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Horace
Horace
1 month 2 weeks ago
Into the middle things…

Into the middle things.

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Line 148
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 6 days ago
Flattery corrupts both the receiver and...

Flattery corrupts both the receiver and the giver.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 3 weeks ago
I may not have been sure...

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 1 week ago
Time is the soul of this...

Time is the soul of this world.

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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 3 weeks ago
The public execution, then, has a...

The public execution, then, has a juridico-political function. It is a ceremonial by which a momentarily injured sovereignty is reconstituted. It restores that sovereignty by manifesting it at its most spectacular. The public execution, however hasty and everyday, belongs to a whole series of great rituals in which power is eclipsed and restored (coronation, entry of the king into a conquered city, the submission of rebellious subjects); over and above the crime that has placed the sovereign in contempt, it deploys before all eyes an invincible force. Its aim is not so much to re-establish a balance as to bring into play, as its extreme point, the dissymmetry between the subject who has dared to violate the law and the all-powerful sovereign who displays his strength.

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Chapter One, The Spectacle of the Scaffold
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
That history just unfolds, independently of...

That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
The only government that I recognize-and...

The only government that I recognize-and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army - is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 2 days ago
Corruption of politics has nothing to...

Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 6 days ago
But as to our country and...

But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion-as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land-so long as the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France.

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pp. 52-53
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
Landlords... grow richer, as it were...

Landlords... grow richer, as it were in their sleep, without working, risking, or economizing.

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Book V, Chapter 1, Section 5
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 week 1 day ago
Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are...

Suffering, sad "female humanity!" What are these feelings which they are taught to consider as disgraceful, to deny to themselves? What form do the Chinese feet assume when denied their proper development? If the young girls of the "higher classes," who never commit a false step, whose justly earned reputations were never sullied even by the stain which the fruit of mere "knowledge of good and evil" leaves behind, were to speak, and say what are their thoughts employed upon, their thoughts, which alone are free, what would they say?

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months ago
We speak not strictly and philosophically...

We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

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Part 3, Section 3
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 5 days ago
Men are at variance...
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Main Content / General
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 day ago
If exclusive privileges were not granted,...

If exclusive privileges were not granted, and if the financial system would not tend to concentrate wealth, there would be few great fortunes and no quick wealth. When the means of growing rich is divided between a greater number of citizens, wealth will also be more evenly distributed; extreme poverty and extreme wealth would be also rare.

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Article on Wealth
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
You can take better care of...

You can take better care of your secret than another can.

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1863
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
Ideas are cheap. It's only what...

Ideas are cheap. It's only what you do with them that counts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
Don't get involved in partial problems,...

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

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Journal entry
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 weeks 5 days ago
That is a long word: forever!...

That is a long word: forever!

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 2 days ago
An army and navy represents the...

An army and navy represents the people's toys.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
Speech and silence. We feel safer...

Speech and silence. We feel safer with a madman who talks than with one who cannot open his mouth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 weeks 5 days ago
Demonstrating is therefore only the means...

Demonstrating is therefore only the means through which I strip my thought of the form of "mine-ness" so that the other person may recognize it as his own.

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Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
You, your families, your friends and...

You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.

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Leaflet issued while Russell was in Brixton Prison, 1961
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
And, oddly enough, even at times...

And, oddly enough, even at times when the current style permitted a treatment of the less epileptic aspects of religion, no fully adequate rendering of the contemplative life was ever achieved in the plasdc arts of Christendom. The peace that passes all understanding was often sung and spoken; it was hardly ever painted or carved. Thus, in the writings of St. Bernard, of Albertus Magnus, of Eckhart and Tauler and Ruysbroeck one may find passages that express very clearly the nature and significance of mystical contemplation. But the saints who figure in medieval painting and sculpture tell us next to nothing about this anticipation of the beatific vision. There are no equivalents of those Far Eastern Buddhas and Bodhisattvas who incarnate, in stone and paint, the experience of ultimate reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
The world is the totality of...

The world is the totality of facts, not things.

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(1.1) Original German: Die Welt ist die Gesamtheit der Tatsachen, nicht der Dinge
Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
1 month 1 week ago
For this, to draw a right...

For this, to draw a right line from every point, to every point, follows the definition, which says, that a line is the flux of a point, and a right line an indeclinable and inflexible flow.

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Book III. Concerning Petitions and Axioms.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 days ago
There is no man....

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 6 days ago
Yes, yes, I see it all!...

Yes, yes, I see it all! - an enormous social activity, a mighty civilization, a profuseness of science, of art, of industry, of morality, and afterwords, when we have filled the world with industrial marvels, with great factories, with roads, museums and libraries, we shall fall exhausted at the foot of it all, and it will subsist - for whom? Was man made for science or was science made for man?

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 2 days ago
The object of desire

What is at stake here is precisely the problem of the fulfillment of desire: when we encounter in reality an object which has all the properties of the fantasized object of desire, we are nevertheless necessarily somewhat disappointed; we experience a certain this is not it; it becomes evident that the finally found real object is not the reference of desire even though it possesses all the required properties.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 5 days ago
Society is eliminating the prerogatives and...

Society is eliminating the prerogatives and privileges of feudal. aristocratic culture together with its content. The fact that the transcending truths of the fine arts, the aesthetics of life and thought, were accessible only to the few wealthy and educated was the fault of a repressive society. But this fault is not corrected by paperbacks, general education, long-playing records, and the abolition of formal dress in the theater and concert hall. The cultural privileges expressed the injustice of freedom, the contradiction between ideology and reality, the separation of intellectual from material productivity; but they also provided a protected realm in which the tabooed truths could survive in abstract integrity-remote from the society which suppressed them.

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pp. 64-65
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 2 days ago
The reward in heaven is the...

The reward in heaven is the perpetual bait, a bait that has caught man in an iron net, a strait-jacket which does not let him expand or grow. All pioneers of truth have been, and still are, reviled; they have been, and still are, persecuted. But did they ask humanity to pay the price? Did they seek to bribe mankind to accept their ideas? They knew too well that he who accepts a truth because of the bribe, will soon barter it away to a higher bidder...Proud and self-reliant characters prefer hatred to such sickening artificial love. Not because of any reward does a free spirit take his stand for a great truth, nor has such a one ever been deterred because of fear of punishment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
To travel is to discover that...

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong.

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Part II: Malaya,
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Since, of desires some are natural...

Since, of desires some are natural and necessary; others natural, but not necessary; and others neither natural nor necessary, but the offspring of false judgment; it must be the office of temperance to gratify the first class, as far as nature requires: to restrain the second within the bounds of moderation; and, as to the third, resolutely to oppose, and, if possible, entirely repress them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 4 days ago
Few are the women and maidens...

Few are the women and maidens who would let themselves think that one could at the same time be joyous and modest. They are all bold and coarse in their speech, in their demeanor wild and lewd. That is now the fashion of being in good cheer. But it is specially evil that the young maiden folk are exceedingly bold of speech and bearing, and curse like troopers, to say nothing of their shameful words and scandalous coarse sayings, which one always hears and learns from another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are limits beyond which your...

There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 3 weeks ago
Every human being is tried this...

Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 week 6 days ago
I can assure you that no...

I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.

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No. 29. (Rica writing to Ibben)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is but one truly serious...

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest, whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. 

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Absurdity and Suicide
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 day ago
Are we not madder than those...

Are we not madder than those first inhabitants of the plain of Sennar? We know that the distance separating the earth from the sky is infinite, and yet we do not stop building our tower.

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No. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
We make choices, decisions, as long...

We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide, we can do nothing but regret the surface...

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 weeks 3 days ago
When even the dictators of today...

When even the dictators of today appeal to reason, they mean that they possess the most tanks. They were rational enough to build them; others should be rational enough to yield to them.

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p. 28.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
Take the question whether other people...

Take the question whether other people exist. ...It is plain that it makes for happiness to believe that they exist - for even the greatest misanthropist would not wish to be deprived of the objects of his hate. Hence the belief that other people exist is, pragmatically, a true belief. But if I am troubled by solipsism, the discovery that a belief in the existence of others is 'true' in the pragmatist's sense is not enough to allay my sense of loneliness: the perception that I should profit by rejecting solipsism is not alone sufficient to make me reject it. For what I desire is not that the belief in solipsism should be false in the pragmatic sense, but that other people should in fact exist. And with the pragmatist's meaning of truth, these two do not necessarily go together. The belief in solipsism might be false even if I were the only person or thing in the universe.

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"William James's Conception of Truth" , published in Philosophical Essays, London, 1910
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
I dislike Communism because it is...

I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.

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Unarmed Victory (1963), p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 week 5 days ago
The jargon makes it seem that...

The jargon makes it seem that ... the pure attention of the expression to the subject matter would be a fall into sin.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is important to remember that...

It is important to remember that the viciousness and wrongs of life stick out very plainly but that even at the worst times there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 4 weeks ago
For what is modesty but hypocritical...

For what is modesty but hypocritical humility, by means of which, in a world swelling with vile envy, a man seeks to beg pardon for his excellences and merits from those who have none? For whoever attributes no merit to himself because he really has none is not modest, but merely honest.

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Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation: Second Aspect
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 days ago
Nothing prints more lively in our...

Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.

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Book II, Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
The fundamental defect of fathers, in...

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

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Ch. 14: Freedom Versus Authority in Education
Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
3 weeks 1 day ago
When ethics thus moves into the...

When ethics thus moves into the domain of politics and becomes morality, the possibility of violence appears because of the threat of the application of such absolutist forms of thought. Further, although the moral agent must remain free in order to avoid the totalizing domination of the state, morality must still be grounded in the ethical relation of the face-to-face.

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Steven Bindeman, Levinas: The Face of Otherness and the Ethics of Therapy
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
Nothing makes the earth seem so...

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 days ago
There is no passion so contagious...

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
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