of the body; for they praise indiscriminately all their goods, without knowing what are really beneficial or hurtful.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 3 weeks ago
Someone arrived there - who lifted...

Someone arrived there - who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. - But what did he see? He saw - wonder of wonders - himself. Novalis here alludes to Plutarch's account of the shrine of the goddess Minerva, identified with Isis, at Sais, which he reports had the inscription "I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised."

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 4 weeks ago
The essence of totalitarian government, and...

The essence of totalitarian government, and perhaps the nature of every bureaucracy, is to make functionaries and mere cogs in the administrative machinery out of men, and thus to dehumanise them.

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As quoted in Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today's political times
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 4 days ago
All registers which, it is acknowledged,...

All registers which, it is acknowledged, ought to be kept secret, ought certainly never to exist.

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Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II, p. 935.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
We define only out of despair,...

We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade to the void.

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 weeks 6 days ago
Faith and patriotism are the two...

Faith and patriotism are the two great thaumaturges of this world. Both are divine; all their actions are prodigies. Do not go to them talking of examination, choice, or discussion; they will say that you blaspheme. They know only two words: submission and belief; with these two levers they raise the world. Even their errors are sublime. These two children of Heaven prove their origin to all eyes by creating and conserving; but if they unite, join their forces, and together take possession of a nation, they exalt it, they divinize it, and they increase its forces a hundred-fold.

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p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
Sarcasm I now see to be,...

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the Devil; for which reason I have, long since, as good as renounced it.

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Bk. II, ch. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 day ago
"I don't want to! Why should...

"I don't want to! Why should I?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't." "So what? I don't care about other people." "You should." "But why?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't."

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Dialogue between Russell and his daughter Katharine, as quoted in My Father - Bertrand Russell, 1975
Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
3 months 3 weeks ago
By asserting the objectivity of the...

By asserting the objectivity of the physical world, naturalism identifies the existence and the conditions of existence of the physical world with existence and the conditions of existence in general. It forgets that the world of the physicist necessarily refers back, through its intrinsic meaning, through the subjective world which one tries to exclude from reality as being pure appearance, conditioned by the empirical nature of man, which is incapable of reaching directly to a world of things in themselves. But while the world of the physicist claims to go beyond naive experience, his world really exists only in relation to naive experience.

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The Theory Of Intuition In Husserls Phenomenology 1963, 1995 p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 2 weeks ago
If it is the drive of...

If it is the drive of our time, after freedom of thought is won, to pursue it to that perfection through which it changes to freedom of the will in order to realize the latter as the principle of a new era, then the final goal of education can no longer be knowledge, but the will born out of knowledge, and the spoken expression of that for which it has to strive is: the personal or free man. Truth consists in nothing other than man's revelation of himself, and thereto belongs the discovery of himself, the liberation from all that is alien, the uttermost abstraction or release from all authority, the re-won naturalness. Such thoroughly true men are not supplied by school; if they are there, they are there in spite of school.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 4 days ago
The sense of justice and injustice...

The sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially... from education, and human conventions.

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Part 2, 1.17
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months ago
Tell him to live by yes...

Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.

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As quoted in The Thought and Character of William James (1935) by Ralph Barton Perry, Vol. II, ch. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months ago
...if the Catholick religion is destroyd...

...if the Catholick religion is destroyd by the Infidels, it is a most contemptible and absurd Idea, that, this, or any Protestant Church, can survive that Event. ... in Ireland particularly, the R[oman] C[atholic] Religion should be upheld in high respect and veneration. ... I am more serious on the positive encouragement to be given to this religion...because the serious and earnest belief and practice of it by its professors forms, as things stand, the most effectual Barrier, if not the sole Barrier, against Jacobinism.

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Letter to William Smith, Member of the Irish Parliament (29 January 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
But if you say: "How am...

But if you say: "How am I to know what he means, when I see nothing but the signs he gives?" then I say: "How is he to know what he means, when he has nothing but the signs either?"

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§ 504
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months ago
On condition that you protect my...

On condition that you protect my rights, I will protect your rights. How, then, does some party obtain the right to claim the protection of the other? Evidently, by actually protecting the rights of the other. But if this is so, no party will ever obtain a strictly legal claim to the protection of the other.

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P. 220
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Everything is worth what its purchaser...

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

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Maxim 847
Philosophical Maxims
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