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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 3 weeks ago
In immediate self-consciousness the simple ego...

In immediate self-consciousness the simple ego is absolute object, which, however, is for us or in itself absolute mediation, and has as its essential moment substantial and solid independence. The dissolution of that simple unity is the result of the first experience; through this there is posited a pure self-consciousness, and a consciousness which is not purely for itself, but for another, i.e. as an existent consciousness, consciousness in the form and shape of thinghood. Both moments are essential, since, in the first instance, they are unlike and opposed, and their reflexion into unity has not yet come to light, they stand as two opposed forms or modes of consciousness. The one is independent whose essential nature is to be for itself, the other is dependent whose essence is life or existence for another. The former is the Master, or Lord, the latter is the Bondsman.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
From the Christian point of view...

From the Christian point of view it stands firm that the truly Christian venturing requires probability.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
Mr. Neo-Angular - I am doing...

Mr. Neo-Angular - I am doing my duty. My ethics are based on dogma, not on feeling. Vertue - I know that a rule is to be obeyed because it is a rule and not because it appeals to my feelings at the moment.

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Pilgrim's Regress 90
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 1 week ago
So live, my boys….

So live, my boys, as brave men; and if fortune is adverse, front its blows with brave hearts.

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Book II, Satire II, Line 135-136 (trans. E. C. Wickham)
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 6 days ago
Again and again…

Again and again our foe, religion, has given birth to deeds sinful and unholy.

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Book I, lines 82-83 (tr. C. Bailey)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
1 month 1 week ago
We must now ask how changes...

We must now ask how changes of this sort can come about, considering first discoveries, or novelties of fact, and then inventions, or novelties of theory. That distinction between discovery and invention or between fact and theory will, however, immediately prove to be exceedingly artificial.

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p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty...

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

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Section II, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
Life is just a notebook with...

Life is just a notebook with blank pages. Every time we make a mistake, the pages get stained and living in it becomes impossible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 4 days ago
Everywhere and at all times it...

Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce in thy present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined.

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VII, 54
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 1 week ago
Truth is the ultimate end of...

Truth is the ultimate end of the whole universe.

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I, 1, 2
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 3 weeks ago
The mathematical thermology created by Fourier...

The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.

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Book II: Astronomy, Ch. I: General View
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 3 weeks ago
Evils draw men together.

Evils draw men together.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 1 day ago
Some days will be sublime. Others...

Some days will be sublime. Others will be merely wonderful. But critically, there will be one particular texture ("what it feels like") of consciousness that will be missing from our lives; and that will be the texture of nastiness.

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"Feeling Groovy, Forever", Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, 14 Mar. 2012
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 6 days ago
It is the greatest of all...

It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do little.

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Lecture XIX : On the Conduct of the Understanding, Part II
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
5 months 1 week ago
After death the sensation...

After death the sensation is either pleasant or there is none at all. But this should be thought on from our youth up, so that we may be indifferent to death, and without this thought no one can be in a tranquil state of mind. For it is certain that we must die, and, for aught we know, this very day. Therefore, since death threatens every hour, how can he who fears it have any steadfastness of soul?

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section 74
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
In action, in desire, we must...

In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks ago
Our model citizen is a sophisticate...

Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato.

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Think Little
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 2 weeks ago
The task of the educator…

The task of the educator is to make the child's spirit pass again where its forefathers have gone, moving rapidly through certain stages but suppressing none of them. In this regard, the history of science must be our guide.

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[Logic and intuition in the science of mathematics and in teaching], L'enseignement mathématique
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
The Noble in the high place,...

The Noble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all times and in all countries, the Almighty Maker's Law.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 months 2 weeks ago
The principles of logic and mathematics...

The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

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p. 77.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
The rudest heathen that worshipped Canopus,...

The rudest heathen that worshipped Canopus, or the Caabah Black-Stone, he, as we saw, was superior to the horse that worshipped nothing at all! Nay there was a kind of lasting merit in that poor act of his; analogous to what is still meritorious in Poets: recognition of a certain endless divine beauty and significance in stars and all natural objects whatsoever.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of...

Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts - that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man.

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p. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 month 1 week ago
You have the courage to tell...

You have the courage to tell the masses what no politician told them: you are inferior and all the improvements in your conditions which you simply take for granted you owe to the effort of men who are better than you. If this be arrogance, as some of your critics observed, it is still the truth that had to said in the age of the Welfare State.

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Mises' letter to Ayn Rand praising Atlas Shrugged,(23 January 1958), quoted in Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism (2007).
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 3 weeks ago
The order and connection…

The order and connection of the thought is identical to with the order and connection of the things.

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Part II, Prop. VII
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 week 5 days ago
Jesus is too colossal for...

Jesus is too colossal for the pen of phrasemongers, however artful. No man can dispose of Christianity with a bon mot.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
2 weeks 4 days ago
Without the collapse of capitalism the...

Without the collapse of capitalism the expropriation of the capitalist class is impossible.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks 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
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 4 days ago
The universal intelligence puts itself in...

The universal intelligence puts itself in motion for every separate effect... or it puts itself in motion once, and everything else comes by way of a sequence in a manner; or individual elements are the origin of all things. In a word, if there is a god, all is well; and if chance rules, do not thou be governed by it.

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IX, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 6 days ago
No period of history has ever...

No period of history has ever been great or ever can be that does not act on some sort of high, idealistic motives, and idealism in our time has been shoved aside, and we are paying the penalty for it.

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Ch. 32, January 13, 1944.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
To recognize this clearly is enough...

To recognize this clearly is enough to drive a man out of his senses or to make him shoot himself. And this is just what does happen, and especially often among military men. A man need only come to himself for an instant to be impelled inevitably to such an end.

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Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
Lamarck, sagacious as many of his...

Lamarck, sagacious as many of his views were, mingled them with so much that was crude and even absurd, as to neutralize the benefit which his originality might have effected had he been a more sober and cautious thinker…

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Ch.2, p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
The freest importation of salt provisions,...

The freest importation of salt provisions, in the same manner, could have as little effect upon the interest of the graziers of Great Britain as that of live cattle. Salt provisions are not only a very bulky commodity, but when compared with fresh meat, they are a commodity both of worse quality, and as they cost more labour and expence, of higher price. They could never, therefore, come into competition with the fresh meat, though they might with the salt provisions of the country.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
4 months 1 week ago
The sight of both eyes…

The sight of both eyes becomes one.

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fr. 88
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Only the skilled....
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Main Content / General
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 1 week ago
The phrase, the world wants to...

The phrase, the world wants to be deceived, has become truer than had ever been intended. People are not only, as the saying goes, falling for the swindle; if it guarantees them even the most fleeting gratification they desire a deception which is nonetheless transparent to them. They force their eyes shut and voice approval, in a kind of self-loathing, for what is meted out to them, knowing fully the purpose for which it is manufactured. Without admitting it they sense that their lives would be completely intolerable as soon as they no longer clung to satisfactions which are none at all.

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Section 10
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
There must have been many who...

There must have been many who had a relationship to Jesus similar to that of Barabbas (his name was Jesus Barrabas). The Danish "Barrabas" is about the same as "N.N." [Mr. X or John Doe], filius patris, his father's son. - It is too bad, however, that we do not know anything more about Barrabas; it seems to me that in many ways he could have become a counterpart to the Wandering Jew. The rest of his life must have taken a singular turn. God knows whether or not he became a Christian. - It would be a poetic motif to have him, gripped by Christ's divine power, step forward and witness for him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
All exact science is dominated by...

All exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.

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The Scientific Outlook (1931), Part I, chapter II, "Characteristics of the Scientific Method"
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Sabbath is not simply a...

The Sabbath is not simply a time to rest, to recuperate. We should look at our work from the outside, not just from within.

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p. 91e
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Mathematics takes us still further from...

Mathematics takes us still further from what is human, into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the world, but every possible world, must conform.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Is there anything in life so...

Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?

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The Suicide Club, The Adventure of the Hansom Cabs.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 days ago
Practice justice in word and deed,...

Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
Human beings can lose their lives...

Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

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Him with His Foot in His Mouth, from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4], p. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Lucidity's task: to attain a correct...

Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
Your favor of July 2. came...

Your favor of July 2. came duly to hand. The concern you therein express as to the effect of your pamphlet in America, induces me to trouble you with some observations on that subject.

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Benjamin Wade speech about Jefferson's letter about Price's work Observations on the Importance of the American Revolution as quoted in the Congressional Record, 1854, pp. 312-313
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 6 days ago
In a sense, all explanation must...

In a sense, all explanation must end in an ultimate arbitrariness.

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Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
Q. You do not consider your...

Q. You do not consider your statement a disloyal one? A. No, sir. Scientific truth is beyond loyalty and disloyalty. Q. You are sure that your statement represents scientific truth? A. I am.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 4 days ago
Corruption of politics has nothing to...

Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 day ago
If an angel were ever to...

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

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B 44
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 3 weeks ago
Could the activity of thinking as...

Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity be among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
Generals are, as a matter of...

Generals are, as a matter of course, allowed to be far more idiotic than ordinary human beings are permitted to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
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