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Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 days ago
Just as a vagrant accused of...

Just as a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field stands before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries, comments and witticisms while the accused is unable to stammer a word, so truth stands before an intelligence which is concerned with the elegant manipulation of opinions.

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p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 1 day ago
I seem to myself, among civilised...

I seem to myself, among civilised men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
All mortals tend to turn into...

All mortals tend to turn into the thing they are pretending to be.

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Letter X
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks ago
To this I answer...
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Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks 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
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 days ago
Celui qui ignore à quel point...

He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow-creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance separated from him by an abyss. The variety of constraints pressing upon man give rise to the illusion of several distinct species that cannot communicate.

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p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Courtesy is a science of the...

Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 2 weeks ago
We think of beauty as being...

We think of beauty as being most worthy of reverence. But what is most worthy of reverence lights up only where the magnificent strength to revere is alive. To revere is not a thing for the petty and lowly, the incapacitated and underdeveloped. It is a matter of tremendous passion; only what flows from such passion is in the grand style.

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p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 4 weeks ago
States as great engines move slowly....

States as great engines move slowly.

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Book II
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 weeks 4 days ago
We have repeatedly observed that while...

We have repeatedly observed that while any whole is evolving, there is always going on an evolution of the parts into which it divides itself; but we have not observed that this equally holds of the totality of things, which is made up of parts within parts from the greatest down to the smallest.

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Pt. II, The Knowable; Ch. XV, The Law of Evolution (continued)
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
Just now
Man's life cannot "be lived" by...

Man's life cannot "be lived" by repeating the pattern of his species; he must live. Man is the only animal that can be bored, that can be discontented, that can feel evicted from paradise. Man is the only animal for whom his own existence is a problem which he has to solve and from which he cannot escape. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of harmony with nature; he must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the master of nature, and of himself.

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Ch. 3 "Human Nature and Character
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 weeks 3 days ago
Half our days we pass in...

Half our days we pass in the shadow of the earth; and the brother of death exacteth a third part of our lives.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
But in the end one needs...

But in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Since I would rather make of...

Since I would rather make of him an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head.

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Ch. 26. On the Education of Children
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 week 2 days ago
The new order contradicts reason so...

The new order contradicts reason so fundamentally that reason does not dare to doubt it. Even the consciousness of oppression fades. The more incommensurate become the concentration of power and the helplessness of the individual, the more difficult for him to penetrate the human origin of his misery.

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p. 44.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 week 3 days ago
Form may then be defined as...

Form may then be defined as the operation of forces that carry the experience of an event, object, scene, and situation to its own integral fulfillment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week 4 days ago
In the form of the oeuvre,...

In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.

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p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
The welfare of the people in...

The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience. It would be easy, however, to destroy that good conscience by shouting to them: if you want the happiness of the people, let them speak out and tell what kind of happiness they want and what kind they don't want! But, in truth, the very ones who make use of such alibis know they are lies; they leave to their intellectuals on duty the chore of believing in them and of proving that religion, patriotism, and justice need for their survival the sacrifice of freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 weeks 2 days ago
Go further, and require each of...

Go further, and require each of them to make a contribution: you will see how many things are still missing, and you will be obliged to get the assistance of a large number of men who belong to different classes, priceless men, but to whom the gates of the academies are nonetheless closed because of their social station. All the members of these learned societies are more than is needed for a single object of human science; all the societies together are not sufficient for a science of man in general.

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Article on Encyclopedia
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 1 week ago
When the Superior Man (Junzi)...

When the Superior Man (Junzi) eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Tao and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning."

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Martyrs must choose between being forgotten,...

Martyrs must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood, never!

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is the same: a chosen...

It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.

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Act 2, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 days ago
What is food to one...

What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.

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Book IV, line 637 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations) Compare: "What's one man's poison, signor, / Is another's meat or drink", Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (1647), Act III, scene 2
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they...

Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.

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Act 5, sc. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 3 weeks ago
We live to improve, or we...

We live to improve, or we live in vain.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually...

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

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To W. Lutoslawski, 5/6/1906
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 1 day ago
We had nothing to say to...

We had nothing to say to one another, and while I was manufacturing my phrases I felt that earth was falling through space and that I was falling with it at a speed that made me dizzy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 1 week ago
Human social institutions can effect the...

Human social institutions can effect the course of human evolution. Just as climate-change, food supply, predators, and other natural forces of selection have molded our nature, so too can our culture.

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Chapter 6, A New Understanding Of Ethics, p. 172
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
1 month 1 week ago
At the point at which the...

At the point at which the concept of différance, and the chain attached to it, intervenes, all the conceptual oppositions of metaphysics (signifier/signified; sensible/intelligible; writing/speech; passivity/activity; etc.)- to the extent that they ultimately refer to the presence of something present (for example, in the form of the identity of the subject who is present for all his operations, present beneath every accident or event, self-present in its "living speech," in its enunciations, in the present objects and acts of its language, etc.)- become non pertinent. They all amount, at one moment or another, to a subordination of the movement of différance in favor of the presence of a value or a meaning supposedly antecedent to différance, more original than it, exceeding and governing it in the last analysis. This is still the presence of what we called above the "transcendental signified.

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p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
I'm afraid of losing my obscurity....

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

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Those Barren Leaves, 1925
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 1 week ago
Philosophy is not politics, and we...

Philosophy is not politics, and we do our best, within our all-too-human limitations, to seek the truth, not to score points against opponents. There is little satisfaction in gaining an easy triumph over a weak opponent while ignoring better arguments against your views. 

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'Last Generation': A Response, The New York Times, June 16, 2010.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
Anything could be found in figures...

Anything could be found in figures if the search were long enough and hard enough and if the proper pieces of information were ignored or overlooked.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 day ago
The most disheartening tendency common among...

The most disheartening tendency common among readers is to tear out one sentence from a work, as a criterion of the writer's ideas or personality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
2 months 6 days ago
Times are bad. Children no longer...

Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book.

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As quoted in InfoWorld, Vol. 23, No. 16, 16 April 2001, p. 49. This had been attributed previously to many other sources from 1908 on, according to this analysis by Quote Investigator.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 5 days ago
Justice was in all countries originally...

Justice was in all countries originally administered by the priesthood; nor indeed could laws in their first feeble state have either authority or sanction, so as to compel men to relinquish their natural independence, had they not appeared to come down to them enforced by beings of more than human power. The first openings of civility have been everywhere made by religion. Amongst the Romans, the custody and interpretation of the laws continued solely in the college of the pontiffs for above a century.

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An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 196
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Too busy with the crowded hour...

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

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Quatrains, Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 5 days ago
He laid it down as a...

He laid it down as a maxim, that monarchy was the basis of all good government and the nearer to monarchy any government approached, the more perfect it was, and vice versa; and he certainly in his wildest moments, never had so far forgotten the nature of government, as to argue that we ought to wish for a constitution that we could alter at pleasure, and change like a dirty shirt. He was by no means anxious for a monarchy with a dash of republicanism to correct it. But the French constitution was the exact opposite of the English in every thing, and nothing could be so dangerous as to set it up to the view of the English, to mislead and debauch their minds.

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Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 385
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is only one inborn erroneous...

There is only one inborn erroneous notion ... that we exist in order to be happy ... So long as we persist in this inborn error ... the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in great things and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence ... hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of ... disappointment.

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Vol II "On the Road to Salvation"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
For my own part, I cannot...

For my own part, I cannot without grief see so much as an innocent beast pursued and killed that has no defence, and from which we have received no offence at all.

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Ch. 11, tr. Cotton, 1685
Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
1 month 6 days ago
The only roads of enquiry there...

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

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Frag. B 2.2-6, quoted by Proclus, Commentary on the Timaeus I, 345
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is hard to have patience...

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week 4 days ago
We return to our analysis of...

We return to our analysis of qualities. Something preserves itself throughout this flux, something that passes into other things, but also stands against them as a being for itself. This something can exist only as the product of a process through which it integrates its otherness with its own proper being. Hegel says that its existence comes about through 'the negation of the negation.' The first negation is the otherness in which it turns, and the second is the incorporation of this other into its own self. Such a process presupposes that things possess a certain power over their movement, that they exist in a certain self-relation that enables them to 'mediate' their existential conditions.

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P. 132-133
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 1 day ago
What is that one crucifixion compared...

What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 week 4 days ago
Let a man once overcome his...

Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
Once in his early youth a...

Once in his early youth a man allowed himself to be so far carried away in an overwrought irresponsible state as to visit a prostitute. It is all forgotten. Now he wants to get married. Then anxiety stirs. He is tortured day and night with the thought that he might possibly be a father, that somewhere in the world there could be a created being who owed his life to him. He cannot share his secret with anyone; he does not even have any reliable knowledge of the fact. –For this reason the incident must have involved a prostitute and taken place in the wantonness of youth; had it been a little infatuated or an actual seduction, it would be hard to imagine that he could know nothing about it, but now this this very ignorance is the basis of his agitated torment. On the other hand, precisely because of the rashness of the whole affair, his misgivings do not really start until he actually falls in love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
The world evades us because it...

The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
1 month 1 week ago
Kripke tries to sober us up...

Kripke tries to sober us up by denying that meaning determines reference. Rather, we name things by confronting them and baptising them, not by creating them out of a list of qualities. Names are not, pace Russell, shorthand for such lists. They are not abbreviations for descriptions, but (in Kripke's coinage) 'rigid designators' - that is, they would name the same things in any possible world, including worlds in which their bearers did not have the properties we, in this world, use to identify them.

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Kripke versus Kant. Lrb.com, september 1980.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
A thing is important if anyone...

A thing is important if anyone think it important.

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Ch. 28, Note 35
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 weeks 2 days ago
As one digs deeper into the...

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

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Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831 Selected Letters, ed. Roger Boesche, UofC Press 1985, p. 39.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
1 week 3 days ago
All forms of tampering with human...

All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.

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Philosophical Maxims
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