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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 6 days ago
Opinion considers the opposition of what...

Opinion considers the opposition of what is true and false quite rigid, and, confronted with a philosophical system, it expects agreement or contradiction. And in an explanation of such a system, opinion still expects to find one or the other.

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Preface, § 2
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 2 weeks ago
A life which does not go...

A life which does not go into action is a failure.

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Vol. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 5 days ago
It is freedom, it is particularity,...

It is freedom, it is particularity, it is solitude that we are aiming at, and not Evil for its own sake.

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p. 179
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 week ago
And because it may be too...

And because it may be too great a temptation to human frailty, apt to grasp at power, for the same persons, who have the power of making laws, to have also in their hands the power to execute them, whereby they may exempt themselves from obedience to the laws they make, and suit the law, both in its making, and execution, to their own private advantage...

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. XII, sec. 143
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 5 days ago
It's a bit embarrassing to have...

It's a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.'

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As quoted in Huston Smith, "Aldous Huxley--A Tribute," The Psychedelic Review, (1964) Vol I, No.3, (Aldous Huxley Memorial Issue), p. 264-5
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
3 days ago
There comes up another difficulty which...

There comes up another difficulty which more nearly concerns our vanity: namely, the impossibility of our conceiving this property [the faculty of feeling] as a dependence or attribute of matter.

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Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
Plato was synthesis of Europe and...

Plato was synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise color.

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Quoted in Swami Abhedananda, India and Her People, 6th ed., Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, 1945
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 week ago
Now just as the historical gives...

Now just as the historical gives occasion for the contemporary to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself, since otherwise we speak Socratically, so the testimony of contemporaries gives occasion for each successor to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 1 week ago
When we consider the being and...

When we consider the being and substance of that universe in which we are immutably set, we shall discover that neither we ourselves nor any substance doth suffer death; for nothing is in fact diminished in its substance, but all things, wandering through infinite space, undergo change of aspect.

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Introductory Epistle
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 6 days ago
When we resist...
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Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month ago
It is the sidereal day, that...

It is the sidereal day, that is, the duration of the rotation of the earth, which is the constant unit of time. ...However ...many astronomers ...think that the tides act as a check on our globe, and that the rotation of the earth is becoming slower and slower. Thus would be explained the apparent acceleration of the motion of the moon...

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
5 days ago
Life is a System of Vital...

Life is a System of Vital Forces ; and the conception of such Forces involves a peculiar Fundamental Idea.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks ago
Tis the art of kings…

Tis the first art of kings, the power to suffer hate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
My mission is to suffer for...

My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
We are born believing. A man...

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

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Worship
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 weeks ago
Given our anthropocentric bias, thinking of...

Given our anthropocentric bias, thinking of non-human vertebrates not just as equivalent in moral status to toddlers or infants, but as though they were toddlers or infants, is a useful exercise. Such reconceptualisation helps correct our lack of empathy for sentient beings whose physical appearance is different from "us". Ethically, the practice of intelligent "anthropomorphism" shouldn't be shunned as unscientific, but embraced insofar as it augments our stunted capacity for empathy. Such anthropomorphism can be a valuable corrective to our cognitive and moral limitations. This is not a plea to be sentimental, simply for impartial benevolence.

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Reprogramming Predators, BLTC Research, 2009
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 day ago
So long as we love we...

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

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"Lay Morals" Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
With all these blessings, what more...

With all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more, fellow-citizens,-A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 2 weeks ago
So what is the alternative to...

So what is the alternative to traditional anthropocentric ethics? Antispeciesism is not the claim that "All Animals Are Equal", or that all species are of equal value, or that a human or a pig is equivalent to a mosquito. Rather the antispeciesist claims that, other things being equal, equally strong interests should count equally. Experiences that are subjectively negative or positive in hedonic tone to the same degree must count for the same.

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"The Antispeciesist Revolution", Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 26 Jul. 2013
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
Faith is a living, bold trust...

Faith is a living, bold trust in God's grace, so certain of God's favor that it would risk death a thousand times trusting in it. Such confidence and knowledge of God's grace makes you happy, joyful and bold in your relationship to God and all creatures. The Holy Spirit makes this happen through faith. Because of it, you freely, willingly and joyfully do good to everyone, serve everyone, suffer all kinds of things, love and praise the God who has shown you such grace.

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An Introduction to St. Paul's Letter to the Romans fromDr. Martin Luthers Vermischte Deutsche Schriften. Johann K. Irmischer, ed. Vol. 63(Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854), pp. 124-125. (EA 63:124-125)
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
5 days ago
To imply by the word "terrorism"...

To imply by the word "terrorism" that this sort of terror is the work exclusively of "terrorists" is misleading. The "legitimate" warfare of technologically advanced nations likewise is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against innocents. The distinction between the intention to perpetrate violence against innocents, as in "terrorism," and the willingness to do so, as in "war," is not a source of comfort.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 day ago
Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment....

Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment.

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Pt. I, ch. II.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
When an opinion has taken root...

When an opinion has taken root in a democracy and established itself in the minds of the majority, it afterward persists by itself, needing no effort to maintain it since no one attacks it. Those who at first rejected it as false come in the end to adopt it as accepted, and even those who still at the bottom of their hearts oppose it keep their views to themselves, taking great care to avoid a dangerous and futile contest.

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Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 5 days ago
The human imagination has seldom had...

The human imagination has seldom had before it an object so sublimely ordered as the medieval cosmos. If it has an aesthetic fault, it is perhaps, for us who have known romanticism, a shade too ordered. For all its vast spaces it might in the end afflict us with a kind of claustrophobia. Is there nowhere any vagueness? No undiscovered by-ways? No twilight? Can we never really get out of doors?

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The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature, 1964
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
It would seem that common sense...

It would seem that common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think it our bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to bring the peace-party and the war-party together, and I believe that the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the program of pacifism which set the military imagination strongly, and to a certain extent justifiably, against it. In the whole discussion both sides are on imaginative and sentimental ground. It is but one utopia against another, and everything one says must be abstract and hypothetical.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 weeks 3 days ago
The pity of all this is,...

The pity of all this is, you know, a man like that [Sri Ramakrishna] has to have disciples, or no one would ever hear about him. But somehow, as the generations pass, the flame dies out. And eventually the disciples kill him.I wish that there was a way of putting a time-bomb into scriptures and records - not a time-bomb, but some kind of invisible ink, so that all scriptures would un-print themselves about fifty years after the master's death. And just dissolve.

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Audio lecture Ramakrishna, Ramana, and Krishnamurti
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month ago
To this end they make a...

To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 6 days ago
The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising...

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.

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Quoted in Hawes The Logic of Contemporary English Realism (1923), p. 110
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 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
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
A culture is in its finest...

A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.

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Ch. 22, August 17, 1941.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 1 day ago
We ourselves are the entities to...

We ourselves are the entities to be analyzed.

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Macquarrie & Robinson translation
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 1 week ago
In the final, positive state, the...

In the final, positive state, the mind has given over the vain search after Abolute notions, the origin and destination of the universe, and the cause of phenomenon, and applies itself to the tudy of their laws, - that is, their invariable relations of succession and resemblance. Reasoning and observation, duly combined, are the means of this knowledge. What is now understood when we speak of an explanation of the facts is simply the establishment of a connection between single phenomena and some general facts, the number of which continually diminishes with the progress of science.

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Vol I
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
The idea of creating a national...

The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.

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Letter to Thomas Law, 1813. FE 9:433
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 days ago
..If you are troubled by external...

..If you are troubled by external circumstances, it is not the circumstances that trouble you, but your own perception of them - and they are in your power to change at any time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
2 days ago
I need not tell you, what...

I need not tell you, what complaints the more candid and judicious of the Chymists themselves are wont to make of those boasters, that confidently pretend, that they have extracted the salt or sulphur of quicksilver, when they have disguised it by additaments, wherewith it resembles the concretes, whose names are given it; whereas by a skilful and rigid examen, it may be easily enough stripped of its disguises, and made to appear again in the pristine form of running mercury. The pretended salts and sulphurs being so far from being elementary parts extracted out of the body of mercury, that they are rather... de-compound bodies, made up of the whole metal and the menstruum, or other additaments employed to disguise it.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
In modern eyes, precious though wars...

In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 2 weeks ago
These two states which it is...

These two states which it is necessary to know together in order to see the whole truth, being known separately, lead necessarily to one of these two vices, pride or indolence, in which all men are invariably led before grace, since if they do not remain in their disorders through laxity, they forsake them through vanity, so true is that which you have just repeated to me from St. Augustine, and which I find to a great extent; for in fact homage is rendered to them in many ways.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 2 weeks ago
To avoid falling…

To avoid falling into the toils of love is not so hard as, after you are caught, to get out of the nets you are in and to break through the strong meshes of Venus.

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Book IV, lines 1146-1148 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
The policy of American government is...

The policy of American government is to leave its citizens free, neither restraining them nor aiding them in their pursuits.

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Letter to M. L'Hommande, (1787), as quoted in The Jeffersonian Cyclopedia (1900), edited by John P. Foley, p. 500
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month ago
Two difficulties: (1) Can we transform...

Two difficulties: (1) Can we transform psychologic time, which is qualitative, into a quantitative time? (2) Can we reduce to one and the same measure facts which transpire in different worlds [of conscious beings]!

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
Skepticism is the sadism of embittered...

Skepticism is the sadism of embittered souls.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
There is no passion so contagious...

There is no passion so contagious as that of fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
I found one day in school...

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

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p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
A great stock, though with small...

A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.

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Chapter IX, p. 111.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks ago
Pain he endures, death he awaits.

Pain he endures, death he awaits.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 2 days ago
Material production - the production, for...

Material production - the production, for example, or cars, televisions, clothing, and food - creates the means of social life. ... Immaterial production, by contrast, including the production of ideas, knowledges, communication, cooperation, and affective relations, tends to create not the means of social life but social life itself. (146)

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146
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Man is a rational animal -...

Man is a rational animal - so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favor of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents. Often paraphrased as "It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 5 days ago
It is the magician's bargain: give...

It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 1 week ago
The medium of the chorus

In his seminar on The Ethic of Psychoanalysis, Lacan speaks of the role of the Chorus in classical tragedy: we, the spectators, came to the theatre worried, full of everyday problems, unable to adjust without reserve to the problems of the play, that is to feel the required fears and compassions - but not problem, there is a chorus, who feels the sorrow and the compassion instead of us - or, more precisely, we feel the required emotions through the medium of the chorus: 'You are then relieved of all worries, even if you do not feel anything, the Chorus will do so in your place.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social...

Obviously, Anarchism, or any other social theory, making man a conscious social unit, will act as a leaven for rebellion.

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Philosophical Maxims
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