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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 4 days ago
Ideas are cheap. It's only what...

Ideas are cheap. It's only what you do with them that counts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
The possibility of divorce renders both...

The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 days ago
Another theme of the Wake that...

Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is "pastimes are past times". The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy.

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(p.99)
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
Childish and altogether ludicrous is what...

Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!

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Thrasymachus, in On the Indestructibility of our Essential Being by Death, in Essays and Aphorisms (1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 days ago
I have all the defects of...

I have all the defects of other people yet everything they do seems to me inconceivable.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 weeks 6 days ago
Nationalism is always an effort in...

Nationalism is always an effort in a direction opposite to that of the principle which creates nations. The former is exclusive in tendency, the latter inclusive. In periods of consolidation, nationalism has a positive value, and is a lofty standard. But in Europe everything is more than consolidated, and nationalism is nothing but a mania, a pretext to escape from the necessity of inventing something new, some great enterprise.

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Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 weeks 4 days ago
The quest for certainty blocks the...

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 days ago
Life creates itself in delirium and...

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 6 days ago
Pacifists ought to enter more deeply...

Pacifists ought to enter more deeply into the aesthetical and ethical point of view of their opponents. ... So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the utopias they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 3 weeks ago
Scilurus on his death-bed, being about...

Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,-thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.

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31 Scilurus
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
It is difficult for the isolated...

It is difficult for the isolated individual to work himself out of the immaturity which has become almost natural for him. He has even become fond of it and for the time being is incapable of employing his own intelligence, because he has never been allowed to make the attempt. Statutes and formulas, these mechanical tools of a serviceable use, or rather misuse, of his natural faculties, are the ankle-chains of a continuous immaturity. Whoever threw it off would make an uncertain jump over the smallest trench because he is not accustomed to such free movement. Therefore there are only a few who have pursued a firm path and have succeeded in escaping from immaturity by their own cultivation of the mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 weeks 1 day ago
I like to walk about amidst...

I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

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"The Irony of Liberalism"
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 days ago
But perhaps the rest of us...

But perhaps the rest of us could have separate classes in science appreciation, the wonder of science, scientific ways of thinking, and the history of scientific ideas, rather than laboratory experience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 5 days ago
I do not overlook the fact...

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. (Socrates, I believe, saw something of this when he suggested that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man).

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Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 days ago
As Narcissus fell in love with...

As Narcissus fell in love with an outering (projection, extension) of himself, man seems invariably to fall in love with the newest gadget or gimmick that is merely an extension of his own body.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 days ago
Heroes abound at the dawn of...

Heroes abound at the dawn of civilizations, during pre-Homeric and Gothic epochs, when people, not having yet experienced spiritual torture, satisfy their thirst for renunciation through a derivative: heroism.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 1 week ago
As to the Approbation or Esteem...

As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it.

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Letter 138, To Gilbert Elliot of Minto; August 9, 1757
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 days ago
The message of radio is one...

The message of radio is one of violent, unified implosion and resonance.

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(p. 263)
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
1 month 1 week ago
Knowledge that is not Infallible is...

Knowledge that is not Infallible is not certain knowledge.

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I. Introduction, p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
6 days ago
The activity of art is... as...

The activity of art is... as important as the activity of language itself, and as universal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
One can forget everything…

One can forget everything, everything, only not oneself, one's own being.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Good is a good doctor, but...

Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 weeks 2 days ago
My conduct must be the best...

My conduct must be the best proof, the moral proof, of my supreme desire; and if I do not end by convincing myself, within the bounds of the ultimate and irremediable uncertainty of the truth of what I hope for, it is because my conduct is not sufficiently pure. Virtue, therefore, is not based upon dogma, but dogma upon virtue, and it is not faith that creates martyrs but martyrs who create faith. There is no security or repose - so far as security and repose are obtainable in this life, so essentially insecure and unreposeful - save in conduct that is passionately good.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months 1 week ago
There are two famous…

There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.

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Théodicée (1710)ː Préface
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
1 month 4 days ago
You rejoice in having made a...

You rejoice in having made a convert to Atheism. I think there is something unnatural in a zeal of proselytism in an Atheist. I do not believe in an intellectual God, a God made after the image of man. In the vulgar acceptation of the word, therefore, I think a man is right who does not believe in God, but I am also persuaded that a man is wrong who is without religion.

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Letter to H. B. Rosser (7 March 1820), quoted in C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, Vol. II (1876), p. 263
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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Deep in the man sits fast...

Deep in the man sits fast his fate To mould his fortunes, mean or great.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 days ago
If someone incessantly drops the word...

If someone incessantly drops the word "life," you know he's a sick man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
To prove the Gospels by a...

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

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As quoted in The Anchor Book of French Quotations with English Translations (1963) by Norbert Gutermam
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 1 week ago
Pass by us, and forgive us...

Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.

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Part 4, Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 days ago
Jean Paul calls the most important...

Jean Paul calls the most important night of his life the one when he discovered there was no difference between dying the next day or in thirty years. A revelation as significant as it is futile; if we occasionally manage to grasp its cogency, we resist on the other hand drawing its consequences, in immediacy the difference in question seeming to each of us somehow irreducible, even absolute: to exist is to prove that we have not understood to what point it is all one and the same thing to die now or no matter when.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 1 day ago
Basic justice is...
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Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 5 days ago
The simple-minded positivism that believes it...

The simple-minded positivism that believes it has found a firm ground of certainty if it only excludes all mental phenomena from consideration and holds fast to observable facts.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 weeks 6 days ago
Thought must be judged by something...

Thought must be judged by something that is not thought, by its effect on production or its impact on social conduct, as art today is being ultimately gauged in every detail by something that is not art, be it box-office or propaganda value.

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describing the pragmatist view, p. 51.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
The worker becomes all the poorer...

The worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces, the more his production increases in power and range. The worker becomes an ever cheaper commodity the more commodities he creates. With the increasing value of the world of things proceeds in direct proportion the devaluation of the world of men. Labour produces not only commodities; it produces itself and the worker as a commodity - and does so in the proportion in which it produces commodities generally.

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p. 71, The Marx-Engels Reader
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 5 days ago
The most dangerous thing you can...

The most dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not. If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity", and become in the end a cruel and treacherous man.

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Book I, Chapter 2, "Some Objections"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
The perception of beauty is a...

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

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June 21, 1852
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 weeks 2 days ago
There are only two cases in...

There are only two cases in which war is just: first, in order to resist the aggression of an enemy, and second, in order to help an ally who has been attacked.

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No. 95. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
You must read Plato. But you...

You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'

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Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
My mother spoke of Christ to...

My mother spoke of Christ to my father, by her feminine and childlike virtues, and, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, gained him at the close of his life to Christ.

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Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 351
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 1 week ago
It is the dissimilarities and inequalities...

It is the dissimilarities and inequalities among men which give rise to the notion of honor; as such differences become less, it grows feeble; and when they disappear, it will vanish too.

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Book Three, Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Like strawberry wives, that laid two...

Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.

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No. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
The blood of Jesus Christ can...

The blood of Jesus Christ can cover a multitude of sins, it seems to me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 weeks ago
There are no whole truths; all...

There are no whole truths; all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays the devil.

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Prologue.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 5 days ago
Genet is a man-failure: he wills...

Genet is a man-failure: he wills the impossible in order to derive from the tragic grandeur of this defeat the assurance that there is something other than the possible.

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p. 213
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 1 day ago
Une âme ... n'est pas faite...

The soul was not made to dwell in a thing; and when forced to it, there is no part of that soul but suffers violence.

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in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 155
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 days ago
There is but a step between...

There is but a step between a proud man's glory and his disgrace.

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Maxim 138
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
To live without duties is obscene....

To live without duties is obscene.

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Aristocracy
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 4 days ago
Courtiers don't take wagers against the...

Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 3 weeks ago
In each separate thing that you...

In each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first, and those which follow after, and only then approach the thing itself.

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Book III, ch. 15, 1 (= Enchiridion 29, 1).
Philosophical Maxims
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