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David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 1 week ago
A lot of people recoil from...

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation.

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"The Abolitionist Project", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 1 week ago
To an atheist all writings tend...

To an atheist all writings tend to atheism: he corrupts the most innocent matter with his own venom.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months ago
Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness...

Knowing that certain nights whose sweetness lingers will keep returning to the earth and sea after we are gone, yes, this helps us to die.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Herbert Spencer is little read now....

Herbert Spencer is little read now. Philosophers do not regard him as a major thinker.

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Social Darwinism has long been in disrepute. Chapter 3, From Evolution To Ethics?, p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 3 weeks ago
Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot...

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

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Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms, The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
3 months 3 weeks ago
The mollusk's motto would be: one...

The mollusk's motto would be: one must live to build one's house, and not build one's house to live in.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
Were a stranger to drop on...

Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

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Demea to Philo, Part X
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 2 weeks ago
At the deepest level, the desire...

At the deepest level, the desire for complete union with God exhibits a narcissistic structure.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 3 days ago
Humanity may endure the loss of...

Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity; - all but the possibility of improvement.

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"The Vocation of the Scholar" (1794), as translated by William Smith, in The Popular Works of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1889), Vol. I, Lecture IV, p. 188.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 days ago
There is but one unconditional commandment,...

There is but one unconditional commandment, which is that we should seek incessantly, with fear and trembling, so to vote and to act as to bring about the very largest total universe of good which we can see. Abstract rules indeed can help; but they help the less in proportion as our intuitions are more piercing, and our vocation is the stronger for the moral life. For every real dilemma is in literal strictness a unique situation; and the exact combination of ideals realized and ideals disappointed which each decision creates is always a universe without a precedent, and for which no adequate previous rule exists.

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"The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life", International Journal of Ethics, April 1891
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 days ago
Where popular authority is absolute and...

Where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on the earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favor. A perfect democracy is, therefore, the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he can be made subject to punishment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime...

I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species. But the Gods have been against me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 3 weeks ago
We have classical associations and great...

We have classical associations and great names of our own which we can confidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We respect the Great Charter more than the laws of Solon. The Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey... The list of warriors and statesmen by whom our constitution was founded or preserved, from De Montfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of Sydney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the bitterness of death was past.

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'History', The Edinburgh Review (May 1828), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), p. 252
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 days ago
To believe is to know you...

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
When I, who conduct this inquiry,...

When I, who conduct this inquiry, love something, then three things are found: I, what I love, and the love itself. There are, therefore three things: the lover, the beloved and the love.

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(Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 2, Section 2, p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The mathematician speculates the causes of...

The mathematician speculates the causes of a certain sensible effect, without considering its actual existence; for the contemplation of universals excludes the knowledge of particulars; and he whose intellectual eye is fixed on that which is general and comprehensive, will think but little of that which is sensible and singular.

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A Dissertation on the Doctrine of Ideas, &c.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 3 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
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 days ago
Legal and economic equality are absolutely...

Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 4 days ago
Oh, can I really believe the...

Oh, can I really believe the poet's tales, that when one first sees the object of one's love, one imagines one has seen her long ago, that all love like all knowledge is remembrance, that love too has its prophecies in the individual. ... it seems to me that I should have to possess the beauty of all girls in order to draw out a beauty equal to yours; that I should have to circumnavigate the world in order to find the place I lack and which the deepest mystery of my whole being points towards, and at the next moment you are so near to me, filling my spirit so powerfully that I am transfigured for myself, and feel that it's good to be here.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is only through science and...

It is only through science and art that civilization is of value. Some have wondered at the formula: science for its own sake; an yet it is as good as life for its own sake, if life is only misery; and even as happiness for its own sake, if we do not believe that all pleasures are of the same quality...Every act should have an aim. We must suffer, we must work, we must pay for our place at the game, but this is for seeing's sake; or at the very least that others may one day see.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 2 weeks ago
Disciplinary society is still governed by...

Disciplinary society is still governed by no. Its negativity produces madmen and criminals. In contrast, achievement society creates depressives and losers.

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Source: Page 8
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
4 months 3 weeks ago
Commit no slander; so that infamy...

Commit no slander; so that infamy and wickedness may not happen unto thee.

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(p. 59)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 days ago
When memory begins to decay, proper...

When memory begins to decay, proper names are what go first ...[C]ommon qualities and names have contracted an infinitely greater number of associations ...than the names of most of the persons ...Their memory is better organized. ...'Organization' means numerous associations; and the more numerous the associations, the greater the number of paths of recall. For the same reason... words... which form the grammatical framework of all our speech, are the very last to decay.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 days ago
If the colleges were better, if...

If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set policy at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.

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The Celebration of Intellect, 1861
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
4 months 3 days ago
The recognition of the light of...

The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction - both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality - that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy - is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.

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Part III, Section 31
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
3 months 3 weeks ago
Theology recognizes the contingency of human...

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

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p. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
4 weeks 1 day ago
But though much may be said...

But though much may be said to Excuse the Chymists when they write Darkly, and Ænigmatically, about the Preparation of their Elixir, and Some few other grand Arcana, the divulging of which they may upon Grounds Plausible enough esteem unfit; yet when they pretend to teach the General Principles of Natural Philosophers, this Equivocall Way of Writing is not to be endur'd. For in such Speculative Enquiries, where the naked Knowledge of the Truth is the thing Principally aim'd at, what does he teach me worth thanks that does not, if he can, make his Notion intelligible to me, but by Mystical Termes, and Ambiguous Phrases darkens what he should clear up; and makes me add the Trouble of guessing at the sence of what he Equivocally expresses, to that of examining the Truth of what he seems to deliver.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 3 weeks ago
What has philosophy got to do...

What has philosophy got to do with measuring anything? It's the mathematicians you have to trust, and they measure the skies like we measure a field.

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Matteo in Concerning the New Star
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 3 days ago
Lack of originality, everywhere, all over...

Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man...

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Part 3, Chapter ?
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 3 days ago
To disrespec the masses…

To disrespect the masses is moral; to honor them, lawful.

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Lucinde and the Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991), "Athenaeum Fragments" § 211
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 4 days ago
Compassion for animals is intimately connected...

Compassion for animals is intimately connected with goodness of character, and it may be confidently asserted that he, who is cruel to living creatures, cannot be a good man. Moreover, this compassion manifestly flows from the same source whence arise the virtues of justice and loving-kindness towards men.

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Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 223
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 weeks ago
The world begins and ends with...

The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
3 months 1 week ago
From any vocabulary of ideas we...

From any vocabulary of ideas we can build other ideas by formal combinations of signs. But not any set of ideas will be instructive. One must have the right ideas.

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Chapter 15, Inductive Logic, p. 139.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 weeks 2 days ago
Every man knows that in...

Every man knows that in his work he does best and accomplishes most when he has attained a proficiency that enables him to work intuitively. That is, there are things which we come to know so well that we do not know how we know them. So it seems to me in matters of principle. Perhaps we live best and do things best when we are not too conscious of how and why we do them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 2 weeks ago
Whatever people do in the market...

Whatever people do in the market economy, is the execution of their own plans. In this sense every human action means planning. What those calling themselves planners advocate is not the substitution of planned action for letting things go. It is the substitution of the planner's own plan for the plans of his fellow-men. The planner is a potential dictator who wants to deprive all other people of the power to plan and act according to their own plans. He aims at one thing only: the exclusive absolute pre-eminence of his own plan.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 2 weeks ago
So far as it goes…

So far as it goes, a small thing may give an analogy of great things, and show the tracks of knowledge.

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Book II, lines 123-124 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts...

The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts a training in humanity and pity.

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3, 20, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 4 days ago
There is a further advantage [to...

There is a further advantage [to hydrogen bombs]: the supply of uranium in the planet is very limited, and it might be feared that it would be used up before the human race was exterminated, but now that the practically unlimited supply of hydrogen can be utilized, there is considerable reason to hope that homo sapiens may put an end to himself, to the great advantage of such less ferocious animals as may survive. But it is time to return to less cheerful topics.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), part I, "The World of Science", chapter 3, "The World of Physics", p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 3 weeks ago
People do not feel in any...

People do not feel in any way ashamed or guilty about spending money on new clothes or a new car instead of giving it to famine relief. (Indeed, the alternative does not occur to them.) This way of looking at the matter cannot be justified. When we buy new clothes not to keep ourselves warm but to look "well-dressed" we are not providing for any important need. We would not be sacrificing anything significant if we were to continue to wear our old clothes, and give the money to famine relief. By doing so, we would be preventing another person from starving. It follows from what I have said earlier that we ought to give money away, rather than spend it on clothes which we do not need to keep us warm. To do so is not charitable, or generous. Nor is it the kind of act which philosophers and theologians have called "supererogatory" - an act which it would be good to do, but not wrong not to do. On the contrary, we ought to give the money away, and it is wrong not to do so.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 days ago
The First [Friend] is the alter...

The First [Friend] is the alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights. There is nothing to be overcome in making him your friend; he and you join like raindrops on a window. But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything... Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. he has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one... How can he be so nearly right, and yet, invariably, just not right? He is as fascinating (and infuriating) as a woman.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 3 days ago
There is something in human history...

There is something in human history like retribution; and it is a rule of historical retribution that its instrument be forged not by the offended, but by the offender himself. The first blow dealt to the French monarchy proceeded from the nobility, not from the peasants. The Indian revolt does not commence with the ryots, tortured, dishonoured and stripped naked by the British, but with the sepoys, clad, fed and petted, fatted and pampered by them.

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In an article written for the New York Daily Tribune, September 16, 1857
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 1 week ago
They call, in fact, for the...

They call, in fact, for the forfeiture, to a greater or less degree, of human liberty, to the point where, were I to attempt to sum up what socialism is, I would say that it was simply a new system of serfdom.

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Notes for a Speech on Socialism (1848). http://oll.libertyfund.org/pages/tocqueville-s-critique-of-socialism-1848
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 4 days ago
I cannot believe - and I...

I cannot believe - and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable - that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

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"The Pursuit of Truth" in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, 1993
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 3 days ago
Assembled in a crowd, people lose...

Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.

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Chapter 5 (p. 42)
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 2 days ago
The point, as Marx saw it,...

The point, as Marx saw it, is that dreams never come true.

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"On Violence"
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 2 weeks ago
No social co-operation under the division...

No social co-operation under the division of labour is possible when some people or unions of people are granted the right to prevent by violence and the threat of violence other people from working. When enforced by violence, a strike in vital branches of production or a general strike are tantamount to a revolutionary destruction of society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 2 weeks ago
He who bases or thinks he...

He who bases or thinks he bases his conduct - his inward or his outward conduct, his feeling or his action - upon a dogma or a principle which he deems incontrovertible, runs the risk of becoming a fanatic, and moreover, the moment that this dogma is weakened or shattered, the morality based upon it gives way. If the earth that he thought firm begins to rock, he himself trembles at the earthquake, for we do not all come up to the standard of the ideal Stoic who remains undaunted among the ruins of a world shattered into atoms. Happily the stuff that is underneath a man's ideas will save him. For if a man should tell you that he does not defraud or cuckold his best friend only because he is afraid of hell, you may depend upon it that neither would he do so even if he were to cease to believe in hell, but that he would invent some other excuse instead. And this is all to the honor of the human race.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 days ago
Neither the few nor the many...

Neither the few nor the many have a right to act merely by their will, in any matter connected with duty, trust, engagement, or obligation.

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p. 440
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 1 day ago
I cannot help....
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Main Content / General
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 3 days ago
We, who are dying, are doing...

We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.

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Freedom and Death
Philosophical Maxims
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