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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
The Calculus required continuity, and continuity...

The Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.

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Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 1 day ago
As soon as men live entirely...

As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual.

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V
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 weeks 4 days ago
Not only are we unable to...

Not only are we unable to conceive of the full and living God as masculine simply, but we are unable to conceive of Him as individual simply, as the projection of a solitary I, an unsocial I, an I that is in reality an abstract I. My living I is an I that is really a We; my living personal I lives only in other, of other, and by other I's; I am sprung from a multitude of ancestors. I carry them within me in extract, and at the same time I carry within me, potentially, a multitude of descendants, and God, the projection of my I to the infinite - or rather I, the projection of God to the finite - must also be a multitude. Hence, in order to save the personality of God - that is to say, in order to save the living God - faith's need - the need of the feeling and the imagination - of conceiving Him and feeling Him as possessed of a certain internal multiplicity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
Ancient histories…

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

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Jeannot et Colin, 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
People are said to believe in...

People are said to believe in God, or to disbelieve in Adam and Eve. But in such cases what is believed or disbelieved is that there is an entity answering a certain description. This, which can be believed or disbelieved is quite different from the actual entity (if any) which does answer the description. Thus the matter of belief is, in all cases, different in kind from the matter of sensation or presentation, and error is in no way analogous to hallucination. A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

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On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism, 1914
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
Each to each a looking-glass, Reflects...

Each to each a looking-glass, Reflects his figure that doth pass. Every wayfarer he meets What himself declared repeats, What himself confessed records, Sentences him in his words; The form is his own corporal form, And his thought the penal worm. Yet shine forever virgin minds, Loved by stars and the purest winds, Which, o'er passion throned sedate, Have not hazarded their state; Disconcert the searching spy, Rendering to a curious eye The durance of a granite ledge To those who gaze from the sea's edge. It is there for benefit; It is there for purging light; There for purifying storms; And its depths reflect all forms; It cannot parley with the mean,- Pure by impure is not seen. For there's no sequestered grot, Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot, But Justice, journeying in the sphere, Daily stoops to harbour there.

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Astræa
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 weeks 1 day ago
"But many of us seek community...

But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.

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All About Love: New Visions, 1999
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 weeks ago
Perhaps power is never free from...

Perhaps power is never free from a feeling of lack.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
China has been long one of...

China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.

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Chapter VIII, p. 86.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 weeks ago
Stories on digital platforms like Facebook...

Stories on digital platforms like Facebook or Instagram are not genuine stories. They have no narrative duration. Rather, they are just sequences of momentary impressions that do not tell us anything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 3 days ago
The constitution of madness as mental...

The constitution of madness as mental illness, at the end of the eighteenth century, bears witness to a rupture in a dialogue, gives the separation as already enacted, and expels from the memory all those imperfect words, of no fixed syntax, spoken falteringly, in which the exchange between madness and reason was carried out. The language of psychiatry, which is a monologue by reason about madness, could only have come into existence in such a silence.

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Preface to 1961 edition
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 5 days ago
I leave Sisyphus at the foot...

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
Power is the near neighbour of...

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

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As quoted in Aurea Carmina (8) by Hierocles of Alexandria, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 day ago
Why callest thou me good? there...

Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.

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19:17 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
By what aberration has suicide, the...

By what aberration has suicide, the only truly normal action, become the attribute of the flawed?

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
Modern physics... reduces matter to a...

Modern physics... reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics.

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 day ago
Look at the birds of the...

Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

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Matthew 6:26 (NKJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 4 weeks ago
The silent treasuring up of...

The silent treasuring up of knowledge; learning without satiety; and instructing others without being wearied: which one of these things belongs to me? To keep silently in mind what one has seen and heard, to study hard and never feel contented, to teach others tirelessly; have I done (all of) these things?

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
1 month 6 days ago
Till mankind be satisfied with the...

Till mankind be satisfied with the naked statement of what they really perceive, till they confess virtue to be then most illustrious, when she more disdains the aid of ornament, they will never arrive at that manly justice of sentiment at which they seem destined one day to arrive. By his scheme of naked virtue will be every day a gainer; every succeeding observer willl more fully do her justice, while vice, deprived of that varnish with which she delighted to glow her actions of that gaudy exhibition which may be made alike by every pretender will speedily sink into unheeded contempt.

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Book V, Chapter 12, "Of Titles"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 3 days ago
The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem...

The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

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p. 785
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 1 week ago
This I know, that between finite...

This I know, that between finite and infinite there is no comparison; so that the difference between God and the greatest and most excellent created thing is no less than the difference between God and the least created thing.

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Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
Tell your master that if there...

Tell your master that if there were as many devils at Worms as tiles on its roofs, I would enter.

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Psalm. Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (translated by Frederic H. Hedge), Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 days ago
Basically-I speak of life as it...

Basically-I speak of life as it is and not of abstract philosophical constructs-life is only bearable because one does not go to the end; doing something is only possible when one has particular illusions and that holds also for friendships, for everything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 weeks 4 days ago
Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of...

Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate.

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 days ago
What ideas individuals may attach to...

What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Credulity in arts and opinions...

Credulity in arts and opinions is likewise of two kinds viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the imagination more than the reason are principally three viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy. Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light.

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De Augmentis Scientiarum (1623) as quoted by Edward Thorpe, History of Chemistry, Vol. 1, p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
Friends are as companions on a...

Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

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As quoted in Gems of Thought: Being a Collection of More Than a Thousand Choice Selections
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 1 week ago
The supporters of the Development Hypothesis......

The supporters of the Development Hypothesis... can show that any existing species-animal or vegetable-when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 1 week ago
Influences of various kinds conspire to...

Influences of various kinds conspire to increase corporate action and decrease individual action. And the change is being on all sides aided by schemers, each of whom thinks only of his pet plan and not at all of the general reorganization which his plan, joined with others such, are working out. It is said that the French Revolution devoured its own children. Here, an analogous catastrophe seems not unlikely. The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with the numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State-socialism-swallowed in the vast wave which they have little by little raised."But why is this change described as 'the coming slavery'?," is a question which many will still ask. The reply is simple. All socialism involves slavery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 1 week ago
But let us not forget this...
But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things."
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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
Among civilized and thriving nations, on...

Among civilized and thriving nations, on the contrary, though a great number of people do no labor at all, many of whom consume the produce of ten times, frequently of a hundred times more labour than the greater part of those who work; yet the produce of the whole labour of the society is so great, that all are often abundantly supplied, and a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniencies of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire.

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Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 1 week ago
It is a proof that the...

It is a proof that the state is not an arbitrary invention, but is established by nature and reason, when we actually find that, in places where men have lived together for a time and have become educated, states are erected, although the people in the one such place know not that the same thing has been done in other places. Each people, which does not live in a condition of nature, but has a government, no matter how constituted, has a right to compel its recognition from all adjoining states.

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P. 474, 477
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 1 week ago
Kalokagathia...
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Main Content / General
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
I did not know that mankind...

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

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p. 488
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 1 day ago
For such is the nature of...

For such is the nature of men, that howsoever they may acknowledge many others to be more witty, or more eloquent, or more learned; Yet they will hardly believe there be many so wise as themselves: For they see their own wit at hand, and other men's at a distance.

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The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
If belief consists in an emotional...

If belief consists in an emotional reaction of the entire man on an object, how can we believe at will? We cannot control our emotions.... But gradually our will can lead us to the same results by a very simple method: we need only in cold blood act as if the thing in question were real, and keep acting as if it were real, and it will infallibly end by growing into such a connection with our life that it will become real. It will become so knit with habit and emotion that our interests in it will be those which characterize belief.

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Ch. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
The whole conception of God is...

The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

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"What We Must Do"
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks ago
Anyone who can understand that the...

Anyone who can understand that the Buddhist idea of Nirvana is not merely negative, and that the Buddha himself who (like the Superman) 'looks down on suffering humanity like a hillsman on the planes' is not an atheistic monster, will instantly see how this misses the point. Nietzsche was not an atheist, any more than the Buddha was. Anyone who reads the Night Song and the Dance Song in Zarathustra will recognize that they spring out of the same emotion as the Vedic or Gathic hymns or the Psalms of David. The idea of the Superman is a response to the need for salvation in precisely the same way that Buddhism was a response to the 'three signs'.

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p. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 5 days ago
Naturally, every age thinks that all...

Naturally, every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Like strawberry wives, that laid two...

Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.

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No. 54
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
1 month 6 days ago
Duty is that mode of action...

Duty is that mode of action which constitutes the best application of the capacity of the individual to the general advantage. Right is the claim of the individual to his share of the benefit arising from his neighbors' discharge of their several duties.

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"Summary of Principles". 1.5
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
1 month 2 weeks ago
For those endowed with insight there...

For those endowed with insight there is in reality no object of love but God, nor does anyone but He deserve love Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment.

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Islamic Texts Society. 2011. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-903682-27-2. Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
He who created us without our...

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

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St. Augustine, Sermo 169, 11, 13: PL 38, 923 as quoted in Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S. J.. Saved: A Bible Study Guide for Catholics (p. 15). Our Sunday Visitor. Kindle Edition.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 weeks 3 days ago
There is absolute truth in anarchism...

There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. ... The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.

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Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 4 days ago
The manufacturing worker almost always lives...

The manufacturing worker almost always lives in the countryside and in a more or less patriarchal relation to his landlord or employer; the proletarian lives, for the most part, in the city and his relation to his employer is purely a cash relation. The manufacturing worker is torn out of his patriarchal relation by big industry, loses whatever property he still has, and in this way becomes a proletarian.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 1 day ago
A man is a man to...

A man is a man to the extent that he is a superman. A man should be defined by the sum of those tendencies which impel him to surpass the human condition.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
The inscrutable wisdom through which we...

The inscrutable wisdom through which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in respect to what it denies us than in respect to what it has granted.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 days ago
And perhaps this habit of much...

And perhaps this habit of much travel, and the engendering of scattered friendships, may prepare the euthanasia of ancient nations.

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Pt. I, ch. II.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 1 day ago
In the Gospels, for instance, we...

In the Gospels, for instance, we sometimes find the kingdom of heaven illustrated by principles drawn from observation of this world rather than from an ideal conception of justice; ... They remind us that the God we are seeking is present and active, that he is the living God; they are doubtless necessary if we are to keep religion from passing into a mere idealism and God into the vanishing point of our thought and endeavour.

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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 weeks ago
An army and navy represents the...

An army and navy represents the people's toys.

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Philosophical Maxims
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