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Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 1 week ago
Philosophers today are as fond as...

Philosophers today are as fond as ever of apriori arguments with ethical conclusions. One reason such arguments are always unsatisfying is that they always prove too much; when a philosopher 'solves' an ethical problem for one, one feels as if one had asked for a subway token and been given a passenger ticket valid for the first interplanetary passenger-carrying space ship instead.

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 week 6 days ago
Come then, and let us celebrate...

Come then, and let us celebrate in the best way we can the anniversary festival which the imperial city is keeping by sacrifices, with unusual splendour. And yet I feel how difficult it is for the human mind even to form a conception of that Sun who is not visible to the sense, if our notion of Him is to be derived from the Sun that is visible; but to express the same in language, however inadequately, is, perhaps, beyond the capability of man! To fitly explain His glory, I am very well aware, is a thing impossible; in lauding it, however, mediocrity seems the highest point to which human eloquence is able to attain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 5 days ago
Each of the parts of philosophy...

Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months ago
We have convictions only if we...

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 2 days ago
Nature too remains, so far as...

Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
5 days ago
We, who are dying, are doing...

We, who are dying, are doing better, than they, who will live. For Crete doesn't need householders, she needs madmen like us. These madmen make Crete immortal.

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Freedom and Death
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
The sun will be darkened, and...

The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory... I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.

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24:29-34 (NIV)
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
3 months 1 week ago
If you believe in the future...

If you believe in the future life and, instead of preparing for it, sell it in order to buy this world, then that is folly! You do not normally sell two things for one; how can you give up an endless life for a limited number of days.

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IV. The True Nature of Prophecy and the Compelling Need of All Creation for it, p. 67.
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 week 5 days ago
Those who are wise won't be...

Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.

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p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 1 week ago
It's easy to support the status...

It's easy to support the status quo if one is not another of its victims.

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Reply to Meet the people who want to turn predators into herbivores, TreeHugger, 4 Dec. 2015
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 6 days ago
The Managers of that Trade themselves,...

The Managers of that Trade themselves, and others, testify, that many of these African nations inhabit fertile countries, are industrious farmers, enjoy plenty, and lived quietly, averse to war, before the Europeans debauched them with liquors, and bribing them against one another; and that these inoffensive people are brought into slavery, by stealing them, tempting Kings to sell subjects, which they can have no right to do, and hiring one tribe to war against another, in order to catch prisoners. By such wicked and inhuman ways the English are said to enslave towards one hundred thousand yearly; of which thirty thousand are supposed to die by barbarous treatment in the first year; besides all that are slain in the unnatural wars excited to take them. So much innocent blood have the Managers and Supporters of this inhuman Trade to answer for to the common Lord of all!

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 3 weeks ago
Suffer no anxiety, for he who...

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
If Man be separated by no...

If Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another-then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man.

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Ch.2, p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 5 days ago
Religious suffering is, at one and...

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 1 week ago
Of how much more passion than...

Of how much more passion than reason has Jupiter composed us? putting in, as one would say, "scarce half an ounce to a pound."

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 days ago
The pre-atomist multisensory void was an...

The pre-atomist multisensory void was an animate, pulsating, and moving vibrant interval, neither container nor contained, acoustic space penetrated by tactility.

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p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 3 weeks ago
The highest form of vanity is...

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 5 days ago
Philosophy is to be studied, not...

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 weeks 1 day ago
I am of course confident that...

I am of course confident that I will fulfil my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.

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Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers' Congress (16 May 1967); as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 4 weeks ago
The authority of science ... promotes...

The authority of science ... promotes and encourages the activity of observing, comparing, measuring and ordering the physical characteristics of human bodies.... Cartesian epistemology and classical ideals produced forms of rationality, scientificity and objectivity that, though efficacious in the quest for truth and knowledge, prohibited the intelligibility and legitimacy of black equality.... In fact, to "think" such an idea was to be deemed irrational, barbaric or mad.

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Prophesy Deliverance!
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 days ago
He sees as well as you...

He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.

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Letter XXIX
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 5 days ago
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by...

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

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Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
In man (as the only rational...

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

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Second Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 5 days ago
When I was 4 years old...

When I was 4 years old ... I dreamt that I'd been eaten by a wolf, and to my great surprise I was in the wolf's stomach and not in heaven.

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BBC interview on "Face to Face" (1959); The Listener, Vol. 61 (1959), p. 503
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 4 days ago
The last peculiarity of consciousness to...

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
5 days ago
With clarity and quiet, I look...

With clarity and quiet, I look upon the world and say: All that I see, hear, taste, smell, and touch are the creations of my mind. The sun comes up and the sun goes down in my skull. Out of one of my temples the sun rises, and into the other the sun sets. The stars shine in my brain; ideas, men, animals browse in my temporal head; songs and weeping fill the twisted shells of my ears and storm the air for a moment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 5 days ago
Life has a value only when...

Life has a value only when it has something valuable as its object.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 day ago
He marveled at the strange blindness...

He marveled at the strange blindness by which men, though they are so alert to what changes in themselves, impose on their friends an image chosen for them once and for all. He was being judged by what he had been. Just as dogs don't change character, men are dogs to one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 days ago
I have known only one person...

I have known only one person in my life who claimed to have seen a ghost. It was a woman; and the interesting thing is that she disbelieved in the immortality of the soul before seeing the ghost and still disbelieves after having seen it. She thinks it was a hallucination. In other words, seeing is not believing. This is the first thing to get clear in talking about miracles.

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"Miracles" (1942), p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 days ago
Writing turned a spotlight on the...

Writing turned a spotlight on the high, dim Sierras of speech; writing was the visualization of acoustic space. It lit up the dark.

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(p. 14)
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
Envy has been, is, and shall...

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 1 week ago
This realistic image, however, does not...

This realistic image, however, does not catch at all what really is, but what should not be - death and misery - what should not exist, from our moral and humanistic point of view. And at the same time making an aesthetic and commercial, perfectly immoral use and abuse of this misery. Images that actually testify, behind their pretended "objectivity", of a deep denial of the real, and of an equal denial of the image - assigned to present what does not even want to be represented, assigned to the rape of the real by burglary.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 4 days ago
There have been other Priests perhaps...

There have been other Priests perhaps equally notable, in calmer times, for doing faithfully the office of a Leader of Worship; bringing down, by faithful heroism in that kind, a light from Heaven into the daily life of their people; leading them forward, as under God's guidance, in the way wherein they were to go. But when this same way was a rough one, of battle, confusion and danger, the spiritual Captain, who led through that, becomes, especially to us who live under the fruit of his leading, more notable than any other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 days ago
Never have nations been civilized, except...

Never have nations been civilized, except by religion.

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XXXIII, p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Xunzi
Xunzi
1 month 1 day ago
In order to properly understand the...

In order to properly understand the big picture, everyone should fear becoming mentally clouded and obsessed with one small section of truth.

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Quoted in: Joan Klostermann-Ketels (2011) HumaniTrees, p. 96
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
2 months 3 weeks ago
No one is guiltless...But no one...

No one is guiltless...But no one is beyond the pale of human existence, provided he pays for his guilt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 5 days ago
I've got a one-dimensional mind. Said...

I've got a one-dimensional mind.

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Said to Rupert Crawshay-Williams; Russell Remembered (1970), p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
This avidity alone...
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Main Content / General
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 2 days ago
Philosophy ... bears witness to the...

Philosophy ... bears witness to the deepest love of reflection, to absolute delight in wisdom.

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"Logological Fragments," Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #12
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 month 4 weeks ago
In advanced age, and in cases...

In advanced age, and in cases of disability from accident, natural infirmity or any other cause, the individual shall be supported by the colony, and receive every comfort which kindness can administer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
I could see clearly that this...

I could see clearly that this problem could only be solved on the individual and personal level; political revolt is irrelevant. Both Camus and Sartre had been neatly hog-tied by their earlier radicalism. Camus came to see that rebellion is a political roundabout that revolves back to the same old tyranny; too ashamed to admit that he had outgrown his leftism, he found himself in an intellectual cul-de-sac. Sartre accused Camus of being a reactionary; but he paid for his own refusal to reexamine his political convictions by congealing into a grotesque attitude of permanent indignation, shaking his fist at some abstract Authority. Where politics is concerned, he seemed determined to be guided by his emotions.

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p. 101
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months ago
When we have no further desire...

When we have no further desire to show ourselves, we take refuge in music, the Providence of the abulic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 week ago
Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth...

Sacred and inspired divinity, the sabaoth and port of all men's labours and peregrinations.

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Book II
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 days ago
For a good cause…

For a good cause, wrongdoing is virtuous.

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Maxim 207
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 days ago
My religious reading has long been...

My religious reading has long been confined to the moral branch of religion, which is the same in all religions; while in that branch which consists of dogmas, all differ.

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Letter to Thomas Leiper (21 January 1809).
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
Since every effort in our educational...

Since every effort in our educational life seems to be directed toward making of the child a being foreign to itself, it must of necessity produce individuals foreign to one another, and in everlasting antagonism with each other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The chalk is no unimportant element...

The chalk is no unimportant element in the masonry of the earth's crust, and it impresses a peculiar stamp, varying with the conditions to which it is exposed, on the scenery of the districts in which it occurs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
Suicide evokes revulsion with horror, because...

Suicide evokes revulsion with horror, because everything in nature seeks to preserve itself: a damaged tree, a living body, an animal; and in man, then, is freedom, which is the highest degree of life, and constitutes the worth of it, to become now a principium for self-destruction? This is the most horrifying thing imaginable. For anyone who has already got so far as to be master, at any time, over his own life, is also master over the life of anyone else; for him, the door stands open to every crime, and before he can be seized he is ready to spirit himself away out of the world. So suicide evokes horror, in that a man thereby puts himself below the beasts. We regard a suicide as a carcase, whereas we feel pity for one who meets his end through fate.

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Part II, p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 5 days ago
The Chinese are a great nation,...

The Chinese are a great nation, incapable of permanent suppression by foreigners. They will not consent to adopt our vices in order to acquire military strength; but they are willing to adopt our virtues in order to advance in wisdom. I think they are the only people in the world who quite genuinely believe that wisdom is more precious than rubies. That is why the West regards them as uncivilized.

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The Problem of China (1922), Ch. XIII: Higher education in China
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months ago
Read day and night, devour books...

Read day and night, devour books - these sleeping pills - not to know but to forget! Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.

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Philosophical Maxims
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