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Democritus
Democritus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Fools learn wisdom through misfortune.

Fools learn wisdom through misfortune.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 3 days ago
It's easy to support the status...

It's easy to support the status quo if one is not another of its victims.

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Reply to Meet the people who want to turn predators into herbivores, TreeHugger, 4 Dec. 2015
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
An observer studying the Solar system...

An observer studying the Solar system dispassionately, and finding himself capable of bringing the four giant planets to his notice, could reasonably say that the Solar system consisted of one star, four planets, and some traces of debris.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
Paradise on earth…

Paradise on earth is where I am.

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Le Mondain, 1736
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
Since the state must necessarily provide...

Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.

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Book V, Chapter XI, §13
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 2 weeks ago
In all the areas of life...

In all the areas of life where people have sought and found consolation through forbidding their desires-sex in particular, and taste in general-the habit of judgment is now to be stamped out.

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"Rays of Hope" (p. 106)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
Since Sputnik, the earth has been...

Since Sputnik, the earth has been wrapped in a dome-like blanket or bubble. Nature ended.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Self-trust is the first secret of...

Self-trust is the first secret of success.

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Success
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Love of the absolute engenders a...

Love of the absolute engenders a predilection for self-destruction. Hence the passion for monasteries and brothels. Cells and women, in both cases. Weariness with life fares well in the shadow of whores and saintly women.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding....

My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding. It is what lets me comprehend Buddha, but also what keeps me from following him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
He who is in love is...

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

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The Method of Nature, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 days ago
Aristotle, a mere bond-servant to...

Aristotle, a mere bond-servant to his logic, thereby rendering it contentious and well nigh useless.

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Rerum Novarum
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
The last peculiarity of consciousness to...

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
No one knows what he can...

No one knows what he can do till he tries.

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Maxim 786
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
5 days ago
Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is...

Reverence for life, veneratio vitæ, is the most direct and at the same time the profoundest achievement of my will-to-live. In reverence for life my knowledge passes into experience. The simple world- and life-affirmation which is within me just because I am will-to-live has, therefore, no need to enter into controversy with itself, if my will-to-live learns to think and yet does not understand the meaning of the world. In spite of the negative results of knowledge, I have to hold fast to world- and life-affirmation and deepen it. My life carries its own meaning in itself. This meaning lies in my living out the highest idea which shows itself in my will-to-live, the idea of reverence for life. With that for a starting-point I give value to my own life and to all the will-to-live which surrounds me, I persevere in activity, and I produce values.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 2 weeks ago
Technology is in its essence something...

Technology is in its essence something that human beings cannot master of their own accord.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 2 days ago
"What progress, you ask, have I...

"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That was indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.

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Seneca is quoting Hecato.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 4 weeks ago
When superstition is allowed to perform...

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

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Ch. 3, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
2 days ago
A mellow understanding of life and...

A mellow understanding of life and of human nature is, and always has been, the Chinese ideal of character, and from that understanding other qualities are derived, such as pacifism, contentment, calm and strength of endurance which distinguish the Chinese character.

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p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
[W]e hold, that the moral obligation...

[W]e hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
Every time that a man has,...

Every time that a man has, with a pure heart, called upon Osiris, Dionysus, Buddha, the Tao, etc., the Son of God has answered him by sending the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit has acted upon his soul, not by inciting him to abandon his religious tradition, but by bestowing upon him light - and in the best of cases the fullness of light - in the heart of that same religious tradition. ... It is, therefore, useless to send out missions to prevail upon the peoples of Asia, Africa or Oceania to enter the Church.

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Section 8
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
5 days ago
I do not want to frighten...

I do not want to frighten you by telling you about the temptations life will bring. Anyone who is healthy in spirit will overcome them. But there is something I want you to realize. It does not matter so much what you do. What matters is whether your soul is harmed by what you do. If your soul is harmed, something irreparable happens, the extent of which you won't realize until it will be too late.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
If we cut up beasts simply...

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

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"Vivisection" (1947), p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Supply and demand constantly determine the...

Supply and demand constantly determine the prices of commodities; never balance, or only coincidentally; but the cost of production, for its part, determines the oscillations of supply and demand.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 58.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 weeks 4 days ago
He has begun by supposing that...

He has begun by supposing that light has a constant velocity... the same in all directions. This... could never be verified directly by experiment... The postulate... resembling the principle of sufficient reason... furnishes us with a new rule for the investigation of simultaneity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
For a truly religious man nothing...

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

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Conversation of 1930
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have cast fire upon the...

I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
Though you give no countenance to...

Though you give no countenance to the complaints of the querulous, yet take care to curb the insolence and ill nature of the injurious. When you observe it yourself, reprove it before the injur'd party: but if the complaint be of something really worth your notice, and prevention another time, then reprove the offender by himself alone, out of sight of him who complain'd and make him go and ask pardon, and make reparation; which ooming thus, as it were from himself, will be the more cheerfully performed, and more kindly receiv'd, the love strenghten'd between them, and a custom of civility grow familiar amongst your children.

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Sec. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks 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
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever is supreme in a state,...

Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the state.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 1 week ago
The first act of violence that...

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

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The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week ago
In refusing to face evil, Sinclair...

In refusing to face evil, Sinclair has gained nothing and lost a great deal; the Buddhist scripture expenses it: those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 1 week ago
I feel that I have within...

I feel that I have within me a medieval soul, and I believe that the soul of my country is medieval, that it has perforce passed through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the Revolution - learning from them, yes, but without allowing them to touch the soul, preserving the spiritual inheritance which has come down from what are called the Dark Ages. And Quixotism is simply the most desperate phase of the struggle between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, which was the offering of the Middle Ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
In Oran, as elsewhere, for want...

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 2 weeks ago
Humility is the fruit of inner...

Humility is the fruit of inner security and wise maturity. To be humble is to be so sure of one's self and one's mission that one can forego calling excessive attention to one's self and status. And, even more pointedly, to be humble is to revel in the accomplishments or potentials of others -- especially those with whom one identifies and to whom one is linked organically.

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(p38)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 days ago
Lastly, there are Idols which have...

Lastly, there are Idols which have immigrated into men's minds from the various dogmas of philosophies, and also from wrong laws of demonstration. These I call Idols of the Theater, because in my judgment all the received systems are but so many stage plays, representing worlds of their own creation after an unreal and scenic fashion.

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Aphorism 44
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 2 weeks ago
Can we find nothing good to...

Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.

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The Distracted Public (1990), p. 159
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
4 days ago
Above all, the ominous clouds of...

Above all, the ominous clouds of those phenomena that we are with varying success seeking to explain by means of the quantum of action, are throwing their shadows over the sphere of physical knowledge, threatening no one knows what new revolution.

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Ch. 3 "Relativity of Space and Time"
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 4 weeks ago
There is hardly a pioneer's hut...

There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.

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Book One, Chapter XIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Man flows at once to God...

Man flows at once to God when the channel of purity is open.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 2 weeks ago
With the abolition of otium and...

With the abolition of otium and of the ego no aloof thinking is left. ... Without otium philosophical thought is impossible, cannot be conceived or understood.

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p. 39.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
One must care about a world...

One must care about a world one will not see.

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Attributed to Russell in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 450, and in Robertson's Dictionary of Quotations (1998), p. 362, but no specific source is given.
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
4 months 1 week ago
Chance seldom interferes with the wise...

Chance seldom interferes with the wise man; his greatest and highest interests have been, are, and will be, directed by reason throughout his whole life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 4 weeks ago
He who seeks equality between unequals...

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

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Ch. 9, Of Aristocracy, Continuation
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
History is nothing but assisted and...

History is nothing but assisted and recorded memory. It might almost be said to be no science at all, if memory and faith in memory were not what science necessarily rest on. In order to sift evidence we must rely on some witness, and we must trust experience before we proceed to expand it. The line between what is known scientifically and what has to be assumed in order to support knowledge is impossible to draw. Memory itself is an internal rumour; and when to this hearsay within the mind we add the falsified echoes that reach us from others, we have but a shifting and unseizable basis to build upon. The picture we frame of the past changes continually and grows every day less similar to the original experience which it purports to describe.

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Ch. 2 "History"
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Heaven and earth shall pass away,...

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

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Mark 13:31, KJV
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 days ago
Heretics cannot themselves appear good unless...

Heretics cannot themselves appear good unless they depict the Church as evil, false, and mendacious. They alone wish to be esteemed as the good, but the Church must be made to appear evil in every respect.

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Dictata super Psalterium (Dictations on the Psalter). This is Luther's first major work from the years 1513 to 1515.
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
2 weeks 2 days ago
It seems to us that the...

It seems to us that the past is our property. Well, on the contrary - we are its property, because we are not able to make changes in it, while it fills the whole of our existence.

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Original: "Otóż przeciwnie - to my jesteśmy jej własnością, ponieważ nie jesteśmy w stanie dokonać w niej zmian, ona natomiast wypełnia całość naszego istnienia." Klucz niebieski albo opowieści biblijne zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
I don't believe...
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Main Content / General
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 month 3 days ago
There is no end. There is...

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

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Fellini on Fellini (1976) edited by Anna Keel and Christian Strich; translated by Isabel Quigly.
Philosophical Maxims
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