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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 1 day ago
Not to feel exasperated, or defeated,...

Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human--however imperfectly--and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on. (Hays translation) Flinch not, neither give up nor despair, if the achieving of every act in accordance with right principle is not always continuous with thee.

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V, 9
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 weeks 1 day ago
Running away from fear is fear;...

Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 2 days ago
The great man, whether we comprehend...

The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces, is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit.

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p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 2 weeks ago
And now I have explained the...

And now I have explained the series of social and intellectual conditions by which the discovery of sociological laws, and consequently the foundation of Positivism, was fixed for the precise date at which I began my philosophical career: that is to say, one generation after the progressive dictatorship of the Convention, and almost immediately after the fall of the retrograde tyranny of Bonaparte.

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p. 71
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Life is the terrible condition

It's quite true that there were billions of years that I didn't exist that I was never bothered about.

Life itself is sitting in a room with a murderer, while eating a nice meal. You're just waiting for the meal to be over...

LIFE is the terrible condition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
The French bourgeois doesn't dislike shit,...

The French bourgeois doesn't dislike shit, provided it is served up to him at the right time.

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Book 2, "To Succeed in Being All, Strive to be Nothing in Anything"
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
The problem of establishing a perfect...

The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.

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Seventh Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months ago
It is our deliberate opinion that...

It is our deliberate opinion that the French Revolution, in spite of all its crimes and follies, was a great blessing to mankind.

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'Sir James Mackintosh', The Edinburgh Review (July 1835), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 215
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 week ago
Don't get involved in partial problems,...

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

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Journal entry
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
2 weeks 6 days ago
The fundamental principle underlying all justifications...

The fundamental principle underlying all justifications of war, from the point of view of human personality, is 'heroism'. War, it is said, offers man the opportunity to awaken the hero who sleeps within him. War breaks the routine of comfortable life; by means of its severe ordeals, it offers a transfiguring knowledge of life, life according to death. The moment the individual succeeds in living as a hero, even if it is the final moment of his earthly life, weighs infinitely more on the scale of values than a protracted existence spent consuming monotonously among the trivialities of cities. From a spiritual point of view, these possibilities make up for the negative and destructive tendencies of war, which are one-sidedly and tendentiously highlighted by pacifist materialism. War makes one realise the relativity of human life and therefore also the law of a 'more-than-life', and thus war has always an anti-materialist value, a spiritual value.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 4 days 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
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 6 days ago
I remind young people everywhere I...

I remind young people everywhere I go, one of the worst things the older generation did was to tell them for twenty-five years "Be successful, be successful, be successful" as opposed to "Be great, be great, be great". There's a qualitative difference.

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Speech in San Francisco: Democracy Matters
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
What a monument of human smallness...

What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most - that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman - the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.

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Vol. 1, Ch 8 "The Philosopher King"
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 1 week ago
The representation of the self-sufficiency of...

The representation of the self-sufficiency of the I can certainly co-exist with a representation of the self-sufficiency of the thing, though the self-sufficiency of the I itself cannot co-exist with that of the thing. Only one of these two can come first, only one can be the starting point; only one can be independent. The one that comes second, just because it comes second, necessarily becomes dependent upon the one that comes first, with which it is supposed to be connected. Which of these two should come first?

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p. 17-18.
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Hope is the only good that...

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.

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A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 234
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 2 weeks ago
The true goal of the bourgeois...

The true goal of the bourgeois life, in other words, is not self-enactment, but diversion. Most people need the organised distraction of work (if they can find it). Idleness - the life of the playboy who doesn't answer the phone - is simply too demanding. "

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A difficult business," New Statesman
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 5 days ago
Death weighs on him….

Death weighs on him who is known to all, but dies unknown to himself.

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lines 401-403; (Chorus)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 5 days ago
One has to do....
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Main Content / General
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
I know well what I am...

I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.

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Book III, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The more we try to wrest...

The more we try to wrest ourselves from our ego, the deeper we sink into it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
I cannot recall those years without...

I cannot recall those years without horror, loathing, and heart-rending pain. I killed people in war, challenged men to duels with the purpose of killing them, and lost at cards; I squandered the fruits of the peasants' toil and then had them executed; I was a fornicator and a cheat. Lying, stealing, promiscuity of every kind, drunkenness, violence, murder - there was not a crime I did not commit... Thus I lived for ten years.

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Pt. I, ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 2 weeks ago
The philosophy of physics is continuous...

The philosophy of physics is continuous with physics itself. Just as certain issues in the Foundations of Mathematics have been discussed by both mathematicians and by philosophers of mathematics, so certain issues in the philosophy of physics have been discussed by both physicists and by philosophers of physics. And just as there are issues of a more epistemological kind that tend to concern philosophers of mathematics more than they do working mathematicians, so there are issues that concern philosophers of physics more than they do working physicists.

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Philosophy of physics
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 2 days ago
The species with eyes appears suddenly,...

The species with eyes appears suddenly, capriciously as it were, and it is this species which changes the environment by creating its visible aspect. The eye does not come into being because it is needed. Just the contrary; because the eye appears it can henceforth be applied as a serviceable instrument. Each species builds up its stock of useful habits by selecting among, and taking advantage of, the innumerable useless actions which a living being performs out of sheer exuberance.

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p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated...

Metaphysical rebellion is a claim, motivated by the concept of a complete unity, against the suffering of life and death and a protest against the human condition both for its incompleteness, thanks to death, and its wastefulness, thanks to evil.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 3 weeks ago
Besides, it is written that the...

Besides, it is written that the tree shall be known by its fruits. The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin; and she has gone about uprooting the other continents from the sixteenth century onwards. Missionary zeal has not Christianized Africa, Asia and Oceania, but has brought these territories under the cold, cruel and destructive domination of the white race, which has trodden down everything. It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.

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Section 9
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
No man is exempt from saying...

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

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Book III, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
This provides us with our first...

This provides us with our first major clue to the solutions of the problem. Even if the left cannot see the world as full of potentiality, it can hold on to the moments of insight and refuse to let go of them. If I know that present difficulties will end in triumph, I am un-discourageable; I merely have to know it intellectually. And if I can 'know' that reality actually has a third dimension, I shall never fall into the mistake of complaining that there is nothing new under the sun and that life is futile.

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p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 2 weeks ago
That some have never dreamed is...

That some have never dreamed is as improbable as that some have never laughed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
2 weeks 6 days ago
My faith in human dignity consists...

My faith in human dignity consists in the belief that man is the greatest scamp on earth. Human dignity must be associated with the idea of a scamp and not with that of an obedient, disciplined and regimented soldier.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 1 week ago
Some propose mere welfare measures -...

Some propose mere welfare measures - while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
2 months 2 weeks ago
Opinion is the companion of probability...

Opinion is the companion of probability within the medieval epistemology.

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Chapter 3, Opinion, p. 28.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 1 week ago
Nietzsche understands the aesthetic state of...

Nietzsche understands the aesthetic state of the observer and recipient on the basis of the state of the creator. Thus the effect of the artwork is nothing else than a reawakening of the creator's state in the one who enjoys the artwork. Observation of art follows in the wake of creation. Nietzsche says (SM, 821), "-the effect of artworks is arousal of the art-creating state, rapture."

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 1 day ago
Never regard something as doing you...

Never regard something as doing you good if it makes you betray a trust or lose your sense of shame or makes you show hatred, suspicion, ill-will or hypocrisy or a desire for things best done behind closed doors.

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III. 7, trans. Gregory Hays
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 week 2 days ago
Whatever the virtue may be, from...

Whatever the virtue may be, from whatever source it may come, it is worthy of esteem... Mind, beauty, wealth, nobility, although the children of chance, all have their own value, as skill, learning and virtue have theirs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
France had endeavoured under the specious...

France had endeavoured under the specious pretext of an enlarged benevolence, to sow the seeds of enmity among nations, and destroy all local attachments, calling them narrow and illiberal-thereby to dissever the people from their governors.

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Speech in the House of Commons on the Traitorous Correspondence Bill (9 April 1793)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
Does a man of sense run...

Does a man of sense run after every silly tale of hobgoblins or fairies, and canvass particularly the evidence? I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.

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Letters
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
The space of early Greek cosmology...

The space of early Greek cosmology was structured by logos - resonant utterance or word.

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p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 4 days ago
Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance...

Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources but strives to enhance them and pass them on.

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Stand up for the real meaning of freedom, The Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 2 weeks ago
I need not repeat, that the...

I need not repeat, that the most savage of the savage tribes in the forest, live among each other in amity. Lions show no fierceness to the lion race. The boar does not brandish his deadly tooth against his brother boar. The lynx lives in peace with the lynx. The serpent shews no venom in his intercourse with his fellow serpent; and the loving kindness of wolf to wolf is proverbial.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 4 weeks ago
To Harmodius, descended from the ancient...

To Harmodius, descended from the ancient Harmodius, when he reviled Iphicrates [a shoemaker's son] for his mean birth, "My nobility," said he, "begins in me, but yours ends in you."

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54 Iphicrates
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
In a certain sense, everything is...

In a certain sense, everything is everywhere at all times. For every location involves an aspect of itself in every other location. Thus every spatio-temporal standpoint mirrors the world.

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Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
By quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of...

By quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of confederating, Germans and Scandinavians, both of them belonging to the same great race, only prepare the way for their hereditary enemy, the Slav. 

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The Eastern Question: A Reprint of Letters written 1853 -1856 dealing with the events of the Crimean War, edit., Eleanor Marx Aveling, London, Swan Sonnenschein & Co. (1897) p. 90
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 days ago
O thou who art able to...

O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.

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Bk. II, ch. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 5 days ago
What madness this is, to punish...

What madness this is, to punish oneself because one is unfortunate, and not to lessen, but to increase one's ills! You ought to display, in this matter also, that decent behaviour and modesty which has characterised all your life: for there is such a thing as self-restraint in grief also.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
...inversion...is an outlet that a child...

...inversion...is an outlet that a child discovers when he is suffocating.

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p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 week ago
"I never believed in God before."...

"I never believed in God before." - that I understand. But not: "I never really believed in Him before."

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p. 53e
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 1 day ago
It is sweet and honorable…

It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country.

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Book III, ode ii, line 13
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
A poem is one undivided unimpeded...

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly received by those for whom it was matured.

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Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is, I think, a spontaneous...

There is, I think, a spontaneous resurgence of thinking that centers on protection of life, celebrating life, enjoying life as both our highest duty and our most powerful form of resistance against a violent and brutal system that globalizes not just trade, but fascism, and denies civil liberties and freedoms.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 4 days ago
But if it bee well considered,...

But if it bee well considered, The praise of Ancient Authors, proceeds not from the reverence of the Dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the Living.

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Review and Conclusion, p. 395
Philosophical Maxims
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