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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
France has always more or less...

France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
1 month 2 weeks ago
To understand a science it is...

To understand a science it is necessary to know its history.

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A Course of Positive Philosophy (1832 - 1842) [Six volumes]
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
How important can it be that...

How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 6 days ago
Recompense hatred with justice, and...

Recompense hatred with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
You can hardly convince a man...

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
I, for my part, do not...

I, for my part, do not conceive an act as having causes, and I consider myself satisfied when I have found in it not its 'factors' but the general themes which it organizes: for our decisions gather into new syntheses and on new occasions the leitmotif that governs our life

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p. 461
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 3 days ago
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws....

Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.

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Book XXIX: Of the Manner of Composing Laws, Chapter 16: Things to be Observed in the Composing of Laws
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
But where is the antidote for...

But where is the antidote for lucid despair, perfectly articulated, proud, and sure? All of us are miserable, but how many know it? The consciousness of misery is too serious a disease to figure in an arithmetic of agonies or in the catalogues of the Incurable. It belittles the prestige of hell, and converts the slaughterhouses of time into idyls. What sin have you committed to be born, what crime to exist? Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle. . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
I am not sure but I...

I am not sure but I should betake myself in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproachable, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much of a gentleman, not so gracious and catholic, he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on nature, as many a god of the Greeks.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
2 months 6 days ago
Count all wickedness….

Count all wickedness foreign and alien.

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§ 5
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 4 weeks ago
Five [of the above] rules are...

Five [of the above] rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
As far as we can discern,...

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

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p. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
The wrinkles of a nation are...

The wrinkles of a nation are as visible as those of an individual.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months ago
Why dost thou not retire…

Why dost thou not retire like a guest sated with the banquet of life, and with calm mind embrace, thou fool, a rest that knows no care?

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Book III, lines 938-939 (tr. Bailey)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is an advantage to all...

It is an advantage to all narrow wisdom and narrow morals that their maxims have a plausible air; and, on a cursory view, appear equal to first principles. They are light and portable. They are as current as copper coin; and about as valuable. They serve equally the first capacities and the lowest; and they are, at least, as useful to the worst men as to the best. Of this stamp is the cant of not man, but measures; a sort of charm by which many people get loose from every honourable engagement.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
We can act as if there...

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

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Lecture III, "The Reality of the Unseen"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing...

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men. Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 1 week ago
It is the peculiarity of privilege...

It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

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As quoted in "Socialism" article of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edition (1887), edited by Thomas Spencer Baynes with assistance of William Robertson Smith, Vol. 22, p. 216, Charles Scribner's Sons
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
To say that the cross emblazoned...

To say that the cross emblazoned with the papal coat of arms, and set up by the indulgence preachers, is equal in worth to the cross of Christ is blasphemy.

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Thesis 79
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
Knowing that certain nights...
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Main Content / General
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Animals only follow their natural instincts;...

Animals only follow their natural instincts; but man, unless he has experienced the influence of learning and philosophy, is at the mercy of impulses that are worse than those of a wild beast. There is no beast more savage and dangerous than a human being who is swept along by the passions of ambition, greed, anger, envy, extravagance, and sensuality.

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Translated by Beert C. Verstraete as On Education for Children, in The Erasmus Reader (University of Toronto Press: 1990), p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
"And your education! Is not that...

"And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class."

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As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 weeks ago
Compared with the wholesale violence of...

Compared with the wholesale violence of capital and government, political acts of violence are but a drop in the ocean. That so few resist is the strongest proof how terrible must be the conflict between their souls and unbearable social iniquities.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
Setting the mind to remember... involves...

Setting the mind to remember... involves a continual minimal irradiation of excitement into paths which lead thereto... the continued presence of the thing in the 'fringe' of our consciousness. Letting the thing go involves withdrawal of the irradiation, unconsciousness of the thing, and... obliteration of the paths.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
When the imagination sleeps, words are...

When the imagination sleeps, words are emptied of their meaning: a deaf population absent-mindedly registers the condemnation of a man. ... there is no other solution but to speak out and show the obscenity hidden under the verbal cloak.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
A man does not kill himself,...

A man does not kill himself, as is commonly supposed, in a fit of madness but rather in a fit of unendurable lucidity, in a paroxysm which may, if so desired, be identified with madness; for an excessive perspicacity, carried to the limit and of which one longs to be rid at all costs, exceeds the context of reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
If at times I have thought...

If at times I have thought myself unfortunate, it is because of a confusion, an error. I have mistaken myself for someone else... Who am I really? I am the author of The World as Will and Representation, I am the one who has given an answer to the mystery of Being that will occupy the thinkers of future centuries. That is what I am, and who can dispute it in the years of life that still remain for me?

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From The Total Library by Jorge Luis Borges, 1999
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 4 weeks ago
For as old age is that...

For as old age is that period of life most remote from infancy, who does not see that old age in this universal man ought not to be sought in the times nearest his birth, but in those most remote from it?

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Preface to the Treatise on Vacuum, c.1651
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
I pre-suppose, of course, a reader...

I pre-suppose, of course, a reader who is willing to learn something new and therefore to think for himself.

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Author's prefaces to the First Edition.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
Then he said to them, "Watch...

Then he said to them, "Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." And he told them this parable: "The ground of a certain rich man produced a good crop. He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' "Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." ' "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?' "This is how it will be with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God."

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12:15-21 (NIV)
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 2 weeks ago
Truth is a standard…

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

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Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Sometimes a scream is better than...

Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.

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1836
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
Brutes are merely brutal; men and...

Brutes are merely brutal; men and women are capable of being devils and lunatics. They are no less capable of being fully human-even, occasionally, of being a bit more than fully human, of being saints, heroes and geniuses.

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Introduction to You Are Not The Target by Laura Archera Huxley, 1963
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 1 week ago
The most thought provoking…

The most thought provoking thing in our thought provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

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What is Called Thinking? (1951-1952), as translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
... a penny saved is better...

... a penny saved is better than a penny earned.

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The Duty of a Husband and Wife (17 March 1539), No. 4408. LW 54:337
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
'Tis the good reader that makes...

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.

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Success
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 weeks 1 day ago
Upper middle-class upbringing has rooted out...

Upper middle-class upbringing has rooted out any element of what might appear to be self-assertion or egoism; good manners is to be like everyone else. So the male of the species becomes accustomed to suppress any stirring of impatience or originality. Shaw once said you can't learn to skate without making a fool of yourself; the British middle-class attitude seems to be that, in that case, you hadn't better skate at all. The result seems to be considerably more oppressive than being brought up in a Jewish ghetto or a west side slum.

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p. 112, An integrity born of hope: Notes on Christopher Isherwood
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
You will hear every day the...

You will hear every day the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear, that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. "What is this Truth you seek? What is this Beauty?" men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God have called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true. When you shall say, "As others do, so will I. I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season." - then dies the man in you; then once more perish the buds of art, and poetry, and science, as they have died already in a thousand thousand men. The hour of that choice is the crisis of your history; and see that you hold yourself fast by the intellect. ... Bend to the persuasion which is flowing to you from every object in Nature, to be its tongue to the heart of man, and to show the besotted world how passing fair is wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Announced by all the trumpets of...

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields, Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air Hides hills and woods, the river and the heaven, And veils the farm-house at the garden's end.

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The Snow-Storm
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 2 weeks ago
To each according to his threat...

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

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Chapter III, Section 24, pg. 141
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
When anyone tells me, that he...

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 2 weeks ago
There are three principal means of...

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination. Our observation of nature must be diligent, our reflection profound, and our experiments exact. We rarely see these three means combined; and for this reason, creative geniuses are not common.

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No. 15
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 2 weeks ago
Virtue is harder to be got...

Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.

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Sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 weeks ago
I have been taught that the...

I have been taught that the land should belong to those who till the soil. With all of his deep-seated sympathies with the Arabs, our comrade cannot possibly deny that the Jews in Palestine have tilled the soil. Tens of thousands of them, young and deeply devout idealists, have flocked to Palestine, there to till the soil under the most trying pioneer conditions. They have reclaimed wastelands and have turned them into fertile fields and blooming gardens. Now I do not say that therefore Jews are entitled to more rights than the Arabs, but for an ardent socialist to say that the Jews have no business in Palestine seems to me rather a strange kind of socialism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 4 days ago
For creation is not a change,...

For creation is not a change, but that dependence of the created existence on the principle from which it is instituted, and thus is of the genus of relation; whence nothing prohibits it being in the created as in the subject. Creation is thus said to be a kind of change, according to the way of understanding, insofar as our intellect accepts one and the same thing as not existing before and afterwards existing.

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II, 18, 2 (see also Summa Theologica I, q. 45, art. 3 ad 2)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
My argument against God was that...

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

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Book II, Chapter 1, "The Rival Conceptions of God"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Ambition is a drug that makes...

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months ago
If what the philosophers say be...

If what the philosophers say be true,—that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain, so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.

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Book I, ch. 18, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month ago
The ancient world takes its stand...

The ancient world takes its stand upon the drama of the Universe, the modern world upon the inward drama of the Soul.

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Ch. 9: "Science and Philosophy", p. 196
Philosophical Maxims
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