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Plato
Plato
6 months 2 days ago
Wonder is the feeling of a...

Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 days ago
The alphabet, when pushed to a...

The alphabet, when pushed to a high degree of abstract visual intensity, became typography. The printed word with its specialist intensity burst the bonds of medieval corporate guilds and monasteries, created extreme individualist patterns of enterprise and monopoly.

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(p. 23)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
The value of life lies not...

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

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Book I, Ch. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months ago
Perpetual devotion to what a man...

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

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An Apology for Idlers.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Science does not stand still, and...

Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.

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Afterword To The 2011 Edition, p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily...

The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily it is the innermost fact of their existence, and determines all the rest,-at public hustings, in private drawing-rooms, in church, in market, and wherever else. Have true reverence, and what indeed is inseparable therefrom, reverence the right man, all is well; have sham-reverence, and what also follows, greet with it the wrong man, then all is ill, and there is nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 5 days ago
The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in...

The Indian...stands free and unconstrained in Nature, is her inhabitant and not her guest, and wears her easily and gracefully. But the civilized man has the habits of the house. His house is a prison.

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April 26, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
A word spoken in season, at...

A word spoken in season, at the right moment, is the mother of ages.

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Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 561.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
4 months 4 days ago
The history of philosophical system is...

The history of philosophical system is the picture gallery of reason.

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Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 5 days ago
Nothing can be preserved that is...

Nothing can be preserved that is not good.

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Books
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 2 weeks ago
We are obliged to regard many...

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

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D 97
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months ago
There have always been poor and...

There have always been poor and working classes; and the working class have mostly been poor. But there have not always been workers and poor people living under conditions as they are today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 4 days ago
The simple-minded positivism that believes it...

The simple-minded positivism that believes it has found a firm ground of certainty if it only excludes all mental phenomena from consideration and holds fast to observable facts.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is a question whether, when...

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

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J 146
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 weeks ago
By extensively studying all learning, and...

By extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, one may thus likewise not err from what is right.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 2 weeks ago
To be sure, risks abound; but...

To be sure, risks abound; but no one is proposing compassionate stewardship of ecosystems by philosophers. Humans are capable of choosing our own future pain-sensitivity too; but any species-wide genomic shift in human pain tolerance will depend on the willingness of prospective parents to use preimplantation genetic screening.

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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
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 1 week ago
The noblest Digladiation is in the...

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.

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Part I, Section XXIV
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 2 days ago
The best plan is....
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Main Content / General
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Americans have always been more...

The Americans have always been more open to my ideas. In fact, I could earn a living in America just by lecturing. One of my brightest audiences, incidentally, were the prisoners in a Philadelphia gaol - brighter than my students at university.

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Interview with Paul Newman in Abraxas Unbound #7
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 2 weeks ago
A general definition of civilization: a...

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.

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p. 353.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
5 months 1 week ago
I have entered on an enterprise...

I have entered on an enterprise which is without precedent, and will have no imitator. I propose to show my fellows a man as nature made him, and this man shall be myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
5 months 5 days ago
In immediate self-consciousness the simple ego...

In immediate self-consciousness the simple ego is absolute object, which, however, is for us or in itself absolute mediation, and has as its essential moment substantial and solid independence. The dissolution of that simple unity is the result of the first experience; through this there is posited a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness which is not purely for itself, but for another, i.e. as an existent consciousness, consciousness in the form and shape of thinghood. Both moments are essential, since, in the first instance, they are unlike and opposed, and their reflexion into unity has not yet come to light, they stand as two opposed forms or modes of consciousness. The one is independent whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is dependent whose essence is life or existence for another. The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter is the Bondsman.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 4 days ago
The heart of Christianity is a...

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.

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"Myth Became Fact", 1944
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 days ago
Non-literate societies cannot see films or...

Non-literate societies cannot see films or photos without much training.

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(p. 41)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 day ago
Consciousness is much more than the...

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 4 days ago
Some teachers of mankind - as...

Some teachers of mankind - as Plato... the first Christians, the orthodox Muslims, and the Buddhists - have gone so far as to repudiate art. ...[They consider it] so highly dangerous in its power to infect people against their wills, that mankind will lose far less by banishing all art than by tolerating each and every art. ...such people were wrong in repudiating all art, for they denied that which cannot be denied - one of the indispensable means of communication, without which mankind could not exist. ...Now there is only fear, lest we should be deprived of any pleasures art can afford, so any type of art is patronized. And I think the last error is much grosser than the first and that its consequences are far more harmful.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
What we really long for after...

What we really long for after death is to go on living this life, this same mortal life, but without its ills without its tedium, and without death. Seneca, the Spaniard, gave expression to this in his Consolatio ad Marciam... And what but that is the meaning of that comic conception of the eternal recurrence which issued from the tragic soul of poor Nietzsche, hungering for concrete and temporal immortality?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
A great chapter of the history...

A great chapter of the history of the world is written in the chalk. Few passages in the history of man can be supported by such an overwhelming mass of direct and indirect evidence as that which testifies to the truth of the fragment of the history of the globe, which I hope to enable you to read, with your own eyes, tonight. Let me add, that few chapters of human history have a more profound significance for ourselves. I weigh my words well when I assert, that the man who should know the true history of the bit of chalk which every carpenter carries about in his breeches-pocket, though ignorant of all other history, is likely, if he will think his knowledge out to its ultimate results, to have a truer, and therefore a better, conception of this wonderful universe, and of man's relation to it, than the most learned student who is deep-read in the records of humanity and ignorant of those of Nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 5 days ago
I congratulate you, my dear friend,...

I congratulate you, my dear friend, on the law of your state for suspending the importation of slaves, and for the glory you have justly acquired by endeavoring to prevent it forever. This abomination must have an end, and there is a superior bench reserved in heaven for those who hasten it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 5 days ago
The rich in all societies may...

The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 5 days ago
In our science and philosophy, even,...

In our science and philosophy, even, there is commonly no true and absolute account of things. The spirit of sect and bigotry has planted its hoof amid the stars. You have only to discuss the problem, whether the stars are inhabited or not, in order to discover it.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 2 weeks ago
Friends are as companions on a...

Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

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As quoted in Gems of Thought: Being a Collection of More Than a Thousand Choice Selections
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is rough….

It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.

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Line 13
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 1 week ago
We swallow greedily any lie that...

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 3 weeks ago
When men and women agree, it...

When men and women agree, it is only in their conclusions; their reasons are always different.

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Ch. VI: Free Society
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 5 days ago
If one advances confidently in the...

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 3 weeks ago
The pleasures that give most joy...

The pleasures that give most joy are the ones that most rarely come.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 2 days ago
No one should be judge in...

No one should be judge in his own cause.

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Maxim 545
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
6 months 2 days ago
Then the case is the same...

Then the case is the same in all the other arts for the orator and his rhetoric; there is no need to know the truth of the actual matters, but one merely needs to have discovered some device of persuasion which will make one appear to those who do not know to know better than those who know.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
In the learned professions as in...

In the learned professions as in the unlearned, and in human things throughout, in every place and in every time, the true function of intellect is not that of talking, but of understanding and discerning with a view to performing!

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 2 weeks ago
What the horrors of war are,...

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine - they are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine - they are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior, jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

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Letter (5 May 1855), published in Florence Nightingale : An Introduction to Her Life and Family (2001), edited by Lynn McDonald, p. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 5 days ago
Every book is a quotation...

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 1 week ago
If your little savage were left...

If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant's reasoning to the grown man's passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 2 weeks ago
Suffering exists only because it was...

Suffering exists only because it was good for our genes. Conditionally-activated negative emotions were fitness-enhancing in the ancestral environment. In the current era, apologists for mental pain are serving as the innocent mouthpieces of the nasty bits of code which spawned them.

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The Good Drug Guide: The Responsible Parent's Guide to Healthy Mood-Boosters for All the Family, BLTC Research, 2012
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 3 weeks ago
This grave dissociation of past and...

This grave dissociation of past and present is the generic fact of our time and the cause of the suspicion, more or less vague, which gives rise to the confusion characteristic of our present-day existence. We feel that we actual men have suddenly been left alone on the earth; that the dead did not die in appearance only but effectively; that they can no longer help us. Any remains of the traditional spirit have evaporated. Models, norms, standards are no use to us. We have to solve our problems without any active collaboration of the past, in full actuality, be they problems of art, science, or politics. The European stands alone, without any living ghosts by his side; like Peter Schlehmil he has lost his shadow. This is what always happens when midday comes.

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"The Dehumanisation of Art"; Ortega y Gasset later used this passage in The Revolt of the Masses (1929), quoting it in Ch. III: The Height Of The Times
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 days ago
If you are not already dead,...

If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 6 days ago
The presence of thought…

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a lover.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
4 months 5 days ago
The power of the people and...

The power of the people and the power of reason are one.

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Act III.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 5 days ago
Thought is the property of him...

Thought is the property of him who can entertain it, and of him who can adequately place it.

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Shakespeare; or, The Poet
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 2 days ago
There are degrees of justice, Elijah....

There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.

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Philosophical Maxims
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