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Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
4 months 3 weeks ago
Everyone knows that time is Death,...

Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.

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"Death"
Philosophical Maxims
Plotinus
Plotinus
8 months 1 day ago
Hence, as Narcissus, by catching at...

Hence, as Narcissus, by catching at the shadow, plunged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who is captivated by beautiful bodies, and does not depart from their embrace, is precipitated, not with his body, but with his soul, into a darkness profound and repugnant to intellect (the higher soul), through which, remaining blind both here and in Hades, he associates with shadows.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 4 weeks ago
One may be humble...
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Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 1 week ago
Science may fall back on its...

Science may fall back on its stupid excuse that science works for science, and that when it has been developed by the scientists it will become accessible to the people also; but art, if it be art, should be accessible to all, and particularly to those for whom it is produced. And the position of our art strikingly arraigns the producers of art for not wishing, not knowing how, and being unable, to serve the people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 months 1 week ago
In your actions, don't procrastinate. In...

In your actions, don't procrastinate. In your conversations, don't confuse. In your thoughts, don't wander. In your soul, don't be passive or aggressive. In your life, don't be all about business.

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VIII. 51:209
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 1 week ago
To evoke in oneself a feeling...

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed through words, so to convey this so that others may experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 4 weeks ago
What is this wide-spread component of...

What is this wide-spread component of the surface of the earth? and whence did it come? You may think this no very hopeful inquiry. You may not unnaturally suppose that the attempt to solve such problems as these can lead to no result, save that of entangling the inquirer in vague speculations, incapable of refutation and of verification. If such were really the case, I should have selected some other subject than a "piece of chalk" for my discourse. But, in truth, after much deliberation, I have been unable to think of any topic which would so well enable me to lead you to see how solid is the foundation upon which some of the most startling conclusions of physical science rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 4 weeks ago
Life cannot exist without a certain...

Life cannot exist without a certain conformity to the surrounding universe - that conformity involves a certain amount of happiness in excess of pain. In short, as we live we are paid for living.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 4 weeks ago
The man-like Apes... have certain characters...

The man-like Apes... have certain characters of structure and of distribution in common.

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Ch.1, p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
7 months 1 week ago
He begins to think for himself...

He begins to think for himself and meets Nineteenth-century Rationalism Which can explain away religion by any number of methods.

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Pilgrim's Regress 19-20
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
6 months 1 week ago
This whole creation is essentially subjective,...

This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.

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General Aspects of Dream Psychology
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6 months 1 week ago
Pass by us, and forgive us...

Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.

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Part 4, Chapter 5
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 1 week ago
There are extraordinary situations which require...

There are extraordinary situations which require extraordinary interposition. An exasperated people, who feel that they possess power, are not easily restrained within limits strictly regular.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
7 months 1 week ago
All those movements which took place...

All those movements which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which had the Reformation as their main expression and result should be analyzed as a great crisis of the Western experience of subjectivity and a revolt against the kind of religious and moral power which gave form, during the Middle Ages, to this subjectivity. The need to take a direct part in spiritual life, in the work of salvation, in the truth which lies in the Book-all that was a struggle for a new subjectivity.

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p. 782
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
3 months 2 weeks ago
Danger reawakens the spirit.....

Danger reawakens the spirit.

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p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
7 months 1 week ago
The sad truth of the matter...

The sad truth of the matter is that most evil is done by people who never made up their minds to be or do either evil or good.

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The Life of the Mind (1978), "Thinking"
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
5 months 1 week 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
William Whewell
William Whewell
3 months 1 week ago
The Perception of Time involves a...

The Perception of Time involves a constant and latent kind of memory, which may be termed a 'Sense of Succession'. The Perception of Number also involves this Sense of Succession, although in small numbers we appear to apprehend the units simultaneously and not successively.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
7 months 4 weeks ago
Therefore let every Christian, yea, let...

Therefore let every Christian, yea, let the whole body of Christ everywhere cry out, despite the tribulations it endures, despite temptations and countless scandals, saying: "Preserve my soul, for I am holy; save Thy servant, O my God, that trusteth in thee" (Ps. 85:2) No, this holy one is not proud, for he trusts in God.

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p.429
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
3 months 3 weeks ago
Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all...

Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all the others knew they were giving rights to vulgarity. But in so doing-in addition to caring for man's well-being-they were providing rights for themselves.

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"Commerce and Culture," p. 289.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
5 months 1 week ago
Gravity is not a version of...

Gravity is not a version of the truth. It is the truth. Anybody who doubts it is invited to jump out of a tenth-floor window.

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The Genius of Charles Darwin
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
5 months 1 week ago
He who helps the guilty, shares...

He who helps the guilty, shares the crime.

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Maxim 139
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
5 months 6 days ago
I was forced, through seeing the...

I was forced, through seeing the error of their foundation, to abandon all belief in every religion which had been taught to man. But my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity - not for a sect, or a party, or for a country or a colour - but for the human race, and with a real and ardent desire to do good.

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Life of Robert Owen (1857) his autobiography, as quoted by Jim Herrick, in "Bradlaugh and Secularism: 'The Province of the Real'"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 months 3 days ago
History is the essence of innumerable...

History is the essence of innumerable biographies.

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On History.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
7 months 1 week ago
Do the essences of proposition and...

Do the essences of proposition and of the truth determine themselves from out of the essence of the thing, or does the essence of the thing determine itself from out of the essence of the proposition? The question is posed as an either/or. However does this either/or itself suffice? Are the essence of the thing and the essence of the proposition only built as mirror images because both of them together determine themselves from out of the same but deeper lying root? However, what and where can be this common ground for the essence of the thing and of the proposition and of their origin? The unconditioned (Unbedingt)? We stated at the beginning that what conditions the essense of the thing in its thingness can no longer itself be thing and conditioned, it must be an unconditioned (Un-bedingtes).

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p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months 1 week ago
The coverage is the war. If...

The coverage is the war. If there were no coverage, there'd be no war. Yes, the newsmen and the mediamen around the world are actually the fighters, not the soldiers anymore.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
5 months 3 weeks ago
The average mind is slow in...

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
6 months 5 days ago
For thought and speech are of...

For thought and speech are of a thinking and speaking subject, and if the life of the latter depends on the performance of a superimposed function, it depends on fulfilling the requirements of this function - thus it depends on those who control these requirements.

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p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
7 months 2 weeks ago
Religion, which should most distinguish us...

Religion, which should most distinguish us from the beasts, and ought most particularly elevate us, as rational creatures, above brutes, is that wherein men often appear most irrational, and more senseless than beasts.

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Book IV, Ch. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 months 3 days ago
In books lies the soul of...

In books lies the soul of the whole Past Time; the articulate audible voice of the Past, when the body and material substance of it has altogether vanished like a dream.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
5 months 4 weeks ago
In America I was liberated from...

In America I was liberated from a certain naïve belief in culture and attained the capacity to see culture from the outside. To clarify the point: in spite of all social criticism and all consciousness of the primacy of economic factors, the fundamental importance of the mind-"Geist"-was quasi a dogma self-evident to me from the very beginning. The fact that this was not a foregone conclusion, I learned in America, where no reverential silence in the presence of everything intellectual prevailed.

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as quoted in The Origin of Negative Dialectics (Free Press: 1977), p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months 1 week ago
The "interface" of the Renaissance was...

The "interface" of the Renaissance was the meeting of medieval pluralism and modern homogeneity and mechanism - a formula for blitz and metamorphosis.

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(p. 161)
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
7 months 2 weeks ago
The sensuous may be exceedingly distinct,...

The sensuous may be exceedingly distinct, while intellectual concepts are extremely confused. The former we observe in the prototype of sensuous knowledge geometry; the latter, in the organon of all intellectual concepts, metaphysics. It is evident how much toil the latter is expending to dispel the fogs of confusion darkening the common intellect, though not always with the happy success of the former science.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
8 months 2 weeks ago
We are, all of us, growing...
We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows not even God.
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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 1 week ago
The good is the everlasting, the...

The good is the everlasting, the pinnacle of our life. ... life is striving towards the good, toward God. The good is the most basic idea ... an idea not definable by reason ... yet is the postulate from which all else follows. But the beautiful ... is just that which is pleasing. The idea of beauty is not an alignment to the good, but is its opposite, because for most part, the good aids in our victory over our predilections, while beauty is the motive of our predilections. The more we succumb to beauty, the further we are displaced from the good. ...the usual response is that there exists a moral and spiritual beauty ... we mean simply the good. Spiritual beauty or the good, generally not only does not coincide with the typical meaning of beauty, it is its opposite.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
7 months 3 weeks ago
Rules necessary for definitions. Not to...

Rules necessary for definitions. Not to leave any terms at all obscure or ambiguous without definition; Not to employ in definitions any but terms perfectly known or already explained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 3 weeks ago
"You will have less money." Yes,...

"You will have less money." Yes, and less trouble. "Less influence." Yes, and less envy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 1 week ago
I have lived through much, and...

I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor -- such is my idea of happiness. And then, on the top of all that, you for a mate, and children perhaps -- what more can the heart of man desire?

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Part 1, Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
7 months 1 week ago
This book, admirable in so many...

This book, admirable in so many respects, power in its break and style, is even more intimidating for me in that, having formely had the good fortune to study under Michel Foucault, I retain the consciousness of an admiring and grateful disciple. Now, the disciple's consciousness, when he starts, I would not say to dispute, but to engage in dialogue with the master or, better, to articulate the interminable and silent dialogue which made him into a disciple-this disciple's consciousness is an unhappy consciousness.

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Cogito and The History of Madness (Routledge classics edition)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
5 months 3 weeks ago
But now we come to the...

But now we come to the real paradox: that something as explosive as sexual excitement can nevertheless become a matter of habit, But then that applies to all our pleasures. We discover some new product in the supermarket, and become addicted to it. Then our tastebuds become accustomed to its flavour, and or interest fades. In the same way a honeymoon couple may find an excuse to hurry off to the bedroom half a dozen times a day; but after a month or so sex has taken its place among the many routines of their lives. They still enjoy it, but it no longer has quite the same power to excite the imagination. Sex, like every other pleasure, can become mechanical.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
7 months 1 week ago
... the fight against suffering must...

... the fight against suffering must be considered a duty, while the right to care for the happiness of others must be considered a privilege confined to the close circle of their friends. ... Pain, suffering, injustice, and their prevention, these are the eternal problems of public morals, the 'agenda' of public policy ...

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Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
4 months 1 week ago
A specter haunts the world and...

A specter haunts the world and it is the specter of migration.

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213
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6 months 1 week ago
I suddenly dreamt that I picked...

I suddenly dreamt that I picked up the revolver and aimed it straight at my heart - my heart, and not my head; and I had determined beforehand to fire at my head, at my right temple. After aiming at my chest I waited a second or two, and suddenly my candle, my table, and the wall in front of me began moving and heaving. I made haste to pull the trigger.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 1 week ago
The hearing ear is always found...

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

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Race
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
7 months 2 weeks ago
To Americans. That some desperate wretches...

To Americans. That some desperate wretches should be willing to steal and enslave men by violence and murder for gain, is rather lamentable than strange. But that many civilized, nay, christianized people should approve, and be concerned in the savage practice, is surprising; and still persist, though it has been so often proved contrary to the light of nature, to every principle of Justice and Humanity, and even good policy, by a succession of eminent men, and several late publications.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 months 4 weeks ago
Use harms and even….

Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.

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Niebla [Mist]
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
7 months 1 week ago
I take it for granted, when...

I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere, - for I have had a little experience in that business, - that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, - and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

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p. 484
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 4 weeks ago
That mysterious independent variable of political...

That mysterious independent variable of political calculation, Public Opinion.

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Universities, Actual and Ideal
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
7 months 1 week ago
The bluebird carries the sky on...

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

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April 3, 1852
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 months 3 days ago
Descend where you will into the...

Descend where you will into the lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue you will, by Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by Mining-Labourer Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful result discloses itself: you have to admit that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any parallel.

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Philosophical Maxims
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