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Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
The finest manners in the world...

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness and fatuity, when contrasted with a finer intelligence.

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p. 493
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 2 weeks ago
The single spirit doth simultaneously temper...

The single spirit doth simultaneously temper the whole together; this is the single soul of all things; all are filled with God.

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IV 9; as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 weeks 3 days ago
Religion for [Berdyaev] is a social...

Religion for [Berdyaev] is a social phenomenon and is adapted to the needs of the masses; as such, it is embodied in visible institutions and in authoritative formulas. The mystic, on the other hand, is aristocratic in temperament and never quite at home where the masses are catered for. He cannot remain in the world of form and convention and second-hand truths which is all about us and with which official religion has to come to terms; he aspires to a contact with spiritual reality as it is, a return to the ultimate sources of his being.

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Edgar Leonard Allen (1893-1961), Freedom in God: A Guide to the Thought of Nicholas Berdyaev
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Every really able man, in whatever...

Every really able man, in whatever direction he work,-a man of large affairs, an inventor, a statesman, an orator, a poet, a painter,-if you talk sincerely with him, considers his work, however much admired, as far short of what it should be.

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Immortality
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 5 days ago
We know as little of a...

We know as little of a supreme being as of Matter. But there is as little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality, and experiential fact. We only don't understand it.

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Letter to Morton Kelsey (1958) as quoted by Morton Kelsey, Myth, History & Faith: The Mysteries of Christian Myth & Imagination (1974) Ch.VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 3 days ago
The gesture that divides madness is...

The gesture that divides madness is the constitutive one, not the science that grows up in the calm that returns after the division has been made.

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Preface to 1961 edition
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
6 days 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
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
A great profusion of things, which...

A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

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Part II Section XIII
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 2 days ago
Sealioning is parasitic....
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Main Content / General
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 3 days ago
Besides, it is written that the...

Besides, it is written that the tree shall be known by its fruits. The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin; and she has gone about uprooting the other continents from the sixteenth century onwards. Missionary zeal has not Christianized Africa, Asia and Oceania, but has brought these territories under the cold, cruel and destructive domination of the white race, which has trodden down everything. It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.

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Section 9
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
My whole heart and soul are...

My whole heart and soul are stirred and incensed against the Turks and Mohammed, when I see this intolerable raging of the Devil. Therefore I shall pray and cry to God, nor rest until I know that my cry is heard in heaven.

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Statement while being confined to residence at Coburg, as quoted in History of the Christian Church, (1910) by Philip Schaff, Vol. VII
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
The more you obey your conscience,...

The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you.

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Book IV, Chapter 8, "Is Christianity Hard or Easy?"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
France wanted to make proselytes to...

France wanted to make proselytes to her opinions, and turn every government in the world into a republic. If every government was against her, it was because she had declared herself hostile to every government. He knew of nothing to which this strange republic could be compared, but to the system of Mahomet, who with the koran in one hand, and a sword in the other, held out the former to the acceptance of mankind, and with the latter compelled them to adopt it as their creed. The koran which France held out, was the declaration of the rights of man and universal fraternity; and with the sword she was determined to propagate her doctrines, and conquer those whom she could not convince.

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Speech in the House of Commons (14 December 1792), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXX (1817), column 72
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
The art of music is good,...

The art of music is good, for the reason, among others, that it produces pleasure; but what proof is it possible to give that pleasure is good? If, then, it is asserted that there is a comprehensive formula, including all things which are in themselves good, and that whatever else is good, is not so as an end, but as a mean, the formula may be accepted or rejected, but is not a subject of what is commonly understood by proof.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
The similarity between Christ and Socrates...

The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 6 days ago
Well, then, arrest him. You can...

Well, then, arrest him. You can accuse him of something or other afterward.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
The confession of evil works is...

The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.

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Tractates on the Gospel of John; tractate XII on John 3:6-21, and 13
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
Don't think money does everything or...

Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
To dream of an enterprise of...

To dream of an enterprise of demolition that would spare none of the traces of the original Big Bang.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
This world belongs to the energetic....

This world belongs to the energetic.

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Resources
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
6 days ago
The "message" of any medium or...

The "message" of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.

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(p. 8)
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
Out of the crooked timber of...

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

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Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 2 weeks ago
For what is life but a...

For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
1 week 4 days ago
You need to know enough philosophy...

You need to know enough philosophy so that the methods of logical analysis are available to you to be used as a tool. One of the most depressing things about educated people today is that so few of them, even among professional intellectuals, are able to follow the steps of a simple logical argument.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
In the revolt against idealism, the...

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word "experience" have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word. It is to be feared, however, that if the word is avoided the confusions of thought with which it has been associated may persist.

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On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism, 1914
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
The "social contract," in the only...

The "social contract," in the only sense in which it is not completely mythical, is a contract among conquerors, which loses its raison d'être if they are deprived of the benefits of conquest.

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Ch. 12: Powers and forms of governments
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
6 days ago
There is absolutely no inevitability, so...

There is absolutely no inevitability, so long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening.

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[A chapter sub-heading attributed by McLuhan to Alfred North Whitehead]
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 days ago
The Institution has been devised to...

The Institution has been devised to afford the means of receiving your children at an early age, almost as soon as they can walk. By this means many of you, mothers and families, will be able to earn a better maintenance or support for your children; you will have less care and anxiety about them, while the children will be prevented from acquiring any bad habits. and gradually prepared to learn the best.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is not the pleasure of...

It is not the pleasure of curiosity, nor the quiet of resolution, nor the raising of the spirit, nor victory of wit, nor faculty of speech that are the true ends of knowledge, but it is a restitution and reinvesting, in great part, of man to the sovereignty and power, for whensoever he shall be able to call the creatures by their true names, he shall again command them.

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Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works, Vol. I, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
A masterpiece of art has in...

A masterpiece of art has in the mind a fixed place in the chain of being, as much as a plant or a crystal.

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Art
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 weeks 2 days ago
The order of nature cannot be...

The order of nature cannot be justified by the mere observation of nature. For there is nothing in the present fact which inherently refers either to the past or to the future.... It illustrates the anti-rationalism of the scientific public that, when Hume did appear, it was only the religious implications of his philosophy which attracted attention. This was because the clergy were in principle rationalists, whereas the men of science were content with a simple faith in the order of nature.

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Ch. 3: "The Century of Genius", p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
All that is Life in me...

All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
You must be afraid, my son....

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

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Mother to her young son, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
So it happens at times that...

So it happens at times that a person believes that he has a world-view, but that there is yet one particular phenomenon that is of such a nature that it baffles the understanding, and that he explains differently and attempts to ignore in order not to harbor the thought that this phenomenon might overthrow the whole view, or that his reflection does not possess enough courage and resolution to penetrate the phenomenon with his world-view.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 weeks 4 days ago
The man of flesh and bone;...

The man of flesh and bone; the man who is born, suffers, and dies-above all, who dies; the man who eats and drinks and plays and sleeps and thinks and wills; the man who is seen and heard; the brother, the real brother.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 3 days ago
The rule of Big Money and...

The rule of Big Money and its attendant culture of cupidity and mendacity has so poisoned our hearts, minds and souls that a dominant self-righteous neoliberal soulcraft of smartness, dollars and bombs thrives with little opposition.

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America is spiritually bankrupt. We must fight back together. The Guardian,
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 week 4 days ago
The "hard law of value," the...

The "hard law of value," the "law set in stone"-when it abandons us, what sadness, what panic! This is why there are still good days left to fascist and authoritarian methods, because they revive something of the violence necessary to life-whether suffered or inflicted. The violence of ritual, the violence of work, the violence of knowledge, the violence of blood, the violence of power and of the political is good! It is clear, luminous, the relations of force, contradictions, exploitation, repression! This is lacking today, and the need for it makes itself felt.

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"Value's Last Tango," p. 156
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
I do not understand! I understand...

I do not understand! I understand nothing! I cannot understand nor do I want to understand! I want to believe! To Believe!

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
5 days ago
The population of the US is...

The population of the US is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the US leads the world by miles. You would think that a country with such resources, and such a field of talent, would be able to elect a leader of the highest quality. Yet, what has happened? At the end of all the primaries and party caucuses, the speeches and the televised debates, after a year or more of non-stop electioneering bustle, who, out of that entire population of 300 million, emerges at the top of the heap? George Bush.

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"Bin Laden's victory " The Guardian
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
Every act of courage is the...

Every act of courage is the work of an unbalanced man. Animals, normal by definition, are always cowardly except when they know themselves to be stronger, which is cowardice itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
Why? Surely they can find other...

Why? Surely they can find other men. Russell's reply when asked "if it wasn't unkind of him to love and leave so many women";

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as quoted in My Father - Bertrand Russell (1975) by Katharine Tait, p. 106
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
I know well what I am...

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

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Book III, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 weeks 1 day ago
People with healthy self-esteem do not...

People with healthy self-esteem do not need to create pretend identities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
The history of all hitherto existing...

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

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Section 1, paragraph 1, lines 1-2.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
For I now saw, or thought...

For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity-that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives.

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(p. 137)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
I regard it as the irresistible...

I regard it as the irresistible effect of the Copernican astronomy to have made the theological scheme of redemption absolutely incredible.

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Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
Great minds are related to the...

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 20, § 242
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
Why you fool, it's the educated...

Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.

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Ch. 5: Elasticity, section 1 Miss Hardcastle speaking to Mark Studdock
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
The establishment of any new manufacture,...

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but in general they bear no regular proportion to those of other older trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.

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Chapter X, Part I, p. 136 (tendency of the rate of profit to fall).
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
Looking for God-or Heaven-by exploring space...

Looking for God-or Heaven-by exploring space is like reading or seeing all Shakespeare's plays in the hope that you will find Shakespeare as one of the characters or Stratford as one of the places. Shakespeare is in one sense present at every moment in every play.

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"The Seeing Eye", in Christian Reflections (1967), p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
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