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Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 6 days ago
Every word instantly becomes a concept...
Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.
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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 3 days ago
Most human beings have an almost...

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

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"Variations on a Philosopher" in Themes and Variations, 1950
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
Pursued by our origins...we all are.

Pursued by our origins...we all are.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 3 weeks ago
The empiricist thinks he believes only...

The empiricist thinks he believes only what he sees, but he is much better at believing than at seeing.

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"Objections to Belief in Substance", p. 201
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 1 week ago
The reason for sketching what's technically...

The reason for sketching what's technically feasible with the tools of synthetic biology is that only after human complicity in the persistence of suffering in the biosphere is acknowledged can we hope to have an informed socio-political debate on the morality of its perpetuation. No serious ethical discussion of free-living animal suffering can begin in the absence of recognition of human responsibility for nonhuman well-being.

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Compassionate Biology: How CRISPR-based gene drives" could cheaply, rapidly and sustainably reduce suffering throughout the living world", BLTC Research, 2016
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 4 days ago
As the variable capital always stays...

As the variable capital always stays in the hands of the capitalist in some form or other, it cannot be claimed in any way that it converts itself into revenue for anyone.

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Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 452.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
We are, I know not how,...

We are, I know not how, double in ourselves, which is the cause that what we believe we do not believe, and cannot disengage ourselves from what we condemn.

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Ch. 16. Of Glory, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 1 week ago
In an information-rich world, the wealth...

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

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Simon, H. A. (1971) "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" in: Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore. MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 40-41.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 1 week ago
Every faculty in one man is...

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.

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Section I, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 weeks ago
One could count on one's fingers...

One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists in the entire world who have a general idea of the history and development of their own particular science; there is not one who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, any scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work. . . .

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p. 13 (as quoted in On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968), p.1)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 3 weeks ago
For the Lawes of Nature (as...

For the Lawes of Nature (as Justice, Equity, Modesty, Mercy, and (in summe)doing to others, as wee would be done to,) of themselves, without the terrour of some Power, to cause them to be observed, are contrary to our naturall Passions, that carry us to Partiality, Pride, Revenge, and the like. And Covenants, without the Sword, are but Words, and of no strength to secure a man at all.

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The Second Part, Chapter 17, p. 85
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 3 weeks ago
People reserve their best thinking for...

People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties and, next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen -economics, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etc. The day's work done, they want to be entertained.

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p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months ago
Hungary conquered and in chains has...

Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years. But for this lesson to get through and convince those in the West who shut their eyes and ears, it was necessary, and it can be no comfort to us, for the people of Hungary to shed so much blood which is already drying in our memories. In Europe's isolation today, we have only one way of being true to Hungary, and that is never to betray, among ourselves and everywhere, what the Hungarian heroes died for, never to condone, among ourselves and everywhere, even indirectly, those who killed them. It would indeed be difficult for us to be worthy of such sacrifices.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 4 days ago
In all the flat, lethargic, dull...

In all the flat, lethargic, dull moments, when the sensate dominates a person, to him Christianity is a madness because it is incommensurate with any finite wherefore. But then what good is it? Answer: Be quiet, it is the absolute. And that is how it must be presented, consequently as, that is, it must appear as madness to the sensate person. And therefore it is true, so true, and also in another sense so true when the sensible person in the situation of contemporaneity (see II A) censoriously says of Christ, “He is literally nothing”-quite so, for he is the absolute. Christianity is an absolute. Christianity came into the world as the absolute, not, humanly speaking, for comfort; on the contrary, it continually speaks about how the Christian must suffer or about how a person in order to become and remain a Christian must endure sufferings that he consequently can avoid simply by refraining from becoming a Christian.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 3 days ago
When the possessions and households of...

When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.

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The Landscaping of Hell : Strip-Mine Morality
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 days ago
In the highest civilization, the book...

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 4 weeks ago
When a philosopher addresses himself to......

When a philosopher addresses himself to... a tyrant, and tells him... tyranny is incompatible with justice, then the philosopher speaks... and believes he is speaking the truth, and... takes a risk...

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[T]hat was Plato's situation with Dionysius in Syracuse... reference... Plato's Seventh Letter, and... The Life of Dion by Plutarch. Ref: 1) Ludwig Edelstein, Plato's seventh letter (1966) 2) Plutarch, Life of Dion
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month ago
To her who gives and takes...

To her who gives and takes back all, to nature, the man who is instructed and modest says, Give what thou wilt; take back what thou wilt. And he says this not proudly, but obediently and well pleased with her.

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X, 14
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 week ago
Alonso of Aragon was wont to...

Alonso of Aragon was wont to say in commendation of age, that age appears to be best in four things - old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.

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No. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 2 weeks ago
To uphold the institutions of our...

To uphold the institutions of our country-that's it-the institutions which protect and sustain a handful of people in the robbery and plunder of the masses, the institutions which drain the blood of the native as well as of the foreigner, turn it into wealth and power

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 1 day ago
If we want a love....
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Main Content / General
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 4 weeks ago
When things fall out opportunely for...

When things fall out opportunely for the person concerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or why, his own immediate personal convenience seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities and revolutions in our sublunary things.

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The Sire de Maletroit's Door.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month ago
As the nature of the universal...

As the nature of the universal has given to every rational being all the powers that it has, so we have received from it this power also. For as the universal nature converts and fixes in its predestined place everything which stands in the way and opposes it, and makes such things a part of itself, so also the rational animal is able to make every hindrance its own material, and to use it for such purpose as it may have designed.

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VIII, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 weeks ago
If people were told: what makes...

If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself-the need for Unity, the need for God - they wouldn't believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 4 days ago
As for him who neither possesses...

As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod: He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person). But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 4 weeks ago
The only knowledge that can truly...

The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas-in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

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p. 301
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 4 weeks ago
The quality of feeling is the...

The quality of feeling is the true psychical representative of the first category of the immediate as it is in its immediacy, of the present in its direct positive presentness. Qualities of feeling show myriad-fold variety, far beyond what the psychologists admit. This variety however is in them only insofar as they are compared and gathered into collections. But as they are in their presentness, each is sole and unique; and all the others are absolute nothingness to it - or rather much less than nothingness, for not even a recognition as absent things or as fictions is accorded to them. The first category, then, is Quality of Feeling, or whatever is such as it is positively and regardless of aught else.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 1 : Presentness, CP 5.44
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 3 weeks ago
The capabilities (intellectual and material) of...

The capabilities (intellectual and material) of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than ever before-which means that the scope of society's domination over the individual is immeasurably greater than ever before. Our society distinguishes itself by conquering the centrifugal social forces with Technology rather than Terror, on the dual basis of an overwhelming efficiency and an increasing standard of living.

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p. xliii
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 5 days ago
All men would…

All men would then be necessarily equal, if they were without needs. It is the poverty connected with our species which subordinates one man to another. It is not inequality which is the real misfortune, it is dependence.

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"Equality", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 days ago
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually...

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

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To W. Lutoslawski, 5/6/1906
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 days ago
In how many churches, by how...

In how many churches, by how many prophets, tell me, is man made sensible that he is an infinite Soul; that the earth and heavens are passing into his mind; that he is drinking forever the soul of God?

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 day ago
When the evolutionary process shifts from...

When the evolutionary process shifts from biology to software technology the body becomes the old hardware environment. The human body is now a probe, a laboratory for experiments.

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(p. 180)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 4 days ago
The bourgeoisie has stripped of its...

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

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Section 1, paragraph 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 4 days ago
Money is coined liberty, and so...

Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.

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The House of the Dead (1862) ch. 1; as translated by Constance Garnett (1915), p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 4 weeks ago
Philosophy is like trying to open...

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

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Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993) edited by James Carl Klagge and Alfred Nordmann
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 4 days ago
The language of excitement is at...

The language of excitement is at best but picturesque merely. You must be calm before you can utter oracles.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 4 days ago
Everything that depends on the action...

Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 days ago
Much of the modern resistance to...

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men's belief that they "own" their bodies - those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!

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Letter XXI
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 weeks 2 days ago
We may assume the existence...

We may assume the existence of an aether; only we must give up ascribing a definite state of motion to it, i.e. we must by abstraction take from it the last mechanical characteristic which Lorentz had still left it. ... But this ether may not be thought of as endowed with the quality characteristic of ponderable media, as consisting of parts which may be tracked through time. The idea of motion may not be applied to it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 5 days ago
It is error only, and not...

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
To Live signifies to believe and...

To Live signifies to believe and hope - to lie and to lie to oneself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 days ago
Not from a vain or shallow...

Not from a vain or shallow thought His awful Jove young Phidias brought.

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The Problem, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 1 week ago
It is hard to imagine an...

It is hard to imagine an experience more horrific than being eaten alive. Most of us would prefer not to imagine what it must feel like. Note that the photographer here had to persuade the park ranger to violate the park rules and put the baby elephant out of his misery.By analogy, suppose it were lawful to visit Third World countries for photoshoots but illegal to "interfere" and help a stricken human baby. Is there a fundamental difference between "ethical" intervention to help humans and "sentimental" pleas to "interfere" and help non-humans? Should we encourage the preservation of life-forms such as the hyena in their current guise? Or do the value judgements underlying the "science" of conservation biology need to be re-examined?

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"Hyenas Eat Baby Elephant Alive: The Case for Intervention"
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 months 3 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
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 2 weeks ago
Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being...

Psychoanalysis, which interprets the human being as a socialized being, and the psychic apparatus as essentially developed and determined through the relationship of the individual to society, must consider it a duty to participate in the investigation of sociological problems to the extent the human being or his/her psyche plays any part at all.

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"Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
Look round this universe. What an...

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organised, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind Nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children!

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part XI
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 weeks ago
Buddhism is the most colossal example...

Buddhism is the most colossal example in the history of applied metaphysics.

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in Verhoeven, Martin J. 2001. "Buddhism and Science: Probing the Boundaries Of Faith and Reason." Religion East and West (1): 77-97.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
Life inspires more dread than death...

Life inspires more dread than death - it is life which is the great unknown.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 1 day ago
People don't stop things they enjoy...

People don't stop things they enjoy doing just because they reach a certain age. They don't stop playing tennis just because they turn 40, they don't stop with sex just because they turn 40; they keep it up as long as they can if they enjoy it, and learning will be the same thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 3 weeks ago
Conservatives believe that our identities and...

Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state is not an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to protect it. The social world emerges through free association, rooted in friendship and community life. And the customs and institutions that we cherish have grown from below, by the 'invisible hand' of co-operation. They have rarely been imposed from above by the work of politics, the role of which, for a conservative, is to reconcile our many aims, and not to dictate or control them.

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"Stand up for the real meaning of freedom," The Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
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