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Horace
Horace
2 months 1 week ago
This to the right….

This to the right, that to the left hand strays, and all are wrong, but wrong in different ways.

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Book II, satire iii, line 50 (trans. Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
This day I heard from Laurence...

This day I heard from Laurence who has sent me papers confirming the portentous State of France-where the Elements which compose Human Society seem all to be dissolved, and a world of Monsters to be producd in the place of it-where Mirabeau presides as the Grand Anarch; and the late Grand Monarch makes a figure as ridiculous as pitiable.

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Letter to Richard Burke (c. 10 October 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is the function of a...

It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

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Preface to Brissot's Address
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
The merits of democracy are negative:...

The merits of democracy are negative: it does not insure good government, but it prevents certain evils.

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Ch. 18: The Taming of Power PT311 books.google
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 1 week ago
A naturall foole that could never...

A naturall foole that could never learn by heart the order of numerall words, as one, two, and three, may observe every stroak of the Clock, and nod to it, or say one, one, one; but can never know what houre it strikes.

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The First Part, Chapter 4, p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
...whoever is not against us is...

...whoever is not against us is for us.

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9:40
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 2 weeks ago
Every man is free to do...

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

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Ch. 6, The Formula of Justice
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
People are entirely too disbelieving of...

People are entirely too disbelieving of coincidence. They are far too ready to dismiss it and to build arcane structures of extremely rickety substance in order to avoid it. I, on the other hand, see coincidence everywhere as an inevitable consequence of the laws of probability, according to which having no unusual coincidence is far more unusual than any coincidence could possibly be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 4 weeks ago
The soul of man…

The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.

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As reported by Alexander Polyhistor, and Diogenes Laërtius in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 30, in the translation of C. D. Yonge
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 4 days ago
Warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we...

Warmth, warmth, more warmth! for we are dying of cold and not of darkness. It is not the night that kills, but the frost.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 2 days ago
When you close your doors, and...

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

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Book I, ch. 14, 13, 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 4 days ago
"God is just and punishes us;...

"God is just and punishes us; that is all we need to know; as far as we are concerned the rest is merely curiosity." Such was the conclusion of Lamennais (Essai, etc., partie, chap. vii.), an opinion shared by many others. Calvin also held the same view. But is there anyone content with this? Pure curiosity! - to call this load that well nigh crushes our heart pure curiosity!

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 2 days ago
For what is a child? Ignorance....

For what is a child? Ignorance. What is a child? Want of instruction. For where a child has knowledge, he is no worse than we are.

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Book II, ch. 1, 16
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 1 week ago
If the only alternative to fascism...

If the only alternative to fascism we produce is a corporate-driven, milquetoast, neoliberal Democratic Party, fascism will come to America. Let us be very clear. It's like a Weimar America.

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Speaking to Chris Hedges on The Real News Network, Cornel West's presidential candidacy is 'for the least of these'. June 16, 2023.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 1 week ago
The society which projects and undertakes...

The society which projects and undertakes the technological transformation of nature alters the base of domination by gradually replacing personal dependence (of the slave on the master, the serf on the lord of the manor, the lord on the donor of the fief, etc.) with dependence on the "objective order of things" (on economic laws, the market etc.).

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p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 1 week ago
Oh. Marx's love for Shakespeare! It...

Oh. Marx's love for Shakespeare! It is well known. Chris Hani shared the same passion. I have just learned this and I like the idea. Even though Marx more often quotes Timon of Athens, the Manifesto seems to evoke or convoke, right from the start, the first coming of the silent ghost, the apparition of the spirit that does not answer, on those ramparts of Elsinore which is then the old Europe.

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Injunctions of Marx
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month ago
When power is separated from any...

When power is separated from any communicative context, it becomes naked violence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
You could attach prices to ideas....

You could attach prices to ideas. Some cost a lot some little. ... And how do you pay for ideas? I believe: with courage.

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p. 60e
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
I am sitting with a...

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
The kingdom of heaven can be...

The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a king who wanted to settle accounts with his slaves.

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18:23
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 2 weeks ago
You must do nothing before him,...

You must do nothing before him, which you would not have him imitate. If any thing escape you, which you would have pass as a fault in him, he will be sure to shelter himself under your example, and shelter himself so as that it will not be easy to come at him, to correct it in him the right way.

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Sec. 71
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 2 weeks ago
Education has for its object the...

Education has for its object the formation of character. To curb restive propensities, to awaken dormant sentiments, to strengthen the perceptions, and cultivate the tastes, to encourage this feeling and repress that, so as finally to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature - this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.

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Pt. II, Ch. 17 : The Rights of Children
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 1 day ago
The percept takes priority of the...

The percept takes priority of the concept.

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Letter to Edward T. Hall, 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 397
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 3 days ago
Only the truth and its expression...

Only the truth and its expression can establish that new public opinion which will reform the ancient obsolete and pernicious order of life; and yet we not only do not express the truth we know, but often even distinctly give expression to what we ourselves regard as false. If only free men would not rely on that which has no power, and is always fettered - upon external aids; but would trust in that which is always powerful and free - the truth and its expression!

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Ch. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 3 weeks ago
If there ever are great revolutions...

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

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Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
The sabbath was made for man,...

The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath.

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Mark 2:27 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 1 week ago
Art is not the possession of...

Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality. Those who have the gift of creative expression in unusually large measure disclose the meaning of the individuality of others to those others. In participating in the work of art, they become artists in their activity. They learn to know and honor individuality in whatever form it appears. The fountains of creative activity are discovered and released. The free individuality which is the source of art is also the final source of creative development in time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 1 day ago
Since Sputnik, the earth has been...

Since Sputnik, the earth has been wrapped in a dome-like blanket or bubble. Nature ended.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
No matter how various the subject...

No matter how various the subject matter I write on, I was a science-fiction writer first and it is as a science-fiction writer that I want to be identified.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Father in heaven, when the thought...

Father in heaven, when the thought of thee awakens in our soul, let it not waken as an agitated bird which flutters confusedly about, but as a child waking from sleep with a celestial smile.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 3 days ago
Whilst shame keeps...
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Main Content / General
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
I believe it to be this;...

I believe it to be this; that my will, absolutely of itself, and without the intervention of any instrument that might weaken its effect, shall act in a sphere perfectly congenial - reason upon reason, spirit upon spirit; in a sphere to which it does not give the laws of life, of activity, of progress, but which has them in itself, therefore, upon self-active reason. But spontaneous, self-active reason is will. The law of the transcendental world must, therefore, be a Will.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.110
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
The wise and virtuous man is...

The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his own private interests should be sacrificed to the public interest of his own particular society--that the interests of this order of society be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state. He should therefore he equally willing that all those inferior interests should be sacrificed to the greater society of all sensible and intelligent beings.

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Section II, Chap. III; cited by Reinhold Niebuhr, The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1941, 24-25.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 weeks 6 days ago
It is perhaps not a surprise...

It is perhaps not a surprise that photography developed as a technological medium in the industrial age, when reality started to disappear. It is even perhaps the disappearance of reality that triggered this technical form. Reality found a way to mutate into an image.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is no worse lie than...

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
To oppose the torrent of scholastic...

To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble maxims as these, that it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be, that the whole is greater than a part, that two and three make five; is pretending to stop the ocean with a bullrush. Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires, which were kindled for heretics, will serve also for the destruction of philosophers.

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Part XI - With regard to reason or absurdity
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is impossible to pursue this...

It is impossible to pursue this nonsense any further.

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(Bastiat and Carey), p. 813 (last text page, second last line).
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 1 week ago
The first act by virtue of...

The first act by virtue of which the State really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society-the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society-this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a State. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The State is not "abolished." It dies out.

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Socialism, Utopian and Scientific
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 1 week ago
If torture was so strongly embedded...

If torture was so strongly embedded in legal practice, it was because it revealed truth and showed the operation of power. It assured the articulation of the written on the oral, the secret on the public, the procedure of investigation on the operation of the confession; it made it possible to reproduce the crime on the visible body of the criminal.

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Chapter One, pp.55
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
The divine life that underlies all...

The divine life that underlies all appearance reveals itself never as a fixed and known entity, but as something that is to be; and after it has become what it was to be, it will reveal itself again to all eternity as something that is to be.

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General Nature of New Eduction p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 1 week ago
The world is so possessed by...

The world is so possessed by the power of what is and the efforts of adjustment to it, that the adolescent's rebellion, which once fought the father because his practices contradicted his own ideology, can no longer crop up. ... Psychologically, the father is ... replaced by the world of things.

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p. 41-42.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
The third of this kind of...

The third of this kind of principles is : matter neither originates nor perishes; all the changes in the world concern form only ; a postulate which on the recommendation of common sense has spread through all philosophical schools, not because it is to be taken as having been found so, or as having been demonstrated by arguments a priori, but because if we were to admit that matter itself is fleeting and transitory, nothing at all that is stable and lasting would be left any longer to serve for the explication of phenomena according to universal and perpetual laws, and hence nothing at all would be left for the exercise of the intellect.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Great men are they who see...

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world. No hope so bright but is the beginning of its own fulfillment. 

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July 18, 1867, Progress of Culture Phi Beta Kappa Address
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
The human understanding when it has...

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

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Aphorism 46
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
We rarely hear, it has been...

We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of the workman. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject.

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Chapter VIII, p. 80.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 1 week ago
Even at the outset, the total...

Even at the outset, the total and massive quality has its uniqueness; even when vague and undefined, it is just that which it is and not anything else. If the perception continues, discrimination inevitably sets in. Attention must move, and as it moves, parts, members, emerge from the background. And if attention moves in a unified direction instead of wandering, it is controlled by the pervading qualitative unity; attention is controlled by it because it operates within it.

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p. 199
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 4 days ago
Democratic and aristocratic states are not...

Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man who has power is inclined to abuse it; he goes until he finds limits. Is it not strange, though true, to say that virtue itself has need of limits?.To prevent this abuse, it is necessary that, by the arrangement of things, power shall stop power. A government may be so constituted, as no man shall be compelled to do things to which the law does not oblige him, nor forced to abstain from things which the law permits.

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Book XI, Chapter 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 1 week ago
Man is a universe in little...

Man is a universe in little [Microcosm].

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Freeman (1948), p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Were the happiness of the next...

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live.

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Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
Ramsgate is full of Jews and...

Ramsgate is full of Jews and fleas.

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MEKOR IV, 490, 25 August 1879
Philosophical Maxims
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