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Edward Said
Edward Said
4 months 1 week ago
The history of other cultures is...

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.

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Chap 4, Sect 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 2 weeks ago
For the whole Past, as I...

For the whole Past, as I keep repeating, is the possession of the Present; the Past had always something true, and is a precious possession. In a different time, in a different place, it is always some other side of our common Human Nature that has been developing itself. The actual True is the sum of all these; not any one of them by itself constitutes what of Human Nature is hitherto developed. Better to know them all than misknow them. "To which of these Three Religions do you specially adhere?" inquires Meister of his Teacher. "To all the Three!" answers the other: "To all the Three; for they by their union first constitute the True Religion."

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 months 1 week ago
It is a sign of sovereignty...

It is a sign of sovereignty to risk one's life, that is, to turn life into a game.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 3 weeks ago
And virtue they will curse, speaking...

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.

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XI, 32
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 1 week ago
Direct action, having proven effective along...

Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months 1 week ago
Order thyself so, that thy Soul...

Order thyself so, that thy Soul may always be in good estate; whatsoever become of thy body.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 months 1 week ago
Zen does not confuse spirituality with...

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. Paraphrase of original text which reads "It does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

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The Way of Zen, Pt. 2, Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 4 weeks ago
To be in love is not...

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months ago
...an intellectual concept abstracts from everything...

...an intellectual concept abstracts from everything sensuous, it is not abstracted from sensuous things, and perhaps would be more correctly called abstracting than abstract. Intellectual concepts it is more cautious, therefore, to call pure ideas, and concepts given only empirically, abstract ideas.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
4 months 1 week ago
So-called professional mathematicians have, in their...

So-called professional mathematicians have, in their reliance on the relative incapacity of the rest of mankind, acquired for themselves a reputation for profundity very similar to the reputation for sanctity possessed by theologians.

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K 52
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 1 week ago
Intolerance is the besetting sin of...

Intolerance is the besetting sin of moral fervour.

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p. 63, Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
5 months 3 weeks ago
Inequalities are permissible when they maximize,...

Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society.

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Chapter III, Section 26, pg. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 4 weeks ago
India is pre-eminently distinguished for the...

India is pre-eminently distinguished for the many traits of original grandeur of thought and of the wonderful remains of immediate knowledge.

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quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 1 week ago
What would life be without arithmetic,...

What would life be without arithmetic, but a scene of horrors?

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Vol. II, letter to Miss Lucie Austin (22 July 1835), p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Beware of false prophets, which come...

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

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Matthew 7:15 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 4 weeks ago
What chance has Vulcan against Roberts...

What chance has Vulcan against Roberts & Co., Jupiter against the lightning-rod and Hermes against the Credit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them.

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Introduction, p. 30.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
We are not to expect to...

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

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Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
4 months 2 weeks ago
Nobody is bound to have an...

Nobody is bound to have an optimistic outlook on the future: that is not a precept of the Christian religion. ... It is a matter of immense importance that illusions should be dispelled and man come face to face with positive realities.

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p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months ago
Nature has willed that man should,...

Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.

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Third Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 3 weeks ago
Since those who rule in the...

Since those who rule in the city do so because they own a lot, I suppose they're unwilling to enact laws to prevent young people who've had no discipline from spending and wasting their wealth, so that by making loans to them, secured by the young people's property, and then calling those loans in, they themselves become even richer and more honored.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 months 1 week ago
Now, on the contrary, when every...

Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this other.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
5 months 2 weeks ago
A law there is….

A law there is, an oracle of Doom, Of old enacted by the assembled gods, That if a Daemon-such as live for ages- Defile himself with foul and sinful murder, He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam Far from the Blest; such is the path I tread, I too a wanderer and exile from heaven.

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tr. Phillip H. De Lacy and Benedict Einarson. Cf. full quotation at Leonard p. 54-55 fr. 115, as paraphrased in Plutarch's Moralia
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 3 weeks ago
Take heed not to be….

Take heed not to be transformed into a Caesar, not to be dipped in the purple dye, for it does happen. Keep yourself therefore, simple, good, pure, grave, unaffected, the friend of justice, religious, kind, affectionate, strong for your proper work. Wrestle to be the man philosophy wished to make you. Reverence the gods, save men. Life is brief; there is but one harvest of earthly existence, a holy disposition and neighborly acts.

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VI, 30
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 3 weeks ago
What is objective must be common...

What is objective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about by... discourse... we are even forced to conclude: no discourse no objectivity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 4 weeks ago
For legislators make the citizens good...

For legislators make the citizens good by forming habits in them, and this is the wish of every legislator, and those who do not effect it miss their mark, and it is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 1 week ago
In matters that are so obscure...

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.

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I, xviii, 37. Modern translation by J.H. Taylor
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 3 weeks ago
Only it takes....

Only it takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 4 weeks ago
By the disposition of a stupendous...

By the disposition of a stupendous wisdom, moulding together the great mysterious incorporation of the human race, the whole, at one time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young; but, in a condition of unchangeable constancy, moves on through the varied tenor of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and progression.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 4 weeks ago
The fact that all Mathematics is...

The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself.

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Principles of Mathematics (1903), Ch. I: Definition of Pure Mathematics, p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is now generally accepted that...

It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about these responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.

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Preface To The 2011 edition, p. xi
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
For a people who are free,...

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.

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Thomas Jefferson's Eighth State of the Union Address
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 2 weeks ago
"Relation" in its idiomatic usage denotes...

"Relation" in its idiomatic usage denotes something direct and active, something dynamic and energetic. It fixes attention upon the way things bear upon one another, their clashings and unitings, the way they fulfill and frustrate, promote and retard, excite and inhibit one another. Intellectual relations subsist in propositions; they state the connection of terms with one another. In art, as in nature and in life, relations are modes of interaction.

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p. 139
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 3 weeks ago
The TV camera has no shutter....

The TV camera has no shutter. It does not deal with aspects or facets of objects in high resolution. It is a means of direct pick-up by the electrical groping over surfaces.

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Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 242
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
6 months 1 day ago
Human infirmity in moderating….

Human infirmity in moderating and checking the emotions I name bondage: for, when a man is a prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune: so much so, that he is often compelled, while seeing that which is better for him, to follow that which is worse.

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Part IV, Preface; translation by R. H. M. Elwes
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 4 days ago
Amid a multitude...
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Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 2 weeks ago
Truly it is a sad thing...

Truly it is a sad thing for a people, as for a man, to fall into Scepticism, into dilettantism, insincerity; not to know Sincerity when they see it. For this world, and for all worlds, what curse is so fatal?

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 4 weeks ago
Whatever we know without inference is...

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
You must be afraid, my son....

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

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Mother to her young son, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 3 weeks ago
This is the end of the...

This is the end of the web of the statesman activity: the direct interweaving of the characters of restrained and courageous men, when the kingly science has drawn them together by friendship and community of sentiment into a common life, and having perfected the most glorious and the best of all textures, clothes with it all the inhabitants of the state, both slaves and freemen, holds them together by this fabric, and omitting nothing which ought to belong to a happy state, rules and watches over them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
4 months 1 week ago
One of the principal motifs of...

One of the principal motifs of Nietzsche's work is that Kant had not carried out a true critique because he was not able to pose the problem of critique in terms of values.

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
4 months 2 weeks ago
Man, if he is to remain...

Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward. ... We can no longer veil reality from ourselves by renouncing self-consciousness without simultaneously excluding ourselves from the historical course of human existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 months 1 week ago
A person who thinks all the...

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 3 weeks ago
We are all made…

We are all made for mutual assistance, as the feet, the hands, and the eyelids, as the rows of the upper and under teeth, from whence it follows that clashing and opposition is perfectly unnatural.

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II, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Tried myself in the school of...

Tried myself in the school of affliction, by the loss of every form of connection which can rive the human heart, I know well, and feel what you have lost, what you have suffered, are suffering, and have yet to endure. The same trials have taught me that for ills so immeasurable, time and silence are the only medicines. I will not, therefore, by useless condolences, open afresh the sluices of your grief, nor, although mingling sincerely my tears with yours, will I say a word more where words are vain.

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Letter to John Adams (13 November 1818) regarding the death of Abigail Adams
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 4 weeks ago
The Grecian are youthful and erring...

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 3 weeks ago
Philosophy is a battle….

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

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§ 109
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 4 weeks ago
What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race,...

What, in unenlightened societies, colour, race, religion, or in the case of a conquered country, nationality, are to some men, sex is to all women; a peremptory exclusion from almost all honourable occupations, but either such as cannot be fulfilled by others, or such as those others do not think worthy of their acceptance.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 2 weeks ago
The Master said, "Hard is...

The Master said, "Hard is it to deal with him, who will stuff himself with food the whole day, without applying his mind to anything good! Are there not gamesters and chess players? To be one of these would still be better than doing nothing at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 3 weeks ago
The question here is the same...

The question here is the same as the question I addressed with regard to madness, disease, delinquency and sexuality. In all of these cases, it was not a question of showing how these objects were for a long time hidden before being finally discovered, nor of showing how all these objects are only wicked illusions or ideological products to be dispelled in the light of reason finally having reached its zenith. It was a matter of showing by what conjunctions a whole set of practices-from the moment they become coordinated with a regime of truth-was able to make what does not exist (madness, disease, delinquency, sexuality, etcetera), nonetheless become something.

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Lecture 1, January 10, 1979, p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Iamblichus
Iamblichus
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect"...

The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect" because they thought that intellect was akin to the One; for among the virtues, they likened the monad to moral wisdom; for what is correct is one. And they called it "being," "cause of truth," "simple," "paradigm," "order," "concord," "what is equal among the greater and the lesser," "the mean between intensity and slackness," "moderation in plurality," "the instant now in time," and moreover they call it "ship," "chariot," "friend," "life," "happiness."

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On the Monad
Philosophical Maxims
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