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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
An appeal to his alarm is...

An appeal to his alarm is never a good plan to rid oneself of a spirited young man.

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The Pavilion on the Links, ch. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is the business of the...

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

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Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Plato was synthesis of Europe and...

Plato was synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise color.

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Quoted in Swami Abhedananda, India and Her People, 6th ed., Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, 1945
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
And why should man, added he,...

And why should man, added he, pretend to an exemption from the lot of all other animals? The whole earth, believe me, PHILO, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: Weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and it is at last finished in agony and horror.

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Demea to Philo, Part X
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
You can take better care of...

You can take better care of your secret than another can.

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1863
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Some part of life - perhaps...

Some part of life - perhaps the most important part - must be left to the spontaneous action of individual impulse, for where all is system there will be mental and spiritual death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 5 days ago
Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against...

Positive philosophy made its counter-attack against critical rationalism on two fronts. Comte fought against the French form of negative philosophy, against the heritage of Descartes and the Enlightenment. In Germany, the struggle was directed against Hegel's system. Schelling received an express commission from Frederick William IV 'to destroy the dragon seed' of Hegelianism, while Stahl, another anti-Hegelian, became the philosophical spokesman of the Prussian monarchy in 1840.

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P. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 2 weeks ago
I do not know what I...

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

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Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27).
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
Money is a crystal formed of...

Money is a crystal formed of necessity in the course of the exchanges, whereby different products of labour are practically equated to one another and thus by practice converted into commodities.

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Vol. I, Ch. 2, pg. 99.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 2 days ago
How much time he gains who...

How much time he gains who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks, but only at what he does himself, to make it just and holy.

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IV, 18
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
The deepest definition of youth is...

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

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p. 285.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
The fact of the religious vision,...

The fact of the religious vision, and its history of persistent expansion, is our one ground for optimism. Apart from it, human life is a flash of occasional enjoyments lighting up a mass of pain and misery, a bagatelle of transient experience.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", p. 268
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 week 3 days ago
In the immense sphere of living...

In the immense sphere of living things, the obvious rule is violence, a kind of inevitable frenzy which arms all things in mutua funera. Once you leave the world of insensible substances, you find the decree of violent death written on the very frontiers of life. Even in the vegetable kingdom, this law can be perceived: from the huge catalpa to the smallest of grasses, how many plants die and how many are killed!

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 3 weeks ago
Society triumphs over many. They wish...

Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed. When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind - with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
Despite the fact that the doctors...

Despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.

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[sometimes quoted as "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered."] Bk. XV, ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
3 weeks ago
It is not so much what...

It is not so much what you believe in that matters, as the way in which you believe it and proceed to translate that belief into action.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
The individual produces an object and,...

The individual produces an object and, by consuming it, returns to himself, but returns as a productive and self reproducing individual. Consumption thus appears as a moment of production.

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Introduction, p. 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 5 days ago
Behold, a sower went forth to...

Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

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13:3-9 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 1 week ago
To conceive that compulsion and punishment...

To conceive that compulsion and punishment are the proper means of reformation, is the sentiment of a barbarian; civilisation and science are calculated to explode so ferocious an idea. It was once universally admitted and approved; it is now necessarily upon the decline.

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Vol. 2, bk. 7, ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 4 weeks ago
There is no objective reality. But...

There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object.

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As translated at Gallery of Russian Thinkers ... selected by Dmitry Olshansky
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Where danger shews it self, apprehension...

Where danger shews it self, apprehension cannot, without stupidity, be wanting; where danger is, sense of danger should be; and so much fear as should keep us awake, and excite our attention, industry, and vigour; but not to disturb the calm use of our reason, nor hinder the execution of what that dictates.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
What is not heartrending is superfluous,...

What is not heartrending is superfluous, at least in music.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 weeks ago
A sovereign shows....
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Main Content / General
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 6 days ago
Fire tries gold….

Fire tries gold, misfortune tries brave men.

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De Providentia (On Providence), 5.9, translated by Aubrey Stewart Alternate translation: Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. (translator unknown).
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 week ago
Both in England and on the...

Both in England and on the Continent a graduated property tax (l'impôt progressif) has been advocated, on the avowed ground that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent.To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours. It is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation.

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Book V, Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 3 weeks ago
By protracting life…

By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

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Book III, lines 1087-1088 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
People crushed by law, have no...

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

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Letter to Charles James Fox
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is no man....

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
We say that someone occupies an...

We say that someone occupies an official position, whereas it is the official position that occupies him.

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F 47
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 5 days ago
Can we find nothing good to...

Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.

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The Distracted Public (1990), p. 159
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
All violence consists in some people...

All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.

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The Law of Love and the Law of Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 2 weeks ago
Why has the Revolution of France...

Why has the Revolution of France been stained with crimes, which the Revolution of the United States of America was not? Men are physically the same in all countries; it is education that makes them different. Accustom a people to believe that priests or any other class of men can forgive sins, and you will have sins in abundance.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
If I had had more time,...

If I had had more time, this letter would have been shorter.

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Written by Voltaire in an over-long letter to a friend, quoted to A. P. Martinich in Philosophical Writing: An Introduction, Note to the Second Edition, 1996
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
A nihilist is not one who...

A nihilist is not one who believes in nothing, but one who does not believe in what exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
... the fight against suffering must...

... the fight against suffering must be considered a duty, while the right to care for the happiness of others must be considered a privilege confined to the close circle of their friends. ... Pain, suffering, injustice, and their prevention, these are the eternal problems of public morals, the 'agenda' of public policy ...

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Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
3 months 1 week ago
The transition of the subject-object relation...

The transition of the subject-object relation to that of the I-Thou implies a passage of consciousness to a new sphere of existence, viz, the interval, betweenness or Zwischen; and this is a passage from thought to Umfassung.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
To conceive a thought - just...

To conceive a thought - just one, but one that would tear the universe to pieces.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
If God has made us…

If God has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor.

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Notebooks, c.1735-c.1750
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 2 weeks ago
The populist rant about greedy banks...

The populist rant about greedy banks that is being loudly ventilated in Congress is a distraction from the true causes of the crisis. The dire condition of America's financial markets is the result of American banks operating in a free-for-all environment that these same American legislators created. It is America's political class that, by embracing the dangerously simplistic ideology of deregulation, has responsibility for the present mess.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 2 days ago
No thefts of free will reported....

No thefts of free will reported.

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(Hays translation) XI, 36
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 6 days ago
I deplore with you the putrid...

I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit I agree with you...

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Letter to Walter Jones (2 January 1814)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
Friendship, I have said, is born...

Friendship, I have said, is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself..."

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 1 week ago
The end of man...

The end of man (as a factual anthropological limit) is announced to thought from the vantage of the end of man (as a determined opening or the infinity of a telos). Man is that which is in relation to his end, in the fundamentally equivocal sense of the word. Since always.

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"The Ends of Man," Margins of Philosophy, tr. w/ notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
Insurrection ... never brings about the...

Insurrection ... never brings about the desired improvement. For insurrection lacks discernment; it generally harms the innocent more than the guilty. Hence, no insurrection is ever right, no matter how right the cause it seeks to promote.

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pp. 62-63
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 days ago
I am not an Atheist....

I am not an Atheist. I do not know if I can define myself as a Pantheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. May I not reply with a parable? The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind, even the greatest and most cultured, toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged, obeying certain laws, but we understand the laws only dimly. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that sways the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza's Pantheism. I admire even more his contributions to modern thought. Spinoza is the greatest of modern philosophers because he is the first philosopher who deals with the soul and the body as one, not as two separate things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 3 weeks ago
The pathos of it all is...

The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class; the class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from the cradle to the grave. No less pathetic is it that so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 3 weeks ago
So potent was Religion….

So potent was Religion in persuading to do wrong.

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Book I, line 101 (tr. Alicia Stallings) H. A. J. Munro's translation: So great the evils to which religion could prompt! W. H. D. Rouse's translation: So potent was Superstition in persuading to evil deeds.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 6 days ago
There is not a truth existing...

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.

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Letter to Henry Lee
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
And when we speak of "abandonment"...

And when we speak of "abandonment" - a favorite word of Heidegger - we only mean to say that God does not exist and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence to the end.

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pp. 32-33
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
5 months 2 days ago
The wise is one only.

The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

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Philosophical Maxims
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