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Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 4 weeks ago
In tetrad form, the artefact is...

In tetrad form, the artefact is seen to be not netural or passive, but an active logos or utterance of the human mind or body that transforms the user and his ground.

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p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 day ago
England, it is true, in causing...

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

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"The British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1853.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
1 month 3 weeks ago
In the development of any science,...

In the development of any science, the first received paradigm is usually felt to account quite successfully for most of the observations and experiments easily accessible to that science's practitioners. Further development, therefore, ordinarily calls for the construction of elaborate equipment, the development of an esoteric vocabulary and skills, and a refinement of concepts that increasingly lessens their resemblance to their usual common-sense prototypes. That professionalization leads, on the one hand, to an immense restriction of the scientist's vision and to a considerable resistance to paradigm change. The science has become increasingly rigid. On the other hand, within those areas to which the paradigm directs the attention of the group, normal science leads to a detail of information and to a precision of the observation-theory match that could be achieved in no other way.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 1 week ago
The case is a good example...

The case is a good example of what Van Vogt came to call "the violent man" or the "Right Man." He is a man driven by a manic need for self-esteem - to feel that he is a "somebody." He is obsessed by the question of "losing face," so will never, under any circumstances, admit that he might be in the wrong.

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p. 211
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months ago
If you want to influence him...

If you want to influence him at all, you must do more than merely talk to him ; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than you wish him to will.

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Addresses to the German Nation (1807), Second Address : "The General Nature of the New Education". Chicago and London, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1922, p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 2 days ago
The end of law is not...

The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings, capable of laws, where there is no law there is no freedom.

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. VI, sec. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Whosoever will come after me, let...

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

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8:34b-36 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 2 weeks ago
Cato instigated the magistrates to punish...

Cato instigated the magistrates to punish all offenders, saying that they that did not prevent crimes when they might, encouraged them. Of young men, he liked them that blushed better than those who looked pale.

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Cato the Elder
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 days ago
The king Frederic has sent me...

The king Frederic has sent me some of his dirty linen to wash; I will wash yours another time.

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Reply to General Manstein. Voltaire writes to his niece Dennis, July 24, 1752, "Voilà le roi qui m'envoie son linge à blanchir"; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.,1919
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
It is certainly not a matter...

It is certainly not a matter of indifference whether I learn something without effort or finally arrive at it myself through my system of thought. In the latter case everything has roots, in the former it is merely superficial.

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F154
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 2 weeks ago
Accept in an unruffled spirit that...

Accept in an unruffled spirit that which is inevitable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 4 weeks ago
For man to become successful, for...

For man to become successful, for man to establish himself as the ruler of the planet, it was necessary for him to use his brain as something more than a device to make the daily routine of getting food and evading enemies a little more efficient. Man had to learn to control his environment.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 4 weeks ago
There is a divergence between private...

There is a divergence between private and social accounting that the market fails to register. One essential task of law and government is to institute the necessary conditions.

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Chapter V, Section 42, p. 268
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 4 weeks ago
Man is useless passion…

Man is a useless passion.

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Part 4, Chapter 2, III
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 1 week ago
Do not mistake yourself by believing...

Do not mistake yourself by believing that your being has something in it more exalted than that of others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 1 day ago
The rich in all societies may...

The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 4 weeks ago
Older cliches are retrieved both as...

Older cliches are retrieved both as inherent principles that inform the new ground and new awareness, and as archetypal nostalgia figures with transformed meaning in relation to the new ground.

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p. 105
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 1 day ago
The Hindoos are most serenely and...

The Hindoos are most serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable. In 1853.

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A Tribute to Hinduism, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 4 weeks ago
A person is strong only when...

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well - in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

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"Appendix A"
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 2 days ago
"...the church of England, when she...

"...the church of England, when she baptizes any one, makes him not a Christian [...] the church of England is mistaken, and makes none but socinians Christians"

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279
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
4 weeks 1 day ago
When we consider that labor is...

When we consider that labor is the producer of all wealth, is it not evident that the impoverishment and, dependence of labor are abnormal conditions resulting from restrictions and usurpations, and that instead of accepting protection, what labor should demand is freedom. That those who advocate any extension of freedom choose to go no further than suits their own special purpose is no reason why freedom itself should be distrusted.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
5 months 1 week ago
We must learn how to imitate...

We must learn how to imitate Cicero from Cicero himself. Let us imitate him as he imitated others.

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in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 6 days ago
If a man is mistaken, instruct...

If a man is mistaken, instruct him kindly and show him his error. But if thou art not able, blame thyself, or blame not even thyself.

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X, 4
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
For the Able Man, meet him...

For the Able Man, meet him where you may, is definable as the born enemy of Falsity and Anarchy, and the born soldier of Truth and Order: into what absurdest element soever you put him, he is there to make it a little less absurd, to fight continually with it till it become a little sane and human again. Peace on other terms he, for his part, cannot make with it; not he, while he continues able, or possessed of real intellect and not imaginary. There is but one man fraught with blessings for this world, fated to diminish and successively abolish the curses of the world; and it is he. For him make search, him reverence and follow; know that to find him or miss him, means victory or defeat for you, in all Downing Streets, and establishments and enterprises here below.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 2 days ago
The best government is a benevolent...

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

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Attributed to Voltaire in Likharev, K.K. (2021). On Government and Politics. In: Likharev, K.K. (eds) Essential Quotes for Scientists and Engineers.
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 1 week ago
I have had a larger responsibility...

I have had a larger responsibility of human lives than ever man or woman had before. And I attribute my success to this - I never gave or took an excuse. Yes, I do see the difference now between me and other men. When a disaster happens, I act and they make excuses.

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Letter to Miss H. Bonham Carter, 1861. As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 4 weeks ago
There is no way of being...

There is no way of being almost funny or mildly funny or fairly funny or tolerably funny. You are either funny or not funny and there is nothing in between. And usually it is the writer who thinks he is funny and the reader who thinks he isn't.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
3 months 3 weeks ago
The ego involved in responsibility is...

The ego involved in responsibility is me and no one else, me with whom one whould have liked to pair up a sister soul, from whom one would have substitution and sacrifice.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 1 day ago
The bodies breathe, feed, store up...

The bodies breathe, feed, store up strength, and then in an erotic moment are shattered, are spent and drained utterly, that they may bequeath their spirit to their sons. What spirit? The drive upward!

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 4 weeks ago
Quietism is the attitude of people...

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, "let others do what I cannot do." The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, "Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is." Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching.

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p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 days ago
The auspices for philosophy are bad...

The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 1 week ago
If compelled to indicate my religion...

If compelled to indicate my religion on an immigration blank, I might be tempted to put down the word "Taoist," to the amazement of the customs officer who probably never heard of it.

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The Wisdom of Laotse (1948), Introduction, p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
'Tis a good word and a...

Tis a good word and a profitable desire, but withal absurd; for to make the handle bigger than the hand, the cubic longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than our legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous; or that man should rise above himself and humanity; for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his hold. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him an extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial. It belongs to our Christian faith, and not to the stoical virtue, to pretend to that divine and miraculous metamorphosis.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 3 days ago
Nature made women mature early and...

Nature made women mature early and had them demand gentle and polite treatment from men, so that they would find themselves imperceptibly fettered by a child due to their own magnanimity; and they would find themselves brought, if not quite to morality itself, then at least to that which cloaks it, moral behavior, which is the preparation and introduction to morality.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 219-220
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 6 days ago
Nothing happens to anyone that he...

Nothing happens to anyone that he can't endure.

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(Hays translation) Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear. , V, 18
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
If they be inhabited, what a...

If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be un-inhabited, what a waste of space.

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On other stars Attributed by John Burroughs on the first page of his 1920 book Accepting The Universe
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 1 day ago
Our profound human duty is not...

Our profound human duty is not to interpret or to cast light on the rhythm of God's arch, but to adjust, as much as we can, the rhythm of our small and fleeting life to his. Only thus may we mortals succeed in achieving something immortal, because then we collaborate with One who is Deathless. Only thus may we conquer mortal sin, the concentration on details, the narrowness of our brains; only thus may we transubstantiate into freedom the slavery of earthen matter given us to mold.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months ago
The end of the human race...

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

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Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom...

What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers?

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17:25 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
History is the essence of innumerable...

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

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On History.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
Our stubbornness is right, because we...

Our stubbornness is right, because we want to preserve the liberty which we have in Christ. Only by preserving our liberty shall we be able to retain the truth of the Gospel inviolate.

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Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 4 weeks ago
The Nazis were 'convinced that evil-doing...

The Nazis were 'convinced that evil-doing in our time has a morbid force of attraction,' Bolshevik assurances inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary moral standards have become a mainstay of Communist propaganda, and experience has proven time and again that the propaganda value of evil deeds and general contempt for moral standards is independent of mere self-interest, supposedly the most powerful psychological factor in politics.

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Part 3, Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
It is in the gift for...

It is in the gift for employing all the vicissitudes of life to one's own advantage and to that of one's craft that a large part of genius consists.

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K 48
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 3 weeks ago
The man who...
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Main Content / General
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 1 day ago
Who holds a sword is tempted,...

Who holds a sword is tempted, who has youth must play,he who does not fear death on earth does not fear God.

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Odysseus, Book VIII, line 560
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month ago
Happy in the prospect of a...

Happy in the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity, I must leave to younger athletes to encounter and lop off the false branches which have been engrafted into it by the mythologists of the middle and modern ages.

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Letter to Doctor Waterhouse
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
A handful of soldiers is always...

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

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E 19
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 3 weeks ago
Without a strategic retreat into the...

Without a strategic retreat into the self, without vigilant thought, human life is impossible. Call to mind all that mankind owes to certain great withdrawals into the self! It is no chance that all the great founders of religions preceded their apostolates by famous retreats. Buddha withdraws to the forest; Mahomet withdraws to his tent, and even there he withdraws from his tent by wrapping his head in his cloak; above all, Jesus goes apart into the desert for forty days.

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p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 weeks 6 days ago
I am neither a German...

I am neither a German citizen nor do I believe in anything that can be described as a "Jewish faith." But I am a Jew and glad to belong to the Jewish people, though I do not regard it in any way as chosen.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 4 weeks ago
Let us now consider whether justice...

Let us now consider whether justice requires the toleration of the intolerant, and if so under what conditions. There are a variety of situations in which this question arises. Some political parties in democratic states hold doctrines that commit them to suppress the constitutional liberties whenever they have the power. Again, there are those who reject intellectual freedom but who nevertheless hold positions in the university. It may appear that toleration in these cases is inconsistent with the principles of justice, or at any rate not required by them.

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p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
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