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Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 months 4 weeks ago
It has become almost a cliché...

It has become almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of ignorance of literature, but it is socially acceptable to boast ignorance of science and proudly claim incompetence in mathematics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 2 weeks ago
"What progress, you ask, have I...

"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That was indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.

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Seneca is quoting Hecato.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
6 months 3 weeks ago
At one level, this movement on...

At one level, this movement on behalf of oppressed farm animals is emotional...Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer...This idea popularized by Professor Singer - that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species - is one whose time appears to have come...What we're seeing now is an interesting moral moment: a grass-roots effort by members of one species to promote the welfare of others...animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda.

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Nicholas Kristof, "Humanity Even for Nonhumans," in The New York Times (8 April 2009).
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
7 months 6 days ago
The first characteristic of the human...

The first characteristic of the human species is man's ability, as a rational being, to establish character for himself, as well as for the society into which nature has placed him. This ability, however, presupposes an already favorable natural predisposition and an inclination to the good in man, because the evil is really without character (since it is at odds with itself, and since it does not tolerate any lasting principle within itself)

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 246
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
7 months 4 days ago
It is the courage to make...

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that distinguishes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

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Letter to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (November 1815)
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
4 months 3 weeks ago
The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen...

The late philosopher Morris R. Cohen of CCNY was asked by a student in the metaphysics course, "Professor Cohen, how do I know that I exist?" The keen old prof replied, "And who is asking?"

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Humboldt's Gift (1996), p. 163
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
4 months 1 week ago
...it won't just be the quality...

...it won't just be the quality and quantity of consciousness in the world that will be transformed in the post-Darwinian Transition. As (post-)humanity emerges from the neurochemical Dark Ages, enriched dopaminergic function in particular may sharpen the sheer intensity and meaningfulness of every moment of conscious existence. For a generation whose lifetimes span both modes of awareness, it will be as if they had just woken up. They will feel they had hitherto been sleep-walking through life in a twilit stupor. Thereafter their former mundane and minimal existence may be recalled only as some kind of zombified trance-state whose nature they were physiologically incapable of recognising...

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The Hedonistic Imperative: Heaven on Earth?, "Eden", BLTC Research
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 3 weeks ago
Listen widely to remove your...

Listen widely to remove your doubts and be careful when speaking about the rest and your mistakes will be few. See much and get rid of what is dangerous and be careful in acting on the rest and your causes for regret will be few. Speaking without fault, acting without causing regret: 'upgrading' consists in this.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
7 months 3 days ago
Moreover, if the character is formed,...

Moreover, if the character is formed, and the mind made up, on the few cardinal points of human opinion, agreement of conviction and feeling on these, has been felt in all times to be an essential requisite of anything worthy the name of friendship, in a really earnest mind. All these circumstances united, made the number very small of those whose society, and still more whose intimacy, I now voluntarily sought.

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(p. 229)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 months ago
If you do the job in...

If you do the job in a principled way, with diligence, energy and patience, if you keep yourself free of distractions, and keep the spirit inside you undamaged, as if you might have to give it back at any moment- If you can embrace this without fear or expectation-can find fulfillment in what you're doing now, as Nature intended, and in superhuman truthfulness (every word, every utterance)-then your life will be happy.

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(Hays translation)- III, 12
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 months ago
The mind which is free from...

The mind which is free from passions is a citadel, for man has nothing more secure to which he can fly for refuge and for the future be inexpugnable. He then who has not seen this is an ignorant man: but he who has seen it and does not fly to this refuge is unhappy.

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VIII, 48
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 3 days ago
A man can live and be...

A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.

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Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 3 days ago
Science does not know its debt...

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
4 months 2 weeks ago
Every oasis is an island that...

Every oasis is an island that has water inside it but not round it.

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Between Niger and Nile (London: Oxford UP, 1965) 20. Cyrenaïca's Green Mountain
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
8 months 1 day ago
The military mind remains unparalleled as...

The military mind remains unparalleled as a vehicle of creative stupidity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
8 months ago
Perhaps we cannot prevent this world...

Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this?

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 4 weeks ago
What pride to discover that nothing...

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 months 3 days ago
Just then another visitor entered the...

Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew Bolkónski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pávlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.

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Bk. I, Ch. IV
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
7 months 4 days ago
Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness...

Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.

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Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
8 months 4 days ago
Be attentive therefore, according to the...

Be attentive therefore, according to the instruction of the Gospel, to learn obedience from the lily and the bird. Be not affrighted, do no despair, when thou comparest thy life with these teachers. There is nothing to despair about, for indeed thou shalt learn from them; and the Gospel first comforts thee by telling thee that God is the God of patience, and then it adds: 'Thou shalt learn from the lilies and the birds, learn to be absolutely obedient like the lilies and the birds, learn not to serve two masters; for no man can serve two masters, he must either ... or.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 4 weeks ago
A more or less superficial layer...

A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. I call it the "personal unconscious". But this personal layer rests upon a deeper layer, which does not derive from personal experience and is not a personal acquisition but is inborn. This deeper layer I call the "collective unconscious". I have chosen the term "collective" because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals.

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p. 3-4
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
8 months 5 days ago
Where there have been powerful governments,...
Where there have been powerful governments, societies, religions, public opinions, in short wherever there has been tyranny, there the solitary philosopher has been hated; for philosophy offers an asylum to a man into which no tyranny can force it way, the inward cave, the labyrinth of the heart.
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
The foundation of irreligious criticism is:...

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
7 months 4 days ago
Correct and accurate conclusions may be...

Correct and accurate conclusions may be arrived at if we carefully observe the relation of the spheres of concepts, and only conclude that one sphere is contained in a third sphere, when we have clearly seen that this first sphere is contained in a second, which in its turn is contained in the third. On the other hand, the art of sophistry lies in casting only a superficial glance at the relations of the spheres of the concepts, and then manipulating these relations to suit our purposes, generally in the following way: - When the sphere of an observed concept lies partly within that of another concept, and partly within a third altogether different sphere, we treat it as if it lay entirely within the one or the other, as may suit our purpose.

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Vol. I, Ch. 10, as translated by R. B. Haldane
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
I believe that man...
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Main Content / General
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
7 months 2 weeks ago
The true servants of God are...

The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.

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p. 616
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
7 months 3 days ago
Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks...

Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is clear truth in the...

There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
8 months 1 day ago
He could almost wish he were...

He could almost wish he were superstitious. He could then console himself with the thought that the casual meaningless meeting had really been directed by a knowing and purposeful Fate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
7 months 5 days ago
We hold, that the moral obligation...

We hold, that the moral obligation of providing for old age, helpless infancy, and poverty, is far superior to that of supplying the invented wants of courtly extravagance, ambition and intrigue.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
5 months 3 weeks ago
Society ... can afford to grant...

Society ... can afford to grant more than before because its interests have become the innermost drives of its citizens.

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p. 72
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 3 days ago
Our opinion here is that that...

Our opinion here is that that place has been so deeply concerned in smuggling, that if it wants it is because it has illegally sent away what it ought to have retained for its own consumption.

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Letter to Lieutenant Governor Levi Lincoln of Massachusetts (November 13, 1808) concerning a petition from the island of Nantucket for food during the American embargo.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
When we have weighed everything, and...

When we have weighed everything, and when our relations in life permit us to choose any given position, we may take that one which guarantees us the greatest dignity, which is based on ideas of whose truth we are completely convinced, which offers the largest field to work for mankind and approach the universal goal for which every position is only a means: perfection.

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
6 months 2 weeks ago
When Demaratus was asked whether he...

When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue."

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Of Demaratus
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
4 months 2 weeks ago
What could be a better indication...

What could be a better indication of man's continued dependence on nature than the fact that today's so-called post-industrial societies satisfy most of their food needs through imports from so-called underdeveloped countries?

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Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 2 weeks ago
It would be some consolation for...

It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works, if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 4 weeks ago
The general co-operation of all members...

The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country - these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 2 weeks ago
The human soul has need of...

The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation. The human soul has need of security and also of risk. The fear of violence or of hunger or of any other extreme evil is a sickness of the soul. The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is also a sickness of the soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 days ago
Under no pretext should arms and...

Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.

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Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League in London, March 1850
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
7 months 4 days ago
In the name of national security,...

In the name of national security, the Commission's hearings were held in secret, thereby continuing the policy which has marked the entire course of the case. This prompts my second question: If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security? Indeed, precisely the same question must be put here as was posed in France during the Dreyfus case: If the Government is so certain of its case, why has it conducted all its inquiries in the strictest secrecy? "

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16 Questions on the Assassination" in The Minority of One, ed. M.S. Arnoni (1964-09-06), pp. 6-8
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 months 3 days ago
Our model citizen is a sophisticate...

Our model citizen is a sophisticate who before puberty understands how to produce a baby, but who at the age of thirty will not know how to produce a potato.

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Think Little
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
8 months 1 day ago
Zeus, the god of gods, who...

Zeus, the god of gods, who rules according to law, and is able to see into such things, perceiving that an honourable race was in a woeful plight, and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that they might be chastened and improve, collected all the gods into their most holy habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, beholds all created things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
3 months 2 weeks ago
God, our Father, has given us...

God, our Father, has given us the life and the art of healing to protect and maintain it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
6 months 2 weeks ago
A fool is known by his...

A fool is known by his Speech; and a wise man by Silence.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
5 months 4 weeks ago
I suddenly stopped and looked out...

I suddenly stopped and looked out at the sea and thought, my God, how beautiful this is ... for 26 years I had never really looked at it before.

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On his greater appreciation of the scenery of the world, after his near-death experience, as quoted in "Did atheist philosopher see God when he 'died'?" by William Cash, in National Post (3 March 2001).
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
7 months 1 week ago
You worry whether the drought will...

You worry whether the drought will end. It is far better that you pray that God may water your mind lest virtue wither away in it. You are greatly concerned with money that is lost or being wasted, or you worry about the advance of old age. I think it much to be desired that you provide first of all for the needs of your soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 months 3 weeks ago
The Kingdom is like a wise...

The Kingdom is like a wise fisherman who cast his net into the sea and drew it up from the sea full of small fish. Among them the wise fisherman found a fine large fish. He threw all the small fish back into the sea and chose the large fish without difficulty. Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 months 3 weeks ago
Wine is a mixture of moisture...

Wine is a mixture of moisture and light.

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As quoted in Lorenzo Magalotti's Scientific and Scholarly Letter
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
3 months 2 weeks ago
The criterion of truth is that...

The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.

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Chapter 5: On Some Popular Errors Concerning the Scope and Method of Economics, § 9 : The Belief in the Omnipotence of Thought
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Kaufmann
Walter Kaufmann
4 months 3 days ago
Of course, not everything old is...

Of course, not everything old is beautiful, any more than everything black, or everything white, or everything young. But the notion that old means ugly is every bit as harmful as the prejudice that black is ugly. In one way it is even more pernicious. The notion that only what is new and young is beautiful poisons our relationship to the past and to our own future. It keeps us from understanding our roots and the greatest works of our culture and other cultures. It also makes us dread what lies ahead of us and leads many to shirk reality.

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Time is an Artist (1978) Epilogue : Old is Beautiful
Philosophical Maxims
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