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Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
Abbot Terrasson tells us that if...

Abbot Terrasson tells us that if the size of a book were measured not by the number of its pages but by the time required to understand it, then we could say about many books that they would be much shorter were they not so short.

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A xix
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 6 days ago
Nothing in this book is true.

Nothing in this book is true.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 4 days ago
By quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of...

By quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of confederating, Germans and Scandinavians, both of them belonging to the same great race, only prepare the way for their hereditary enemy, the Slav. 

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The Eastern Question: A Reprint of Letters written 1853 -1856 dealing with the events of the Crimean War, edit., Eleanor Marx Aveling, London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co. (1897) p. 90
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 6 days ago
There are plenty of good reasons...

There are plenty of good reasons for fighting," I said, "but no good reason ever to hate without reservation, to imagine that God Almighty Himself hates with you, too. Where's evil? It's that large part of every man that wants to hate without limit, that wants to hate with God on its side. It's that part of every man that finds all kinds of ugliness so attractive.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 weeks ago
To look at a work of...

To look at a work of art in order to see how well certain rules are observed and canons conformed to impoverished perception. But to strive to note the ways in which certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the organic means by which the media is made to express and carry definite parts, or how the problem of adequate individualization is solved, sharpens esthetic perception and enriches its content.

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p. 213
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
A good means to discovery is...

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 154
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 3 weeks ago
Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a...

Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

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The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 4 weeks ago
How did this division of the...

How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis? The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the nationalities in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these nations, large and small. All the earlier history of Austria up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality - the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. (Weltsturm). For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary.

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The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 5 days ago
Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference...

Some decent regulated pre-eminence, some preference (not exclusive appropriation) given to birth, is neither unnatural, nor unjust, nor impolitic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 4 weeks ago
The new governmental reason does not...

The new governmental reason does not deal with what I would call the things in themselves of governmentality, such as individuals, things, wealth, and land. It no longer deals with these things in themselves. It deals with the phenomena of politics, that is to say, interests, which precisely constitute politics and its stakes; it deals with interests, or that respect in which a given individual, thing, wealth, and so on interests other individuals or the collective body of individuals. ... In the new regime, government is basically no longer to be exercised over subjects and other things subjected through these subjects. Government is now to be exercised over what we could call the phenomenal republic of interests. The fundamental question of liberalism is: What is the utility value of government and all actions of government in a society where exchange determines the value of things?

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Lecture 2, January 17, 1979, pp. 45-46
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
""You do not love the mind...

""You do not love the mind of your race, nor the body. Any kind of creature will please you if only it is begotten by your kind as they now are. It seems to me, Thick One, what you really love is no completed creature but the very seed itself: for that is all that is left".

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Oyarsa
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 5 days ago
The science of religion is one...

The science of religion is one science within philosophy; indeed it is the final one. In that respect it presupposes the other philosophical disciplines and is therefore a result.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 day ago
Accepting the absurdity of everything around...

Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end. It arouses a revolt that can become fruitful.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
The Americans never use the word...

The Americans never use the word peasant, because they have no idea of the class which that term denotes; the ignorance of more remote ages, the simplicity of rural life, and the rusticity of the villager have not been preserved among them; and they are alike unacquainted with the virtues, the vices, the coarse habits, and the simple graces of an early stage of civilization.

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Chapter XVII.
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 2 days ago
Of these not right forms of...

Of these not right forms of government, monarchy, when bound by good written rules, which we call laws, is the best of all the six; but without law it is hard and most oppressive to live with. The government of the few must be considered intermediate, both in good and in evil. The government of the multitude is weak in all respects and able to do nothing great, either good or bad, when compared with the other forms of government, therefore of all these governments when they are lawful, this is the worst, and when they are all lawless it is the best.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
But the inner part is the...

But the inner part is the better part; for to it, as both ruler and judge, all these messengers of the senses report the answers of heaven and earth and all the things therein, who said, "We are not God, but he made us." My inner man knew these things through the ministry of the outer man, and I, the inner man, knew all this, I, the soul, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of earth about my God, and it answered, "I am not he, but he made me."

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X, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 day ago
Nothing is harder to understand than...

Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
Sickness is mankind's greatest defect. F...

Sickness is mankind's greatest defect.

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F 100
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
I would really like to slow...

I would really like to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctuation marks. For I would like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.)

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p. 77e
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 3 weeks ago
Being nimble and light-footed, his father...

Being nimble and light-footed, his father encouraged him to run in the Olympic race. "Yes," said he, "if there were any kings there to run with me."

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41 Alexander
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 2 weeks ago
Philosophy ... must not bargain away...

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 1 week ago
Ideology is a symptom

This is probably the fundamental dimension of 'ideology': ideology is not simply a 'false consciousness', an illusory representation of reality, it is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as 'ideological' - 'ideological' is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence -that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals 'do not know what they are doing'. 'Ideological is not the false consciousness of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by "false consciousness"'. Thus we have finally reached the dimension of the symptom, because one of its possible definitions would also be 'a formation whose very consistency implies a certain non-knowledge on the part of the subject': the subject can 'enjoy his symptom' only in so far as its logic escapes him - the measure of the success of its interpretation is precisely its dissolution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 6 days ago
Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance...

Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources but strives to enhance them and pass them on.

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Stand up for the real meaning of freedom, The Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
If there is something more excellent...

If there is something more excellent than the truth, then that is God; if not, then truth itself is God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 3 weeks ago
True poetry is a function of...

True poetry is a function of awakening. It awakens us, but it must retain the memory of previous dreams.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
John - I'm trying to find...

John - I'm trying to find the Island in the West. Sensible - You refer, no doubt to some aesthetic experience.

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Pilgrim's Regress 77
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is absolute truth in anarchism...

There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. ... The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.

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Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 5 days ago
In England ... everything becomes professional...

In England ... everything becomes professional ... even the rogues of that island are pedants.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Lyceum (1797)"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 5 days ago
Nothing is so much to be...

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

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September 7, 1851
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 2 days ago
The attempt to separate everything from...

The attempt to separate everything from everything else is not only not in good taste but also shows that a man is utterly uncultivated and unphilosophical. The complete separation of each thing from all is the utterly final obliteration of all discourse. For our power of discourse is derived from the interweaving of the classes or ideas with one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 weeks ago
The inner music of things sounds...

The inner music of things sounds only when you close your eyes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 week ago
Let great authors have their due,...

Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.

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Book I, iv, 10
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 5 days ago
Whoever does not philosophize for the...

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)", Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #96
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 6 days ago
The ethical life... is maintained in...

The ethical life... is maintained in being by a common culture, which also upholds the togetherness of society... Unlike the modern youth culture, a common culture sanctifies the adult state, to which it offers rites of passage.

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"Idle Hands" (p. 127)
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 week 6 days ago
I predict we will abolish suffering...

I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world. Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically pre-programmed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.

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Quoted in Ethics Matters (2012) by Peter and Charlotte Vardy, p. 114 ISBN 978-0334043911
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 weeks 3 days ago
The difference between a Humanist and...

The difference between a Humanist and a lunatic is in fact one of degree.

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Vol. 9
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
To all my friends...
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Main Content / General
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 5 days ago
Life is a business that does...

Life is a business that does not cover the costs.

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Vol II "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life"
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
The various languages placed side by...
The various languages placed side by side show that with words it is never a question of truth, never a question of adequate expression; otherwise, there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself" (which is precisely what the pure truth, apart from any of its consequences, would be) is likewise something quite incomprehensible to the creator of language and something not in the least worth striving for. This creator only designates the relations of things to men, and for expressing these relations he lays hold of the boldest metaphors.' To begin with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one.
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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Fortune is lavish with her favors,...

Fortune is lavish with her favors, but not to be depended on. Nature on the other hand is self-sufficing, and therefore with her feebler but trustworthy [resources] she wins the greater [meed] of hope.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 4 days ago
Money is a crystal formed of...

Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities.

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Vol. I, Ch. 2, pg. 99.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 days ago
In order that men should embrace...

In order that men should embrace the truth - not in the vague way they did in childhood, nor in the one-sided and perverted way presented to them by their religious and scientific teachers, but embrace it as their highest law the complete liberation of this truth from all and every superstition (both pseudo-religious and pseudo-scientific) by which it is still obscured is essential: not a partial, timid attempt, reckoning with traditions sanctified by age and with the habits of the people - not such as was effected in the religious sphere by Guru Nanak, the founder of the sect of the Sikhs, and in the Christian world by Luther, and by similar reformers in other religions - but a fundamental cleansing of religious consciousness from all ancient religious and modern scientific superstitions.

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VI
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 4 days ago
We are obviously heading for revolution-something...

We are obviously heading for revolution-something I have never once doubted since 1850. The first act will include a by no means gratifying rehash of the stupidities of '48-'49. However, that's how world history runs its course, and one has to take it as one finds it.

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Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann (28 December 1862), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860-64 (2010), p. 437
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 4 days ago
In a constantly revolving circle every...

In a constantly revolving circle every point is simultaneously a point of departure and a point of return. If we interrupt the rotation, not every point of departure is a point of return.

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Vol. II, Ch. IV, p. 104.
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 6 days ago
The conservative response to modernity is...

The conservative response to modernity is to embrace it, but to embrace it critically, in full consciousness that human achievements are rare and precarious, that we have no God-given right to destroy our inheritance, but must always patiently submit to the voice of order, and set an example of orderly living.

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"Eliot and Conservatism" (p. 208)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
The wraith of Sigmund said. "You...

The wraith of Sigmund said. "You know what this is, I suppose. Religious melancholia. Stop while there is time. If you dive, you dive into insanity."

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Pilgrim's Regress 168
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 3 weeks ago
The precepts "Love your enemies, do...

The precepts "Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, bless them that curse you" ... are born from the Gospel's profound spirit of individualism, which refuses to let one's own actions and conduct depend in any way on somebody else's acts. The Christian refuses to let his acts be mere reactions-such conduct would lower him to the level of his enemy. The act is to grow organically from the person, "as the fruit from the tree." ... What the Gospel demands is not a reaction which is the reverse of the natural reaction, as if it said: "Because he strikes you on the cheek, tend the other"-but a rejection of all reactive activity, of any participation in common and average ways of acting and standards of judgment.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 99-100
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
The regime which is destroyed by...

The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month ago
I have just discovered that without...

I have just discovered that without her father's consent this sweet, trusting, gullible six-year-old is being sent, for weekly instruction, to a Roman Catholic nun. What chance has she?

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month ago
Age may have one side, but...

Age may have one side, but assuredly Youth has the other. There is nothing more certain than that both are right, except perhaps that both are wrong. Let them agree to differ; for who knows but what agreeing to differ may not be a form of agreement rather than a form of difference?

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Crabbed Age and Youth.
Philosophical Maxims
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