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Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Pennsylvania legislature, who, on a...

The Pennsylvania legislature, who, on a proposition to make the belief in God a necessary qualification for office, rejected it by a great majority, although assuredly there was not a single atheist in their body. And you remember to have heard, that when the act for religious freedom was before the Virginia Assembly, a motion to insert the name of Jesus Christ before the phrase, "the author of our holy religion," which stood in the bill, was rejected, although that was the creed of a great majority of them.

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Letter to Albert Gallatin (16 June 1817). Published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12, p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
7 months 1 day ago
Those who read and rightly understand...

Those who read and rightly understand my teaching will not start an insurrection; they have not learned that from me.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 3 weeks ago
…the prince says…

. ... the prince says that the world will be saved by beauty! And I maintain that the reason he has such playful ideas is that he is in love.

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Part 3, Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 1 week ago
A society like the Church, which...

A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license.

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Devil disguised. p. 122
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 months 1 week ago
In the most secret chamber of...

In the most secret chamber of the spirit of him who believes himself convinced that death puts an end to his personal consciousness, his memory, for ever, and all unknown to him perhaps, there lurks a shadow, a vague shadow, a shadow of uncertainty, and while he says within himself, "Well, let us live this life that passes away, for there is no other!" the silence of this secret chamber speaks to him and murmurs, "Who knows!... " These voices are like the humming of a mosquito when the south-west wind roars through the trees in the wood; we cannot distinguish this faint humming, yet nevertheless, merged in the clamor of the storm, it reaches the ear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
I'd rather offer my life as...

I'd rather offer my life as a sacrifice than be necessary to anything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
2 months 2 weeks ago
The socialist system of society should...

The socialist system of society should only be, and can only be, an historical product, born out of the school of its own experiences, born in the course of its realization, as a result of the developments of living history, which - just like organic nature of which, in the last analysis, it forms a part - has the fine habit of always producing along with any real social need the means to its satisfaction, along with the task simultaneously the solution. However, if such is the case, then it is clear that socialism by its very nature cannot be decreed or introduced by ukase. It has as its prerequisite a number of measures of force - against property, etc. The negative, the tearing down, can be decreed; the building up, the positive, cannot. New Territory. A thousand problems. Only experience is capable of correcting and opening new ways.

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Chapter Six, "The Problem of Dictatorship"
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 3 weeks ago
When new technologies impose themselves on...

When new technologies impose themselves on societies long habituated to older technologies, anxieties of all kinds result.

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Location, Volume 1 Issues 1-2, 1963, p. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
5 months 1 day ago
In sum, a theory is only...

In sum, a theory is only accepted if the theory has substantial, non-ad hoc, explanatory successes. This is in accordance with Popper; unfortunately, it is in even better accordance with the 'inductivist' accounts that Popper rejects, since these stress support rather than falsification.

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The 'corroboration' of theories
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 3 weeks ago
The foundation of all technology is...

The foundation of all technology is fire.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 weeks ago
Thee might observe incidentally that if...

Thee might observe incidentally that if the state paid for child-bearing it might and ought to require a medical certificate that the parents were such as to give a reasonable result of a healthy child - this would afford a very good inducement to some sort of care for the race, and gradually as public opinion became educated by the law, it might react on the law and make that more stringent, until one got to some state of things in which there would be a little genuine care for the race, instead of the present haphazard higgledy-piggledy ways.

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Letter to Alys Pearsall Smith (1894); published in The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell, Volume 1: The Private Years (1884-1914)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
7 months 1 day ago
Malice sucks up the greatest part...

Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.

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Of Repentance, Book III, Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 3 weeks ago
He [God] lends us a little...

He [God] lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it.

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Book II, Chapter 4, "The Perfect Penitent"
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
5 months 3 days ago
What I do not like about...

What I do not like about our definitions of genius is that there is in them nothing of the day of judgment, nothing of resounding through eternity and nothing of the footsteps of the Almighty.

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E 92
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 3 weeks ago
I am not sure but I...

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 2 weeks ago
Never esteem anything as of advantage...

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

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III, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
7 months 1 day ago
There must then be something that...

There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?

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Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 3 weeks 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
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
3 months 2 weeks ago
The groups are not unified under...

The groups are not unified under any single authority but rather relate to each other in a network structure. Social forums, affinity groups, and other forms of democratic decision-making are the basis of the movements, and they manage to act together based on what they have in common. ... These globalization protest movements are obviously limited in many regards. First of all, although their vision and desire is global in scope, they have thus far only involved significant numbers in North America and Europe. Second, so long, as they remain merely protests movements, traveling from one summit meeting to the next, they will be incapable of becoming a foundational struggle and of articulating an alternative to social relations. These limitations may only be temporary obstacles, and the movements may discover ways to overcome them.

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86-87
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 1 week ago
It is only by entering the...

It is only by entering the transcendental, the supernatural, the authentically spiritual order that man rises above the social. Until then, whatever he may do, the social is transcendent in relation to him.

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p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 months 1 week ago
With competition is connected less the...

With competition is connected less the intention to do the thing best than the intention to make it as profitable, as productive, as possible. Hence people study to get into the civil service (study in order to get a well-paid job), study cringing and flattery, routine and 'acquaintance with business', work 'for appearance'. Hence, while it is apparently a matter of doing 'good service', in truth only a 'good business' and earning of money are looked out for. The job is done only ostensibly for the job's sake, but in fact on account of the gain that it yields. One would indeed prefer not to be censor, but one wants to be - advanced; one would like to judge, administer, etc., according to his best convictions, but one is afraid of transfer or even dismissal; one must, above all things - live.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 2 weeks ago
The slave frees himself when, of...

The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 3 weeks ago
My Lords, to obtain empire is...

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 398
Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
3 months 1 week ago
We should become angels and not...

We should become angels and not devils, that's why we have been created and born into the world. Therefore be and stick to what God has chosen you for.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is as to whether its...

It is as to whether its services or uses are to be exchanged or not which makes a tool an article of capital or merely an article of wealth. Thus, the lathe of a manufacturer used in making things which are to be exchanged is capital, while the lathe kept by a gentleman for his own amusement is not.

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Book I, Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 2 weeks ago
Everything is in a state of...

Everything is in a state of metamorphosis. Thou thyself art in everlasting change and in corruption to correspond; so is the whole universe.

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Meditations. ix. 19.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 3 weeks ago
Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at...

Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.

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Sec. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 3 weeks ago
I agree with you that it...

I agree with you that it is the duty of every good citizen to use all the opportunities, which occur to him, for preserving documents relating to the history of our country.

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Letter to Hugh P. Taylor
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
The only medicine for suffering, crime,...

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 2 weeks ago
Your vision will become clear only...

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

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Letter to Fanny Bowditch, 22 October 1916
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
However intimate we may be with...

However intimate we may be with the operations of the mind, we cannot think more than two or three minutes a day; - unless, by taste or by profession, we practice, for hours on end, brutalizing words in order to extract ideas from them. The intellectual represents the major disgrace, the culminating failure of Homo sapiens.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 weeks 1 day ago
I exist....
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Main Content / General
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 3 weeks ago
Privacy invasion is now one of...

Privacy invasion is now one of biggest knowledge industries.

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(p. 24)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 3 weeks ago
For as only one thing is...

For as only one thing is necessary, and as the theme of the talk is the willing of only one thing: hence the consciousness before God of one's eternal responsibility to be an individual is that one thing necessary.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 months 3 weeks ago
Let me say and not mourn:...

Let me say and not mourn: the world lives in the death of speech and sings there.

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The Silence
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Kaufmann
Walter Kaufmann
3 months 3 weeks ago
The most obvious failure of organized...

The most obvious failure of organized religions is surely that almost all of them have made a mockery of what their founders taught.

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p. 267
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 2 weeks ago
Entertainment and learning are not opposites;...

Entertainment and learning are not opposites; entertainment may be the most effective mode of learning.

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pp. 66-67
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
6 months 2 weeks ago
The essence of the belief that...

The essence of the belief that bats have experience is that there is something that it is like to be a bat. Now we know that most bats (the microchiroptera, to be precise) perceive the external world primarily by sonar, or echolocation. ... But bat sonar, though clearly a form of perception, is not similar in its operation to any sense that we possess, and there is no reason to suppose that it is subjectively like anything we can experience or imagine. This appears to create difficulties for the notion of what it is like to be a bat.

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p. 168.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months 3 weeks ago
Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and...

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

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Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 3 weeks ago
In public, as well as in...

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

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Chapter V, p. 563.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
7 months 3 weeks ago
The life of money-making is one...

The life of money-making is one undertaken under compulsion, and wealth is evidently not the good we are seeking; for it is merely useful and for the sake of something else.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 3 weeks ago
Money is always to be found….

Money is always to be found when men are to be sent to the frontiers to be destroyed: when the object is to preserve them, it is no longer so.

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"Charity", 1770
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
4 months 3 weeks ago
Driving is a spectacular form of...

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology.

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Vanishing Point (pp. 9-10)
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
6 months 1 week 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
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 months 2 weeks ago
If, then, a….

If, then, a phenomenon admits of a complete mechanical explanation, it will admit of an infinity of others, that will render an account equally well of all the particulars revealed by experiment.

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Ch. XII: Optics and Electricity, as translated by George Bruce Halsted
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 2 weeks ago
That there should one Man die...

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

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Bk. III, ch. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Whoever shall find the interpretation of...

Whoever shall find the interpretation of these words shall not taste of death. (1) I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye do dishonour me. And I seek not mine own glory: there is one that seeketh and judgeth. Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.

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(John 8:49-51)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
5 months 3 weeks ago
I have always taken as the...

I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.

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Preface to Second Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
4 months 6 days ago
Now civilizations, I believe, come to...

Now civilizations, I believe, come to birth and proceed to grow by successfully responding to successive challenges. They break down and go to pieces if and when a challenge confronts them which they fail to meet.

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Ch. 8: Civilization on Trial
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
7 months 6 days ago
They men have corrupted this...

They men have corrupted this order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.

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Philosophical Maxims
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