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Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months 2 weeks ago
The love of God consists in...

The love of God consists in an ardent desire to procure the general welfare, and reason teaches me that there is nothing which contributes more to the general welfare of mankind than the perfection of reason.

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Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677) (in P. Wiener (ed.), Leibniz Selections, Macmilland Press Ltd, 1951).
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks 4 days ago
We often have need of a...

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves. Even if my philosophy does not extend to discovering anything new, it does nevertheless possess the courage to regard as questionable what has long been thought true.

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B 49
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 weeks ago
Enlightenment is an awakening to the...

Enlightenment is an awakening to the everyday.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
'But you must see that if...

But you must see that if two things are alike, then it is a further question whether the first is copied from the second, or the second from the first, or both from a third.''What would the third be?''Some have thought that all these loves were copies of our love for the Landlord.'

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Pilgrim's Regress 59
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
In all affairs - love, religion,...

In all affairs - love, religion, politics, or business - it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

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As quoted in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 37 (1940), p. 90; no specific source given.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
There were never in the world...

There were never in the world two opinions alike, any more than two hairs or two grains. Their most universal quality is diversity.

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Ch. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
All who are not lunatics are...

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people desire those things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can only be refuted by science: Humankind has become so much one family that we cannot ensure our own prosperity except by ensuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

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"The Science to Save Us from Science," The New York Times Magazine, 3/19/1950
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 3 weeks ago
The symptom is automatically dissolved

Precisely as an enigma, the symptom, so to speak, announces its dissolution through interpretation: the aim of psychoanalysis is to re-establish the broken network of communication by allowing the patient to verbalize the meaning of his symptom: through this verbalization the symptom is automatically dissolved. This, then is the basic point: in its very construction, the symptom implies the field of the big Other as consistent, complete, because its very function is an appeal to the Other which contains its meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 6 days ago
Strictly speaking, the mass, as a...

Strictly speaking, the mass, as a psychological fact, can be defined without waiting for individuals to appear in mass formation. In the presence of one individual we can decide whether he is "mass" or not. The mass is all that which sets no value on itself - good or ill - based on specific grounds, but which feels itself "just like everybody," and nevertheless is not concerned about it; is, in fact, quite happy to feel itself as one with everybody else.

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Chap.I: The Coming Of The Masses
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 day ago
Every living creature commences its existence...

Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

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Ch.2, p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 1 week ago
Our dignity is not in what...

Our dignity is not in what we do, but in what we understand.

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p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
Can a mortal ask questions which...

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
Generals are usually a conservative force...

Generals are usually a conservative force who can be relied on to oppose social change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 weeks 3 days ago
There is a similarity between writers...

There is a similarity between writers and SDS [Students for a Democratic Society, a radical left-wing group]: Plenty of paranoia, but no ideas.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 1 week ago
Every moment celebrates obsequies over the...

Every moment celebrates obsequies over the virtues of its predecessor.

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Ch. XIV
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 weeks 3 days ago
The public health authorities never mention...

The public health authorities never mention the main reason many Americans have for smoking heavily, which is that smoking is a fairly sure, fairly honorable form of suicide.

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Preface (p. xi)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
This adoration, too, was not the...

This adoration, too, was not the same as the worship of God. In my opinion they did not yet recognize him as God, but they acted in keeping with the custom mentioned in Scripture, according to which Kings and important people were worshiped; this did not mean more than falling down before them at their feet and honoring them.

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Sermon on The Gospel for the Festival of the Epiphany, 1522. Luther's Works, American Ed., Hans J. Hillerbrand, Helmut T. Lehmann eds., Philadelphia, Concordia Publishing House/Fortress Press, 1974, ISBN 0800603524 (Sermons II), vol. 52:198
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Forgetting when God does it in...

Forgetting when God does it in relation to sin, is the opposite of creating, since to create is to bring forth from nothing and to forget is to take back into nothing. What is hidden from my eyes, that I have never seen; but what is hidden behind my back, that I have seen. The one who loves forgives in this way; he forgives, he forgets, he blots out the sin, in love he turns toward the one he forgives; but when he turns toward him, he of course, cannot see what is lying behind his back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
1 month 1 week ago
People talk, indeed, of a "primitive...

People talk, indeed, of a "primitive mentality", as, for example, to-day that of the inferior races, and in days gone by that of humanity in general, at whose door the responsibility for superstition should be laid.

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Chapter II : Static Religion
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 days ago
I feel that I have within...

I feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that the soul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution - learning from them, yes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving the spiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the Dark Ages. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the struggle between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which was the offering of the Middle Ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
1 month 1 week ago
To say that authority, whether secular...

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

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"The Meaning of Life".
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
Money appears as measure (in Homer,...

Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange,because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 93.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 2 weeks ago
To attempt the destruction of our...

To attempt the destruction of our passions is the height of folly. What a noble aim is that of the zealot who tortures himself like a madman in order to desire nothing, love nothing, feel nothing, and who, if he succeeded, would end up a complete monster!

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Ch. 5, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
For the prevision is allied Unto...

For the prevision is allied Unto the thing so signified; Or say, the foresight that awaits Is the same Genius that creates.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
What strength belongs to every plant...

What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 weeks ago
Good tests kill flawed theories; we...

Good tests kill flawed theories; we remain alive to guess again.

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As quoted in My Universe : A Transcendent Reality (2011) by Alex Vary, Part II
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 4 weeks ago
In order to enter into a...

In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 1 day ago
The positivist philosophy of Comte and...

The positivist philosophy of Comte and the I doctrine deduced from it that humanity is an organism, and Darwin's doctrine of a law of the struggle for existence that is supposed to govern life, with the differentiation of various breeds of people which follows from it, and the anthropology, biology, and sociology of which people are now so fond-all have the same aim. These have all become favourite sciences because they serve to justify the way in which people free themselves from the human obligation to labour, while consuming the fruits of other people's labour.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
Value, therefore, does not stalk about...

Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 85.
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 weeks 3 days ago
Preserving seeks to secure the life...

Preserving seeks to secure the life that already is; safeguarding secures and reproduces the conditions of becoming, of living, of futurity, where the content of that life, that living, can be neither prescribed nor predicted, and where self-determination emerges as a potential.

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p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 1 week ago
I am a strange compound of...

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind - my wayward heart creates its own misery - Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child - long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

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Undated letter to Joseph Johnson (October? 1792), published in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), edited by Janet Todd, p. 206.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 day ago
The true servants of God are...

The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.

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p. 616
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 2 weeks ago
Plato... introduces two infinities, because both...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks 4 days 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
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 day ago
A Pharisee is someone who is...

A Pharisee is someone who is virtuous out of obedience to the Great Beast.

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p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
If we command our wealth, we...

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

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No. 1
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
If nature has been frugal in...

If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.

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Part I, Essay 16: The Stoic
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 week 4 days ago
An atheist is just somebody who...

An atheist is just somebody who feels about Yahweh the way any decent Christian feels about Thor or Baal or the golden calf. As has been said before, we are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

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Richard Dawkins on militant atheism,
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Announced by all the trumpets of...

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

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The Snow-Storm
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 weeks 6 days ago
In one sense, I do believe...

In one sense, I do believe I am "like a man," as Parthe [the writer's sister] says. But how? In having sympathy. ... Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. ... They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?

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Letter to Madame Mohl
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Pursue Virtue virtuously...

Pursue Virtue virtuously.

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These words also appear in Christian Morals, Part I, Section I
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
Nobody realizes that some people expend...

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
None shall rule but the humble,...

None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have.

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Boston Hymn
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
In obedience to the feeling of...

In obedience to the feeling of reality, we shall insist that, in the analysis of propositions, nothing "unreal" is to be admitted. But, after all, if there is nothing unreal, how, it may be asked, could we admit anything unreal? The reply is that, in dealing with propositions, we are dealing in the first instance with symbols, and if we attribute significance to groups of symbols which have no significance, we shall fall into the error of admitting unrealities, in the only sense in which this is possible, namely, as objects described.

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Ch. 16: Descriptions
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 3 weeks ago
I thanke God for my happy...

I thanke God for my happy Dreams|dreames, as I doe for my good rest, for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happinesse; and surely it is not a melancholy conceite to thinke we are all asleepe in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as meare dreames to those of the next, as the Phantasmes of the night, to the conceit of the day. There is an equall delusion in both, and the one doth but seeme to bee the embleme or picture of the other;

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Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Why don't I kill myself? If...

Why don't I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Kalokagathia...
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Main Content / General
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
At this very moment, I am...

At this very moment, I am suffering - as we say in French, j'ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 2 weeks ago
They had no temples, but they...

They had no temples, but they had a real living and uninterrupted sense of oneness with the whole of the universe; they had no creed, but they had a certain knowledge that when their earthly joy had reached the limits of earthly nature, then there would come for them, for the living and for the dead, a still greater fullness of contact with the whole of the universe. They looked forward to that moment with joy, but without haste, not pining for it, but seeming to have a foretaste of it in their hearts, of which they talked to one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 weeks 3 days ago
High school is closer to the...

High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.

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Introduction to Our Time Is Now: Notes From the High School Underground, John Birmingham, ed.
Philosophical Maxims
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