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Max Stirner
Max Stirner
4 weeks 1 day ago
The tiger that assails me is...

The tiger that assails me is in the right, and I who strike him down am also in the right. I defend against him not my right, but myself.

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S. Byington, trans. (1913), p. 191
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 3 weeks ago
Women are never supposed to have...

Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except "suckling their fools "; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first "claim of social life." They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their " duty " to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 1 week ago
Government was intended to suppress injustice,...

Government was intended to suppress injustice, but its effect has been to embody and perpetuate it.

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"Summary of Principles" 2.7
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 2 weeks ago
Whatever is referred to must exist....

Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

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P. 77.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
The criminal, like the artist, is...

The criminal, like the artist, is a social explorer.

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quoted in "Marshall McLuhan, Author, Dies; Declared 'Medium Is the Message'" by Alden Whitman, The New York Times, January 1, 1981
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 6 days ago
Blest is that nation whose silent...

Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say.

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Letter to Count Diodati
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 2 weeks ago
The best and safest method of...

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish these properties by experiment, and then to proceed more slowly to hypothesis for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

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Letter to Ignatius Pardies (1672) Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society (Feb. 1671/2) as quoted by William L. Harper
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 1 week ago
A text is not a text...

A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.

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Plato's Pharmacy, intro
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Power is the near neighbour of...

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

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As quoted in Aurea Carmina (8) by Hierocles of Alexandria, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 1 day ago
Generosity is nothing...
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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the...

Buddhism calls anger "corruption of the mind," Manicheism "root of the tree of death." I know this, but what good does it do me to know?

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 days ago
At fifteen my heart was...

At fifteen my heart was set on learning; at thirty I stood firm; at forty I had no more doubts; at fifty I knew the will of heaven; at sixty my ear was obedient; at seventy I could follow my heart's desire without overstepping the boundaries of what was right.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 5 days ago
We know that the real lesson...

We know that the real lesson to be taught is that the human person is precious and unique; but we seem unable to set it forth except in terms of ideology and abstraction.

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Ch. 10, p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
If I used to ask myself,...

If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, "what good did it do the occupant to be born?" I now put the same question about anyone alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 2 weeks ago
What does man actually know about...
What does man actually know about himself? Is he, indeed, ever able to perceive himself completely, as if laid out in a lighted display case? Does nature not conceal most things from him even concerning his own body in order to confine and lock him within a proud, deceptive consciousness, aloof from the coils of the bowels, the rapid flow of the blood stream, and the intricate quivering of the fibers! She threw away the key.
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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
When the husk gets separated from...

When the husk gets separated from the kernel, almost all men run after the husk and pay their respects to that. It is only the husk of Christianity that is so bruited and wide spread in this world; the kernel is still the very least and rarest of all things. There is not a single church founded on it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
I do not think it can...

I do not think it can be questioned that sympathy is a genuine motive, and that some people at some times are made somewhat uncomfortable by the sufferings of some other people. It is sympathy that has produced the many humanitarian advances of the last hundred years. We are shocked when we hear stories of the ill-treatment of lunatics, and there are now quite a number of asylums in which they are not ill-treated. Prisoners in Western countries are not supposed to be tortured, and when they are, there is an outcry if the facts are discovered. We do not approve of treating orphans as they are treated in Oliver Twist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 days ago
"Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of...

"Genius" (which means transcendent capacity of taking trouble, first of all).

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Life of Fredrick the Great, Bk. IV, ch. 3 (1858-1865). Sometimes misreported as "Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains";
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
2 months 3 weeks ago
It isn't at all a matter...

It isn't at all a matter of being optimistic, but rather of continuing to have faith in the ongoing and literally unending process of emancipation and enlightenment that, in my opinion, frames and gives direction to the intellectual vocation.

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Preface to 25th anniversary edition of Orientalism (1994), p. xv
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 week ago
I am sitting with a...

I am sitting with a philosopher in the garden; he says again and again "I know that that's a tree", pointing to a tree that is near us. Someone else arrives and hears this, and I tell them: "This fellow isn't insane. We are only doing philosophy."

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
If Nietzsche and Hegel serve as...

If Nietzsche and Hegel serve as alibis to the masters of Dachau and Karaganda, that does not condemn their entire philosophy. But it does lead to the suspicion that one aspect of their thought, or of their logic, can lead to these appalling conclusions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
Young man! Deny yourself satisfaction (of...

Young man! Deny yourself satisfaction (of amusement, of debauchery, of love, etc.), not with the Stoical intention of complete abstinence, but with the refined Epicurean intention of having in view an ever-growing pleasure. This stinginess with the cash of your vital urge makes you definitely richer through the postponement of pleasure, even if you should, for the most part, renounce the indulgence of it until the end of your life. The awareness of having pleasure under your control is, like everything idealistic, more fruitful and more abundant than everything that satisfies the sense through indulgence because it is thereby simultaneously consumed and consequently lost from the aggregate of totality.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 54.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
If death had only negative aspects,...

If death had only negative aspects, dying would be an unmanageable action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
I... believe in the rationalist tradition...

I... believe in the rationalist tradition of a commonwealth of learning, and in the urgent need to preserve this tradition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks ago
All the Good of mortals is...

All the Good of mortals is mortal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months ago
Uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the...

Uncertainty, doubt, perpetual wrestling with the mystery of our final destiny, mental despair, and the lack of any solid and stable foundation, may be the basis of an ethic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Philosophy's error is to be too...

Philosophy's error is to be too endurable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 1 week ago
This [experimentation] is the custom-and properly...

This [experimentation] is the custom-and properly so-in those sciences where mathematical demonstrations are applied to natural phenomena, as is seen in the case of perspective, astronomy, mechanics, music, and others where the principles, once established by well-chosen experiments, become the foundations of the entire superstructure.

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Salviati, Third Day. Change of Position
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks ago
Alexander, king of Macedon, began to...

Alexander, king of Macedon, began to study geometry; unhappy man, because he would thereby learn how puny was that earth of which he had seized but a fraction! Unhappy man, I repeat, because he was bound to understand that he was bearing a false title. For who can be "great" in that which is puny?

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 3 weeks ago
The progressive world is necessarily divided...

The progressive world is necessarily divided into two classes - those who take the best of what there is and enjoy it - those who wish for something better and try to create it. Without these two classes the world would be badly off. They are the very conditions of progress, both the one and the other. Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Nothing proves that we are more...

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 6 days ago
There is not a sprig of...

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

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Thomas Jefferson Letter (23 Dec 1790) to Martha Jefferson Randolph. Collected in B.L. Rayner (ed.), Sketches of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of Thomas Jefferson (1832), 192.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
And perhaps this habit of much...

And perhaps this habit of much travel, and the engendering of scattered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of ancient nations.

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Pt. I, ch. II.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
I am displeased with everything. If...

I am displeased with everything. If they made me God, I would immediately resign.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
Deem not life a thing of...

Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.

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IV, 50
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
3 weeks 3 days ago
Any religion or philosophy which is...

Any religion or philosophy which is not based on a respect for life is not a true religion or philosophy.

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Letter to a Japanese Animal Welfare Society (1961); also in The Words of Albert Schweitzer (1984) edited by ‎Norman Cousins, p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
How will one part of the...

How will one part of the infinite be above, and another below? Or how will it have extremes or a middle? Further still, every sensible body is in place; but the species and differences of place are upward and downward, before and behind, to the right hand and to the left: and these things not only thus subsist with relation to us, and by position, but have a definite subsistence in the universe itself. But it is impossible that these things should be in the infinite: and... that there should be an infinite place. But every body is in place; and therefore it is also impossible that there should be an infinite body. ...Therefore ...there is not an infinite body in energy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 3 weeks ago
Thinking is more erotic than calculating.

Thinking is more erotic than calculating.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
Why dost thou not pray... to...

Why dost thou not pray... to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?

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IX, 40
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
The life of God - the...

The life of God - the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things - may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things.

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§ 19
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
If God has made us…

If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

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Notebooks, c.1735-c.1750
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
We are born helpless. As soon...

We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness. We need others physically, emotionally, intellectually; we need them if we are to know anything, even ourselves. Introduction

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
Our habitual experience is a complex...

Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 2 days ago
All parties seem to be agreed...

All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
A real work of art…

A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Life consists with wildness. The most...

Life consists with wildness. The most alive is the wildest. Not yet subdued to man, its presence refreshes him.

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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
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
To resign oneself or to blow...

To resign oneself or to blow out one's brains, that is the choice one faces at certain moments. In any case, the only real dignity is that of exclusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 6 days ago
One's language is a spiritual location....

One's language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. ... Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.

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Part I, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man,...

The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

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II, 14
Philosophical Maxims
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