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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome...

I shall doubtless outlive some troublesome desires; but I am in no hurry about that; nor, when the time comes, shall I plume myself on the immunity just in the same way, I do not greatly pride myself on having outlived my belief in the fairy tales of Socialism. Old people have faults of their own; they tend to become cowardly, niggardly, and suspicious. Whether from the growth of experience or the decline of animal heat, I see that age leads to these and certain other faults; and it follows, of course, that while in one sense I hope I am journeying towards the truth, in another I am indubitably posting towards these forms and sources of error.

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Crabbed Age and Youth.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Every man would like to be...

Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

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Ch. 1: The Impulse to Power
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 months 1 week ago
To say that authority, whether secular...

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

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"The Meaning of Life".
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Impossible to spend sleepless nights and...

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
Every faculty in one man is...

Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your reason by my reason, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love. I neither have, nor can have, any other way of judging about them.

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Section I, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 1 week ago
Big industry, freed from the pressure...

Big industry, freed from the pressure of private property, will undergo such an expansion that what we now see will seem as petty in comparison as manufacture seems when put beside the big industry of our own day. This development of industry will make available to society a sufficient mass of products to satisfy the needs of everyone. The same will be true of agriculture, which also suffers from the pressure of private property and is held back by the division of privately owned land into small parcels. Here, existing improvements and scientific procedures will be put into practice, with a resulting leap forward which will assure to society all the products it needs. In this way, such an abundance of goods will be able to satisfy the needs of all its members.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 week 1 day ago
Militarism in both its forms -...

Militarism in both its forms - as war and as armed peace - is a legitimate child, a logical result of capitalism, which can only be overcome with the destruction of capitalism, and that hence whoever honestly desires world peace and liberation from the tremendous burden of armaments must also desire Socialism. Only in this way can real Social Democratic enlightenment and recruiting be carried on in connection with the armaments debate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
A man of understanding…

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

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Ch. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
1 week 4 days ago
How can a man be said...

How can a man be said to have a country where he has no right to a square inch of soil...

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Ch. 2 : Political Dangers
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that...

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 2 weeks ago
But how shall we expect charity...

But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.

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Section 4
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
He is great who is what...

He is great who is what he is from Nature, and who never reminds us of others.

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Uses of Great Men
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week ago
Invention is the mother....
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Max Scheler
Max Scheler
3 months 3 days ago
Instead of defining the word, let...

Instead of defining the word, let us briefly characterize or describe the phenomenon. Ressentiment is a self-poisoning of the mind which has quite definite causes and consequences. It is a lasting mental attitude, caused by the systematic repression of certain emotions and affects which, as such, are normal components of human nature. Their repression leads to the constant tendency to indulge in certain kinds of value delusions and corresponding value judgments. The emotions and affects primarily concerned are revenge, hatred, malice, envy, the impulse to detract, and spite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Better be mute, than dispute with...

Better be mute, than dispute with the Ignorant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1 month 3 weeks ago
I have been overcome by the...

I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light. ... Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Though the managing ourselves well in...

Though the managing ourselves well in this part of our behavior has the name good-breeding, as if a peculiar effect of education; yet... young children should not be much perplexed about it... Teach them humility, and to be good-natur'd, if you can, and this sort of manners will not be wanting; civility being in truth nothing but a care not to shew any slighting or contempt of any one in conversation.

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Sec. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
A man is...

A man is what he wills himself to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
"And your education! Is not that...

"And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class."

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As quoted in The Communist Manifesto (21 February 1848), p19-20.
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
3 weeks 1 day ago
The Greeks made Space the subject-matter...

The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. and certainty Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church... had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science "more geometrico". Matter... could be measured as a quantity and... its characteristic expression as a substance was the Law of Conservation of Matter... This, which has hitherto represented our knowledge of space and matter, and which was in many quarters claimed by philosophers as a priori knowledge, absolutely general and necessary, stands to-day a tottering structure.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
1 month 1 week ago
Friendship ... flourishes not so much...

Friendship ... flourishes not so much by kindnesses as by sincerity.

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Part 3
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself...

Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.

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"Wave Mechanics," p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
Well, it was healthy to miss...

Well, it was healthy to miss once in a while. It kept self-confidence balanced at a point safely short of arrogance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 5 days ago
Put up again thy sword into...

Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 5 days ago
And seeing every man is presumed...

And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit Arbitrator in his own cause.

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The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 78
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
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 week 5 days ago
When common words are appropriated as...

When common words are appropriated as technical terms, their meaning may be modified, and must be rigorously fixed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
In the course of my fight...

In the course of my fight with the school, I couldn't help but notice that I became a pariah. [...] Once, however, a fellow faculty member, making sure we were unobserved, said to me, "Isaac, the faculty is proud of you for your courage in fighting the administration for academic freedom."I said, "There's no courage involved in it. Don't you know my definition of academic freedom?""No. What's your definition of academic freedom?"I said, "Independent income."

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 1 week ago
Romantic poetry ... recognizes as its...

Romantic poetry ... recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.

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Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 116
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 1 week ago
If a given science accidentally reached...

If a given science accidentally reached its goal, this would by no means stop the workers in the field, who would be driven past their goal by the sheer momentum of the illusion of unlimited progress.

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p. 55
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
The law of faith, being a...

The law of faith, being a covenant of free grace, God alone can appoint what shall be necessarily believed by everyone whom He will justify. What is the faith which He will accept and account for righteousness, depends wholly on his good pleasure. For it is of grace, and not of right, that this faith is accepted. And therefore He alone can set the measures of it: and what he has so appointed and declared is alone necessary. No-body can add to these fundamental articles of faith; nor make any other necessary, but what God himself hath made, and declared to be so. And what these are which God requires of those who will enter into, and receive the benefits of the new covenant, has already been shown. An explicit belief of these is absolutely required of all those to whom the gospel of Jesus Christ is preached, and salvation through his name proposed.

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§ 156
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 6 days ago
Most men ebb and flow…

Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 weeks 2 days ago
I want to make one thing...

I want to make one thing absolutely clear. I am not a Zen Buddhist, I am not advocating Zen Buddhism, I am not trying to convert anyone to it. I have nothing to sell. I'm an entertainer. That is to say, in the same sense, that when you go to a concert and you listen to someone play Mozart, he has nothing to sell except the sound of the music. He doesn't want to convert you to anything. He doesn't want you to join an organization in favor of Mozart's music as opposed to, say, Beethoven's. And I approach you in the same spirit as a musician with his piano or a violinist with his violin. I just want you to enjoy a point of view that I enjoy.

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Alan Watts, on Zen
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
The cruelest lies are often told...

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his teeth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator. And how many loves have perished because, from pride, or spite, or diffidence, or that unmanly shame which withholds a man from daring to betray emotion, a lover, at the critical point of the relation, has but hung his head and held his tongue?

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Truth of Intercourse.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 6 days ago
The worm stood straight on God's...

The worm stood straight on God's blood-splattered threshold thenand beat his drum, beat it again, and raised his throat:'You've matched all well on earth, wine, women, bread, and song,but why, you Murderer, must you slay our children? Why?'God foamed with rage and raised his sword to pierce that throat,but his old copper sword, my lads, stuck at the bone.Then from his belt the worm drew his black-hilted sword,rushed up and slew that old decrepit god in heaven!And now, my gallant lads - I don't know when or how -that worm's god-slaying sword has fallen into my hands;I swear that from its topmost iron tip the blood still drips!

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Odysseus' song, Book III, line 424
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 1 week ago
The male has more teeth than...

The male has more teeth than the female in mankind, and sheep, and goats, and swine. This has not been observed in other animals.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 6 days ago
The advance of science….

The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile or vain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
Monopoly of one kind or another,...

Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.

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Chapter VII, Part Third, p. 684.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Three in the morning. I realize...

Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 5 days ago
In our university of Virginia you...

In our university of Virginia you know there is no Professorship of Divinity. A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion. Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed on the minds of some honest friends to the institution.

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Letter to Thomas Cooper (3 November 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12, p. 272
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 1 week ago
I am a sick man…

I am a sick man... I am a wicked man. An unattractive man.

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Part 1, Chapter 1
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
4 weeks ago
If a concept lacks an essence,...

If a concept lacks an essence, nothing will ever be found that completely fits that concept. If you are lacking in the concept of human being, it will immediately expose that you are something individual, something that cannot be expressed by the term human being, thus, in every instance, an individual human being.

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Landstreicher, p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Every man is a new method....

Every man is a new method.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
With Puritanism as the constant check...

With Puritanism as the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 5 days ago
Can we find nothing good to...

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

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The Distracted Public (1990), p. 159
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
How do we account for the...

How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium - in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 5 days ago
[E]veryone who has left houses or...

Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.

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19:29
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 5 days ago
Conquered people tend to be witty....

Conquered people tend to be witty.

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Mr. Sammler's Planet, (1976), p. 98
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 2 weeks ago
The heart of man is the...

The heart of man is the place the devil dwells in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself.

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Section 51
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
When Descartes said, "Conquer yourself rather...

When Descartes said, "Conquer yourself rather than the world," what he meant was, at bottom, - the same - that we should act without hope. Marxists, to whom I have said thus have answered: "Your action is limited, obviously, by your death: but you can rely upon the help of others.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
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