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Confucius
Confucius
2 months 5 days ago
The superior man is modest...

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. James Legge translation. Variant translations: The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions. The greater man does not boast of himself, But does what he must do. A good man does not give orders, but leads by example.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week 1 day ago
Dialectical thought understands the critical tension...

Dialectical thought understands the critical tension between "is" and "ought" first as an ontological condition, pertaining to the structure of Being itself. However, the recognition of this state of Being - its theory - intends from the beginning a concrete practice. Seen in the light of a truth which appears in them falsified or denied, the given facts themselves appear false and negative.

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p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The true test of civilization is,...

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

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Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
It was an important moment. The...

It was an important moment. The old partners of the spectacle of punishment, the body and the blood, gave way. A new character came of the scene, masked. It was the end of a certain kind of tragedy; comedy began, with shadow play, faceless voices, impalpable entities. The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into this bodiless reality.

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pp. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
1 month 2 weeks ago
There are two kinds of truths….

There are two kinds of truths: those of reasoning and those of fact. The truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposite is impossible; the truths of fact are contingent and their opposites are possible.

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La monadologie (33).
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 2 days ago
The measure of a man's life...

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
The least initial deviation from the...

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
A strict allegory is like a...

A strict allegory is like a puzzle with a solution: a great romance is like a flower whose smell reminds you of something you can't quite place. I think the something is 'the whole quality of life as we actually experience it.'

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C. S. Lewis' Letters to Children - letter to Lucy, 9/11/1958
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
But your crime will be there,...

But your crime will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.

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Clytemnestra to her daughter Electra, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
In fact of course, this 'productive'...

In fact of course, this 'productive' worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn't give a damn for the junk.

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Notebook II, The Chapter on Capital, p. 193.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
My body and my will are...

My body and my will are one.

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Book 1
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 day ago
If you say to someone who...

If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
Any man more right than his...

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
An early morning walk is a...

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

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April 20, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
After these matters we ought perhaps...

After these matters we ought perhaps next to discuss pleasure. For it is thought to be most intimately connected with our human nature, which is the reason why in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain; it is thought, too, that to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character. For these things extend right through life, with a weight and power of their own in respect both to virtue and to the happy life, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful; and such things, it will be thought, we should least of all omit to discuss, especially since they admit of much dispute.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 1 day ago
Venerate the martyrs...

Venerate the martyrs, praise, love, proclaim, honor them. But worship the God of the martyrs.

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273:9; translation from: The works of Saint Augustine, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, ISBN 1565480600 ISBN 9781565480605 p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
Misfortune shows those who are not...

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
A nation never falls but by...

A nation never falls but by suicide.

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1861
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt...

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.

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"Psychological Observations"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 weeks 6 days ago
Not to be content with Life...

Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 2 weeks ago
The first remark we have to...

The first remark we have to make, and which - though already presented more than once - cannot be too often repeated when the occasion seems to call for it, - is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle - Plan of Existence - Law - is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as such - however true in itself - is not completely real.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 day 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
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 2 weeks ago
When by these steps he has...

When by these steps he has got resolution enough not to be deterr'd from what he ought to do, by the apprehension of danger; when fear does not, in sudden or hazardous occurrences, decompose his mind, set his body a-trembling, and make him unfit for action, or run away from it, he has then the courage of a rational creature: and such an hardiness we should endeavour by custom and use to bring children to, as proper occasions come in our way.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 2 days ago
It is reconciled in policy; and...

It is reconciled in policy; and politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part; and by no means the greatest part.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 78
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 weeks 5 days ago
If you want me to believe...

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

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as quoted in Diderot and the Encyclopædists (1897) by John Morley, p. 92.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is very important to note...

It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe...

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Voltaire, Fragments historiques sur l'Inde. Quoted in Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 2 days ago
You have the representatives of that...

You have the representatives of that [Christian] religion which says that their God is love, that the very vital spirit of their institution is charity,-a religion which so much hates oppression, that, when the God whom we adore appeared in human form, He did not appear in a form of greatness and majesty, but in sympathy with the lowest of the people, and thereby made it a firm and ruling principle that their welfare was the object of all government, since the Person who was the Master of Nature chose to appear Himself in a subordinate situation. These are the considerations which influence them, which animate them, and will animate them, against all oppression,-knowing that He who is called first among them, and first among us all, both of the flock that is fed and of those who feed it, made Himself "the servant of all."

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (19 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 days ago
Glorious is the risk! - καλος...

Glorious is the risk! - καλος γαρ ο κινδυνος, glorious is the risk that we are able to run of our souls never dying ... Faced with this risk, I am presented with arguments designed to eliminate it, arguments demonstrating the absurdity of the belief in the immortality of the soul; but these arguments fail to make any impression on me, for they are reasons and nothing more than reasons, and it is not with reasons that the heart is appeased. I do not want to die - no; I neither want to die nor do I want to want to die; I want to live for ever and ever and ever. I want this "I" to live - this poor "I" that I am and that I feel myself to be here and now, and therefore the problem of the duration of my soul, of my own soul, tortures me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
There are men who astonish and...

There are men who astonish and delight, men who instruct and guide. Some men's words I remember so well that I must often use them to express my thought. Yes, because I perceive that we have heard the same truth, but they have heard it better.

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Character
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
6 days ago
The philosophical anthropologist ... can know...

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 2 weeks ago
The three great things that govern...

The three great things that govern mankind are reason, passion and superstition. The first governs a few, the two last share the bulk of mankind and possess them in their turns. But superstition most powerfully produces the greatest mischief.

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Journal entry (16 May 1681), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 200
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 6 days ago
The more man....
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Main Content / General
Novalis
Novalis
1 week 6 days ago
Fate and temperament are the names...

Fate and temperament are the names of a concept.

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As quoted in Demian (1972) by Hermann Hesse, trans. W.J. Strachan
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 week 6 days ago
A jealous lover...

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. Ch. II; Variants or variant translations of this statement have also been attributed to Bakunin: The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. A boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 1 week ago
Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth,...

Neither family, nor privilege, nor wealth, nor anything but Love can light that beacon which a man must steer by when he sets out to live the better life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 week 3 days ago
Democratic socialists are either proletarians who...

Democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. It follows that, in moments of action, the communists will have to come to an understanding with these democratic socialists, and in general to follow as far as possible a common policy with them - provided that these socialists do not enter into the service of the ruling bourgeoisie and attack the communists. It is clear that this form of co-operation in action does not exclude the discussion of differences.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 2 weeks ago
A young man before he leaves...

A young man before he leaves the shelter of his father's house, and the guard of a tutor, should be fortify'd with resolution, and made acquainted with men, to secure his virtues, lest he should be led into some ruinous course, or fatal precipice, before he is sufficiently acquainted with the dangers of conversation, and his steadiness enough not to yield to every temptation.

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Sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 2 days ago
Parliament is not a congress of...

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.

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Speech to the Electors of Bristol (3 November 1774); as published in The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke
Philosophical Maxims
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
1 month 5 days ago
And since these things are so,...

And since these things are so, we must suppose that there are contained many things and of all sorts in the things that are uniting, seeds of all things, with all sorts of shapes and colours and savours.

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Frag. B 4, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
6 days ago
In philosophical anthropology, ... where the...

In philosophical anthropology, ... where the subject is man in his wholeness, the investigator cannot content himself, as in anthropology as an individual science, with considering man as another part of nature and with ignoring the fact that he, the investigator, is himself a man and experiences this humanity in his inner experience in a way that he simply cannot experience any part of nature.

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p. 147
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 6 days ago
The core of ethics runs deep...

The core of ethics runs deep in our species and is common to human beings everywhere. It survives the most appalling hardships and the most ruthless attempts to deprive human beings of their humanity. Nevertheless, some people resist the idea that his core has a biological basis which we have inherited from our pre-human ancestors.

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Chapter 2, The Biological Basis Of Ethics, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
1 month 3 weeks ago
I suppose the body to be...

I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.

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Descartes, René (1662). Le Homme (The Treatise on Man), XI:119, CSM I:99 in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Descartes and the Pineal Gland - 2.1 "The Treatise of Man".
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Christian Religion not only was...

The Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Tories in England long imagined...

The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
1 month 2 weeks ago
The very port and gait of...

The very port and gait of a swan, or turkey, or peacock show the high idea he has entertain'd of himself; and his contempt of all others. This is the more remarkable, that in the two last species of animals, the pride always attends the beauty, and is discover'd in the male only. The vanity and emulation of nightingales in singing have been commonly remark'd [...] All these are evident proofs, that pride and humility are not merely human passions, but extend themselves over the whole animal creation.

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Part 1, Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Plato was synthesis of Europe and...

Plato was synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise color.

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Quoted in Swami Abhedananda, India and Her People, 6th ed., Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, 1945
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 1 day ago
Since you cannot do good to...

Since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special regard to those who, by the accidents of time, or place, or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you.

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1:28:29 English Latin Latin: Sed cum omnibus prodesse non possis, his potissimum consulendum est, qui pro locorum et temporum vel quarumlibet rerum opportunitatibus constrictius tibi quasi quadam sorte iunguntur.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 2 weeks ago
On the stage on which we...

On the stage on which we are observing it, - Universal History - Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
1 month 1 week ago
At the end of Being and...

At the end of Being and Nothingness, ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure.

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Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 116
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
A Turk thinks, or used to...

A Turk thinks, or used to think (for even Turks are wiser now-a-days), that society would be on a sandbank if women were suffered to walk about the streets with their faces uncovered. Taught by these and many similar examples, I look upon this expression of loosening the foundations of society, unless a person tells in unambiguous terms what he means by it, as a mere bugbear to frighten imbeciles with.

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Stability of Society (17 August 1850), quoted in Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (eds.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV, 1986
Philosophical Maxims
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