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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is a kind of latent...

There is a kind of latent omniscience not only in every man but in every particle.

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p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 week 1 day ago
There is another significant involution of...

There is another significant involution of time and movement in space. It is constituted not only by directional tendencies-up and down for example-but by mutual approaches and retreatings. Near and far, close and distant, are qualities of pregnant, often tragic, import-that is, as they are experienced, not just stated by measurement of science. They signify loosening and tightening, expanding and contracting, separating and compacting, soaring and drooping, rising and falling; the dispersive, scattering, and the hovering and brooding, unsubstantial lightness and massive blow. Such actions and reaction are the very stuff out if which the objects and events we experience are made.

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p. 215
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
For what are they all in...

For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?

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Good-bye, st. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week 2 days ago
The transition from Hegel to Marx...

The transition from Hegel to Marx is, in all respects, a transition to an essentially different order of truth, no to be interpreted in terms of philosophy. We shall see that all the philosophical concepts of Marxian theory are social and economic categories, whereas Hegel's social and economic categories are all philosophical concepts.

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P. 258
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
As the chosen people bore in...

As the chosen people bore in their features the sign manual of Jehovah, so the division of labour brands the manufacturing workman as the property of capital.

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Vol. I, Ch. 14, Section 5, pg. 396.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 6 days ago
When I walk along with...

When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 3 days ago
It was evident that he revived...

It was evident that he revived by fits and starts. He would suddenly come to himself from actual delirium for a few minutes; he would remember and talk with complete consciousness, chiefly in disconnected phrases which he had perhaps thought out and learnt by heart in the long weary hours of his illness, in his bed, in sleepless solitude.

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Part 2, Chapter 10
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Four snakes gliding up and down...

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

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April 11, 1834
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 weeks ago
Language forms a kind of wealth,...

Language forms a kind of wealth, which all can make use of at once without causing any diminution of the store, and which thus admits a complete community of enjoyment; for all, freely participating in the general treasure, unconsciously aid in its preservation.

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Volume II, p. 213
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 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
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 2 weeks ago
The moment we no longer have...

The moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the receiving end you get not only one lie - a lie which you could go on for the rest of your days - but you get a great number of lies, depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.

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p. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Riches are a good handmaid, but...

Riches are a good handmaid, but the worst mistress.

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De Augmentis Scientiarum, Book II, "Antitheta"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
Impossible to accede...
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Main Content / General
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 3 days ago
They made and recorded a sort...

They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the rights of man, in such a pedantic abuse of elementary principles as would have disgraced boys at school; but this declaration of rights was worse than trifling and pedantic in them; as by their name and authority they systematically destroyed every hold of authority by opinion, religious or civil, on the minds of the people. By this mad declaration they subverted the state; and brought on such calamities as no country, without a long war, has ever been known to suffer, and which may in the end produce such a war, and perhaps, many such.

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Speech in the House of Commons (9 February 1790), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 358
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
And thus Christianity is played in...

And thus Christianity is played in, Christendom. Artists in dramatic costumes make their appearance in artistic buildings-there really is no danger at all, anything but that: the teacher is a royal functionary, steadily promoted, making a career-and how he dramatically plays Christianity, in short, he plays comedy. He lectures about renunciation, but he himself is being steadily promoted; he teaches all that about despising worldly titles and rank, but he himself is making a career.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 days ago
To desire friendship is a great...

To desire friendship is a great fault. Friendship should be a gratuitous joy like those afforded by art or life. We must refuse it so that we may be worthy to receive it; it is of the order of grace.

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p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
For the purposes of poetry a...

For the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 2 weeks ago
The best government is a benevolent...

The best government is a benevolent tyranny tempered by an occasional assassination.

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Attributed to Voltaire in Likharev, K.K. (2021). On Government and Politics. In: Likharev, K.K. (eds) Essential Quotes for Scientists and Engineers.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Leave this hypocritical prating about the...

Leave this hypocritical prating about the masses. Masses are rude, lame, unmade, pernicious in their demands and influence, and need not to be flattered, but to be schooled. I wish not to concede anything to them, but to tame, drill, divide, and break them up, and draw individuals out of them.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 2 weeks ago
There ought to be some regulation...

There ought to be some regulation with respect to the spirit of denunciation that now prevails. If every individual is to indulge his private malignancy or his private ambition, to denounce at random and without any kind of proof, all confidence will be undermined and all authority be destroyed. Calumny is a species of treachery that ought to be punished as well as any other kind of treachery. It is a private vice productive of public evils; because it is possible to irritate men into disaffection by continual calumny who never intended to be disaffected. It is therefore equally as necessary to guard against the evils of unfounded or malignant suspicion as against the evils of blind confidence. It is equally as necessary to protect the characters of public officers from calumny as it is to punish them for treachery or misconduct.

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Letter to George Jacques Danton
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
The creed which accepts as the...

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
In a world, man must create...

In a world, man must create his own essence: it is in throwing himself into the world, suffering there, struggling there, that he gradually defines himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week ago
Be it well understood, I am...

Be it well understood, I am free by compulsion, whether I wish to be or not. Freedom is not an activity pursued by an entity that, apart from and previous to such pursuit, is already possessed of a fixed being. To be free means to be lacking in constitutive identity, not to have subscribed to a determined being, to be able to be other than what one was, to be unable to install oneself once and for all in any given being. The only attribute of the fixed, stable being in the free being is this constitutive instability.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 weeks 2 days ago
The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is...

The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.

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On Manners and Fashion
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
2 months 6 days ago
War is the father and king...

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free. War is the father and king of all, and has produced some as gods and some as men, and has made some slaves and some free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
When one plays for top prizes...

When one plays for top prizes one must be prepared to pay top stakes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 week 2 days ago
Brother will betray brother to death,...

Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will even rise up against their parents and have them put to death.

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10:21 (HCSB) Said to his disciples.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 5 days ago
Lucidity is not necessarily compatible with...

Lucidity is not necessarily compatible with life, actually not at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
The circulation of commodities is the...

The circulation of commodities is the original precondition of the circulation of money.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 107.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The stars awaken a certain reverence,...

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

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Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 weeks 2 days ago
Blessed be the hour in which...

Blessed be the hour in which I was first led to inquire into my own spiritual nature and destination! All my doubts are removed; I know what I can know, and have no fears for what I cannot know. I am satisfied; perfect clearness and harmony reign in my soul, and a new and more glorious existence begins for me. My entire destiny I cannot comprehend; what I am to become, exceeds my present power of conception. A part, which is concealed from me, is visible to the father of spirits. I know only that it is secure, everlasting and glorious. That part of it which is confided to me I know, for it is the root of all my other knowledge.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.120
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 day ago
Thus the universe is to be...

Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the opposites are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of God is the way in which we understand this incredible fact that what cannot be, yet is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 3 days ago
Well is it known that ambition...

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.

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No. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 weeks 2 days ago
There can be little question that...

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

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Pt. I, sec. 1, "The Principle of Economy"
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
The sweetest thing in all my...

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing - to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from - my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.

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Psyche
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 3 days ago
It is the nature of all...

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
We are not that we are,...

We are not that we are, nor do we treat or esteem each other for such, but for that we are capable of being.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 3 days ago
Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind...

Above all, avoid falsehood, every kind of falsehood, especially falseness to yourself. Watch over your own deceitfulness and look into it every hour, every minute.

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Book II, ch. 4 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to Mrs. Khoklakov
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 2 weeks ago
The more one presupposes that his...

The more one presupposes that his own power will suffice him to realize what he desires the more practical is that desire. When I treat a man contemptuously, I can inspire him with no practical desire to appreciate my grounds of truth. When I treat any one as worthless, I can inspire him with no desire to do right.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 15
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 5 days ago
One would have to be as...

One would have to be as unenlightened as an angel or an idiot to imagine that the human escapade could turn out well.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
The best friend is he that,...

The best friend is he that, when he wishes a person's good, wishes it for that person's own sake.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
In plain truth, lying is an...

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

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Book I, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 2 weeks ago
How natural it is that those...

How natural it is that those who have spent a long time in the study of philosophy appear ridiculous when they enter the courts of law as speakers. Those who have knocked about in courts and the like from their youth up seem to me, when compared with those who have been brought up in philosophy and similar pursuits, to be as slaves in breeding compared with freemen. The latter always have leisure, and they talk at their leisure in peace; and they do not care at all whether their talk is long or short, if only they attain the truth. But the men of the other sort are always in a hurry and the other party in the suit does not permit them to talk about anything they please.

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Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
1 month 3 weeks ago
I suppose the body to be...

I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.

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Descartes, René (1662). Le Homme (The Treatise on Man), XI:119, CSM I:99 in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Descartes and the Pineal Gland - 2.1 "The Treatise of Man".
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Only in thought is man a...

Only in thought is man a God; in action and desire we are the slaves of circumstance.

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Letter to Lucy Donnely, November 25, 1902
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 days ago
Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial...

Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. "It is only on the march and it time of war," says Robertson Smith in The Prophets of Israel, "that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a central authority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of national organization, centering in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thought of mainly as a host of Jehovah. the very name of Israel is martial, and means 'God (El) fighteth,' and Jehovah in the Old Testament is Iahwé Cebāôth - the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on the battlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but in primitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge in time of peace."

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 week ago
Reason as an organ for perceiving...

Reason as an organ for perceiving the true nature of reality and determining the guiding principles of our lives has come to be regarded as obsolete.

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p. 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 days ago
The whole economic system of Capitalism...

The whole economic system of Capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from Heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications. ... It is the result of a secularization of economic life, and by it the hierarchical subordination of the material to the spiritual is inverted. The autonomy of economics has ended in their dominating the whole life of human societies: the worship of Mammon has become the determining force of the age. And the worst of it is that this undisguised "mammonism" is regarded as a very good thing, an attainment to the knowledge of truth and a release from illusions. Economic materialism formulates this to perfection when it brands the whole spiritual life of man as a deception and a dream.

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p. 92
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 week 5 days ago
Ireland still remains the Holy Isle...

Ireland still remains the Holy Isle whose aspirations must on no account be mixed with the profane class-struggles of the rest of the sinful world ... the Irish peasant must not on any account know that the Socialist workers are his sole allies in Europe.

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Letter to Karl Marx
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
For eighteen hundred years, though perchance...

For eighteen hundred years, though perchance I have no right to say it, the New Testament has been written; yet where is the legislator who has wisdom and practical talent enough to avail himself of the light which it sheds on the science of legislation?

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Philosophical Maxims
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