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William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
If things are ever to move...

If things are ever to move upward, some one must take the first step, and assume the risk of it. No one who is not willing to try charity, to try non-resistance as the saint is always willing, can tell whether these methods will or will not succeed.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 1 day ago
The importance of the culture industry...

The importance of the culture industry in the spiritual constitution of the masses is no dispensation for reflection on its objective legitimation, its essential being, least of all by a science which thinks itself pragmatic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 1 week ago
Since those who rule in the...

Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored.

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Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
3 months 3 days ago
The Asharites have expressed a very...

The Asharites have expressed a very peculiar opinion, both with regard to reason and religion; about this problem they have explained it in a way in which religion has not, but have adopted quite an opposite method.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
A world full of happiness is...

A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

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Ch. VI: International relations, p. 106
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
There can never be a man...

There can never be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corrdiors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 week 5 days ago
When two do the same thing,...

When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.

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Maxim 338
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 3 weeks ago
A constant element of enjoyment must...

A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant.

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Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 1 week ago
Nihilism is not overcome by arguments...

Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul.

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(p19)
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 week 1 day ago
When we read the best nineteenth-...

When we read the best nineteenth- and twentieth-century novelists, we soon realize that they are trying in a variety of ways to establish a definition of human nature, to justify the continuation of life as well as the writing of novels.

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"The Sealed Treasure" (1960), p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
Fire is the most tolerable third...

Fire is the most tolerable third party.

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January 2, 1853
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 weeks 3 days ago
We're terrible animals. I think that...

We're terrible animals. I think that the Earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, as well it should.

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On humans, interviewed by Jon Stewart, The Daily Show
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
I get along quite well with...

I get along quite well with someone only when he is at his lowest point and has neither the desire nor the strength to restore his habitual illusions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 2 days ago
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws....

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

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Book XXIX: Of the Manner of Composing Laws, Chapter 16: Things to be Observed in the Composing of Laws
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
Sobriety is the strength...
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Main Content / General
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
A man full of warm, speculative...

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
Private profit is often hidden under...

Private profit is often hidden under a careful coating of great patriotism.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 2 weeks ago
Properly understood, then, the desire to...

Properly understood, then, the desire to act justly derives in part from the desire to express most fully what we are or can be, namely free and equal rational beings with the liberty to choose.

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Chapter IV, Section 40, p. 256
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
A man may be humble through...

A man may be humble through vainglory.

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Ch. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
Christ ought to be preached with...

Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind - that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.

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p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Respect the child. Be not too...

Respect the child. Be not too much his parent. Trespass not on his solitude.

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Education
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
Around us knowledge has been extinguished,...

Around us knowledge has been extinguished, and recruitment of men of religion and men of law has ceased; that is to say, we have made Muslim society much more miserable, more disordered, more ignorant, and more barbarous than it had been before knowing us.

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Travail sur l'Algerie, Travels in Algeria p. 185
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
The administrators of the executive power...

The administrators of the executive power may be either elective or not; and in the former case all or only some of them may be elective. They are elective in a proper democracy, that is to say, in a democracy which recognizes representation. If all the public officials are directly elected by the whole people, the democracy is a pure democracy; if only some, it is a mixed democracy. The public officials may also fill vacancies themselves; this is the case in a pure aristocracy. But if only some of the magistrates are thus replaced by the public officers, and if the others are again directly elected by the people, then the form of government is that of a democratic aristocracy. A permanent president (monarch) may also be elected to exercise the executive power during his lifetime. In all these cases, either all citizens of the commonwealth, or only some of them, are eligible to office. Eligibility may, therefore, be limited or unlimited.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
I am he that liveth, and...

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.

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Revelation 1:18-19
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 2 weeks ago
If there be an order in...

If there be an order in which the human race has mastered its various kinds of knowledge, there will arise in every child an aptitude to acquire these kinds of knowledge in the same order. So that even were the order intrinsically indifferent, it would facilitate education to lead the individual mind through the steps traversed by the general mind. But the order is not intrinsically indifferent; and hence the fundamental reason why education should be a repetition of civilization in little.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 days ago
Only the feeble resign themselves to...

Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 6 days ago
Speech structures the abyss of mental...

Speech structures the abyss of mental and acoustic space...it is a cosmic, invisible architecture of the human dark.

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(p. 13)
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 4 days ago
Moderation, in the pursuit of honors...

Moderation, in the pursuit of honors or riches, is the only security against disappointment and vexation. A wise man, therefore, will prefer the simplicity of rustic life to the magnificence of courts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
The Spirit of the Lord is...

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

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Luke 4:18-19 NIV
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
Men sometimes submit to shame, to...

Men sometimes submit to shame, to tyranny, to conquest, but they never long suffer anarchy. There is no people so barbarous that they escape this general law of humanity.

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Second letter on Algeria (1837), Travels in Algeria p. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 2 weeks ago
If there are different Notions of...

If there are different Notions of the science of Philosophy, it is the true Notion alone that puts us in a position to understand the writings of philosophers who have worked in the knowledge of it. For in thought, and particularly in speculative thought, comprehension means something quite different from understanding the grammatical sense of the words alone, and also from understanding them in the region of ordinary conception only. Hence we may possess a knowledge of the assertions, propositions, or of the opinions of philosophers; we may have occupied ourselves largely with the grounds of and deductions from these opinions, and the main point in all that we have done may be wanting - the comprehension of the propositions.

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First divsion, Chapter I. - The Metaphysics of the Understanding…
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
As to [General Douglas] Macarthur, I...

As to [General Douglas] Macarthur, I don't feel in a position to have clear opinions about anyone I know only from newspapers. You see, whenever they deal with anyone (or anything) I know myself, I find they're always a mass of lies & misunderstandings: so I conclude they're no better in the places where I don't know.

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Letter to Mrs. Mary Van Deusen, April 30, 1951. Collected Letters of C. S. Lewis, vol. 3, "Narnia, Cambridge, and Joy", 1950-1963. p. 114.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
I take as my example the...

I take as my example the three notorious words, Humanity, Popularity, and Liberality. When these words are used in speaking to a German who has learnt no language but his own they are to him nothing but a meaningless noise, which has no relationship of sound to remind him of anything he knows already and so takes him completely out of his circle of observation and beyond any observation possible to him. ... Further, if in speaking to the German, instead of the words Popularity [Popularitdt] and Liberality [Liberalitat], I should use the expressions, " striving for favour with the great mob," and " not having the mind of a slave," which is how they must be literally translated, he would, to begin with, not even obtain a clear and vivid sense-image such as was certainly obtained by a Roman of old.

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The Chief Difference Between The Germans And The Other Peoples Of Teutonic Descent p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
I may not have been sure...

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months ago
We are He, since we are...

We are He, since we are His body and since He was made man in order to be our Head.

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p.432
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 5 days ago
Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming...

Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming candor the spirit of the prevailing business culture, the very same attitude of 'being practical' as counter to which philosophical meditation as such was conceived.

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p. 52.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks 3 days ago
There is no greater impediment to...

There is no greater impediment to progress in the sciences than the desire to see it take place too quickly.

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K 72
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Finally, every man will become dear...

Finally, every man will become dear and pleasing to every other man; all will be beloved by all! and, what is still more desirable, beloved also by Christ; to become acceptable to whom is the highest felicity of human nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 1 week ago
L'important, c'est que le sexe n'ait...

L'important, c'est que le sexe n'ait pas été seulement affaire de sensation et de plaisir, de loi ou d'interdiction, mais aussi de vrai et de faux. What is important is that sex was not only a question of sensation and pleasure, of law and interdiction, but also of the true and the false.

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Vol. I, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 4 weeks ago
For as old age is that...

For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?

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Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum, c.1651
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
The real point at issue always...

The real point at issue always is Turkey in Europe - the great peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities.

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The Russian Menace to Europe, From Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, edited by Paul Blackstock and Bert Hoselitz, and published by George Allen and Unwin, London, 1953
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy seems to me on the...

Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.

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Letter to Gilbert Murray, December 28, 1902
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
2 months 2 weeks ago
Create all the happiness you are...

Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.

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Advice to a young girl, 22 June 1830
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 1 week ago
We are firmly convinced that the...

We are firmly convinced that the most imperfect republic is a thousand times better than the most enlightened monarchy. In a republic, there are at least brief periods when the people, while continually exploited, is not oppressed; in the monarchies, oppression is constant. The democratic regime also lifts the masses up gradually to participation in public life--something the monarchy never does. Nevertheless, while we prefer the republic, we must recognise and proclaim that whatever the form of government may be, so long as human society continues to be divided into different classes as a result of the hereditary inequality of occupations, of wealth, of education, and of rights, there will always be a class-restricted government and the inevitable exploitation of the majorities by the minorities. The State is nothing but this domination and this exploitation, well regulated and systematised.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 1 week ago
In the Gospels, for instance, we...

In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour.

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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 weeks 3 days ago
Over Christmas, Allen Newell and I...

Over Christmas, Allen Newell and I created a thinking machine.

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Simon (1956) quoted on CMU Libraries: Problem Solving Research
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 1 week ago
Being is only Being for Dasein...

Being is only Being for Dasein.

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Macquarrie & Robinson translation
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
In all ages of the world,...

In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; and it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds, on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connexion, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government.

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Part I, Essay 9: Of The Parties of Great Britain
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
There are two godheads: the world...

There are two godheads: the world and my independent I. I am either happy or unhappy, that is all. It can be said: good or evil do not exist. A man who is happy must have no fear. Not even in the face of death. Only a man who lives not in time but in the present is happy.

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Journal entry (8 July 1916), p. 74e
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
Justice was in all countries originally...

Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.

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An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196
Philosophical Maxims
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