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Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 1 week ago
A modest man is steady, an...

A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

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Ch. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
...the Outsider's problem is the problem...

...the Outsider's problem is the problem of denial of self-expression.

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Chapter Four The Attempt to Gain Control
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 months 4 days ago
Imminent seems the collapse of that...

Imminent seems the collapse of that which for millennium has constituted man's universe. The new world which has arisen as an apparatus for supply of the necessaries of life compels everything and everyone to serve it. It annihilates whatever it has no place for person seems to be going undergoing absorption into that which is nothing more than a means to an end, into that which is devoid of purpose of significance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
Wherever we turn we find that...

Wherever we turn we find that the real obstacles to peace are human will and feeling, human convictions, prejudices, opinions. If we want to get rid of war we must get rid first of all of its psychological causes. Only when this has been done will the rulers of the nations even desire to get rid of the economic and political causes.

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Ch. 9, p. 138 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
3 months 5 days ago
The notion that one can discover...

The notion that one can discover large patterns or regularities in the procession of historical events is naturally attractive to those who are impressed by the success of the natural sciences in classifying, correlating, and above all predicting.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
No matter how various the subject...

No matter how various the subject matter I write on, I was a science-fiction writer first and it is as a science-fiction writer that I want to be identified.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
The man is making preparations for...

The man is making preparations for a year, and does not know that he will die before evening. And I remembered God's second saying, "Learn what is not given to man." 'What dwells in man" I already knew. Now I learnt what is not given him. It is not given to man to know his own needs.

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Ch. XI
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 6 days ago
The doctrine of Right and Wrong,...

The doctrine of Right and Wrong, is perpetually disputed, both by Pen and the Sword: Whereas the doctrine of Lines, and Figures, is not so; because men care not, in that subject what be truth, as a thing that crosses no mans ambition, profit, or lust. For I doubt not, but if it had been a thing contrary to any mans right of dominion, or to the interest of men that have dominion, That the three Angles of a Triangle, should be equall to two Angles of a Square; that doctrine should have been, if not disputed, yet by the burning of all books of Geometry, suppressed, as far as he whom it concerned was able.

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The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 80-81
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 6 days ago
We sometimes imagine, under the influence...

We sometimes imagine, under the influence of Spenglerian philosophy or some other kind of "historical morphology," that we live in a similar age [to the Romans], the last witnesses of a condemned civilization. But condemned by whom? Not by God, but by some supposed "historical laws." For although we do not know any historical laws, we are in fact able of inventing them quite freely, and such laws, once invented, can then be realized in the form of self-fulfilling prophecies.

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Looking for the Barbarians
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 3 weeks ago
Human intuitions are systematically biased. Evolutionary...

Human intuitions are systematically biased. Evolutionary psychology explains how our moral intuitions and the rationalisations they spawn have been shaped by millennia of natural selection to maximise the inclusive fitness of our genes, not to track the welfare of other sentient beings impartially conceived. Many human cultures have found nothing intuitively wrong with aggressive warfare, slavery, wife-beating, infanticide or female genital mutilation. Ultimately, folk morality is a doomed enterprise as hopeless as folk physics. A mature posthuman ethics, I'd argue, must be committed to the well-being of all sentient life; and mature posthuman technology offers the means to deliver that commitment.

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"Post-Darwinian Ethics?", H+ Magazine, May 2009
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 3 weeks ago
Without narration, life is purely additive.

Without narration, life is purely additive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 2 weeks ago
People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty,...

People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
3 weeks 3 days ago
We came to a tree which...

We came to a tree which was still bare, and on which the birds were singing out gaily in the morning, without any fear of us. Then stooping over like an Indian on the hunt, my companion placed a pebble in the leather of his sling and stretched it. Obeying his peremptory glance I did the same, with frightful twinges of conscience, vowing firmly that I would shoot when he did. At that very moment the church bells began to sound, mingling with the song of the birds in the sunshine. It was the warning bell that came a half-hour before the main bell. For me it was a voice from heaven. I threw the sling down, scaring the birds away, so that they were safe from my companion's sling, and fled home. And ever afterwards when the bells of Holy Week ring out amidst the leafless trees in the sunshine I remember with moving gratitude how they rang into my heart at that time the commandment: Thou shalt not kill.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks ago
It is to this law that...

It is to this law that our souls must adjust themselves, this they should follow, this they should obey. Whatever happens, assume that it was bound to happen, and do not be willing to rail at Nature. That which you cannot reform, it is best to endure, and to attend uncomplainingly upon the God under whose guidance everything progresses; for it is a bad soldier who grumbles when following his commander.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
Here then we may learn the...

Here then we may learn the fallacy of the remark... that any particular state is weak, though fertile, populous, and well cultivated, merely because it wants money. It appears that the want of money can never injure any state within itself: For men and commodities are the real strength of any community. It is the simple manner of living which here hurts the public, by confining the gold and silver to few hands, and preventing its universal diffusion and circulation. On the contrary, industry and refinements of all kinds incorporate it with the whole state, however small its quantity may be: They digest it into every vein, so to speak; and make it enter into every transaction and contract.

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Of Money (1752) as quoted in David Hume: Writings on Economics (1955, 1970) ed., Eugene Rotwein, p. 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 days ago
Our time is Gothic in...

Our time is Gothic in its spirit. Unlike the Renaissance, it is not dominated by a few outstanding personalities. The twentieth century has established the democracy of the intellect. In the republic of art and science, there are many men who take an equally important part in the intellectual movements of our age. It is the epoch rather than the individual that is important. There is no one dominant personality like Galileo or Newton. Even in the nineteenth century, there were still a few giants who outtopped all others. Today the general level is much higher than ever before in the history of the world, but there are few men whose stature immediately sets them apart from all others.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week ago
A man's body...
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Main Content / General
Xunzi
Xunzi
1 month 1 week ago
A person who is transformed by...

A person who is transformed by the instructions of a teacher, devotes himself to study, and abides by ritual and rightness may become a noble person, while one who follows his nature and emotions, is content to give free play to his passions, and abandons ritual and rightness is a lesser person.

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Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 180
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
If you don't want to explode...

If you don't want to explode with rage, leave your memory alone, abstain from burrowing there.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is nothing in any object,...

There is nothing in any object, consider'd in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it; [...] even after the observation of the frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience.

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Part 3, Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is the function of a...

It is the function of a judge not to make but to declare the law, according to the golden mete-wand of the law and not by the crooked cord of discretion.

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Preface to Brissot's Address
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 2 weeks ago
Irony is the form of paradox....

Irony is the form of paradox. Paradox is what is good and great at the same time.

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Aphorism 48, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968), p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
It has been said that love...

It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

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Paradoxe sur le Comédien
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
We have become like the most...

We have become like the most primitive Palaeolithic man, once more global wanderers, but information gatherers rather than food gatherers. From now on the source of food, wealth and life itself will be information.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
"And yet, it was not, not...

"And yet, it was not, not now, she that really counted. Or if she counted (and, oh, gloriously she did) it was for another's sake. The earth and stars and sun, all that was or will be, existed for his sake. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming. The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed with his approach. I cast down my eyes."

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Orual
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
There is only this swarm of...

There is only this swarm of dying creatures stricken with longevity, all the more hateful in that they are so good at organizing their agony. p. 120, first American edition

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1970
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
3 weeks ago
Heinrich Himmler's political tendencies were philo-monarchist...

Heinrich Himmler's political tendencies were philo-monarchist and Right-wing conservative, inherited from his father who had been the loyalist instructor of Heinrich, hereditary prince of Bavaria. He was especially fascinated by the ideal of the Order of Teutonic Knights, which we spoke of earlier. He wanted to make the SS a corps that would perform the same function of the state's central nucleus that the nobility had played with its unquestioning loyalty to the regime, but in a new form. For the formation of a man of the SS, he considered a blend of Spartan spirit and Prussian discipline. But he also had in view the order of Jesuits (Hitler jokingly used to call Himmler 'my Ignatius of Loyola').

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 6 days ago
The social contract....

The social contract between all people around the world only has one requirement: Don't kill. From there it's those who don't agree, those that agree but have some reactive justification, and those that agree and don't kill.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 weeks ago
...this our world, which is so...

...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
Perhaps the best hope for the...

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
The concept of space, therefore, is...

The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
The lot assigned to every man...

The lot assigned to every man is suited to him, and suits him to itself.

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III, 4
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 4 weeks ago
The antagonism between science and religion,...

The antagonism between science and religion, about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious - fabricated, on the one hand, by short-sighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension; and that, outside the boundaries of that province, they must be content with imagination, with hope, and with ignorance.

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"The interpreters of Genesis and the interpreters of Nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 1 week ago
We are only puppets, our strings...

We are only puppets, our strings are being pulled by unknown forces.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
Lord, you have cursed Cain and...

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 1 week ago
There are only Epicureans, either crude...

There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 months 3 weeks ago
A leftist government doesn't exist because...

A leftist government doesn't exist because being on the left has nothing to do with governments.

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from L'Abécédaire de Gilles Deleuze: G comme Gauche ("Gilles Deleuze's Alphabet Book: Left-wing Politics"), 1988-1989.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
It was the period of my...

It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.

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(p. 184)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
The tolls for the maintenance of...

The tolls for the maintenance of a high road, cannot with any safety be made the property of private persons.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 786 (See also.. Public-private partnerships).
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
No man who believes that all...

No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

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The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell: A fresh look at empiricism, 1927-42 (G. Allen & Unwin, 1996), p. 217
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 4 weeks ago
Both are torn halves of an...

Both are torn halves of an integral freedom, to which however they do not add up.

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On high culture and popular culture, in a letter to Walter Benjamin
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 6 days ago
Hegel's philosophy was an integral part...

Hegel's philosophy was an integral part of the culture which authoritarianism had to overcome. It is therefore no accident that the National Socialist assault on Hegel begins with the repudiation of his political theory.

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P. 411
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
...this Jewish doctrine of the primacy...

...this Jewish doctrine of the primacy of economic values has found the widest acceptance and been most whole-heartedly acted upon. From America it has begun to infect the rest of the world. We may be pardoned for wishing that the Jews had remained not forty, but four thousand years in their repulsive wilderness.

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"One and Many," pp. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
4 months 1 day 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
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 6 days ago
In an age of enormities, the...

In an age of enormities, the emotions are naturally weakened. We are continually called upon to have feelings - about genocide, for instance, or about famine or the blowing up of passenger planes - and we are all aware that we are incapable of reacting appropriately. A guilty consciousness of emotional inadequacy or impotence makes people doubt their own human weight.

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"The Distracted Public" (1990), p. 156
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 6 days ago
For I came to cause division,...

For I came to cause division, with a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 Indeed, a man's enemies will be those of his own household.

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10:35,36, New World Translation
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
Spontaneous love can reach the point...

Spontaneous love can reach the point of despair, shows that it is in despair, that even when it is happy it loves with the power of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
3 months 5 days ago
Everything is what it is: liberty...

Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 month 1 week ago
Nowhere is there more constancy and...

Nowhere is there more constancy and more unanimity than among the French to subordinate that sex which they pretend to honor so highly.

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The Theory of Social Organization
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 3 weeks ago
No sane person should believe that...

No sane person should believe that something is 'subjective' merely because it cannot be settled beyond controversy.

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Lecture IV: Reasonableness as a Fact and as a Value
Philosophical Maxims
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