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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months ago
Characters and talents are complemental and...

Characters and talents are complemental and suppletory. The world stands by balanced antagonisms. The more the peculiarities are pressed the better the result. The air would rot without lightning; and without the violence of direction that men have, without bigots, without men of the fixed idea, no excitement, no efficiency. The novelist should not make any character act absurdly, but only absurdly as seen by others. For it is so in life. Nonsense will not keep its unreason if you come into the humorist's point of view, but unhappily we find it is fast becoming sense, and we must flee again into the distance if we would laugh.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 1 week ago
We find that everything that makes...

We find that everything that makes up difference and number is pure accident, pure show, pure constitution. Every production, of whatever kind, is an alteration, but the substance remains always the same, because it is only one, one divine immortal being.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 day ago
I found one day in school...

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

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p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 1 week ago
A faithful and good servant is...

A faithful and good servant is a real godsend; but truly 'tis a rare bird in the land.

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156
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 4 weeks ago
Then the case is the same...

Then the case is the same in all the other arts for the orator and his rhetoric; there is no need to know the truth of the actual matters, but one merely needs to have discovered some device of persuasion which will make one appear to those who do not know to know better than those who know.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month ago
The Scientific discourse extracts truths from...

The Scientific discourse extracts truths from the errors which surround and oppose it on all sides and in every form; and, by demolition of these opposing views as error, and as impossible to true thought, shows the truth as that which alone remains after their withdrawal, and therefore as the only possible truth:--and in this separation of opposites, and elucidation of the truth from the confused chaos in which truth and error lie mingled together, consists the peculiar and characteristic nature of the Scientific discourse. This method creates and produces truth, before our eyes, out of a world full of error.

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P. 26-27
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 weeks 1 day ago
What is morality in any given...

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like, and immorality is what they dislike.

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Ch. 22, August 30, 1941.
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 weeks 6 days ago
The traditional disputes of philosophers are,...

The traditional disputes of philosophers are, for the most part, as unwarranted as they are unfruitful. The surest way to end them is to establish beyond question what should be the purpose and method of a philosophical enquiry. And this is by no means so difficult a task as the history of philosophy would lead one to suppose. For if there are any questions which science leaves it to philosophy to answer, a straightforward process of elimination must lead to their discovery.

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Ch. 1, first lines.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists...

Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists who can no longer be . . . optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why should they have any to die?

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is object proof that homosexuality...

There is object proof that homosexuality is more interesting than heterosexuality. It's that one knows a considerable number of heterosexuals who would wish to become homosexuals, whereas one knows very few homosexuals who would really like to become heterosexuals.

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As quoted in Who's Who in Contemporary Gay & Lesbian History: From World War II to the Present Day (2001) by Robert Aldrich and Gary Wotherspoon ISBN 041522974X
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
From the cradle to the grave,...

From the cradle to the grave, each individual pays for the sin of not being God. That's why life is an uninterrupted religious crisis, superficial for believers, shattering for doubters.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 6 days ago
Strawberry cakes

I found there, on the central square (Václavské náměstí), a café that miraculously worked through this emergency. I remember they had wonderful strawberry cakes, and I was sitting there eating strawberry cakes and watching Russian tanks against demonstrators. It was perfect.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 3 weeks ago
The public execution is to be...

The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a political ritual. It belongs, even in minor cases, to the ceremonies by which power is manifested.

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Chapter One, The body of the condemned
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us...

Nostalgia, more than anything, gives us the shudder of our own imperfection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is only the individual possessed...

It is only the individual possessed of the most entire sincerity that can exist under Heaven, who can adjust the great invariable relations of mankind, establish the great fundamental virtues of humanity, and know the transforming and nurturing operations of Heaven and Earth; shall this individual have any being or anything beyond himself on which he depends? Call him man in his ideal, how earnest is he! Call him an abyss, how deep is he! Call him Heaven, how vast is he! Who can know him, but he who is indeed quick in apprehension, clear in discernment, of far-reaching intelligence, and all-embracing knowledge, possessing all Heavenly virtue?

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 3 weeks ago
In the ceremonies of the public...

In the ceremonies of the public execution, the main character was the people, whose real and immediate presence was required for the performance.

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Chapter One, pp. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
We must live, you used to...

We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 1 week ago
Now I say this to keep...

Now I say this to keep the conscience free from mischievous laws and fictitious sins, and not because I would defend images. Nor would I condemn those who have destroyed them, especially those who destroy divine and idolatrous images. But images for memorial and witness, such as crucifixes and images of saints, are to be tolerated.

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p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 day ago
So much of modern mathematical work...

So much of modern mathematical work is obviously on the border-line of logic, so much of modern logic is symbolic and formal, that the very close relationship of logic and mathematics has become obvious to every instructed student. The proof of their identity is, of course, a matter of detail: starting with premisses which would be universally admitted to belong to logic, and arriving by deduction at results which as obviously belong to mathematics, we find that there is no point at which a sharp line can be drawn, with logic to the left and mathematics to the right. If there are still those who do not admit the identity of logic and mathematics, we may challenge them to indicate at what point, in the successive definitions and deductions of Principia Mathematica, they consider that logic ends and mathematics begins. It will then be obvious that any answer must be quite arbitrary.

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Ch. 18: Mathematics and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 days ago
The composer reveals the innermost nature...

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

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Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 weeks 2 days ago
Ye know not what manner of...

Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. (KJV) 9:55-56 Rebuking James and John for asking if he would command fire to come down from heaven, to consume a village of Samaritans for not receiving them, because they seemed to be headed for Jerusalem.

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Jesus on usury from the Sermon on the Mount, Luke 6:34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 week 1 day ago
On another possible world or another...

On another possible world or another planet a word might be associated with much the same stereotype and much the same criteria as our term 'water', but it might designate XYZ and not H₂O. At least this could happen in a prescientific era. And it would not follow that XYZ was water; it would only follow that XYZ could look like water, taste like water, etc. What 'water' refers to depends on the actual nature of the paradigms, not just on what is in our heads.

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Language and Reality
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 1 week ago
In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: "Either...

In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: "Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad," as if to say: "Let the one who wishes to have good fruit begin by planting a good tree." Therefore, let the person who wishes to do good works being not with the works but with the believing, for this alone makes a person good.

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p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month ago
History is mere Empiricism; it has...

History is mere Empiricism; it has only facts to communicate, and all its proofs are founded upon facts alone. To attempt to rise to Primeval History on this foundation of fact, or to argue by this means how such or such a thing might have been, and then to take for granted that it has been so in reality,is to stray beyond the limits of History, and produce an a priori History; just as the Philosophy of Nature, referred to in our preceding lecture, endeavoured to find an a priori Science of Physics.

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p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 week 5 days ago
By necrophilia is meant love for...

By necrophilia is meant love for all that is violence and destruction; the desire to kill; the worship of force; attraction to death, to suicide, to sadism; the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic by means of "order." The necrophile, lacking the necessary qualities to create, in his impotence finds it easy to destroy because for him it serves only one quality: force.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
4 days ago
Rational mechanics must be the science...

Rational mechanics must be the science of the motions which result from any forces, and of the forces which are required for any motions, accurately propounded and demonstrated. For many things induce me to suspect, that all natural phenomena may depend upon some forces by which the particles of bodies are either drawn towards each other, and cohere, or repel and recede from each other: and these forces being hitherto unknown, philosophers have pursued their researches in vain. And I hope that the principles expounded in this work will afford some light, either to this mode of philosophizing, or to some mode which is more true.

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Preface, translation in William Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
Just now
Do not resist the evil-doer and...

Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

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V. "Do not resist the evil-doer" is an allusion to the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 5:39.
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 days ago
The move from a structuralist account...

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

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"Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time" (1997), which received first place in the Philosophy and Literature Bad Writing Contest
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 6 days ago
It is a sign of sovereignty...

It is a sign of sovereignty to risk one's life, that is, to turn life into a game.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 5 days ago
Morals are in all countries the...

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 6 days ago
The outsider, Haller says, is a...

The outsider, Haller says, is a self-divided man; being self-divided, his chief desire is to be unified. He is selfish as a man with a lifelong raging toothache.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 day ago
France has always more or less...

France has always more or less influenced manners in England; and when your fountain is choked up and polluted, the stream will not run long, or not run clear, with us, or perhaps with any nation. This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but too close and connected a concern in what is done in France. Excuse me, therefore, if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious spectacle of the 6th of October, 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 2 weeks ago
By faithfulness we are collected and...

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.

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As quoted in Footprints in Time : Fulfilling God's Destiny for Your Life (2007) by Jeff O'Leary, p. 223
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 day ago
...the French business is no light...

...the French business is no light or trivial thing, or such as has commonly occurd in the course of political Events. At present the whole political State of Europe hinges upon it. On the Continent there is little doubt; every thing will take is future shape and colour from the good or ill success of the Duke of Brunswick. In my opinion, it is the most important crisis that ever existed in the World. ... My poor opinion is, that these principles...cannot possibly be realized in practice in France, without an absolute certainty and that at no remote period, of overturning the whole fabrick of the British Constitution.

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Letter to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville (19 September 1792), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792-August 1794 (1968), pp. 218-219
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
1 month 2 weeks ago
Animals are rational; in most of...

Animals are rational; in most of them logos is imperfect, but it is certainly not wholly lacking. So if, as our opponents say, justice applies to rational beings, why should not justice, for us, also apply to animals?

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3, 18, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
How important can it be that...

How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 5 days ago
A word, once dissected, no longer...

A word, once dissected, no longer signifies anything, is nothing. Like a body that, after an autopsy, is less than a corpse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
3 weeks ago
Machiavelli is the complete contrary of...

Machiavelli is the complete contrary of a machiavellian, since he describes the tricks of power and "gives the whole show away." The seducer and the politician, who live in the dialectic and have a feeling and instinct for it, try their best to keep it hidden.

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p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 week 1 day ago
Even if we consider not words...

Even if we consider not words by themselves but rules deciding what words may appropriately be produced in certain contexts - even if we consider, in computer jargon, programs for using words - unless those programs themselves refer to something extra-linguistic there is still no determinate reference that those words possess. This will be a crucial step in the process of reaching the conclusion that the Brain-in-a-Vat Worlders cannot refer to anything external at all (and hence cannot say that they are Brain-in-a-Vat Worlders).

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Chap. 1 : Brains in a vat
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 3 weeks ago
Everyone is the other, and no...

Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, which supplies the answer to the who of everyday Da-sein, is the nobody to whom every Da-sein has always already surrendered itself, in its being-among-one-another.

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Stambaugh translation
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 day ago
Fairness, justice, universal human rights...
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Main Content / General
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 weeks 2 days ago
We live in a nightmare of...

We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder.

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p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months ago
A man builds a fine house;...

A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life: he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.

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Works and Days
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nobody should ever doubt that in...

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

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229E:2
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 weeks ago
If the subjectivist view hold true,...

If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.

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pp. 7-8.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 4 weeks ago
God is the solitude of men....

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

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Act 10, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 2 days ago
I cannot guess what may be...

I cannot guess what may be the fate of Quakerism in America; but I perceive it loses ground daily in England. In all countries, where the established religion is of a mild and tolerating nature, it will at length swallow up all the rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 day ago
Through a wise and salutary neglect...

Through a wise and salutary neglect [of the colonies], a generous nature has been suffered to take her own way to perfection; when I reflect upon these effects, when I see how profitable they have been to us, I feel all the pride of power sink and all presumption in the wisdom of human contrivances melt and die away within me. My vigour relents. I pardon something to the spirit of liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 2 weeks ago
It would be better if they...

It would be better if they [rulers] compelled the Jews to work for their living, as they do in parts of Italy, than that, living without occupation, they can grow rich only by usury .

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art. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 6 days ago
Notional determinism

When we observe a thing, we see too much in it, we fall under the spell of the wealth of empirical detail which prevents us from clearly perceiving the notional determination which forms the core of the thing. The problem is thus not that of how to grasp the multiplicity of determinations, but rather to abstract from them, how to constrain our gaze and teach it to grasp only the notional determinism.

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Philosophical Maxims
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