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Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
They that be whole need not...

They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.

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9:12-13 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
2 months 2 weeks ago
Truth is best...

Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 27, 14.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
We have nothing to do but...

We have nothing to do but to receive, resting absolutely upon the merit, power, and love of our Redeemer.

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Reported in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895) edited by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 225
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity...

Similarly, individual acts of aristocratic generosity do not eliminate pauperism; they perpetuate it.

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p. 219
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Mathematics takes us still further from...

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
A very great part of the...

A very great part of the mischiefs that vex the world arises from words.

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Letter to Richard Burke post 19 February 1792 (1792), in R. B. McDowell and William B. Todd (eds), The Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke, Vol. 9: I: The Revolutionary War, 1794-1797; II: Ireland. p. 647
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Each of us believes, quite unconsciously...

Each of us believes, quite unconsciously of course, that we alone pursue the truth, which the rest are incapable of seeking out and unworthy of attaining. This madness is so deep-rooted and so useful that it is impossible to realize what would become of each of us if it were someday to disappear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 weeks 1 day ago
A noble spirit finds a cure...

A noble spirit finds a cure for injustice in forgetting it.

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Maxim 441
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 1 week ago
Whoever is versed...

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
The moral flabbiness born of the...

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.

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To H. G. Wells, 9/11/1906
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
The reason I cannot really say...

The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can - if I may put it this way - find that Archimedian point, and as soon as I have found it, everything is readily clear for me. Then I am able to pursue this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
The soul of wit may become...

The soul of wit may become the very body of untruth.

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Foreward (p. vii)
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic....

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 3 days ago
No realistic, sane person goes around...

No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.

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Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 452
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
No nation was ever so virtuous...

No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.

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Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 3 weeks ago
At the present time a serious,...

At the present time a serious, strong state can have but one sound foundation - military and bureaucratic centralization. Between a monarchy and the most democratic republic there is only one essential difference: in the former, the world of officialdom oppresses and robs the people for the greater profit of the privileged and propertied classes, as well as to line its own pockets, in the name of the monarch; in the latter, it oppresses and robs the people in exactly the same way, for the benefit of the same classes and the same pockets, but in the name of the people's will. In a republic a fictitious people, the "legal nation" supposedly represented by the state, smothers the real, live people. But it will scarcely be any easier on the people if the cudgel with which they are beaten is called the people's cudgel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week 3 days ago
In comparing civilized man with the...

In comparing civilized man with the animal world, one is as the Alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. Surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces-of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. But the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity, to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder.

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Ch.2, p. 131-132
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
By 1204, the only place where...

By 1204, the only place where the entire body of Greek learning existed, still intact, was Constantinople. As a result of the crusaders' conquest, however, Constantinople was ruthlessly pillaged and destroyed and almost all the great treasures of ancient Greek learning were lost forever. It is because of that sack, for instance, that we have only seven plays left out of the better than one hundred written by Sophocles. The tragedy of 1204 can never be undone and for all of time, only bits and pieces of the marvelous Greek world can be known to us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Yes, I know well that others...

Yes, I know well that others before me have felt what I feel and express; that many others feel it today, although they keep silence about it. ...And I do not keep silence about it because it is for many the thing which must not be spoken, the abomination of abominations - infandum - and I believe that it is necessary now and again to speak the thing which must not be spoken. ...Even if it should lead only to irritating the devotees of progress, those who believe that truth is consolation, it would lead to not a little. To irritating them and making them say: "Poor fellow! if he would only use his intelligence to better purpose!... Someone perhaps will add that I do not know what I say, to which I shall reply that perhaps he may be right - and being right is such a little thing! - but that I feel what I say and I know what I feel and that suffices me. And that it is better to be lacking in reason than to have too much of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
Les médecins administrent des médicaments dont...

Doctors are men who prescribe medicine of which they know little, to human beings of whom they know less, to cure diseases of which they know nothing.

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Note: This attribution to Voltaire appears in Strauss' Familiar Medical Quotations (1968), p. 394, and in publications as early as 1956
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 1 day ago
Does the interiorization of media such...

Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes?

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(p. 28)
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 1 week ago
Scientists, animated by the purpose of...

Scientists, animated by the purpose of proving they are purposeless, constitute an interesting subject for study.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 6 days ago
Those alone are dear to Divinity...

Those alone are dear to Divinity who are hostile to injustice.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
Being of opinion that the doctrine...

Being of opinion that the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a sect as the Quakers were very well deserving the curiosity of every thinking man, I resolved to make myself acquainted with them, and for that purpose made a visit to one of the most eminent of that sect in England, who, after having been in trade for thirty years, had the wisdom to prescribe limits to his fortune, and to his desires, and withdrew to a small but pleasant retirement in the country, not many miles from London. Here it was that I made him my visit. His house was small, but neatly built, and with no other ornaments but those of decency and convenience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
The rich in all societies may...

The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks ago
It's the great mystery of human...

It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
I remember the very place in...

I remember the very place in Hyde Park where, in my fourteenth year, on the eve of leaving my father's house for a long absence, he told me that I should find, as I got acquainted with new people, that I had been taught many things which youths of my age did not commonly know; and that many persons would be disposed to talk to me of this, and to compliment me upon it. What other things he said on this topic I remember very imperfectly; but he wound up by saying, that whatever I knew more than others, could not be ascribed to any merit in me, but to the very unusual advantage which had fallen to my lot.

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(p. 34)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are born believing. A man...

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

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Worship
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week 6 days ago
People crushed by law have no...

People crushed by law have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws.

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According to Kenneth Owen Morgan (The Illustrated History of Britain (1984) p. 421) this was said by Macaulay in 1832. If so, he was quoting a letter written by Edmund Burke in 1777.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week 6 days ago
The gallery in which the reporters...

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

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Hallam', The Edinburgh Review (September 1828), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 210
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 1 week ago
As more and more women acquired...

As more and more women acquired prestige, fame, or money from feminist writings or from gains from feminist movement for equality in the workforce, individual opportunism undermined appeals for collective struggle. Women who were not opposed to patriarchy, capitalism, classism, or racism labeled themselves "feminist." Their expectations were varied. Privileged women wanted social equality with men of their class; some women wanted equal pay for equal work; others wanted an alternative lifestyle. Many of these legitimate concerns were easily co-opted by the ruling capitalist patriarchy.

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p. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Tell me how you want to...

Tell me how you want to die, and I'll tell you who you are.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
I am against bigness and greatness...

I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top. - You need take no notice of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite unintelligible to anyone but myself.

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Letter to Mrs. Henry Whitman (7 June 1899), in The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James, vol. 2, p. 90, 1926
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 1 day ago
The new media are not bridges...

The new media are not bridges between man and nature - they are nature...The new media are not ways of relating us to the old world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will.

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Media as the New Nature, 1969, p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 2 weeks ago
In most cases, to be reasonable...

In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.

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p. 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 1 day ago
I pray you, magnificent Sir, do...

I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you.

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Third Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
The anarchists put the thing upside...

The anarchists put the thing upside down. They declare that the proletarian revolution must begin by doing away with the political organisation of the state. But after its victory the sole organisation which the proletariat finds already in existence is precisely the state. This state may require very considerable alterations before it can fulfil its new functions. But to destroy it at such a moment would be to destroy the only organism by means of which the victorious proletariat can assert its newly-conquered power, hold down its capitalist adversaries and carry out that economic revolution of society without which the whole victory must end in a new defeat and in a mass slaughter of the workers similar to those after the Paris Commune.

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Letter to Philipp Van Patten
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Apart from autograph hunters, I get......

Apart from autograph hunters, I get... many letters from Hindus, beseeching me to adopt some form of mysticism, from young Americans, asking me where I think the line should be drawn in petting, and from Poles, urging me to admit that while all other nationalism may be bad that of Poland is wholly noble. I get letters from engineers who cannot understand Einstein, and from parsons who think that I cannot understand Genesis, from husbands whose wives have deserted them - not (they say) that that would matter, but the wives have taken the furniture with them, and what in these circumstances should an enlightened male do? ...I get letters (concerning whose genuineness I am suspicious) trying to get me to advocate abortion, and I get letters from young mothers asking my opinion of bottle-feeding.

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Letter to Mr C. L. Aiken, March 19, 1930
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is my own experience ......

It is my own experience ... that commentators are far more ingenious at finding meaning than authors are at inserting it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
The truth can be spoken only...

The truth can be spoken only by someone who is already at home in it; not by someone who still lives in untruthfulness, and does no more than reach out towards it from within untruthfulness.

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p. 41e
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 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
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 1 week ago
So clearly will….

So clearly will truths kindle light for truths.

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Book I, line 1117 (tr. W. H. D. Rouse and M. F. Smith)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Communists disdain to conceal their...

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

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Section 4, paragraph 11 (last paragraph) Variant translation: Workers of the world, unite!
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 1 day ago
Obsolescence is the moment of superabundance....

Obsolescence is the moment of superabundance.

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Yeats studies, Issue 2, Irish University Press, 1972, p. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Artistic creation is a demand for...

Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 month 3 weeks ago
Murder begins where self-defense ends. Act...

Murder begins where self-defense ends.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
What we really need the poet's...

What we really need the poet's and orator's help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.

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Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument, 31 May 1897
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
1 month 4 days ago
Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of...

Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate.

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month ago
States are doomed....
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Main Content / General
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 days ago
It (marriage) happens as with cages:...

It (marriage) happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

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Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
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