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Plutarch
Plutarch
5 months 2 weeks ago
To one commending an orator for...

To one commending an orator for his skill in amplifying petty matters, Agesilaus said, "I do not think that shoemaker a good workman that makes a great shoe for a little foot."

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Of Agesilaus the Great
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 3 weeks ago
In its most general form, confinement...

In its most general form, confinement was explained, or at least justified, by a will to avoid scandal. It thereby signalled an important change in the consciousness of evil. The Renaissance had let unreason in all its forms come out into the light of day, as public exposure gave evil the chance to redeem itself and to serve as an exemplum.

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Part One: 5. The Insane
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 4 days ago
China is a much richer country...

China is a much richer country than any part of Europe.

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Chapter XI, Part III, (First Period) p. 221.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 2 weeks ago
The necessity for power is obvious,...

The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.

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p. 235
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 1 week ago
The Virgin Mary remains in the...

The Virgin Mary remains in the middle between Christ and humankind. For in the very moment he was conceived and lived, he was full of grace. All other human beings are without grace, both in the first and second conception. But the Virgin Mary, though without grace in the first conception, was full of grace in the second ... whereas other human beings are conceived in sin, in soul as well as in body, and Christ was conceived without sin in soul as well as in body, the Virgin Mary was conceived in body without grace but in soul full of grace.

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As quoted in Anderson, H. George; Stafford, J. Francis; Burgess, Joseph A., eds. (1992). The One Mediator, The Saints, and Mary. Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue. VIII. Minneapolis: Augsburg. ISBN 0-8066-2579-1., p. 236
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 months ago
What we do need to worry...

What we do need to worry about is the possibility that we will be reduced, in the face of the enormities of our time, to silence or to mere protest.

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A Poem of Difficult Hope
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 3 weeks ago
The whole contains nothing which is...

The whole contains nothing which is not or its advantage; and all natures indeed have this common principle, but the nature of the universe has this principle besides, that it cannot be compelled even by any external cause to generate anything harmful to itself.

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X, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
4 months 2 weeks ago
The uniting of Orthodoxy with state...

The uniting of Orthodoxy with state absolutism came about on the soil of a non-belief in the Divineness of the earth, in the earthly future of mankind; Orthodoxy gave away the earth into the hands of the state because of its own non-belief in man and mankind, because of its nihilistic attitude towards the world. Orthodoxy does not believe in the religious ordering of human life upon the earth, and it compensates for its own hopeless pessimism by a call for the forceful ordering of it by state authority.

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Nihilism On A Religious Soil
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 day ago
The most violent, mean and malignant...

The most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest.

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Author's prefaces to the First Edition.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 months 1 week ago
What is obscene about pornography is...

What is obscene about pornography is not an excess of sex, but the fact that it contains no sex at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 1 day ago
Both in thought and in feeling,...

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

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p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
5 months 1 week ago
Before anything else the One must...

Before anything else the One must exist eternally; from his power derives everything that always is or will ever be. He is the Eternal and embraces all times. He knows profoundly all events and He himself is everything. He creates everything beyond any beginning of time and beyond any limit of place and space. He is not subject to any numerical law, or to any law of measure or order. He himself is law, number, measure, limit without limit, end without end, act without form.

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VIII 2, as quoted in The Acentric Labyrinth (1995) by Ramon Mendoza
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 3 weeks ago
Happiness is the only sanction of...

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months ago
Too much consistency is as bad...

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

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"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will, 1929
Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
2 months 1 week ago
Thus proletarian violence has become an...

Thus proletarian violence has become an essential factor in Marxism. Let us add once more that, if properly conducted, it will have the result of suppressing parliamentary socialism, which will no longer be able to pose as the leader of the working classes and as the guardian of order.

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p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
5 months 3 weeks ago
Technically speaking, since our complex societies...

Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

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Habermas (2004) in: Giovanna Borradori (2004) Philosophy in a Time of Terror: : Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 1 week ago
I approached the task of destroying...

I approached the task of destroying images by first tearing them out of the heart through God's Word and making them worthless and despised. This indeed took place before Dr. Karlstadt ever dreamed of destroying images. For when they are no longer in the heart, they can do no harm when seen with the eyes. But Dr. Karlstadt, who pays no attention to matters of the heart, has reversed the order by removing them from sight and leaving them in the heart. For he does not preach faith, nor can he preach it; unfortunately, only now do I see that. Which of these two forms of destroying images is best, I will let each man judge for himself.

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pp. 84-85
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months 1 week ago
Not to be a proud and...

Not to be a proud and haughty person, you have to follow the old proverb and "know thyself." That is to say, you must regard your special talents, whatever beauty or fame you have, as gifts from God, and not as things you earned for yourself. Whatever is low and mean is not God's doing, however. Here you can only blame yourself. Remember the squalor of your birth and how naked and poor you were when you crawled into the light of day like a little animal.

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p.154
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months ago
It occurred to him that what...

It occurred to him that what had appeared perfectly impossible before, namely that he had not spent his life as he should have done, might after all be true. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false. He tried to defend all those things to himself and suddenly felt the weakness of what he was defending.

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Ch. XI
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months 3 days ago
The light dove, cleaving the air...

The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.

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B 8
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 1 day ago
Blessed are those eyes that have...

Blessed are those eyes that have seen more water than any man! Blessed be that haughty mind that aimed at the greatest hope! May you be blessed who row the current your life longand now with dry unfreshened lips descend to Hadesto find the hidden deathless springs and slake your thirst! My son, it's death who keeps and pours the deathless waters.

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Voice of the Nile, from Odysseus' story, Book VIII, line 1290 (the first line is taken from an Egyptian hieroglyph.)
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 months 2 weeks ago
The concept of positivity in itself,...

The concept of positivity in itself, in abstracto, has become part and parcel of the ideology today. ... Critique has started to become suspect, regardless of its content.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 3 weeks ago
If evolution is a struggle for...

If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?

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Chapter 1, The Origins Of Altruism, p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
4 months 1 week ago
The martyr sacrifices herself (himself in...

The martyr sacrifices herself (himself in a few instances) entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for she (or he) makes the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.

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As quoted in Forever Yours (1990) by Martha Vicinus and Bea Nergaard , p. 275. Letter, c. 1867, to the scholar Benjamin Jowett.
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
6 months 4 days ago
Of all the things that are...

Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth. For, of things beyond our power, I believe there is nothing in the world which we can love with tranquility except such men.

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Spinoza, Correspondence, 146, Letter xix
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 4 weeks ago
When they have really learned to...

When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.

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Letter XIV
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months ago
I wished, by treating Psychology like...

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

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A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science, 1892
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 months 1 week ago
In recent times it has been...

In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months ago
If you say that this is...

If you say that this is absurd, that we cannot be in love with everyone at once, I merely point out to you that, as a matter of fact, certain persons do exist with an enormous capacity for friendship and for taking delight in other people's lives; and that such person know more of truth than if their hearts were not so big. The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and its jealousies. Leave those out, and you see that the ideal I am holding up before you, however impracticable to-day, yet contains nothing intrinsically absurd.

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"What Makes a Life Significant?"
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
5 months 5 days ago
Foreknowledge is power....

Foreknowledge is power.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Lindsay Mackay
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
The ceaseless labour of your life...

The ceaseless labour of your life is to build the house of death.

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Book I, Ch. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 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
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 months 1 week ago
The great fault of all ethics...

The great fault of all ethics hitherto has been that they believed themselves to have to deal only with the relations of man to man. In reality, however, the question is what is his attitude to the world and all life that comes within his reach. A man is ethical only when life, as such, is sacred to him, and that of plants and animals as that of his fellow men, and when he devotes himself helpfully to all life that is in need of help. Only the universal ethic of the feeling of responsibility in an ever-widening sphere for all that lives - only that ethic can be founded in thought. ... The ethic of Reverence for Life, therefore, comprehends within itself everything that can be described as love, devotion, and sympathy whether in suffering, joy, or effort.

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Ch. 13, p. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 day ago
Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and...

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.

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Vol. I, Ch. 15 (last sentence), pg. 556.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 1 week ago
I think these things firearms were...

I think these things firearms were invented by Satan himself, for they can't be defended against with (ordinary) weapons and fists. All human strength vanishes when confronted with firearms. A man is dead before he sees what's coming.

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3552
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 day ago
If production be capitalistic in form,...

If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction.

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Vol. I, Ch. 23, pg. 620.
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
6 months 2 weeks ago
Of all the means which wisdom...

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 5 days ago
This is a work that cannot...

This is a work that cannot be completed except by a society of men of letters and skilled workmen, each working separately on his own part, but all bound together solely by their zeal for the best interests of the human race and a feeling of mutual good will.

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Article on Encyclopedia, as translated in The Many Faces of Philosophy : Reflections from Plato to Arendt (2001), "Diderot", p. 237
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
5 months 4 weeks ago
To each according to his threat...

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

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Chapter III, Section 24, pg. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 4 weeks ago
Man works when he is partially...

Man works when he is partially involved. When he is totally involved he is at play or leisure.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Everyone feels....
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Main Content / General
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Cannot we understand how these men...

Cannot we understand how these men worshipped Canopus; became what we call Sabeans, worshipping the stars? Such is to me the secret of all forms of Paganism. Worship is transcendent wonder; wonder for which there is now no limit or measure; that is worship.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 2 weeks ago
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as...

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

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p. 135; Ch. 17, December 15, 1939.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 1 week ago
And I myself, in Rome, heard...

And I myself, in Rome, heard it said openly in the streets, "If there is a hell, then Rome is built on it." That is, "After the devil himself, there is no worse folk than the pope and his followers."

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Against the Roman Papacy, An Institution of the Devil
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
1 month 4 weeks ago
The concept of the state presupposes...

The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.

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Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
2 months 2 weeks ago
We should become angels and not...

We should become angels and not devils, that's why we have been created and born into the world. Therefore be and stick to what God has chosen you for.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 2 weeks ago
In order to be exercised, the...

In order to be exercised, the intelligence requires to be free to express itself without control by any authority. There must therefore be a domain of pure intellectual research, separate but accessible to all, where no authority intervenes. The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life.The human soul has need of both personal property and collective property.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
The plague of man is boasting...

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

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Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 day ago
But, suppose, besides, that the making...

But, suppose, besides, that the making of the new machinery affords employment to a greater number of mechanics, can that be called compensation to the carpet makers, thrown on the streets?

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Vol. I, Ch. 15, Section 6, pg. 479.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 months 2 weeks ago
If one takes pleasure in calling...

If one takes pleasure in calling the gold standard a "barbarous relic," one cannot object to the application of the same term to every historically determined institution. Then the fact that the British speak English - and not Danish, German, or French - is a barbarous relic too, and every Briton who opposes the substitution of Esperanto for English is no less dogmatic and orthodox than those who do not wax rapturous about the plans for a managed currency.

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The Gold Standard - LvMI, excerpt from chapter 17 of Human Action
Philosophical Maxims
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