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Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 week 3 days ago
True philosophy must start from the...

True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."

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Chapter 26 "The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life"
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
The philosophy of Bergson, which is...

The philosophy of Bergson, which is a spiritualist restoration, essentially mystical, medieval, Quixotesque, has been called a demi-mondaine philosophy. Leave out the demi; call it mondaine, mundane. Mundane - yes, a philosophy for the world and not for philosophers, just as chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone. The world desires illusion (mundus vult decipi) - either the illusion antecedent to reason, which is poetry, or the illusion subsequent to reason, which is religion. And Machiavelli has said that whosoever wishes to delude will always find someone willing to be deluded. Blessed are they who are easily befooled!

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2 months 2 weeks ago
Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness,...

Hardness and softness, roughness and smoothness, moonlight and sunlight present themselves in our recollection not preeminently as sensory contents but as certain kinds of symbioses, certain ways outside has of invading us and certain ways we have of meets this invasion...

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p. 317
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
There lay certitude; there, in the...

There lay certitude; there, in the daily round. All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 day ago
I cannot imagine how the clockwork...

I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.

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As attributed in More Random Walks in Science : An Anthology (1982) by Robert L. Weber, p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 2 weeks ago
The dressing up and puffing up...

The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.

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p. 283
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 3 weeks ago
In the old system, the body...

In the old system, the body of the condemned man became the king's property, on which the sovereign left his mark and brought down the effects of his power. Now he will be rather the property of society, the object of a collective and useful appropriation.

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Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 days ago
The sentiments of men often differ...

The sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same ... In all matters of opinion and science, the case is opposite: The difference among men is there oftener found to lie in generals than in particulars; and to be less in reality than in appearance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months ago
Those who forget good and evil...

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 weeks ago
The capacity to give one's attention...

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 1 week ago
The two most far-reaching critical theories...

The two most far-reaching critical theories at the beginning of the latest phase of industrial society were those of Marx and Freud. Marx showed the moving powers and the conflicts in the social-historical process. Freud aimed at the critical uncovering of the inner conflicts. Both worked for the liberation of man, even though Marx's concept was more comprehensive and less time-bound than Freud's.

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The Art of Being" Pt. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
He that is without sin among...

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

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8:7 (King James Version)
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
2 months 2 weeks ago
Whenever convictions are not arrived at...

Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but indirectly through a critique of the opinions of others, the processes of thinking are impregnated with ressentiment. The establishment of "criteria" for testing the correctness of opinions then becomes the most important task. Genuine and fruitful criticism judges all opinions with reference to the object itself. Ressentiment criticism, on the contrary, accepts no "object" that has not stood the test of criticism.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 4 weeks ago
Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and...

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.

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Vol. I, Ch. 15 (last sentence), pg. 556.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 days ago
The infant runs toward it with...

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

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"Death"
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 weeks ago
No longer able to believe in...

No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art" took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months ago
You, your families, your friends and...

You, your families, your friends and your countries are to be exterminated by the common decision of a few brutal but powerful men. To please these men, all the private affections, all the public hopes, all that has been achieved in art, and knowledge and thought and all that might be achieved hereafter is to be wiped out forever. Our ruined lifeless planet will continue for countless ages to circle aimlessly round the sun unredeemed by the joys and loves, the occasional wisdom and the power to create beauty which have given value to human life.

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Leaflet issued while Russell was in Brixton Prison, 1961
Philosophical Maxims
John Herschel
John Herschel
1 week 1 day ago
Unfortunately... the philosophy of Aristotle laid...

Unfortunately... the philosophy of Aristotle laid it down as a principle, that the celestial motions were regulated by laws proper to themselves, and bearing no affinity to those which prevail on earth. By thus drawing a broad and impassable line of separation between celestial and terrestrial mechanics, it placed the former altogether out of the pale of experimental research, while it at the same time impeded the progress of the latter by the assumption of principles respecting natural and unnatural motions, hastily adopted from the most superficial and cursory and remark, undeserving even the name of observation. Astronomy therefore continued for ages a science of mere record, in which theory had no part, except in so far as it attempted to conciliate the inequalities of the celestial motions with that assumed law of uniform circular revolution which was alone considered consistent with the perfection of the heavenly mechanism.

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Ch.3 Of Cosmical Phenomena
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
3 months 2 weeks ago
Follow your desire as long as...

Follow your desire as long as you live and do not perform more than is ordered; do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... When riches are gained, follow desire, for riches will not profit if one is sluggish.

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Maxim no. 11.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months ago
I see again what I thought...

I see again what I thought I saw the first time, when I sent forth the little book that was compared to and in fact could best be compared to a humble little flower under the cover of the great forest.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 weeks ago
The heart of Christianity is a...

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact.

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"Myth Became Fact", 1944
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week ago
The chief impression left by a...

The chief impression left by a study of Crowley's life and works is that he wasted an immense amount of time and energy trying to shock everyone he came into contact with, and his dislike of orthodoxy turned him into an unconsciously comic figure, like Don Quixote.

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pp. 153-154
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
Reason is immortal, all else mortal....

Reason is immortal, all else mortal.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Sect. 30, as translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 2 days ago
Driving is a spectacular form of...

Driving is a spectacular form of amnesia. Everything is to be discovered, everything to be obliterated. Admittedly, there is the primal shock of the deserts and the dazzle of California, but when this is gone, the secondary brilliance of the journey begins, that of the excessive, pitiless distance, the infinity of anonymous faces and distances, or of certain miraculous geological formations, which ultimately testify to no human will, while keeping intact an image of upheaval. This form of travel admits of no exceptions: when it runs up against a known face, a familiar landscape, or some decipherable message, the spell is broken: the amnesic, ascetic, asymptotic charm of disappearance succumbs to affect and worldly semiology.

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Vanishing Point (pp. 9-10)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 4 weeks ago
Inferiority is always with us, and...

Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
"What do you do from morning...

"What do you do from morning to night?" "I endure myself."

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 weeks ago
What I give is the morphology...

What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.

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Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 2 weeks ago
Tomorrow we will….

Tomorrow we will be back on the vast ocean.

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The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations: The Illiterati's Guide to Latin Maxims, Mottoes, Proverbs and Sayings
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 1 week ago
Care and responsibility are constituent elements...

Care and responsibility are constituent elements of love, but without respect for and knowledge of the beloved person, love deteriorates into domination and possessiveness. Respect is not fear and awe; it denotes, in accordance with the root of the word (respicere = to look at), the ability to see a person as he is, to be aware of his individuality and uniqueness. To respect a person is not possible without knowing him; care and responsibility would be blind if they were not guided by the knowledge of the person's individuality.

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Ch. 3; in Ch. 2 of his later work The Art of Loving (1956) a similar statement is made :
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
2 months 3 weeks ago
Women are systematically degraded by receiving...

Women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions which men think it manly to pay to the sex, when, in fact, men are insultingly supporting their own superiority.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Each of us must....
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Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Men are at variance with the...

Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week ago
Taken as a whole, the Cross...

Taken as a whole, the Cross Correspondences and the Willet scripts are among the most convincing evidence that at present exists for life after death. For anyone who is prepared to devote weeks to studying them, they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Myers, Gurney, and Sidgwick went on communicating after death.

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p. 136
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months ago
Reading the morning newspaper is the...

Reading the morning newspaper is the realist's morning prayer. One orients one's attitude toward the world either by God or by what the world is. The former gives as much security as the latter, in that one knows how one stands.

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Miscellaneous writings of G.W.F. Hegel, translation by Jon Bartley Stewart, Northwestern University Press, 2002, page 247.
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
4 months 6 days ago
No more useful inquiry can be...

No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature ... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.

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Rules for the Direction of the Mind in Key Philosophical Writings (1997), pp. 29-30
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
The Dantean conceptions of Inferno were...

The Dantean conceptions of Inferno were childish and unworthy of the Divine imagination: fire and torture. Boredom is much more subtle. The inner torture of a mind unable to escape itself in any way, condemned to fester in its own exuding mental pus for all time, is much more fitting. Oh, yes, my friend, we have been judged, and condemned, too, and this is not Heaven, but hell.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 days ago
In any country where talent and...

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 1 day ago
For consequentialists, of course, the imperative...

For consequentialists, of course, the imperative to imagine the consequences of living in a world in which everyone would act as you choose to act leads to the conclusion that some practices are utterly untenable, not because they are irrational, but because they inflict consequential damage that is unwanted. In both cases, I would suggest, a potential action is figured as hypothetically reciprocal: one's own act comes back in the imagined form of another's act; another might act on me as I would act on the other, and the consequences are unacceptable because of those damaging consequences.

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p. 78
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
A fair exterior is a silent...

A fair exterior is a silent recommendation.

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Maxin 267
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 4 days ago
Among these widely differing families of...

Among these widely differing families of men, the first that attracts attention, the superior in intelligence, in power, and in enjoyment, is the white, or European, the MAN pre-eminently so called, below him appear the Negro and the Indian.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
3 weeks 4 days ago
The task of a theory of...

The task of a theory of class is to identify the existing conditions for potential collective struggle and express them as a political proposition.

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104
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
3 months 6 days ago
Since therefore, as well those degrees...

Since therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever?

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Philonous to Hylas. Hylas replies with, "So it seems".
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1 week 3 days ago
Woe to that nation whose literature...

Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print", it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory.

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Variant translation, as quoted in TIME
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
Primitive superstition lies just below the...

Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects.

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p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
You have just dined, and however...

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 4 weeks ago
I do not overlook the fact...

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. (Socrates, I believe, saw something of this when he suggested that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man).

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Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months ago
Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass...

Circumstances (which with some gentlemen pass for nothing) give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing colour, and discriminating effect. The circumstances are what render every civil and political scheme beneficial or noxious to mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
The seat of faith, however, is...

The seat of faith, however, is not consciousness but spontaneous religious experience, which brings the individual's faith into immediate relation with God. Here we must ask: Have I any religious experience and immediate relation to God, and hence that certainty which will keep me, as an individual, from dissolving in the crowd?

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p 85
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Dogs, also, bark..

Dogs, also, bark at what they do not know.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
I'd rather be ruled by a...

I'd rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.

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The earliest published source for such a statement yet located is in Pat Robertson - Where He Stands (1988) by Hubert Morken, p. 42, where such a comment is attributed to Luther without citation.
Philosophical Maxims
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