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Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 day ago
Kierkegaard was by far the most...

Kierkegaard was by far the most profound thinker of the last century. Kierkegaard was a saint.

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As quoted in "Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard on the ethico-religious" by Roe Fremstedal in Ideas in History Vol. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 1 week ago
To pray to God….

To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.

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Notebooks, c.1735-c.1750
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 6 days ago
Science has adapted itself entirely to...

Science has adapted itself entirely to the wealthy classes and accordingly has set itself to heal those who can afford everything, and it prescribes the same methods for those who have nothing to spare.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 weeks ago
Power turns pure being into a...

Power turns pure being into a having.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
The state is primarily an organization...

The state is primarily an organization for killing foreigners.

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Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (1960), p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 6 days ago
Who am I? Subject and object...

Who am I? Subject and object in one - contemplating and contemplated, thinking and thought of. As both must I have become what I am.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 71
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 day ago
One can mistrust one's own senses,...

One can mistrust one's own senses, but not one's own belief. If there were a verb meaning "to believe falsely," it would not have any significant first person, present indicative.

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Pt II, p. 162
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 1 week ago
It is sometimes said….

It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare.

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Philosophical Dictionary ('Sens Commun') (1767). Compare Juvenal, Satires, viii:73: Original Latin: rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 4 days ago
Many evils, no doubt, were produced...

Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
God is the solitude of men....

God is the solitude of men. There was only me: I alone decided to commit Evil; alone, I invented Good. I am the one who cheated, I am the one who performed miracles, I am the one accusing myself today, I alone can absolve myself; me, the man.

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Act 10, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 4 days ago
I don't believe in an afterlife,...

I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 6 days ago
Nature is the best posture-master. p....

Nature is the best posture-master.

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p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 3 days ago
I did not hate the author...

I did not hate the author of my misfortunes - truth and justice acquit me of that; I rather pitied the hard destiny to which he seemed condemned. But I thought with unspeakable loathing of those errors, in consequence of which every man is fated to be, more or less, the tyrant or the slave. I was astonished at the folly of my species, that they did not rise up as one man, and shake off chains so ignominious, and misery so insupportable. So far as related to myself, I resolved - and this resolution has never been entirety forgotten by me - to hold myself disengaged from this odious scene, and never fill the part either of the oppressor or the sufferer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks ago
An untempted woman cannot boast of...

An untempted woman cannot boast of her chastity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 days ago
Speech structures the abyss of mental...

Speech structures the abyss of mental and acoustic space...it is a cosmic, invisible architecture of the human dark.

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(p. 13)
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 days ago
You cannot endow even the best...

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers.

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Ch. I: "Routineer and Inventor", p. 30.
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 5 days ago
It may be expedient but it...

It may be expedient but it is not just that some should have less in order that others may prosper.

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Chapter I, Section 3, pg. 15
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 4 days ago
It is the real....
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Main Content / General
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 day ago
The invasion... exhibits in stark terms,...

The invasion... exhibits in stark terms, the choice that is before us today between maintaining a liberal government that respects the rights of individuals, or moving over to a form of centralized illiberal dictatorship, even if that... illiberal government is somehow democratically legitimated. ...That's the central issue in global politics today. ...That's basically what the... Ukraine invasion is about, and that's why... all liberal societies that care about those individual freedoms... have a very powerful interest in the outcome of that war, because Putin and Russia are at the center of an international network of illiberal forces that are seeking to overturn liberal values in virtually every part of the world, and therefore... that's all part of a larger global struggle over our fundamental liberal values.

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26:50 Question & Answer period follows
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 1 week ago
The close-up of a face is...

The close-up of a face is as obscene as a sexual organ seen from up close. It is a sexual organ. The promiscuity of the detail, the zoom-in, takes on a sexual value.

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(p. 43)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
No protracted war can fail to...

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
These left me in no doubt...

These left me in no doubt that something was trying to communicate with us, but that direct communication would be counterproductive. It seemed to be an important part of the scheme to create a sense of mystery.

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p. 352
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 days ago
Perhaps some day soon we will...

Perhaps some day soon we will have arrived at the point when we can look back with irony at the barbaric old times when in order to be free we had to keep our own brothers and sisters slaves or to be equal we were constrained to inhuman sacrifices of freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months ago
In... "The Education of Children"... Plutarch...

In... "The Education of Children"... Plutarch gives an anecdote of Theocritus, a sophist, as an example of athuroglossos... he is... "a giant in impudence"... strong not because of his reason, or his rhetorical ability... or his ability to pronounce the truth, but only because he is arrogant. ...His fourth trait is... "putting his confidence in bluster." He is confident in thorubos... the noise made by a strong voice, by a scream, a clamor, or uproar. ...The final characteristic ...his confidence in ..."ignorant outspokenness..." ... it lacks mathesis ...-learning or wisdom.

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Ref: Plutarch, "The Education of Children", Moralia (1927) Vol. 1, Tr. Frank Cole Babbit, p. 4, The Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press.
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 1 week ago
One reason an egalitarian approach to...

One reason an egalitarian approach to the value of life is important is that it draws from ideals of radical democracy at the same time that it enters into ethical considerations about how best to practice nonviolence. The institutional life of violence will not be brought down by a prohibition, but only by a counter-institutional ethos and practice.

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p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
What would become of the rich,...

What would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage-workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 months 6 days ago
I would rather be a devil...

I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 5 days ago
We have two bits of evidence...

We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place.) ...The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put in our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.

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Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 days ago
Why is psychology the youngest of...

Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic - and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images - be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will - are lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive.

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p. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened...

Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs.

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Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 4 days ago
Law could never, by determining exactly...

Law could never, by determining exactly what is noblest and must just for one and all, enjoin upon them that which is best; for the differences of men and of actions and the fact that nothing, I may say, in human life is ever at rest, forbid any science whatsoever to promulgate any simple rule for everything and for all time. So, that which is persistently simple is inapplicable to things which are never simple.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 5 days ago
I fancy that most people who...

I fancy that most people who think at all have done a great deal of their thinking in the first fourteen years.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
All for ourselves, and nothing for...

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

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Chapter IV, p. 448.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 1 week ago
One thing I have frequently observed...

One thing I have frequently observed in children, that when they have got possession of any poor creature, they are apt to use it ill: they often torment, and treat it very roughly, young birds, butterflies, and such other poor animals which fall into their hands, and that with a seeming kind of pleasure. This I think should be watched in them, and if they incline to any such cruelty, they should be taught the contrary usage. For the custom of tormenting and killing of beasts, will, by degrees, harden their minds even towards men; and they will delight in the suffering and destruction of inferior creatures, will not be apt to be very compassionate or benign to those of their own kind. Our practice takes notice of this in the exclusion of butchers from juries of life and death.

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Sec. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
Nothing is so wearing as the...

Nothing is so wearing as the possession or abuse of liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
Bad times, hard times, this is...

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

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80:8
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
Where the frontier of science once...

Where the frontier of science once was is now the centre.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 153
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 4 weeks ago
The cry of equality pulls everyone...

The cry of equality pulls everyone down.

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Quoted in The Observer September 13, 1987.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 3 weeks ago
The essential characteristic of the first...

The essential characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century is the growing weakness, and almost the disappearance, of the idea of value.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 day ago
It seems to me as good...

It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English - the best race in the world - cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German.

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Writing about the eventual outcome of World War I, in which he was a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army (25 October 1914), as quoted in The First World War (2004) by Martin Gilbert, p. 104
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 1 week ago
Now the mass of mankind are...

Now the mass of mankind are plainly... choosing a life like that of brute animals...

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 6 days ago
Memento mori-remember death! These are important...

Memento mori-remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die-what makes this any different from a half hour?

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p. 209
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 week ago
Instead of noble men, let us...

Instead of noble men, let us have noble villages of men. If it is necessary, omit one bridge over the river, round a little there and throw one arch at least over the darker gulf of ignorance which surrounds us.

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Editorial, Andhra Granthalayam, vol. 1, no. 2 (1939) p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 6 days ago
It was these Romans who reunited...

It was these Romans who reunited in one State the Culture which had now been produced by the intermixture of different races, and thereby completed the period of Ancient Time, and closed the simple course of Ancient Civilization. With respect to its influence on Universal History, this nation, more than any other, was the blind and unconscious instrument for the furtherance of a higher World-Plan; after having formed itself, by its internal des tiny indicated above, into a most fit and proper instrument for that purpose.

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p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 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
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 1 week ago
It is perhaps not a surprise...

It is perhaps not a surprise that photography developed as a technological medium in the industrial age, when reality started to disappear. It is even perhaps the disappearance of reality that triggered this technical form. Reality found a way to mutate into an image.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 6 days ago
It seemed clear to me that...

It seemed clear to me that life and the world somehow depended upon me now. I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 6 days ago
No concrete test of what is...

No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon.

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"The Will to Believe" p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 5 days ago
I hate victims who respect their...

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

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Loser Wins (Les Séquestrés d'Altona: A Play in Five Acts)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
I have never yet seen any...

I have never yet seen any plan which has not been mended by the observation of those who were much inferior in understanding to the person who took the lead in the business.

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Philosophical Maxims
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