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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
Some people talk as if meeting...

Some people talk as if meeting the gaze of absolute goodness would be fun. They need to think again. They are still only playing with religion. Goodness is either the great safety or the great danger-according to the way you react to it.

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Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 2 weeks ago
Now I am about to take...

Now I am about to take my last voyage, a great leap in the dark.

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Last words
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months ago
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample...

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

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53
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Classics which at home are drowsily...

Classics which at home are drowsily read have a strange charm in a country inn, or in the transom of a merchant brig.

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Voyage to England
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 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
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 3 weeks 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
William Whewell
William Whewell
3 weeks 1 day 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
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 5 days ago
Have I done something for the...

Have I done something for the general interest? Well then I have had my reward. Let this always be present to thy mind, and never stop doing such good.

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XI, 4
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 week 5 days ago
By a clock we understand...

By a clock we understand anything characterized by a phenomenon passing periodically through identical phases so that we must assume, by the principle of sufficient reason, that all that happens in a given period is identical with all that happens in an arbitrary period.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
No man can have….

No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.

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Line 4.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
Life is a business...
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Main Content / General
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
Fe que no duda es fe...

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.

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La Agonía del Cristianismo (The Agony of Christianity)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Democracy is, by the nature of...

Democracy is, by the nature of it, a self-canceling business; and it gives in the long run a net result of zero.

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Ch. 6, Laissez-Faire.
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 1 day ago
It's easy to support the status...

It's easy to support the status quo if one is not another of its victims.

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Reply to Meet the people who want to turn predators into herbivores, TreeHugger, 4 Dec. 2015
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 day ago
Man, being the servant and interpreter...

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

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Aphorism 1
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
We all want progress. But progress...

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

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Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen...

The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 530.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months ago
Virtue refuses facility for her companion...

Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

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Ch. 11. Of Cruelty (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 5 days ago
It is a base thing for...

It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself.

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VII, 37
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Talents differ; all is well and...

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.

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Fable
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 1 day ago
Never forget: We are alive within...

Never forget: We are alive within mysteries.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
To this I answer: That force...

To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man...

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. XVIII, sec. 204
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
When a war breaks out, people...

When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
The logical picture of the facts...

The logical picture of the facts is the thought.

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(3) Original German: Das logische Bild der Tatsachen ist der Gedanke.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 1 week ago
How far down the evolutionary scale...

How far down the evolutionary scale shall we go? Shall we eat fish? What about shrimps? Oysters? To answer these questions we must bear in mind the central principle on which our concern for other beings is based. As I said ... the only legitimate boundary to our concern for the interests of other beings is the point at which it is no longer accurate to say that the other being has interests. To have interests, in a strict, nonmetaphorical sense, a being must be capable of suffering or experiencing pleasure. If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for disregarding that suffering, or for refusing to count it equally with the like suffering of any other being. But the converse of this is also true. If a being is not capable of suffering, or of enjoyment, there is nothing to take into account.

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Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 3 weeks ago
Someday, someday, this crazy world will...

Someday, someday, this crazy world will have to end, And our God will take things back that He to us did lend. And if, on that sad day, you want to scold our God, Why go right ahead and scold Him. He'll just smile and nod.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks 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
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 1 day ago
Let us have the candor to...

Let us have the candor to acknowledge that what we call "the economy" or "the free market" is less and less distinguishable from warfare. For about half of the last century, we worried about world conquest by international communism. Now with less worry (so far) we are witnessing world conquest by international capitalism. Though its political means are milder (so far) than those of communism, this newly internationalized capitalism may prove even more destructive of human cultures and communities, of freedom, and of nature. Its tendency is just as much toward total dominance and control.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing proves that we are more...

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 weeks ago
If you want me to believe...

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

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as quoted in Diderot and the Encyclopædists (1897) by John Morley, p. 92.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps...

Of this Shakspeare of ours, perhaps the opinion one sometimes hears a little idolatrously expressed is, in fact, the right one; I think the best judgement not of this country only, but of Europe at large, is slowly pointing to the conclusion, That Shakspeare is the chief of all Poets hitherto; the greatest intellect who, in our recorded world, has left record of himself in the way of Literature. On the whole, I know not such a power of vision, such a faculty of thought, if we take all the characters of it, in any other man. Such a calmness of depth; placid joyous strength; all things imaged in that great soul of his so true and clear, as in a tranquil unfathomable sea!

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
The absolute idea is the subject...

The absolute idea is the subject in its final form, thought. The otherness and negation is the object, being. The absolute idea now has to be interpreted as objective being. Hegel's Logic thus ends where it began, with the category of being. This, however is a different being that can no longer be explained thought he concepts applied in the analysis that opened the Logic. For being now is understood in its notion that is, as a concrete totality wherein all particular forms subsist as the essential distinctions and relations of on comprehensive principle. Thus comprehended, being is nature, and dialectical thought passes on to the Philosophy of Nature.

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P. 165-166
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Ever, as before, does Madness remain...

Ever, as before, does Madness remain a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted Vision of Creation, which swims thereon, which we name the Real.

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Bk. III, ch. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 3 weeks ago
Justice is the first virtue of...

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.

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Chapter I, Section 1, pg. 3-4
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
9 months 2 weeks ago
Subgroups are secondary

No subgroup, race, nationalism, religious group, gender based groups or other identity essence based groups will ever be more important than, and should never ethically take precedence over the existence based universal group, the human group. Universal identity takes precedence over subgroup identity, and when we are forced to subgroup in reaction to injustice, that is the only ethical subgroup.

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Propositions / General
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 months 1 week 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
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
I used to ask myself, over...

I used to ask myself, over a coffin: "What good did it do the occupant to be born?," I now put the same question about anyone alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
The more powerful and original a...

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 1 week ago
Truth is the ultimate end of...

Truth is the ultimate end of the whole universe.

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I, 1, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
The States should be urged to...

The States should be urged to concede to the General Government, with a saving of chartered rights, the exclusive power of establishing banks of discount for paper.

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ME 13:431
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
What will be left of the...

What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 1 day ago
If I solve my dispute with...

If I solve my dispute with my neighbor by killing him, I have certainly solved the immediate dispute. If my neighbor was a scoundrel, then the world is no doubt better for his absence. But in killing my neighbor, though he may have been a terrible man who did not deserve to live, I have made myself a killer - and the life of my next neighbor is in greater peril than the life of the last. In making myself a killer I have destroyed the possibility of neighborhood.

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A Statement against the War in Vietnam
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Only the great generalizations survive. The...

Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

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From a lecture on Books given in the Fraternity Course in Boston in 1864
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
4 ways...

4 ways: Agnosticism, Relativism, Amorality, Morality. 

1) I don't know. 2) Everybody is different. 3) Do whatever you can. 4) Do what you should.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
Does the interiorization of media such...

Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes?

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(p. 28)
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 months 1 week ago
However long Jewish, Christian and Muslim...

However long Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians struggle to find multiple meanings in this text, the dominant seems to be this: Abraham's unquestioning willingness to heed gods command to sacrifice the thing he loved most is what qualified him to become the father of what are called still the Abrahamic faiths.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months ago
A few years ago I had...

A few years ago I had occasion to visit Peru, and I got to know a fine philosopher and a truly wonderful human being-Francisco Miro Casada. Miro Casada has been an idealist all his life, while being, at the same time, a man of great experience (a former member of several governments and a former Ambassador to France). I found him a man who represents the social democratic vision in its purest form. Talking to him, and to my other friends in Peru (who represented quite a spectrum of political opinion), I heard something that was summed up in a remark he, Miro Casada, made to me, "Whenever you have a Republican president, we get a wave of military dictatorships in Latin America".

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 2 weeks ago
The polarization has a number of...

The polarization has a number of different roots. The economic... fact that many working class voters have been left behind by the prosperity of globalization. ...The more important division is a cultural one ...the feeling on the part of many populist voters, that they are not being respected by the elites that are running the country... [H]ere, all of the identity issues... play themselves out.

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22:57
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is but one mode by...

There is but one mode by which man can possess in perpetuity all the happiness which his nature is capable of enjoying, - that is by the union and co-operation of all for the benefit of each. Union and co-operation in war obviously increase the power of the individual a thousand fold. Is there the shadow of a reason why they should not produce equal effects in peace; why the principle of co-operation should not give to men the same superior powers, and advantages, (and much greater) in the creation, preservation, distribution and enjoyment of wealth?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
Human beings have a physical need...

Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: "Let's have done with it now," and it's having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.

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p. 86e
Philosophical Maxims
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