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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
Predicting the future is a hopeless,...

Predicting the future is a hopeless, thankless task, with ridicule to begin with and, all too often, scorn to end with.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
What should we gain by a...

What should we gain by a definition, as it can only lead us to other undefined terms?

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 2 weeks ago
The end of man...

The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.

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"The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy, tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
The writers against religion, whilst they...

The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months ago
Nothing is terrible except….

Nothing is terrible except fear itself.

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De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, "Fortitudo"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
We boil at different degrees. Eloquence

We boil at different degrees.

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Eloquence
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months ago
He was always smoothing and polishing...

He was always smoothing and polishing himself, and in the end he became blunt before he was sharp.

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L 70
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 5 days ago
My own book Women, Race and...

My own book Women, Race and Class was one of many that were published during that era, including, to name only a few, This Bridge Called My Back, edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherrie Moraga, the work of bell hooks and Michelle Wallace, and the anthology All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, but Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies. So behind this concept of intersectionality is a rich history of struggle. A history of conversations among activists within movement formations, and with and among academics as well.

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Angela Davis Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement (2015) p 19
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 3 days ago
If the individual realizes his self...

If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

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Ch. 7, p. 262-3
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Not without a slight shudder at...

Not without a slight shudder at the danger, I often perceive how near I had come to admitting into my mind the details of some trivial affair, - the news of the street; and I am astonished to observe how willing men are to lumber their minds with such rubbish, - to permit idle rumors and incidents of the most insignificant kind to intrude on ground which should be sacred to thought. Shall the mind be a public arena, where the affairs of the street and the gossip of the tea-table chiefly are discussed? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, - an hypæthral temple, consecrated to the service of the gods? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden my attention with those which are insignificant, which only a divine mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news in newspapers and conversation. It is important to preserve the mind's chastity in this respect.

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pp. 491-2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
I will remark again, however, as...

I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The rest of the story, to...

The rest of the story, to Grand's thinking, was very simple. The common lot of married couples. You get married, you go on loving a bit longer, you work. And you work so hard that it makes you forget to love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
He yawned. He had finished the...

He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well-bred moralities had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, common sense stoicism - all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life.

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L'âge de raison (The Age of Reason)
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 4 weeks ago
No more useful inquiry can be...

No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature ... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.

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Rules for the Direction of the Mind in Key Philosophical Writings (1997), pp. 29-30
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
If I hear the Way...

If I hear the Way [of truth] in the morning, I am content even to die in that evening.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
6 days ago
It is better…

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

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Line 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
Now men seem, not unreasonably, to...

Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
The hardware world tends to move...

The hardware world tends to move into software form at the speed of light.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
Ha! to forget. How childish! I...

Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.

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Inès reiterating to Garcin that they cannot ignore one another, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
2 weeks 2 days ago
It's also been attacked from the...

It's also been attacked from the left by people... I teach students at Stanford, and many of them think that liberalism is... the doctrine of their parents' or their grandparents' generation, but it's really not relevant to Gen Z younger people who are impatient for social justice and social change that liberalism is not providing.

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6:48
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
4 months 1 week ago
If we admit the existence of...

If we admit the existence of the prophetic mission, by putting the idea of possibility, which is in fact ignorance, in place of certainty, and make miracles a proof of the truth of man who claims to be a prophet it becomes necessary that they should not be used by a person, who says that they can be performed by others than prophets, as the Mutakallimun do.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 weeks 3 days ago
Contemporary capitalist production is characterized by...

Contemporary capitalist production is characterized by a series of passages that name different faces of the same shift: from the hegemony of industrial labor to that of immaterial labor, from Fordism to post-Fordism, and from the modern to the postmodern.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 3 weeks ago
What peculiar privilege has this little...

What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions; but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part II
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
A very poor man may be...

A very poor man may be said in some sense to have a demand for a coach and six; he might like to have it; but his demand is not an effectual demand, as the commodity can never be brought to market in order to satisfy it.

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Chapter VII, p. 67.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
Use, do not abuse…

Use, do not abuse; as the wise man commands. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

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"Cinquième discours: sur la nature de plaisir," Sept Discours en Vers sur l'Homme, 1738
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 weeks ago
The case of the conscience of...

The case of the conscience of Eichmann, which is admittedly complicated but is by no means unique, is scarcely comparable to the case of the German generals, one of whom, when asked at Nuremberg, "How was it possible that all of you honorable generals could continue to serve a murderer with such unquestioning loyalty?," replied that it was "not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander. Let history do that or God in Heaven."

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Ch. VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
6 days ago
For we are mistaken…

For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
The fate of the country does...

The fate of the country does not depend on how you vote at the polls - the worst man is as strong as the best at that game; it does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

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"Slavery in Massachusetts", 1854
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
I do not open up...

I do not open up the truth to one who is not eager to get knowledge, nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
Just now
I lay it down that there...

I lay it down that there is Matter, and also there are Material Species, but unless a Final Cause for them be previously assumed, we shall be, without perceiving it, introducing the doctrine of Epicurus: since if nothing be anterior to two efficient causes, a spontaneous flux and chance must have united the two together.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 1 week ago
The disparagement of empirical evidence in...

The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflict between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society.

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p. 138.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 months 2 weeks ago
If only it were true...
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Main Content / General
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 2 weeks ago
Harvard now, I think, suffers from...

Harvard now, I think, suffers from a kind of self-idolatry, that it needs to be critical of itself in order to grow. And again, if you can be in contact with the best of its past, then it's got a chance. But if it just remains well adjusted to the status quo, generating careerist and opportunist students rather than critically oriented students who have a heart and soul, concerned about suffering here and around the world - then Harvard has a chance. I'm not giving up on Harvard, but I am making my way to New York.

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Speaking in Too Radical for Harvard? Cornel West on Failed Fight for Tenure, Biden's First 50 Days & More, Democracy Now!
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 weeks ago
So it is with minds. Unless...

So it is with minds. Unless you keep them busy with some definite subject that will bridle and control them, they throw themselves in disorder hither and yon in the vague field of imagination. ..And there is no mad or idle fancy that they do no bring forth in the agitation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
But I liken common languid Times,...

But I liken common languid Times, with their unbelief, distress, perplexity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances, impotently crumbling down into ever worse distress towards final ruin;-all this I liken to dry dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of Heaven that shall kindle it. The great man, with his free force direct out of God's own hand, is the lightning. His word is the wise healing word which all can believe in. All blazes round him now, when he has once struck on it, into fire like his own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 1 week ago
What is to prevent….

What is to prevent one from telling truth as he laughs, even as teachers sometimes give cookies to children to coax them into learning their A B C?

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Book I, satire i, line 24 (translation by H. Fairclough)
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
The decisions of law courts should...

The decisions of law courts should never be printed: in the long run, they form a counterauthority to the law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
The bodies of which the world...

The bodies of which the world is composed are solids, and therefore have three dimensions. Now, three is the most perfect number, it is the first of numbers, for of one we do not speak as a number, of two we say both, but three is the first number of which we say all. Moreover, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
Show me what thou truly lovest,...

Show me what thou truly lovest, what thou seekest and strivest for with thy whole heart when thou hopest to attain to true en joyment of thyself-and thou hast thereby shown me thy Life. What thou lovest, in that thou livest. This very Love is thy Life, the root, the seat, the central point of thy being. All other emotions within thee have life only in so far as they are governed by this one central emotion.

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P. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 3 weeks ago
The objective of all human arrangements...
The objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life.
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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are at war with a...

We are at war with a system, which, by it's essence, is inimical to all other Governments, and which makes peace or war, as peace and war may best contribute to their subversion. It is with an armed doctrine that we are at war. It has, by it's essence, a faction of opinion, and of interest, and of enthusiasm, in every country. To us it is a Colossus which bestrides our channel. It has one foot on a foreign shore, the other upon the British soil. Thus advantaged, if it can at all exist, it must finally prevail.

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p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
The use of the intellect in...

The use of the intellect in the sciences whose primitive concepts as well as axioms are given by sensuous intuition is only logical, that is, by it we only subordinate cognitions to one another according to their relative universality conformably to the principle of contradiction, phenomena to more general phenomena, and consequences of pure intuition to intuitive axioms. But in pure philosophy, such as metaphysics, in which the use of the intellect in respect to principles is real, that is to say, where the primary concept of things and relations and the very axioms are given originally by the pure intellect itself, and not being intuitions do not enjoy immunity from error, the method precedes the whole science, and whatever is attempted before its precepts are thoroughly discussed and firmly established is looked upon as rashly conceived and to be rejected among vain instances of mental playfulness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Today we experience, in reverse, what...

Today we experience, in reverse, what pre-literate man faced with the advent of writing.

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p. 273
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
4 months 1 week ago
Natural inclinations are present in things...

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

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III, 126, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 weeks ago
There is as much difference between...

There is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others.

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Ch. 1. Of the Inconstancy of Our Actions, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
In its widest possible sense, however,...

In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

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Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Characters and talents are complemental and...

Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms. The more the peculiarities are pressed the better the result. The air would rot without lightning; and without the violence of direction that men have, without bigots, without men of the fixed idea, no excitement, no efficiency. The novelist should not make any character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by others. For it is so in life. Nonsense will not keep its unreason if you come into the humorist's point of view, but unhappily we find it is fast becoming sense, and we must flee again into the distance if we would laugh.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
All natural capacities of a creature...

All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end. First Thesis Variant translations: All natural capacities of a creature are destined sooner or later to be developed completely and in conformity with their end. All natural capacities of a creature are destined to develop themselves completely and to their purpose.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
I have changed my mind about...

I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation.

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Philosophical Maxims
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