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Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
To those whose talents are...

To those whose talents are above mediocrity, the highest subjects may be announced. To those who are below mediocrity, the highest subjects may not be announced.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 days ago
Literacy, in translating man out of...

Literacy, in translating man out of the closed world of tribal depth and resonance, gave man an eye for an ear and ushered him into a visual open world of specialized and divided consciousness.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 weeks ago
Humans are prone to status quo...

Humans are prone to status quo bias. So let's do a thought-experiment. Imagine we stumble across an advanced civilisation that has abolished predation, disease, famine, and all the horrors of primitive Darwinian life. The descendants of archaic lifeforms flourish unmolested in their wildlife parks - free living, but not "wild". Should we urge scrapping their regime of compassionate stewardship of the living world - and a return to asphyxiation, disembowelling and being eaten alive? Or is a happy biosphere best conserved intact? Reply to "Should humans wipe out all carnivorous animals so the succeeding generations of herbivores can live in peace?"

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, Quora, 16 Jun. 2018
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 3 days ago
The beginning in every task is...

The beginning in every task is the chief thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The most disadvantageous peace is better...

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

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Adagia, 1508
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions...

Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

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p. 259.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
The retinue of a grandee in...

The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe.

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Chapter XI, Part III, Third Period, p. 240.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
Stop Traveller! Near this place lieth...

Stop Traveller! Near this place lieth John Locke. If you ask what kind of a man he was, he answers that he lived content with his own small fortune. Bred a scholar he made his learning subservient only to the cause of truth. This thou will learn from his writings, which will show thee everything else concerning him, with greater truth, than the suspect praises of an epitaph. His virtues, indeed, if he had any, were too little for him to propose as matter of praise to himself, or as an example to thee. Let his vices be buried together. As to an example of manners, if you seek that, you have it in the Gospels; of vices, to wish you have one nowhere; if mortality, certainly, (and may it profit thee), thou hast one here and everywhere.

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Epitaph, as translated from the Latin.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 3 weeks ago
Any reductionist program has to be...

Any reductionist program has to be based on an analysis of what is to be reduced. If the analysis leaves something out, the problem will be falsely posed.

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p. 167.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
5 days ago
Nearly all of it is now...

Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will.

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Letter to John Adams (1819) ME 15:224
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 5 days ago
The Quaestor turned back the pages...

The Quaestor turned back the pages until he found himself among the Pensées. "We are not satisfied," he read, "with the life we have in ourselves and our own being; we want to live an imaginary life in other people's idea of us. Hence all our efforts are directed to seeming what we are not. We labor incessantly to preserve and embellish this imaginary being, and neglect that which is really ours." The Quaestor put down the book, ... and ruefully reflected that all his own troubles had arisen from this desire to seem what in fact he was not. To seem a man of action, when in fact he was a contemplative; to seem a politician, when nature had made him an introspective psychologist; to seem a wit, which God had intended him for a sage.

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"Variations on a Philosopher" in Themes and Variations (1943), p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 5 days ago
I cannot call this Shakspeare a...

I cannot call this Shakspeare a "Sceptic," as some do; his indifference to the creeds and theological quarrels of his time misleading them. No: neither unpatriotic, though he says little about his Patriotism; nor sceptic, though he says little about his Faith. Such "indifference" was the fruit of his greatness withal: his whole heart was in his own grand sphere of worship (we may call it such); these other controversies, vitally important to other men, were not vital to him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 4 weeks ago
My intention was not to deal...

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth telling... [W]ho is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relations to power. ...[W]ith the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the 'critical' tradition in the West.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Every living creature commences its existence...

Every living creature commences its existence under a form different from, and simpler than, that which it eventually attains.

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Ch.2, p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
The mind itself, its love [of...

The mind itself, its love [of itself] and its knowledge [of itself] are a kind of trinity.

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(Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 4, Section 4, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
The human understanding when it has...

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

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Aphorism 46
Philosophical Maxims
Chrysippus
Chrysippus
3 months 3 weeks ago
He who is running a race...

He who is running a race ought to endeavor and strive to the utmost of his ability to come off victor; but it is utterly wrong for him to trip up his competitor, or to push him aside. So in life it is not unfair for one to seek for himself what may accrue to his benefit; but it is not right to take it from another.

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As quoted in De Officiis by Cicero, iii. 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 6 days ago
Do you ask me whom I...

Do you ask me whom I have conquered? Neither the Persians, nor the far-off Medes, nor any warlike race that lies beyond the Dahae; not these, but greed, ambition, and the fear of death that has conquered the conquerors of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 5 days ago
The most any one can do...

The most any one can do is to confess as candidly as he can the grounds for the faith that is in him, and leave his example to work on others as it may.

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The Dilemma of Determinism, 1884
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 days ago
Receive an injury rather than do...

Receive an injury rather than do one.

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Maxim 5
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
It is dangerous…

It is dangerous to be right in matters where established men are wrong.

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Le Siècle de Louis XIV (1752) Fontenelle Note: The most frequently attributed variant of this quote is: It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
The long habit of living indisposeth...

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 5 days ago
The executive of the modern State...

The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

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As quoted in the Communist Manifesto (1848) p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
I speak truth, not so much...

I speak truth, not so much as I would, but as much as I dare; and I dare a little the more as I grow older.

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Book iii. Chap 2. Of Repentance
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
3 weeks 6 days ago
While the positivists were proclaiming the...

While the positivists were proclaiming the end "once and for all" of unverifiable metaphysical systems and speculative philosophy in general, new doctrines in flagrant contradiction to those ideals have sprung up one after the other. Positivists see no more in this development than evidence of human stupidity, not any reflection on themselves.

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Chapter Eight, Logical Empiricism, p. 198
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 weeks 2 days ago
For us in Russia, communism is...

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

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BBC Radio broadcast, Russian service, as quoted in The Listener
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
If a philosopher is not a...

If a philosopher is not a man, he is anything but a philosopher; he is above all a pedant, and a pedant is a caricature of a man. The cultivation of any branch of science - of chemistry, of physics, of geometry, of philology - may be a work of differentiated specialization, and even so, only within very narrow limits and restrictions; but philosophy, like poetry, is a work of integration and synthesis, or else it is merely pseudo-philosophical erudition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 5 days ago
Complete, at the same time, was...

Complete, at the same time, was his confidence in his own judgment when it spoke to him decisively. He was one of those few that could believe and know as well as inquire and be of opinion. When I remember how much he admired intellectual force, how much he had of it himself, and yet how unconsciously and contentedly he gave others credit for superiority, I again see the healthy spirit of the genuine man.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 1 day ago
Hast thou named....
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Main Content / General
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 day ago
The source of our actions resides...

The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, the cause, and the conclusion of time. Our reflexes and our pride transform into a planet the parcel of flesh and consciousness we are. If we had the right sense of our position in the world, if to compare were inseparable from to live, the revelation of our infinitesimal presence would crush us. But to live is to blind ourselves to our own dimensions. . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 6 days ago
The place of the father in...

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one - particularly if he plays golf, which he usually does.

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Introduction to The New Generation, 1930
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 months 1 day ago
The principles of logic and mathematics...

The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

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p. 77.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
Concerning the female sorcerer. Roman law...

Concerning the female sorcerer. Roman law also prescribes this. Why does the law name women more than men here, even though men are also guilty of this? Because women are more susceptible to those superstitions of Satan; take Eve, for example. They are commonly called "wise women." Let them be killed.

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Sermon on Exodus, 1526, WA XVI, p. 551 as quoted in Luther on Women: A Sourcebook, edited by Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, (2003), p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 5 days ago
I'll know how to die with...

I'll know how to die with courage; that is easier than living.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
If man in the state of...

If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. IX, sec. 123
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 4 days ago
I need Christ, not something that...

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 5 days ago
Out from the heart of Nature...

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old.

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The Problem, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
He was as great as a...

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

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Said of Napoleon (1842)
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 3 weeks ago
We are but dust….

We are but dust and shadow.

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Book IV, ode vii, line 16
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Verily I say unto you, All...

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

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(Mark 3:28-29) (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 5 days ago
To the wild deep-hearted man all...

To the wild deep-hearted man all was yet new, not veiled under names or formulas; it stood naked, flashing in on him there, beautiful, awful, unspeakable. Nature was to this man, what to the Thinker and Prophet it forever is, preternatural. This green flowery rock-built earth, the trees, the mountains, rivers, many-sounding seas;-that great deep sea of azure that swims overhead; the winds sweeping through it; the black cloud fashioning itself together, now pouring out fire, now hail and rain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 6 days ago
But no wall can be erected...

But no wall can be erected against Fortune which she cannot take by storm; let us strengthen our inner defences. If the inner part be safe, man can be attacked, but never captured.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
5 days ago
Every man should be protected in...

Every man should be protected in his lawful acts, and be certain that no ex post facto law shall punish or endamage him for them. ...The sentiment that ex post facto laws are against natural right, is so strong in the United States, that few, if any, of the State constitutions have failed to proscribe them. The federal constitution indeed interdicts them in criminal cases only; but they are equally unjust in civil as in criminal cases, and the omission of a caution which would have been right, does not justify the doing what is wrong. Nor ought it to be presumed that the legislature meant to use a phrase in an unjustifiable sense, if by rules of construction it can be ever strained to what is just.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
What song the Syrens sang, or...

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.

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Chapter V. Cf Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars: "Tiberius," Ch 70
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
'Tis from the resemblance of the...

Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry'd one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv'd, must also be resembling.

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Part 3, Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 5 days ago
If we owe to it [civil...

If we owe to it [civil society] any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now though civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind.

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p. 442
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 5 days ago
If anything is certain, it is...

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist

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Marx quoted and translated by Engels (in an 1882 letter to Eduard Bernstein) about the peculiar Marxism which arose in France 1882.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
By extensively studying all learning, and...

By extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, one may thus likewise not err from what is right.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 days ago
Everything is worth what its purchaser...

Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it.

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Maxim 847
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 2 weeks ago
You ask me why I do...

You ask me why I do not write something... I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

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Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
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