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Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
4 months 3 days ago
As long as we try to...

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

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Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 6 days ago
No freeman shall be debarred the...

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms within his own lands.

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Draft Constitution for Virginia (June 1776)
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
I maintain that in every special...

I maintain that in every special natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with as mathematics; for... science proper, especially of nature, requires a pure portion, lying at the foundation of the empirical, and based upon à priori knowledge of natural things. ...the conception should be constructed. But the cognition of the reason through construction of conceptions is mathematical. A pure philosophy of nature in general, namely, one that only investigates what constitutes a nature in general, may thus be possible without mathematics; but a pure doctrine of nature respecting determinate natural things (corporeal doctrine and mental doctrine), is only possible by means of mathematics; and as in every natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with therein as there is cognition à priori, a doctrine of nature can only contain so much science proper as there is in it of applied mathematics.

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Preface, Tr. Ernest Belfort Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 days ago
There is a science of Dynamics...

There is a science of Dynamics in man's fortunes and nature, as well as of Mechanics. There is a science which treats of, and practically addresses, the primary, unmodified forces and energies of man, the mysterious springs of Love, and Fear, and Wonder, of Enthusiasm, Poetry, Religion, all which have a truly vital and infinite character; as well as a science which practically addresses the finite, modified developments of these, when they take the shape of immediate "motives," as hope of reward, or as fear of punishment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
But the extraordinary insight which some...

But the extraordinary insight which some persons are able to gain of others from indications so slight that it is difficult to ascertain what they are, is certainly rendered more comprehensible by the view here taken.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 1 week ago
These Lectures, conjoined with those which...

These Lectures, conjoined with those which have already appeared under the titles of "The Characteristics of the Present Age," and "The Nature of the Scholar," in the latter of which the tone of thought that governs the present course is applied to a particular subject, form a complete scheme of popular instruction, of which the present work exhibits the highest and clearest summit; and, taken together, they are the result of a process of self-culture, unceasingly pursued during the last six or seven years of my life, with greater leisure and in riper maturity, by means of that Philosophy in which I have been a partaker for thirteen years, and which, although, I hope, it has changed many things in me, has nevertheless itself suffered no change whatever during that period.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
Man was born to live with...

Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.

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The character Suzanne Simon, in La Religieuse [The Nun]
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 1 week ago
Whenever government assumes to deliver us...

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

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Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 5 days ago
On fact, the whole machinery of...

On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices.

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Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. Pt. III, Form; § 30: "The average modified in the direction of pleasure.", p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 1 week ago
Every art, and every system, and...

Every art, and every system, and in like manner every action and purpose aims, it is thought, at some good; for which reason a common and by no means a bad description of the good is, that at which all things aim.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 1 week ago
Beginning in the 1970s, however, the...

Beginning in the 1970s, however, the techniques and organizational form of industrial production shifted toward smaller and more mobile labor units and more flexible structures of production, a shift often labeled as a move from Fordist to post-Fordist production.

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82
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Imaginary pains are by far the...

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
There is no duty we so...

There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.

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An Apology for Idlers.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
A finite interval of time generally...

A finite interval of time generally contains an innumerable series of feelings; and when these become welded together in association the result is a general idea.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 3 weeks ago
Historical time knows no lasting present.

Historical time knows no lasting present.

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Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 3 weeks ago
The ideology of development has implied...

The ideology of development has implied the globalization of the priorities, patterns, and prejudices of the West. Instead of self-generated, development is imposed. Instead of coming from within, it is externally guided. Instead of contributing to the maintenance of diversity, development has created homogeneity...

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Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 6 days ago
The wise man is joyful, happy...

The wise man is joyful, happy and calm, unshaken, he lives on a plane with the gods.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
For the kingdom of heaven is...

For the kingdom of heaven is with us today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Great men, great nations, have not...

Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 months 1 week ago
The criterion which we use to...

The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express - that is, if he knows what observations would lead him, under certain conditions, to accept the proposition as being true, or reject it as being false.

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p. 16.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
Several actual worlds without one another...

Several actual worlds without one another are not, therefore, impossible by the very concept, as Wolf hastily concluded from the notion of a complex or multiplicity which he deemed sufficient to a whole, as such, but only on condition that there exist but one necessary cause of all things. If several are admitted, several worlds without one another will be possible in the strictest metaphysical sense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 3 weeks ago
The time is come when women...

The time is come when women must do something more than the "domestic hearth," which means nursing the infants, keeping a pretty house, having a good dinner and an entertaining party.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
Under no pretext should arms and...

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

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Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in London, March 1850
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
4 months 2 weeks ago
The love of God consists in...

The love of God consists in an ardent desire to procure the general welfare, and reason teaches me that there is nothing which contributes more to the general welfare of mankind than the perfection of reason.

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Closing sentence of the Preface to the general science (1677) (in P. Wiener (ed.), Leibniz Selections, Macmilland Press Ltd, 1951).
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 weeks ago
The greatest error of all the...

The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

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Book I, v, 11
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
Lightly men talk of saying what...

Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, "Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words." A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

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Orual
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1 month 3 weeks ago
I do not believe that sheer...

I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and can lead to rebirth.

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Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1929-1932 (1973), p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
"If a nation expects to be...

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free," said Jefferson, "it expects what never was and never will be."

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Chapter 4 (p. 34)
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
In order to shake a hypothesis,...

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

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No. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 days ago
The fine arts once divorcing themselves...

The fine arts once divorcing themselves from truth are quite certain to fall mad, if they do not die.

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Latter Day Pamphlet, No. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
Lord, you have cursed Cain and...

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 weeks ago
It's easier for a Russian....
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Main Content / General
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
To attain this end we must...

To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over vice and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this world, receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also because wisdom needs no violence.

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Book V, Ch. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 2 days ago
Among the things held to be...

Among the things held to be just by law, whatever is proved to be of advantage in men's dealings has the stamp of justice, whether or not it be the same for all; but if a man makes a law and it does not prove to be mutually advantageous, then this is no longer just. And if what is mutually advantageous varies and only for a time corresponds to our concept of justice, nevertheless for that time it is just for those who do not trouble themselves about empty words, but look simply at the facts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 2 days ago
He would be the finer gentleman...

He would be the finer gentleman that should leave the world without having tasted of lying or pretence of any sort, or of wantonness or conceit.

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IX, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 week ago
This aristocratic thesis is... the demos,...

This aristocratic thesis is... the demos, the people, are the most numerous... also comprised of the most ordinary, and... even the worst, citizens. Therefore... what is best for the demos cannot be what is best for the polis... the city.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
I die adoring God…

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

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Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière, 28 February 1778
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 3 weeks ago
Man is born as a freak...

Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind.

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The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968), p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
We must not always judge of...

We must not always judge of the generality of the opinion by the noise of the acclamation.

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No. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 months 3 days ago
I'm delighted to hear someone make...

I'm delighted to hear someone make the claim that there is moral progress because it can be such a incendiary thing to say, and its something that I say and deeply believe in.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 2 weeks ago
Because of the way that myth...
Because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people the ancient Greeks, for instance more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker.
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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
The key to a Christian conception...

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

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"Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 1 week ago
Ethical ideas and sentiments have to...

Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.

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Ch. 1, Introductory
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 3 weeks ago
The significance of feminist movement (when...

The significance of feminist movement (when it is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 2 weeks ago
That which is good…

That which is good for the enemy harms you, and that which is good for you harms the enemy.

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Rule 1 from Machiavelli's Lord Fabrizio Colonna: libro settimo (Book 7) (Modern Italian uses nemico instead of nimico.)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 5 days ago
From whence it follows, that were...

From whence it follows, that were the publique and private interest are most closely united, there is the publique most advanced.

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The Second Part, Chapter 19, p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
4 weeks ago
If a concept lacks an essence,...

If a concept lacks an essence, nothing will ever be found that completely fits that concept. If you are lacking in the concept of human being, it will immediately expose that you are something individual, something that cannot be expressed by the term human being, thus, in every instance, an individual human being.

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Landstreicher, p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 3 weeks ago
What is food to one...

What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.

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Book IV, line 637 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations) Compare: "What's one man's poison, signor, / Is another's meat or drink", Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (1647), Act III, scene 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
At this very moment, I am...

At this very moment, I am suffering - as we say in French, j'ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 1 week ago
Even when there is no law,...

Even when there is no law, there is conscience.

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Maxim 237
Philosophical Maxims
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