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St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
Even then [at the time of...

Even then [at the time of Peter's speech in Acts 2] it was the last days; how much more so now, when there must still be as much time till the end of the world as has passed since the ascension of the Lord! We do not know the end of the world, because it is not for us to know the times or the seasons that the Father has set in his power; but we know that, like the apostles, we live in the last times, in the last days, in the last hour. Those who lived after the apostles and before us were more in what we call the last times, and we ourselves are in them even more than they; those who will come after us will be so much more, till one gets to those who will be, if one may say so, the last of the last, and finally till that day, the very last, of which the Lord means to speak when he said, "And I will raise him up on the last day". How far are we from that day? That is an impenetrable secret.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
The animals are much more content...

The animals are much more content with mere existence than we are; the plants are wholly so; and man is so according to how dull and insensitive he is. The animal's life consequently contains less suffering but also less pleasure than the human's, the direct reason being that on the one hand it is free from care and anxiety and the torments that attend them, but on the other is without hope and therefore has no share in that anticipation of a happy future which, together with the enchanting products of the imagination which accompany it, is the source of most of our greatest joys and pleasures. The animal lacks both anxiety and hope because its consciousness is restricted to what is clearly evident and thus to the present moment: the animal is the present incarnate.

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Vol. 2 "On the Suffering of the World" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 4 days ago
An intuitionist conception of justice is,...

An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.

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Chapter I, Section 8, pg. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 2 weeks ago
I believe that the unity of...

I believe that the unity of man as opposed to other living things derives from the fact that man is the conscious life of himself. Man is conscious of himself, of his future, which is death, of his smallness, of his impotence; he is aware of others as others; man is in nature, subject to its laws even if he transcends it with his thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1 month 3 weeks ago
Theology recognizes the contingency of human...

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

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p. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
Even more than in a poem,...

Even more than in a poem, it is the aphorism that the word is god.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 1 day ago
It is no longer a question...

It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.

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Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 4 weeks ago
If I were asked to name...

If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 weeks ago
The kingdom of heaven is like...

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof.

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13:31-32 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
A precise language awaits a completed...

A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 5 days ago
For the philosophy which is so...

For the philosophy which is so important in each of us is not a technical matter; it is our more or less dumb sense of what life honestly and deeply means. It is only partly got from books; it is our individual way of just seeing and feeling the total push and pressure of the cosmos. ...I have heard friends and colleagues try to popularize philosophy... but they soon grew dry, and then technical, and the results were only partially encouraging. So my enterprise is a bold one. The founder of pragmatism... gave... lectures... with that very word in its title,-flashes of brilliant light relieved against Cimmerian darkness! None of us... understood all that he said-yet here I stand making a very similar venture. ...There is... a curious fascination in hearing deep things talked about, even though neither we nor the disputants understand them. We get the problematic thrill, we feel the presence of the vastness.

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Lecture I, The Present Dilemma in Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
Only what we have not accomplished...

Only what we have not accomplished and what we could not accomplish matters to us, so that what remains of a whole life is only what it will not have been.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
The jingoes and war speculators are...

The jingoes and war speculators are filling the air with the sentimental slogan of hypocritical nationalism, "America for Americans," "America first, last, and all the time."

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 weeks ago
There is no fundamental biological reason...

There is no fundamental biological reason why the human genome can't be rewritten to allow everyone to be "in" love with everyone else - if we should so choose. But simply loving each other will be miraculous enough; and will probably suffice. An empty religious piety can be transformed into a biological reality. 

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"Brave New World? A Defence of Paradise-Engineering", BLTC Research, 1998
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
Einstein analyses the ideas of time-order...

Einstein analyses the ideas of time-order and of simultaneity. Primarily (according to his analysis) time-order only refers to the succession of events at a given place. Accordingly each given place has its own time-order. But these time-orders are not independent in the system of nature, and their correlation is known to us by means of physical measurement. Now ultimately all physical measurement depends upon coincidence in time and place.

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p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
2 months 3 weeks ago
One should attend….

One should attend to one's enemies, for they are the first persons to detect one's errors.

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§ 5
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are two atheisms of which...

There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.

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As quoted in The New Christianity (1967) edited by William Robert Miller
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
The wraith of Sigmund....
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Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Men are disturbed, not by things,...

Men are disturbed, not by things, but by the principles and notions which they form concerning things.

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(5). (Enchiridion 5)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
'T is so much to be...

T is so much to be a king, that he only is so by being so. The strange lustre that surrounds him conceals and shrouds him from us; our sight is there broken and dissipated, being stopped and filled by the prevailing light.

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Book III, Ch. 7. Of the Inconveniences of Greatness
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 6 days ago
The hidden significance of these fables...

The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel to the poetry and history, are not so remarkable as the readiness with which they may be made to express a variety of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make the sun, or the wind, or the sea symbols to signify exclusively the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the unconscious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noonday thoughts of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, always dwells in this auroral atmosphere.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 6 days ago
I do not wish to kill...

I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 days ago
This is the contradiction of racism,...

This is the contradiction of racism, colonialism, and all forms of tyranny: in order to treat a man like a dog, one must first recognize him as a man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 days ago
Virtue is the death of conscience...

Virtue is the death of conscience because it is the habit of Good, and yet the ethic of the honest man infinitely prefers virtue to the noblest agonies of conscience. Thus, being poses nonbeing and eliminates it. There is only being.

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p. 402
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 1 week ago
Guilt has to be understood not...

Guilt has to be understood not only as a way of checking one's own destructiveness, but as a mechanism for safeguarding the life of the other, one that emerges from our own need and dependency, from a sense that this life is not a life without another life. Indeed, when it turns into a safeguarding action, I am not sure it should still be called "guilt." If we do still use that term, we could conclude that "guilt" is strangely generative or that its productive form is reparation.

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p. 93
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 5 days ago
You worldly-minded people are most unfortunate!...

You worldly-minded people are most unfortunate! You are surrounded with sorrows and troubles overhead and underfoot and to the right and to the left, and you are enigmas even to yourselves.

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p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am convinced we do not...

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

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F 54
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The vitality of the ordinary members...

The vitality of the ordinary members of society is dependent on its Outsiders.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
2 months 3 days ago
How can a rational being be...

How can a rational being be ennobled by anything that is not obtained by its own exertions?

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
The true test of civilization is,...

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

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Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
The dominion of bad men is...

The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.

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IV, 3 Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 days ago
Better to be ignorant of a...

Better to be ignorant of a matter than half know it.

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Maxim 865
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months ago
Free-market fundamentalism trivializes the concern for...

Free-market fundamentalism trivializes the concern for public interest. It puts fear and insecurity in the hearts of anxiety-ridden workers. It also makes money-driven, poll-obsessed elected officials deferential to corporate goals of profit - often at the cost of the common good. ... The free-market fundamentalism that prevails in the United States today promotes the pervasive sleepwalking of the populace. People see that the false prophets are handsomely rewarded - with money, status and access to more power. ... We are experiencing the sad gangsterization of America - an unbridled grasp at power, wealth and status.

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Cornel West: Democracy Matters in The Globalist
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 weeks 4 days ago
Every oasis is an island that...

Every oasis is an island that has water inside it but not round it.

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Between Niger and Nile (London: Oxford UP, 1965) 20. Cyrenaïca's Green Mountain
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 days ago
"My field," said Goethe, "is time."...

"My field," said Goethe, "is time." That is indeed the absurd speech. What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out his adventure within the span of his lifetime.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 3 days ago
As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily...

As civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 6 days ago
Surplus value is exactly equal to...

Surplus value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one [is] exactly measured by the diminution of necessary labour.

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Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 259.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
I hung my verse in the...

I hung my verse in the wind Time and tide their faults will find.

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"The Test", as quoted in Emerson As A Poet (1883) by Joel Benton, p. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 days ago
Every ideology is contrary to human...

Every ideology is contrary to human psychology.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 5 days ago
As Being and Life are one...

As Being and Life are one and the same, so are Death and Nothingness one and the same. But there is no real Death and no real Nothing ness, as we have already said. There is, however, an Apparent Life, and this is the mixture of life and death, of being and nothingness.

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P. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 1 day ago
Kant speaks of the "thing-in-itself" (Ding...

Kant speaks of the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) in order to distinguish it from the "thing-for-us" (Ding fur uns), that is, as a "phenomenon." A thing-in-itself is that which is not approachable through experience as are the rocks, plants, and animals. Every thing-for-us is as a thing and also a thing-in-itself, which means that it is recognized absolutely withing the absolute knowledge of God. But not every thing-in-itself is also a thing-for-us: God, for instance, is a thing-in-itself, as Kant uses the word, according to the meaning of Christian theology.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
We are all secularised anarchists today.

We are all secularised anarchists today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 days ago
Without an understanding of causality there...

Without an understanding of causality there can be no theory of communication. What passes as information theory today is not communication at all, but merely transportation.

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(p. 362)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 days ago
Renaissance Italy became a kind of...

Renaissance Italy became a kind of Hollywood collection of sets of antiquity, and the new visual antiquarianism of the Renaissance provided an avenue to power for men of any class.

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(p. 136)
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 3 weeks ago
Love is the extremely difficult realisation...

Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real. Love, and so art and morals, is the discovery of reality.

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"The Sublime and the Good", in the Chicago Review, Vol. 13 Issue 3 (Autumn 1959) p. 51.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 days ago
Then I dreamed that one day...

Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them and the jailer said as he put down the pipkin:'Our relations with the cow are not delicate-as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.' ... John said, 'Thank heavens! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense. You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.' 'And pray, what difference is there except by custom?''Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?'

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Pilgrim's Regress 49
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The point I wish to make...

The point I wish to make is that I became aware that we discipline our minds to see only certain aspects of the world; life is complicated, and we need all our wits about us to deal with its complexities. There would be no great point in having second sight or thaumaturgic powers for most of us. But it is worth observing that they can generally be developed where needed.

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p. 240
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
It is the highest impertinence and...

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expence, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.

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Chapter III, p. 381.
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 1 week ago
Fundamental principles

The source of totalitarianism is a dogmatic attachment to the official word: the lack of laughter, of ironic detachment. An excessive commitment to Good may in itself become the greatest Evil: real Evil is any kind of fanatical dogmatism, especially exerted in the name of supreme Good... Consider only Mozart's Don Giovanni at the end of the opera, when he is confronted with the following choice: if he confesses his sins, he can still achieve salvation; if he persists, he will be damned forever. From this viewpoint of the pleasure principle, the proper thing to do would be to renounce his past, but he does not, he persists in his Evil, although he knows that by persisting he will be damned forever. Paradoxically, with his final choice of Evil, he acquires the status of an ethical hero - that is, of someone who is guided by fundamental principles beyond the pleasure principle and not just by the search for pleasure or material gain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
I once received a letter from...

I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), Part III, chapter II, "Solipsism", p. 196
Philosophical Maxims
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