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Parmenides
Parmenides
3 months 2 weeks ago
The only roads of enquiry there...

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

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Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
La culture est un instrument manié...

Culture is an instrument wielded by professors to manufacture professors, who, when their turn comes, will manufacture professors.

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The Need for Roots, part 2: Uprootedness, chapter 1: Uprootedness in the Towns
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
Of all people, girls and...

Of all people, girls and servants are the most difficult to behave to. If you are familiar with them, they lose their humility. If you maintain a reserve towards them, they are discontented.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
1 week ago
Everyone explains that discussions about Socialism...

Everyone explains that discussions about Socialism are exceedingly obscure; this obscurity is due, to a large extent, to the fact that contemporary socialists use a terminology which no longer corresponds to their ideas.

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p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
A farewell does not dilute the...

A farewell does not dilute the presence of the past; it may make an even deeper presence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 2 weeks ago
An integral part of totalitarian control...

An integral part of totalitarian control is the attack on critical and independent thought. The appeal to facts is substituted for the appeal to reason. No reason can sanction a regime that uses the greatest productive apparatus man has ever created in the interest of an increasing restriction on human satisfactions-no reason except the fact that the economic system can be retained in no other way. Just as the Fascist emphasis on action and change prevents the insight into necessity of rational courses of action and change, [Giovanni] Gentile's deification of thinking prevents the liberation of thought from the shackles of 'the given.'

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P. 405
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 1 week ago
In comparing civilized man with the...

In comparing civilized man with the animal world, one is as the Alpine traveller, who sees the mountains soaring into the sky and can hardly discern where the deep shadowed crags and roseate peaks end, and where the clouds of heaven begin. Surely the awe-struck voyager may be excused if, at first, he refuses to believe the geologist, who tells him that these glorious masses are, after all, the hardened mud of primeval seas, or the cooled slag of subterranean furnaces-of one substance with the dullest clay, but raised by inward forces to that place of proud and seemingly inaccessible glory. But the geologist is right; and due reflection on his teachings, instead of diminishing our reverence and our wonder, adds all the force of intellectual sublimity, to the mere aesthetic intuition of the uninstructed beholder.

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Ch.2, p. 131-132
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 4 weeks ago
Through laziness and cowardice a large...

Through laziness and cowardice a large part of mankind, even after nature has freed them from alien guidance, gladly remain immature. It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 1 week ago
Direct action, having proven effective along...

Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 4 weeks ago
So-called "realist" photography does not capture...

So-called "realist" photography does not capture the "what is." Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 4 weeks ago
It is sometimes said….

It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare.

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Philosophical Dictionary ('Sens Commun') (1767). Compare Juvenal, Satires, viii:73: Original Latin: rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
At present we are on the...

At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. We discern the freshness and purity of the morning, but they do not make us fresh and pure. We cannot mingle with the splendours we see. But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumour that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Who looks in the sun will...

Who looks in the sun will see no light else; but also he will see no shadow. Our life revolves unceasingly, but the centre is ever the same, and the wise will regard only the seasons of the soul.

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March 10, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 6 days ago
I need not repeat, that the...

I need not repeat, that the most savage of the savage tribes in the forest, live among each other in amity. Lions show no fierceness to the lion race. The boar does not brandish his deadly tooth against his brother boar. The lynx lives in peace with the lynx. The serpent shews no venom in his intercourse with his fellow serpent; and the loving kindness of wolf to wolf is proverbial.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 2 days ago
The appropriate moment

If we merely wait for the appropriate moment we will never live to see it, because this [appropriate moment] cannot arrive without the subjective conditions of the maturity of the revolutionary force being fulfilled - it can only arrive after a series of failed attempts.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
2 months 3 weeks ago
"I exist" does not follow from...

"I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.

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p. 47.
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
2 months 3 weeks ago
I saw a Divine Being. I'm...

I saw a Divine Being. I'm afraid I'm going to have to revise all my various books and opinions.

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National Post (3 March 2001).
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 3 days ago
I pray you, magnificent Sir, do...

I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you.

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Third Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 4 days ago
Of war men ask….

Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.

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line 407; (Lycus).
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Hope is the normal form of...

Hope is the normal form of delirium.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
The contradiction is this: man rejects...

The contradiction is this: man rejects the world as it is, without accepting the necessity of escaping it. In fact, men cling to the world and by far the majority do not want to abandon it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
Physics is mathematical not because we...

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
If I were to go blind,...

If I were to go blind, what would bother me the most would be no longer to be able to stare idiotically at the passing clouds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
If I made laws for Shakers...

If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as "spiritual life," "God," "soul," "cross," etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.

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June 15, 1844
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 3 weeks ago
Every man is free to do...

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

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Ch. 6, The Formula of Justice
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 1 week ago
It is the indignity of being...

It is the indignity of being treated as disposable that pushes people towards religious fundamentalism in order to retrieve a sense of self, of meaning, of significance. This is why globalization breeds religious fundamentalism and free markets create terrorism and extremism, not democracy.

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(p80)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 4 days ago
The public weal requires that men...

The public weal requires that men should betray and lie and massacre.

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Book III, Ch. 1. Of Profit and Honesty
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is but one good; that...

There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him.

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Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 2 weeks ago
And hereby it comes to passe,...

And hereby it comes to passe, that Intemperance, is naturally punished with Diseases; Rashness, with Mischance; Injustice; with Violence of Enemies; Pride, with Ruine; Cowardice, with Oppression; Negligent government of Princes, with Rebellion; and Rebellion with Slaughter.

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The Second Part, Chapter 31, p. 194
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 3 days ago
This worthy man, whose nephew is...

This worthy man, whose nephew is still minister of Eskdalemuir (and author of a book on the Jews), proved the greatest blessing to that household. My father would, in any case, have saved himself. Of the other brothers, it may be doubted whether William Brown was not the primary preserver. They all learned to he masons from him, or from one another; instead of miscellaneous laborers and hunters, became regular tradesmen, the best in all their district, the skilfullest and faithfullest, and the best-rewarded every way. Except my father, none of them attained a decisive religiousness. But they all had prudence and earnestness, love of truth, industry, and the blessings it brings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
1 month 2 weeks ago
Like many others, I came to...

Like many others, I came to philosophy to study matters of life and death, and was taught that professionalization required forgetting them. The more I learned, the more I grew convinced of the opposite: the history of philosophy was indeed animated by the questions that drew us there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 day ago
The most formidable of all the...

The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
When he entered into the Whig...

When he entered into the Whig party, he did not conceive that they pretended to any discoveries. They did not affect to be better Whigs, than those were who lived in the days in which principle was put to the test. Some of the Whigs of those days were then living. They were what the Whigs had been at the Revolution; what they had been during the reign of queen Anne; what they had been at the accession of the present royal family.

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p. 409
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is an uphill race, and...

It is an uphill race, and a race against time, for if the American form of democracy overtakes us first, the majority will no more relax their despotism than a single despot would. But our only chance is to come forward as Liberals, carrying out the democratic idea, not as Conservatives, resisting it.

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Letter to Henry Fawcett (5 February 1860), quoted in Michael St. John Packe, The Life of John Stuart Mill (1954), p. 418
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 1 week ago
It suffices to remember how many...

It suffices to remember how many sorrows he is spared who no longer thinks too many thoughts, how much more "in accordance with reality" a person behaves when he affirms that the real is the right, how much more capacity to use the machinery falls to the person who integrates himself with it uncomplainingly.

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p. 286
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Instead of deciding once in three...

Instead of deciding once in three or six years which member of the ruling class was to misrepresent the people in Parliament, universal suffrage was to serve the people, constituted in Communes, as individual suffrage serves every other employer in the search for the workmen and managers in his business.

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The Civil War in France : "The Third Address", May 1871
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
The "interface" of the Renaissance was...

The "interface" of the Renaissance was the meeting of medieval pluralism and modern homogeneity and mechanism - a formula for blitz and metamorphosis.

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(p. 161)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 4 days ago
If you set a high value...

If you set a high value on liberty, you must set a low value on everything else.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 2 weeks ago
[I]f it is the moral right...

If it is the moral right we are to look at, I say, that on every principle of moral obligation, I hold that the Jew has a right to political power.

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Speech in the House of Commons (5 April 1830) in favour of Robert Grant's Jewish Disabilities Bill
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
If life is deprived of any...

If life is deprived of any meaningful closure, it will be ended in non-time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
A nihilist is not one who...

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 4 weeks ago
Figure to yourself the mixture of...

Figure to yourself the mixture of surprise and delight which has this instant been poured into my mind by the sound of my name, as uttered by you, in the speech just read to me out of the Morning Herald... By one and the same man, not only Parliamentary Reform, but Law Reform advocated. Advocated? and by what man? By one who, in the vulgar sense of profit and loss, has nothing to gain by it... Yes, only from Ireland could such self-sacrifice come; nowhere else: least of all in England, cold, selfish, priest-ridden, lawyer-ridden, lord-ridden, squire-ridden, soldier-ridden England, could any approach to it be found.

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Letter to Daniel O'Connell (15 July 1828) , quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. X (1843), pp. 594-595
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 3 weeks ago
On the stage on which we...

On the stage on which we are observing it, - Universal History - Spirit displays itself in its most concrete reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 3 weeks ago
Those who purge the soul believe...

Those who purge the soul believe that the soul can receive no benefit from any teachings offered to it until someone by cross-questioning reduces him who is cross-questioned to an attitude of modesty, by removing the opinions that obstruct the teachings, and thus purges him and makes him think that he knows only what he knows, and no more.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
2 weeks 5 days ago
As for one-party rule, it was...

As for one-party rule, it was questioned neither by the Left Opposition nor by the Right [wing of the Communist party]. All were prisoners of their own doctrine and their own past: all had worked with a will to create the apparatus of violence that crushed them. Bukharin's hopeless attempt to form a league with Kamenev was no more than a pitiful epilogue to his career. In November 1929 the deviationists performed a public act of penance, but even this did not save them. Stalin's victory was complete; the collapse of the Bukharinite opposition meant the triumph of autocracy in the party and in the country. In December 1929 Stalin's fiftieth birthday was celebrated as a major historical event, and from this point we may date the "cult of personality". Trotsky's prophecy of 1903 had come true: party rule had become Central Committee rule, and this in turn had becorne the personal tyranny of a dictator.

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(pp. 42-3)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
With despair, true optimism begins: the...

With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
2 months 2 weeks ago
All the seemingly positive valuations and...

All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
The role of the artist is...

The role of the artist is to create an Anti-environment as a means of perception and adjustment.

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(p. 31)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
2 months 2 weeks ago
Historians of ideas, however scrupulous and...

Historians of ideas, however scrupulous and minute they may feel it necessary to be, cannot avoid perceiving their material in terms of some kind of pattern.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 2 days ago
Egos appear by....
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