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Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
3 months 3 weeks ago
Without some affinity in human ideas...

Without some affinity in human ideas art would certainly be impossible; but it can never be exactly determined how far the intentions of the poet are realized.

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Gottlob Frege (1892). On Sense and Reference.
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months 1 week ago
To successfully adjudicate ethical problems, as...

To successfully adjudicate ethical problems, as opposed to 'solving' them, it is necessary that the members of the society have a sense of community. A compromise that cannot pretend to be the last word on an ethical question, that cannot pretend to derive from binding principles in an unmistakeably constraining way, can only derive its force from a shared sense of what is and is not reasonable, from loyalties to one another, and a commitment to 'muddling through' together.

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"How Not to Solve Ethical Problems"
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
Cultivate that kind of knowledge which...

Cultivate that kind of knowledge which enables us to discover for ourselves in case of need that which others have to read or be told of.

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D 89
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Whoever drinks from my mouth will...

Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months ago
But your crime will be there,...

But your crime will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.

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Clytemnestra to her daughter Electra, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 3 weeks ago
Faith exalts the human heart, by...

Faith exalts the human heart, by removing it from the market-place, making it sacred and unexchangeable. Under the jurisdiction of religion our deeper feelings are sacralized, so as to become raw material for the ethical life: the life lived in judgement.

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"Avant-garde and Kitsch" (p. 91)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 2 weeks ago
Religion is regarded by the common...

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.

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As quoted in What Great Men Think About Religion (1945) by Ira D. Cardiff, p. 342.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 weeks ago
As an eminent pioneer in...

As an eminent pioneer in the realm of high frequency currents... I congratulate you on the great successes of your life's work.

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[http://www.teslasociety.com/einsteinletter.jpg Einstein's letter] to Nikola Tesla for Tesla's 75th birthday (1931)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Taken as a whole, the Cross...

Taken as a whole, the Cross Correspondences and the Willet scripts are among the most convincing evidence that at present exists for life after death. For anyone who is prepared to devote weeks to studying them, they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Myers, Gurney, and Sidgwick went on communicating after death.

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p. 136
Philosophical Maxims
G. E. Moore
G. E. Moore
3 months 3 weeks ago
The study of Ethics would, no...

The study of Ethics would, no doubt, be far more simple, and its results far more "systematic," if, for instance, pain were an evil of exactly the same magnitude as pleasure is a good; but we have no reason whatever to assume that the Universe is such that ethical truths must display this kind of symmetry ... .

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Principia Ethica (1903), ch. VI.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 days ago
Lincoln's place in the history of...

Lincoln's place in the history of the United States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington!

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
...whoever is not against us is...

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

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9:40
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 3 weeks ago
I have never met a man...

I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.

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As quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 605
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 1 week ago
In Kleist's essay humans are caught...

In Kleist's essay humans are caught between the graceful automatism of the puppet and the conscious freedom of a god. The jerky, stuttering quality of their actions comes from their feeling that they must determine the course of their lives. Other animals live without having to choose their path through life. Whatever uncertainty they may feel sniffing their way through the world is not a permanent condition; once they reach a place of safety, they are at rest. In contrast, human life is spent anxiously deciding how to live.

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The Faith of Puppets: Leopardi and the Souls of Machines (p.25-6)
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
Communism is the doctrine of the...

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 day ago
It is always better to have...

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

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Letter From Thomas Jefferson to the Rev. James Madison, 19 July 1788
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 5 days ago
Avarice, the spur of industry, is...

Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

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Part I, Essay 12: Of Civil Liberty
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
3 months 3 weeks ago
One must always maintain one's connection...

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.

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A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 1 week ago
But how many are the final...

But how many are the final causes of union, the most beautiful, which this deity contains within himself? The Sun, that is, Apollo, is "Leader of the Muses;" and inasmuch as he completes our life with good order, he produces in the world Æsculapius; for even before the world was, he had the latter by his side. But were one to discuss the numerous other qualities belonging to this god, he would never arrive to the end of them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 3 weeks ago
The Democratic Party is beyond redemption...

The Democratic Party is beyond redemption at this point when it comes to seriously speaking to the needs of poor and working people... The neofascism that's escalating is predicated on the rottenness of a system in which the Democratic Party facilitates that frustration and desperation because it can't present an alternative... If America is unable to present an alternative to the Democratic Party, then we're going fascist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
1 month ago
A science that observes the laws...

A science that observes the laws of causation, and so is value-free, threatens human freedom and man's religious, ethical, and legal responsibility. The philosophy of values raised to that challenge, in the sense that it opposed a sphere of values, as a realm of ideal valuations, to a sphere of being that was only causally understood. It was an attempt to assert the human being as a free, responsible creature, indeed not in itself, but at least, in its valuation, what one called value. That attempt was put forth as a positivistic substitute for the metaphysical.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
There is no more important rule...

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you cannot understand them.

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F 81
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 2 days ago
The mass of men lead lives...

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 3 weeks ago
Beauty as we feel it is...

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said.

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Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 267
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 2 weeks ago
See the foundations of the most...

See the foundations of the most celebrated cities hardly now to be discerned; they were ruined by anger. See deserts extending for many miles without an inhabitant: they have been desolated by anger.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
Wonder is the foundation of all...

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
The true University of these days...

The true University of these days is a Collection of Books.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 weeks ago
Fine words and an insinuating...

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue. 

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Variant: Someone who is a clever speaker and maintains a 'too-smiley' face is seldom considered a humane person.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 1 week ago
The reproduction of mankind is a...

The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them of clay, in the way Adam was fashioned.

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752
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 2 weeks ago
These reasonings are unconnected...

These reasonings are unconnected: "I am richer than you, therefore I am better"; "I am more eloquent than you, therefore I am better." The connection is rather this: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style.

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(44).
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months ago
To choose this or that is...

To choose this or that is to affirm at the same time the value of what we choose, because we can never choose evil. We always choose the good, and nothing can be good for us without being good for all.

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Existentialism and Human Emotions
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 1 week ago
The fact that goals may be...

The fact that goals may be dependent for their force on other more distant ends leads to the arrangement of these goals in a hierarchy - each level to be considered as an end relative to the levels below it and as a mean to the levels above it.

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p. 62.
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 3 weeks ago
For why do you hasten…

For why do you hasten to remove things that hurt your eyes, but if anything gnaws your mind, defer the time of curing it from year to year?

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Book I, epistle ii, lines 37-39; translation by C. Smart
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 6 days ago
An American cannot converse, but he...

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.

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Chapter XIV.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 2 weeks ago
The haste of day rules over...

The haste of day rules over the night as empty form.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 3 weeks ago
In fact, this infinitesimally spread-out consciousness...

In fact, this infinitesimally spread-out consciousness is a direct feeling of its contents as spread out. In an infinitesimal interval we directly perceive the temporal sequence of its beginning, middle, and end... Now upon this interval follows another, whose beginning is the middle of the former, and whose middle is the end of the former. Here we have an immediate perception of the temporal sequence of its beginning, middle and end, or say, of the second, third, and fourth instants.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 4 weeks ago
We begin again to structure the...

We begin again to structure the primordial feelings...from which 3000 years of literacy divorced us. We begin again to live a myth.

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(p. 17)
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
1 month ago
Evil does not approach us as...

Evil does not approach us as pride any more, but on the contrary as slumber, lassitude, concealment of the "I." ... It may make us so quickly contented, that any definitive fire will die down. The venomous, breathtaking frigid mist seems able ... to harden hearts and fill them with envy, obduracy and resentment, with bloody scorn for the divine image and light, with all the causes of the only true original sin, which is not wanting to be like God.

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p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
Death is not an event in...

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 3 weeks ago
To become god....
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Main Content / General
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Everyday we act in ways that...

Everyday we act in ways that reflect our ethical judgements.

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Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 3 weeks ago
Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions...

Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continual comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.

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Ch. VIII: Ideal Society
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 4 weeks ago
We desire nothing so much...

We desire nothing so much as what we ought not to have.

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Maxim 559 [Mimi et aliorum sententiae 677]
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months ago
Man's urge for change and his...

Man's urge for change and his need for stability have always balanced and checked each other, and our current vocabulary, which distinguishes between two factions, the progressives and the conservatives, indicates a state of affairs in which this balance has been thrown out of order. No civilization - the man-made artifact to house successive generations - would ever have been possible without a framework of stability, to provide the wherein for the flux of change. Foremost among the stabilizing factors, more enduring than customs, manners and traditions, are the legal systems that regulate our life in the world and our daily affairs with each other.

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"Civil Disobedience"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months ago
What a monument of human smallness...

What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most - that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman - the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.

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Vol. 1, Ch 8 "The Philosopher King"
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
5 months 2 weeks ago
Since our leading men think themselves...

since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish-ponds that will come to hand for food, and neglect everything else, do not you think that I am doing no mean service if I secure that those who have the power, should not have the will, to do any harm?

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Letters to Atticus, Book II, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1 month 1 week ago
Proverbs about truth are well-loved in...

Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience: ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 days ago
A spider conducts operations that resemble...

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst of architects from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

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Vol. I, Ch. 7, pg. 198.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 2 days ago
How does the light of a...

How does the light of a star set out and plunge into black eternity in its immortal course? The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom. Out of the transient encounter of contrary forces which constitute your existence, strive to create whatever immortal thing a mortal may create in this world - a Cry. And this Cry, abandoning to the earth the body which gave it birth, proceeds and labors eternally.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Adam came from great power and...

Adam came from great power and great wealth, but he was not worthy of you. For had he been worthy, [he would] not [have tasted] death.

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Philosophical Maxims
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