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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Those who have been inspired to...

Those who have been inspired to action by the doctrine of the class war will have acquired the habit of hatred, and will instinctively seek new enemies when the old ones have been vanquished. But in actual fact the psychology of the working man in any of the Western democracies is totally unlike that which is assumed in the Communist Manifesto. He does not by any means feel that he has nothing to lose but his chains, nor indeed is this true. The chains which bind Asia and Africa in subjection to Europe are partly riveted by him. He is himself part of a great system of tyranny and exploitation. Universal freedom would remove, not only his own chains, which are comparatively light, but the far heavier chains which he has helped to fasten upon the subject races of the world.

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Ch. VI: International Relations
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is the dissimilarities and inequalities...

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

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Book Three, Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 day ago
Modem mainstream economic theory bravely assumes...

Modem mainstream economic theory bravely assumes that people make their decisions in such a way as to maximize their utility. Accepting this assumption enables economics to predict a great deal of behavior (correctly or incorrectly) without ever making empirical studies of human actors.

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Simon (1990) "Invariants of Human Behavior" in: Annu. Rev. Psychol. 41: p. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 day ago
The first task of administrative theory...

The first task of administrative theory is to develop a set of concepts that will permit the description, in terms relevant to the theory, of administrative situations. These concepts, to be scientifically useful, must be operational; that is, their meanings must correspond to empirically observable facts or situations.

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p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
Just as Marx used to say...

Just as Marx used to say about the French Marxists of the late 'seventies: All I know is that I am not a Marxist.

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Letter to Conrad Schmidt
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
We must frankly confess, then, using...

We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 1 day ago
You worry whether the drought will...

You worry whether the drought will end. It is far better that you pray that God may water your mind lest virtue wither away in it. You are greatly concerned with money that is lost or being wasted, or you worry about the advance of old age. I think it much to be desired that you provide first of all for the needs of your soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Instinctively we divide mankind into friends...

Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.

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Authority and the Individual, 1949
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 days ago
The foundational...
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Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 3 weeks ago
Why has the Revolution of France...

Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, which the Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever happens, I cannot be a...

Whatever happens, I cannot be a silent witness to murder or torture. Anyone who is a partner in this is a despicable individual. I am sorry I cannot be moderate about it...

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Quoted in The New York Times Biographical Service, Vol. I (1970), p. 294, said by Russell "in the spring of 1967"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
I like a church, I like...

I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?

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The Problem, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 5 days ago
There is no greater fallacy than...

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 2 weeks ago
So we are always esthetically disappointed...

So we are always esthetically disappointed when the sensuous qualities and the intellectual properties of an object do not coalesce.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 4 weeks ago
The medium of the chorus

In his seminar on The Ethic of Psychoanalysis, Lacan speaks of the role of the Chorus in classical tragedy: we, the spectators, came to the theatre worried, full of everyday problems, unable to adjust without reserve to the problems of the play, that is to feel the required fears and compassions - but not problem, there is a chorus, who feels the sorrow and the compassion instead of us - or, more precisely, we feel the required emotions through the medium of the chorus: 'You are then relieved of all worries, even if you do not feel anything, the Chorus will do so in your place.'

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 3 weeks ago
The law of faith, being a...

The law of faith, being a covenant of free grace, God alone can appoint what shall be necessarily believed by everyone whom He will justify. What is the faith which He will accept and account for righteousness, depends wholly on his good pleasure. For it is of grace, and not of right, that this faith is accepted. And therefore He alone can set the measures of it: and what he has so appointed and declared is alone necessary. No-body can add to these fundamental articles of faith; nor make any other necessary, but what God himself hath made, and declared to be so. And what these are which God requires of those who will enter into, and receive the benefits of the new covenant, has already been shown. An explicit belief of these is absolutely required of all those to whom the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, and salvation through his name proposed.

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§ 156
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 2 weeks ago
The three qualities of space and...

The three qualities of space and time reciprocally affect and qualify one another in experience. Space is inane save as occupied with active volumes. Pauses are holes when they do not accentuate masses and define figures as individuals. Extension sprawls and finally benumbs if it does not interact with place so as to assume intelligible distribution. Mass is nothing fixed. It contracts and expands, asserts and yields, according to its relations to other spatial and enduring things.... these are then the common properties of the matter of arts because there are general conditions without which an experience is not possible. As we saw earlier, the basic condition is felt relationship between doing and undergoing as the organism and environment interact.

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pp. 220-21
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Great geniuses have the shortest biographies....

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

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Plato; or, The Philosopher
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
Love truth…

Love truth, but pardon error.

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1738
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 2 weeks ago
The discovery that mass changes with...

The discovery that mass changes with velocity, a discovery made when minute bodies came under consideration, finally forced surrender of the notion that mass is a fixed and inalienable possession of ultimate elements or individuals, so that time is now considered to be their fourth dimension.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 days ago
The most heated defenders of a...

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.

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F 8
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 1 week ago
Thus the sum…

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

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Book II, line 75 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
A European who goes to New...

A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.

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Ch. 8: Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 4 weeks ago
Who knows whether the best of...

Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Æquinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Philosophy and religion are enemies, and...

Philosophy and religion are enemies, and because they are enemies they have need of one another. There is no religion without some philosophical basis, no philosophy without roots in religion. ... the attacks which are directed against religion from a presumed scientific or philosophical point of view are merely attacks from another but opposing religious point of view.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 3 weeks ago
In a head-on clash between violence...

In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us. Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

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On Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Since we're all going to die,...

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks ago
I know every numbskull will babble...

I know every numbskull will babble on about "black man," "maneater," "chance," and "retrospective interpretation," in order to banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the familiar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, healthy-minded people, they always remind me of those optimistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded. On a phallic dream he had as a young child.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 3 weeks ago
By 'arguing...' I mean... criticizing... inviting......

By 'arguing...' I mean... criticizing... inviting... criticism; and trying to learn from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
No one should try to live...

No one should try to live if he has not completed his training as a victim.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
Eloquence, when at its highest pitch,...

Eloquence, when at its highest pitch, leaves little room for reason or reflection; but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections, captivates the willing hearers, and subdues their understanding. Happily, this pitch it seldom attains. But what a Tully or a Demosthenes could scarcely effect over a Roman or Athenian audience, every Capuchin, every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind, and in a higher degree, by touching such gross and vulgar passions.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
When any work seems to have...

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to affect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.

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Part II Section XII
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 day ago
When you wander, as you often...

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
1 month 1 week ago
Necessity resides in the way we...

Necessity resides in the way we talk about things, not in the things we talk about.

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Ways of Paradox and Other Essays (1976), p. 174
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months ago
To an atheist all writings tend...

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 1 day ago
But one no longer wonders when...

But one no longer wonders when one realizes that in the higher classes there is an unerring instinct of what tends to maintain and of what tends to destroy the organization by virtue of which they enjoy their privileges. The fashionable lady had certainly not reasoned out that if there were no capitalists and no army to defend them, her husband would have no fortune, and she could not have her entertainments and her ball-dresses. And the artist certainly does not argue that he needs the capitalists and the troops to defend them, so that they may buy his pictures. But instinct, replacing reason in this instance, guides them unerringly. And it is precisely this instinct which leads all men, with few exceptions, to support all the religious, political, and economic institutions which are to their advantage.

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Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 2 weeks ago
We are accustomed to speak of...

We are accustomed to speak of ideas as reproduced, as passed from mind to mind, as similar or dissimilar to one another, and, in short, as if they were substantial things; nor can any reasonable objection be raised to such expressions. But taking the word "idea" in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness, it is clear that an idea once past is gone forever, and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea. These two ideas are not present in the same state of consciousness, and therefore cannot possibly be compared.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 weeks 4 days ago
And perhaps this habit of much...

And perhaps this habit of much travel, and the engendering of scattered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of ancient nations.

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Pt. I, ch. II.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 weeks 6 days ago
When reason rules, money is a...

When reason rules, money is a blessing.

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Maxim 50
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Indians, whom we call barbarous,...

The Indians, whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.

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Sec. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Get hold of yourself, be confident...

Get hold of yourself, be confident once more, don't forget that it is not given to just anyone to have idolized discouragement without succumbing to it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month ago
If reason is both transcendent and...

If reason is both transcendent and immanent, then philosophy, as culture-bound reflection and argument about eternal questions, is both in time and eternity. We don't have an Archimedean point; we always speak the language of a time and place; but the rightness and wrongness of what we say is not just for a time and a place.

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Why reason can't be naturalized
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 4 weeks ago
The symptom is automatically dissolved

Precisely as an enigma, the symptom, so to speak, announces its dissolution through interpretation: the aim of psychoanalysis is to re-establish the broken network of communication by allowing the patient to verbalize the meaning of his symptom: through this verbalization the symptom is automatically dissolved. This, then is the basic point: in its very construction, the symptom implies the field of the big Other as consistent, complete, because its very function is an appeal to the Other which contains its meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months ago
Who loves not woman, wine, and...

Who loves not woman, wine, and song / Remains a fool his whole life long.

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As quoted by Anonymous, "On Luther's Love for and Knowledge of Music" in The Musical World. Vol VII, No. 83 (Oct 13, 1837).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 4 weeks ago
Darkness and light divide the course...

Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
If this life be not a...

If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is no better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a real fight.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
The welfare of the people in...

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. It would be easy, however, to destroy that good conscience by shouting to them: if you want the happiness of the people, let them speak out and tell what kind of happiness they want and what kind they don't want! But, in truth, the very ones who make use of such alibis know they are lies; they leave to their intellectuals on duty the chore of believing in them and of proving that religion, patriotism, and justice need for their survival the sacrifice of freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
2 months 4 days ago
All things are full…

All things are full of gods.

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As quoted in Aristotle, De Anima, 411a
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
In that daily effort in which...

In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 3 weeks ago
Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions...

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.

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A 51, B 75
Philosophical Maxims
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