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Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 weeks ago
Wonder, indeed, is, on all hands,...

Wonder, indeed, is, on all hands, dying out: it is the sign of uncultivation to wonder.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 1 week ago
Perception is part of the problem

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 weeks ago
The biology of suffering in intelligent...

The biology of suffering in intelligent agents is a deep underlying source of existential risk - and one that can potentially be overcome.

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"Unsorted Postings", pre-2014
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 6 days ago
The chief reason warfare is still...

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

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"On Violence"
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 4 days ago
The best thing about the sciences...

The best thing about the sciences is their philosophical ingredient, like life for an organic body. If one dephilosophizes the sciences, what remains left? Earth, air, and water.

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Fragment No. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 2 weeks ago
I am a lover of liberty....

I am a lover of liberty. I will not and I cannot serve a party.

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Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni (1523), § 176, As quoted in Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1900) by Ephraim Emerton, p. 377
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
the ultimate end, with reference to...

the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable...is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments...This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
2 months 3 weeks ago
"There is no God," cry the...

"There is no God," cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values - is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 4 days ago
Only the most perfect human being...

Only the most perfect human being can design the most perfect philosophy.

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Fichte Studies § 651
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 days ago
Perhaps we cannot...
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Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
The weapon of criticism obviously cannot...

The weapon of criticism obviously cannot replace the criticism of weapons. Material force can only be overthrown by material force, but theory itself becomes a material force when it has gripped the masses. Theory is capable of gripping the masses when it demonstrates ad hominem, and it demonstrates ad hominem, when it becomes radical. To be radical is to grasp things by the root, but for man the root is man himself. The clear proof of the radicalism of German theory, and hence of its political energy, is that it proceeds from the decisive positive abolition of religion.

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As quoted from David McLellan, Marx before Marxism, MacMillan, 1980, p. 150.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 days ago
Say what we will, death is...

Say what we will, death is the best thing nature has found to please everyone. With each of us, everything vanishes, everything stops forever. What an advantage, what an abuse! Without the least effort on our part, we own the universe, we drag it into our own disappearance. No doubt about it, dying is immoral...

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months ago
Man is the creature of circumstances....

Man is the creature of circumstances.

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"The Philanthropist"
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 4 days ago
There were many special laws affecting...

There were many special laws affecting the several kings inscribed about the temples, but the most important was the following: They were not to take up arms against one another, and they were all to come to the rescue if any one in any of their cities attempted to overthrow the royal house; like their ancestors, they were to deliberate in common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the descendants of Atlas. And the king was not to have the power of life and death over any of his kinsmen unless he had the assent of the majority of the ten.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
2 months 3 weeks ago
The "old maid" with her repressed...

The "old maid" with her repressed cravings for tenderness, sex, and propagation, is rarely quite free of ressentiment. What we call "prudery," in contrast with true modesty, is but one of the numerous variants of sexual ressentiment. The habitual behavior of many old maids, who obsessively ferret out all sexually significant events in their surroundings in order to condemn them harshly, is nothing but sexual gratification transformed into ressentiment satisfaction. Thus the criticism accomplishes the very thing it pretends to condemn.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 61-62
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
3 weeks 1 day ago
The characteristic feature of militarism is...

The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors. Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline.

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Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 6 days ago
A totally unmystical world would be...

A totally unmystical world would be a world totally blind and insane.

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Grey Eminence, 1940
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 days ago
Of course, I had to own...

Of course, I had to own that he was right; I didn't feel much regret for what I'd done. Still, to my mind, he overdid it, and I'd have liked to have a chance of explaining to him, in a quite friendly, almost affectionate way, that I have never been able to really regret anything in all my life. I've always been far too much absorbed in the present moment, or the immediate future, to think back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 4 weeks ago
I Jesus have sent mine angel...

I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star.

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Revelation 22:17
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 1 week ago
Truth happens to an idea. It...

Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2 months 3 weeks ago
Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness,...

Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, moonlight and sunlight present themselves in our recollection not preeminently as sensory contents but as certain kinds of symbioses, certain ways outside has of invading us and certain ways we have of meets this invasion...

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p. 317
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 weeks 4 days ago
Until he extends the circle of...

Until he extends the circle of his compassion to all living things, man will not himself find peace.

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Variant translation: Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 6 days ago
Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such...

Christian Apocalyptic offers us no such hope. It does not even foretell, (which would be more tolerable to our habits of thought) a gradual decay. It foretells a sudden, violent end imposed from without; an extinguisher popped onto the candle, a brick flung at the gramophone, a curtain rung down on the play - "Halt!"

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 2 days ago
When the general population no longer...

When the general population no longer constitutes the armed forces, when the army is no longer the people in arms, then empires fall. Today all armies are again tending to become mercenary armies.

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49
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
At last I have attained true...

At last I have attained true glory. As I walked through Fleet Street the day before yesterday, I saw a copy of Hume at a bookseller's window with the following label: "Only 2l. 2s. Hume's History of England in eight volumes, highly valuable as an introduction to Macaulay." I laughed so convulsively that the other people who were staring at the books took me for a poor demented gentleman.

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Alas for poor David! Journal entry (8 March 1849), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), p. 253
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
Our patience will achieve more than...

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 day ago
Most of the texts... preserved from...

Most of the texts... preserved from this period come from writers... either... affiliated with the aristocratic party, or... distrustful of democratic or radically democratic institutions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week ago
The dead? But the dead have...

The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 4 weeks ago
Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known...

Experience has repeatedly confirmed that well-known maxim of Bacon's that "a little philosophy inclineth a man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." At the same time, when Bacon penned that sage epigram... he forgot to add that the God to whom depth in philosophy brings back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them.

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Ch. I
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
Every man takes the limits of...

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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"Psychological Observations"
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Only charity admitteth no excess. For...

Only charity admitteth no excess. For so we see, aspiring to be like God in power, the angels transgressed and fell.

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Book II, xxii
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 days ago
Maman used to say that you...

Maman used to say that you can always find something to be happy about.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
Homeliness is almost as great a...

Homeliness is almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high art.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Within the last half century, the...

Within the last half century, the labours of such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischof, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled... the successive stages of development which... are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silk-worm moth to the school boy.

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Ch.2, p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 days ago
It has been a long time...

It has been a long time since philosophers have read men's souls. It is not their task, we are told. Perhaps. But we must not be surprised if they no longer matter much to us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 4 days ago
By striving to do the impossible,...

By striving to do the impossible, man has always achieved what is possible. Those who have cautiously done no more than they believed possible have never taken a single step forward.

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As quoted in The Explorers (1996) by Paolo Novaresio ISBN 1-55670-495-X
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 months 3 weeks ago
God ... demands everything, in order...

God ... demands everything, in order to give everything anew to him who loves Him, after that loving has truly given up all.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 3 weeks ago
Whereas the work is understood to...

Whereas the work is understood to be traceable to a source (through a process of derivation or "filiation"), the Text is without a source - the "author" a mere "guest" at the reading of the Text.

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Proposition 5
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 days ago
The fact that life has no...

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live - moreover, the only one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week ago
From every joy and pain a...

From every joy and pain a hope leaps out eternally to escape this pain and to widen joy. And again the ascent begins - which is pain - and joy is reborn and new hope springs up once more. The circle never closes. It is not a circle, but a spiral which ascends eternally, ever widening, enfolding and unfolding the triune struggle.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 days ago
The reaction against your own thought...

The reaction against your own thought in itself lends life to thought. How this reaction is born is hard to describe, because it identifies with the very rare intellectual tragedies. - The tension, the degree and level of intensity of a thought proceeds from its internal antinomies, which in turn are derived from the unsolvable contradictions of a soul. Thought cannot solve the contradictions of the soul. As far as linear thinking is concerned, thoughts mirror themselves in other thoughts, instead of mirroring a destiny.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
What chance has Vulcan against Roberts...

What chance has Vulcan against Roberts & Co., Jupiter against the lightning-rod and Hermes against the Credit Mobilier? All mythology overcomes and dominates and shapes the forces of nature in the imagination and by the imagination; it therefore vanishes with the advent of real mastery over them.

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Introduction, p. 30.
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 1 week ago
I once had a conversation with...

I once had a conversation with a famous French philosopher who's a friend of mine. And I said to him, "Why the hell do you write so badly? Pourquoi tu écris si mal?" ... And this was Michel Foucault. He was a very smart guy and wrote a lot of very good stuff but in general he just wrote badly. When you heard him give a lecture in Berkeley, it was perfectly clear, just as clear as I am. ... And he said, "Well, in France, it would be regarded as somewhat childish and naive if you wrote clearly. ... In France you've got to have 10% incomprehensible."

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Otherwise people won't think it's deep. They won't think you're a profound thinker.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 days ago
The deepest and most organic death...

The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 5 days ago
In any case, if you ever...

In any case, if you ever leave me with a handsome man, do not tell me that you trust me because, let me warn you: that is not what will prevent me from deceiving you, if I want to. On the contrary.

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Jessica to her husband Hugo, Act 3, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 3 weeks ago
He who created us without our...

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

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St. Augustine, Sermo 169, 11, 13: PL 38, 923 as quoted in Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S. J.. Saved: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics (p. 15). Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 week ago
In all the flat, lethargic, dull...

In all the flat, lethargic, dull moments, when the sensate dominates a person, to him Christianity is a madness because it is incommensurate with any finite wherefore. But then what good is it? Answer: Be quiet, it is the absolute. And that is how it must be presented, consequently as, that is, it must appear as madness to the sensate person. And therefore it is true, so true, and also in another sense so true when the sensible person in the situation of contemporaneity (see II A) censoriously says of Christ, “He is literally nothing”-quite so, for he is the absolute. Christianity is an absolute. Christianity came into the world as the absolute, not, humanly speaking, for comfort; on the contrary, it continually speaks about how the Christian must suffer or about how a person in order to become and remain a Christian must endure sufferings that he consequently can avoid simply by refraining from becoming a Christian.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 1 day ago
If all the parts….

If all the parts of the universe are interchained in a certain measure, any one phenomenon will not be the effect of a single cause, but the resultant of causes infinitely numerous; it is, one often says, the consequence of the state of the universe the moment before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
A physicist looks for causes; that...

A physicist looks for causes; that does not necessarily imply that there are causes everywhere. A man may look for gold without assuming that there is gold everywhere; if he finds gold, well and good, if he doesn't he's had bad luck. The same is true when the physicists look for causes.

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BBC Radio Debate on the Existence of God, Russell vs. Copleston, 1948
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 2 weeks ago
Newton's law is nothing but the...

Newton's law is nothing but the statistics of gravitation, it has no power whatever. Let us get rid of the idea of power from law altogether. Call law tabulation of facts, expression of facts, or what you will; anything rather than suppose that it either explains or compels.

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Suggestions for Thought : Selections and Commentaries (1994), edited by Michael D. Calabria and Janet A. MacRae, p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
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