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Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 2 weeks ago
If this truth has once and...

If this truth has once and for all been discarded and men have decided for integral adjustment, if reason has been purged of all morality regardless of cost, and has triumphed over all else, no one may remain outside and look on. The existence of one solitary "unreasonable" man elucidates the shame of the entire nation. His existence testifies to the relativity of the system of radical self-preservation that has been posited as absolute.

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p. 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes...

The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals even I am a yogi .

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Quoted in R. Malhotra and V. Viswanathan, Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0., 2022
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 2 weeks ago
Matters of religion should never be...

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

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Ch. VI
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
Sabbath rest does not follow creation;...

Sabbath rest does not follow creation; it brings creation to completion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
The worst is not ennui nor...

The worst is not ennui nor despair but their encounter, their collision. To be crushed between the two!

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 3 weeks ago
A subject interests me and holds...

A subject interests me and holds my attention only so long as it presents me with difficulties, only so long as I am at odds with it and have, as it were, to struggle with it; but once I have mastered it I hurry on to something else, to a new subject; for my interest is not confined to any particular field or subject; it extends to everything human. This does not mean that I am an intellectual miser or egoist, who amasses knowledge for himself alone; by no means! What I do and think for myself, I must also think and do for others. But I feel the need of instructing others in a subject only so long as, while instructing others, I am also instructing myself.

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Lecture I, , R. Manheim, trans. (1967), p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 1 week ago
Today's fashion magazines may carry an...

Today's fashion magazines may carry an article about the dangers of anorexia while bombarding its readers with images of emaciated young bodies representing the height of beauty and desirability.

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As quoted in Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2014), p.34
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 weeks 1 day ago
I am neither a German...

I am neither a German citizen nor do I believe in anything that can be described as a "Jewish faith." But I am a Jew and glad to belong to the Jewish people, though I do not regard it in any way as chosen.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 4 days ago
The logic now in use serves...

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.

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Aphorism 7
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
As soon as it is held...

As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up. Discouragement of inquiry, ... is the first of these, but others are pretty sure to follow. Positions of authority will be open to the orthodox. Historical records must be falsified if they throw doubt on received opinion. Sooner or later unorthodoxy will come to be considered a crime to be dealt with by the stake, the purge, or the concentration camp. I can respect the men who argue that religion is true and therefore ought to be believed, but I can only feel profound moral reprobation for those who say that religion ought to be believed because it is useful, and that to ask whether it is true is a waste of time.

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3 quoted from Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), Ibn Warraq
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
4 months 2 weeks ago
My principal motive is the belief...

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have ... "an ambition of transcendence."

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Introduction to Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume I (1991).
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 2 weeks ago
Those who are humane achieve glory....

Those who are humane achieve glory. Those who are inhumane suffer disgrace.

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2A:4
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 3 days ago
Art expresses, it does not state....
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Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 4 weeks ago
Style ought to prove that one...
Style ought to prove that one believes in an idea; not only that one thinks it but also feels it.
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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 2 weeks ago
If the people have no faith...

If the people have no faith in their rulers, there is no standing for the state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 1 week ago
Many conflicts within Third World countries...

Many conflicts within Third World countries are related to the practice of exploiting resources faster than nature can renew them or diverting them away from where people need them. Dams in every society have become major sources of conflict. As water scarcity grows, neighbors, families turn against each other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 2 weeks ago
If you are to be kept...

If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will warn you, the other will expose you.

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Plutarch, Moralia, 74C
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months 4 days ago
It's easier to be faithful to...

It's easier to be faithful to a restaurant than it is to a woman.

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Fidelity
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
We have been given free will,...

We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a 'state of grace.' All our actions must be directed, in the last analysis, to making ourselves passive in relation to the activity and the being of divine reality. We are, as it were, aeolian harps, endowed with the power either to expose themselves to the wind of the Spirit or to shut themselves away from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 2 weeks ago
Similarly a work of art vanishes...

Similarly a work of art vanishes from sight for a beholder who seeks in it nothing but the moving fate of John and Mary or Tristan and Isolde and adjusts his vision to this. Tristan's sorrows are sorrows and can evoke compassion only in so far as they are taken as real. But an object of art is artistic only in so far as it is not real. In order to enjoy Titian's portrait of Charles the Fifth on horseback we must forget that this is Charles the Fifth in person and see instead a portrait - that is, an image, a fiction. The portrayed person and his portrait are two entirely different things; we are interested in either one or the other. In the first case we "live" with Charles the Fifth, in the second we look at an object of art.

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"The Dehumanization of Art"
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 week ago
The custom of procuring abortions has...

The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.

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Mother Earth
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
The multiplication of our kind borders...

The multiplication of our kind borders on the obscene; the duty to love them, on the preposterous.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nothing is great but truth, and...

Nothing is great but truth, and the smallest truth is great. The other day I had a thought, which I put like this: Even a harmful truth is useful, for it can be harmful only for the moment and will lead to other truths, which must always become useful, very much so. Conversely, even a useful error is harmful, for it can be useful only for the moment, enticing us into other errors, which become more and more harmful.

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Letter to Charlotte von Stein (1787) in Goethe's World View: Presented in His Reflections and Maxims (1963), Edited with an Introduction by Frederick Ungar, Translated by Heinz Norden, pp. 72-73, Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, New York.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
The mother tongue is propaganda. The...

The mother tongue is propaganda.

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The University of Windsor review, Volumes 1-2, 1965, p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 1 week ago
Christ's whole body groans in pain....

Christ's whole body groans in pain. Until the end of the world, when pain will pass away, this man groans and cries to God. And each one of us has part in the cry of that whole body. Thou didst cry out in thy day, and thy days have passed away; another took thy place and cried out in his day. Thou here, he there, and another there. The body of Christ ceases not to cry out all the day, one member replacing the other whose voice is hushed. Thus there is but one man who reaches unto the end of time, and those that cry are always His members.

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p.423
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 weeks 2 days ago
Now the real fruits of human...

Now the real fruits of human nature - the arts, sciences, great enterprises, lofty conceptions, manly virtues - are due especially to the state of war. In a word, we can say that blood is the manure of the plant we call genius.

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Chapter III, p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 months 1 week ago
Religion for [Berdyaev] is a social...

Religion for [Berdyaev] is a social phenomenon and is adapted to the needs of the masses; as such, it is embodied in visible institutions and in authoritative formulas. The mystic, on the other hand, is aristocratic in temperament and never quite at home where the masses are catered for. He cannot remain in the world of form and convention and second-hand truths which is all about us and with which official religion has to come to terms; he aspires to a contact with spiritual reality as it is, a return to the ultimate sources of his being.

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Edgar Leonard Allen (1893-1961), Freedom in God: A Guide to the Thought of Nicholas Berdyaev
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
The TV camera has no shutter....

The TV camera has no shutter. It does not deal with aspects or facets of objects in high resolution. It is a means of direct pick-up by the electrical groping over surfaces.

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Arts in society, Volume 3, 1964, p. 242
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 3 weeks ago
The most important subject, and the...

The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to science.Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood, and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
4 months 1 week ago
Never will this prevail, that the...

Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are - bar your thought from this road of inquiry.

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Frag. B 7.1-2, quoted by Plato, Sophist, 237a
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 1 week ago
Money, as a matter of principle,...

Money, as a matter of principle, makes everything the same.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Is there anything in life so...

Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?

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The Suicide Club, The Adventure of the Hansom Cabs.
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 4 days ago
If I solve my dispute with...

If I solve my dispute with my neighbor by killing him, I have certainly solved the immediate dispute. If my neighbor was a scoundrel, then the world is no doubt better for his absence. But in killing my neighbor, though he may have been a terrible man who did not deserve to live, I have made myself a killer - and the life of my next neighbor is in greater peril than the life of the last. In making myself a killer I have destroyed the possibility of neighborhood.

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A Statement against the War in Vietnam
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 4 weeks ago
I have no knowledge of myself...

I have no knowledge of myself as I am, but merely as I appear to myself.

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B 158
Philosophical Maxims
Avicenna
Avicenna
5 months 1 week ago
The knowledge of anything, since all...

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes. Therefore in medicine we ought to know the causes of sickness and health. And because health and sickness and their causes are sometimes manifest, and sometimes hidden and not to be comprehended except by the study of symptoms, we must also study the symptoms of health and disease. Now it is established in the sciences that no knowledge is acquired save through the study of its causes and beginnings, if it has had causes and beginnings; nor completed except by knowledge of its accidents and accompanying essentials. Of these causes there are four kinds: material, efficient, formal, and final.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
I had always heard it maintained...

I had always heard it maintained by my father, and was myself convinced, that the object of education should be to form the strongest possible associations of the salutary class; associations of pleasure with all things beneficial to the great whole, and of pain with all things hurtful to it.

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(p. 136)
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 3 weeks ago
The new education must consist essentially...

The new education must consist essentially in this, that it completely destroys freedom of will in the soil which it undertakes to cultivate, and produces on the contrary strict necessity in the decisions of the will, the opposite being impossible. Such a will can henceforth be relied on with confidence and certainty.

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Addresses to the German Nation (1807), Second Address : "The General Nature of the New Education". Chicago and London, The Open Court Publishing Company, 1922, p. 20.
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
4 months 2 days ago
Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing...

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months 4 days ago
If I'm a cruel satirist at...

If I'm a cruel satirist at least I'm not a hyprocrite: I never judge what other people do. Neither a politician nor a priest, I never censor what others do. Neither a philospher nor a psychiatrist, I never bother trying to analyze or resolve my fears and neuroses.

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"Hypocrisy"
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 1 week ago
Nothing can well be imagined more...

Nothing can well be imagined more painful than the present position of woman, unless, on the one hand, she renounces all outward activity and keeps herself within the magic sphere, the bubble of her dreams; or, on the other, surrendering all aspiration, she gives herself to her real life, soul and body. For those to whom it is possible, the latter is best; for out of activity may come thought, out of mere aspiration can come nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 days 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
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
Every one who has a heart...

Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor-that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.

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To the Working People, Complete Works, trans. Leo Wiener, Vol 24, p. 129
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months ago
There is no good father who...

There is no good father who would want to resemble our Heavenly Father.

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No. 51
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
He that knows anything, knows this,...

He that knows anything, knows this, in the first place, that he need not seek long for instances of his ignorance.

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Book IV, Ch. 3, sec. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Men are at variance with the...

Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
The problems are dissolved in the...

The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word - like a lump of sugar in water.

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 183
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is a political axiom that...

It is a political axiom that power follows property.

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Chapter 12 (p. 113)
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
4 months 2 weeks ago
Purity is for man, next to...

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

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(Extracts, p. 57)
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 1 week ago
The ideology of development has implied...

The ideology of development has implied the globalization of the priorities, patterns, and prejudices of the West. Instead of self-generated, development is imposed. Instead of coming from within, it is externally guided. Instead of contributing to the maintenance of diversity, development has created homogeneity...

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Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
How did this division of the...

How did this division of the nations come about, what was its basis? The division is in accordance with all the previous history of the nationalities in question. It is the beginning of the decision on the life or death of all these nations, large and small. All the earlier history of Austria up to the present day is proof of this and 1848 confirmed it. Among all the large and small nations of Austria, only three standard-bearers of progress took an active part in history, and still retain their vitality - the Germans, the Poles and the Magyars. Hence they are now revolutionary. All the other large and small nationalities and peoples are destined to perish before long in the revolutionary world storm. (Weltsturm). For that reason they are now counter-revolutionary.

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The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849).
Philosophical Maxims
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