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Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 2 weeks ago
In the darkest region of the...

In the darkest region of the political field the condemned man represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is no….

There is no self-knowledge except historical self-knowledge. No one knows what he is if he doesn't know what his contemporaries are.

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"Ideas," Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), § 139
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 months 1 week ago
Hayek's theory of evolutionary rationality shows...

Hayek's theory of evolutionary rationality shows how traditions and customs (those surrounding sexual relations, for example) might be reasonable solutions to complex social problems, even when, and especially when, no clear rational grounds can be provided to the individual for obeying them. These customs have been selected by the ''invisible hand'' of social reproduction, and societies that reject them will soon enter the condition of ''maladaptation,'' which is the normal prelude to extinction.

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Hayek and conservatism, in Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
A man full of warm, speculative...

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is clear that thought is...

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.

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Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda, books.google.com, archive.org
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
A great soul, any sincere soul,...

A great soul, any sincere soul, knows not what he is,-alternates between the highest height and the lowest depth; can, of all things, the least measure-Himself! What others take him for, and what he guesses that he may be; these two items strangely act on one another, help to determine one another. With all men reverently admiring him; with his own wild soul full of noble ardors and affections, of whirlwind chaotic darkness and glorious new light; a divine Universe bursting all into godlike beauty round him, and no man to whom the like ever had befallen, what could he think himself to be?

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 4 weeks ago
If it is permissible to write...

If it is permissible to write plays that are not intended to be seen, I should like to see who can prevent me from writing a book no one can read.

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F 1
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 1 week ago
The fact that no one has...

The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.

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p. 343
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 weeks ago
All seed except Mary was vitiated...

All seed except Mary was vitiated [by original sin].

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 11, WA, 39, II:107
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
In contemplating thyself never include the...

In contemplating thyself never include the vessel which surrounds thee, and these instruments which are attached about it. For they are like an ax, differing only in this, that they grow to the body. For indeed there is no more use in these parts without the cause which moves and checks them than in the weaver's shuttle, and the writer's pen, and the driver's whip.

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X, 38
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 weeks ago
Even the constantly reiterated insistence that...

Even the constantly reiterated insistence that we are miserable offenders, born in sin, is a kind of inverted arrogance: such vanity, to presume that our moral conduct has some sort of cosmic significance, as though the Creator of the Universe wouldn't have better things to do than tot up our black marks and our brownie points. The universe is all concerned with me. Is that not the arrogance that passeth all understanding? The Intellectual and Moral Courage of Atheism

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Originally from 2007; quotes are from the slightly revised 2019 version on the website
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
The theoretical understanding of the world,...

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago
Luxury is the opposite of the...

Luxury is the opposite of the naturally necessary.

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Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 448.
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 2 weeks ago
Creating difficulties for himself for the...

Creating difficulties for himself for the pleasure of resolving them is a strange human mania.

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p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
It seems to me now that...

It seems to me now that mathematics is capable of an artistic excellence as great as that of any music, perhaps greater; not because the pleasure it gives (although very pure) is comparable, either in intensity or in the number of people who feel it, to that of music, but because it gives in absolute perfection that combination, characteristic of great art, of godlike freedom, with the sense of inevitable destiny; because, in fact, it constructs an ideal world where everything is perfect and yet true.

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Letter to Gilbert Murray, April 3, 1902
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
Prize that which is best in...

Prize that which is best in the universe; and this is that which useth everything and ordereth everything.

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V, 21
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 2 weeks ago
I came into this world, not...

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
Why may not a goose say...

Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 2 weeks ago
What will be left of the...

What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
The measure of a master is...

The measure of a master is his success in bringing all men round to his opinion twenty years later.

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Culture
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
Whoever does not philosophize for the...

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)", Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #96
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
2 months 2 weeks ago
While Trump is not going to...

While Trump is not going to be president, Trumpism is going to survive. ...The Democrats need to look very very carefully at those election results because ...the Republicans did well not necessarily because people love what they represent, but because they don't like what the Democrats represent... Unless they sort out what that is, they are going to continue to lose elections.

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28:52:00
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 4 days ago
You will die, not because you...

You will die, not because you are ill, but because you are alive; even when you have been cured, thesame end awaits you; when you have recovered, it will be not death, but ill health, that you have escaped.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is a bad thing to...

It is a bad thing to perform menial duties even for the sake of freedom; to fight with pinpricks, instead of with clubs. I have become tired of hypocrisy, stupidity, gross arbitrariness, and of our bowing and scraping, dodging, and hair-splitting over words. Consequently, the government has given me back my freedom.

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Letter from Marx to Arnold Ruge (25 January 1843)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 weeks ago
The world becomes full of organisms...

The world becomes full of organisms that have what it takes to become ancestors. That, in a sentence, is Darwinism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
6 months 1 week ago
Medicine considers the human body as...

Medicine considers the human body as to the means by which it is cured and by which it is driven away from health.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
We must consider....
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Main Content / General
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 4 weeks ago
The beginning is from God: for...

The beginning is from God: for the business which is in hand, having the character of good so strongly impressed upon it, appears manifestly to proceed from God, who is the author of good, and the Father of Lights. Now in divine operations even the smallest beginnings lead of a certainty to their end. And as it was said of spiritual things, "The kingdom of God cometh not with observation," so is it in all the greater works of Divine Providence; everything glides on smoothly and noiselessly, and the work is fairly going on "before men are aware that it has begun. Nor should the prophecy of Daniel be forgotten, touching the last ages of the world: -"Many shall go to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased;" clearly intimating that the thorough passage of the world (which now by so many distant voyages seems to be accomplished, or in course of accomplishment), and the advancement of the sciences, are destined by fate, that is, by Divine Providence, to meet in the same age.

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Aphorism 93
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 weeks ago
If women get tired and die...

If women get tired and die of bearing, there is no harm in that; let them die as long as they bear; they are made for that.

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-- Essays, quoted in Luther On "Woman"
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 3 weeks ago
Is Wagner a human being at...
Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.
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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 months 3 weeks ago
The very ideology of "cultural production"...

The very ideology of "cultural production" is antithetical to all culture, as is that of visibility and of the polyvalent space: culture is a site of the secret, of seduction, of initiation, of a restrained and highly ritualized symbolic exchange.

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"The Beaubourg Effect," p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
You must picture me alone in...

You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is the mark of a...

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable in the retrospect. We should have been cut-throats to do otherwise. And there's an end. We ought to know distinctly that we are damned for what we do wrong; but when we have done right, we have only been gentlemen, after all. There is nothing to make a work about.

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"Reflections and Remarks on Human Life", VI: Right and Wrong, published in Works: Letters and Miscellanies of Robert Louis Stevenson -- Sketches, Criticisms, Etc. (1895), p. 628.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
Another theme of the Wake that...

Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliché to archetype is "pastimes are past times". The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy.

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(p.99)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
Depart then satisfied, for he also...

Depart then satisfied, for he also who releases thee is satisfied.

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XII, 36
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
Marx shared with economists then and...

Marx shared with economists then and since the inability to make his concepts include innovational processes. It is one thing to spot a new product but quite another to observe the invisible new environments generated by the action of the product on a variety of pre-existing social grounds.

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(p. 63)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 2 weeks ago
That man is the richest whose...

That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.

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March 11, 1856
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 2 weeks ago
I don't know what the life...

I don't know what the life of a rascal is like since I have never been one, but that of an honest man is abominable. How few men are there whose passage on this stupid planet has been marked by really good and useful acts! I prostrate myself before the one of which one can say: pertransivit bene faciendo; the one who had been able to instruct, console, and relieve his fellows; the one who made great sacrifices for charity; these heroes of silent charity who hide themselves and expect nothing in this world. But what is the ordinary man? And how many are there in a thousand who can ask themselves without terror: what have I done in this world? In what way have I advanced the common good and what will remain of me of good or evil?

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Letter to chevalier de Saint-Réal, 21 December 1816, Œuvre critique, xiv, p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
How I wish I didn't know...

How I wish I didn't know anything about myself and this world!

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
It is the very joy of...

It is the very joy of man's heart to admire, where he can; nothing so lifts him from all his mean imprisonments, were it but for moments, as true admiration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 2 weeks ago
Thinking withdraws radically and for its...

Thinking withdraws radically and for its own sake from this world and its evidential nature, whereas science profits from a possible withdrawal for the sake of specific results.

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p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 3 weeks ago
No greater mistake can be made...

No greater mistake can be made than to imagine that what has been written latest is always the more correct; that what is written later on is an improvement on what was written previously; and that every change means progress. Men who think and have correct judgment, and people who treat their subject earnestly, are all exceptions only. Vermin is the rule everywhere in the world: it is always at hand and busily engaged in trying to improve in its own way upon the mature deliberations of the thinkers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 months ago
We cannot abdicate our conscience to...

We cannot abdicate our conscience to an organization, nor to a government. 'Am I my brother's keeper?' Most certainly I am! I cannot escape my responsibility by saying the State will do all that is necessary. It is a tragedy that nowadays so many think and feel otherwise.

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p. 309
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 4 weeks ago
Many city-dwellers have a romanticized conception...

Many city-dwellers have a romanticized conception of the living world. From another perspective, some "conservation biologists" favour e.g. "Pleistocene rewilding". By contrast, I think any truly compassionate person should be horrified at the terrible suffering of Nature "red in tooth and claw". Why not aim for a cruelty-free world instead?

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"Interview with Pensata Animal", Pensata Animal, 25 Oct. 2009
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 months ago
Indian thought has greatly attracted me...

Indian thought has greatly attracted me since in my youth I first became acquainted with it through reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. From the very beginning I was convinced that all thought is really concerned with the great problem of how man can attain to spiritual union with infinite Being. My attention was drawn to Indian thought because it is busied with this problem and because by its nature it is mysticism. What I liked about it also was that Indian ethics are concerned with the behaviour of man to all living beings and not merely with his attitude to his fellow-man and to human society.

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Preface, p. vi
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 4 days ago
Thus no fortune, no external circumstance,...

Thus no fortune, no external circumstance, can shut off the wise man from action. For the very thing which engages his attention prevents him from attending to other things. He is ready for either outcome: if it brings goods, he controls them; if evils, he conquers them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Boredom is connected naturally with time,...

Boredom is connected naturally with time, with the horror of time, with the experience and the consciousness of time. Those who are not aware of time do not become bored. Basically life is only possible if one is not aware of time. If one should happen to want to experience consciously one of those moments that pass, one would be lost; life would become unbearable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 4 days ago
We find here the final application...

We find here the final application of the doctrine of objective immortality. Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God. In this way, the insistent craving is justified - the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 3 weeks ago
Americans cleave to the things of...

Americans cleave to the things of this world as if assured that they will never die,... They clutch everything but hold nothing fast, and so lose grip as they hurry after some new delight. ... Death steps in in the end and stops him before he has grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes him. At first sight there is something astonishing in this spectacle of so many lucky men restless in the midst of abundance. But it is a spectacle as old as the world; all that is new is to see a whole people performing in it.

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Book Two, Chapter XIII.
Philosophical Maxims
L.P. Jacks
L.P. Jacks
1 month 2 weeks ago
Our intellectual development in the field...

Our intellectual development in the field of science has outstripped our human development in the field of character.

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BBC Radio National Lecture (1938), quoted in Unitarian Universalist Biographical Dictionary.
Philosophical Maxims
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