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Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
Just now
Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial...

Like monarchy, monotheism had a martial origin. "It is only on the march and it time of war," says Robertson Smith in The Prophets of Israel, "that a nomad people feels any urgent need of a central authority, and so it came about that in the first beginnings of national organization, centering in the sanctuary of the ark, Israel was thought of mainly as a host of Jehovah. the very name of Israel is martial, and means 'God (El) fighteth,' and Jehovah in the Old Testament is Iahwé Cebāôth - the Jehovah of the armies of Israel. It was on the battlefield that Jehovah's presence was most clearly realized; but in primitive nations the leader in time of war is also the natural judge in time of peace."

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 3 days ago
There are two forms of knowledge,...

There are two forms of knowledge, one genuine, one obscure. To the obscure belong all of the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling. The other form is the genuine, and is quite distinct from this. [And then distinguishing the genuine from the obscure, he continues:] Whenever the obscure [way of knowing] has reached the minimum sensibile of hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and when the investigation must be carried farther into that which is still finer, then arises the genuine way of knowing, which has a finer organ of thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 1 week ago
The mere word 'design' by itself...

The mere word 'design' by itself has no consequences and explains nothing. It is the barrenest of principles. The old question of whether there is design is idle. The real question is what is the world, whether or not it have a designer - and that can be revealed only by the study of all nature's particulars.

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Lecture III, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
All human activity is prompted by...

All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only, or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths.

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(wav audio file of Russell's voice)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 days ago
Get thee behind me, Satan: thou...

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

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16:23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 week 6 days ago
He who carries self-regard far enough...

He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
1 month 3 weeks ago
Never trust her at any time….

Never trust her at any time, when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

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Book II, lines 557-559 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
Just now
One of the greatest...
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Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
1 week 2 days ago
By asserting the objectivity of the...

By asserting the objectivity of the physical world, naturalism identifies the existence and the conditions of existence of the physical world with existence and the conditions of existence in general. It forgets that the world of the physicist necessarily refers back, through its intrinsic meaning, through the subjective world which one tries to exclude from reality as being pure appearance, conditioned by the empirical nature of man, which is incapable of reaching directly to a world of things in themselves. But while the world of the physicist claims to go beyond naive experience, his world really exists only in relation to naive experience.

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The Theory Of Intuition In Husserls Phenomenology 1963, 1995 p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 3 weeks ago
If it had pleased them [the...

If it had pleased them [the legislators] to order that this wealth, after having been possessed by fathers during their life, should return to the republic after their death, you would have no reason to complain of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 2 days ago
Everyone must destroy their life. According...

Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
1 month 2 weeks ago
Le remords s'endort durant un destin...

Remorse sleeps during a prosperous period but wakes up in adversity. Variant translations: Remorse sleeps during prosperity but awakes bitter consciousness during adversity. Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.

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II
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
Always put the best interpretation on...

Always put the best interpretation on a tenet. Why not on Christianity, wholesome, sweet, and poetic? It is the record of a pure and holy soul, humble, absolutely disinterested, a trutn-speaker, and bent on serving, teaching, and uplifting men. Christianity taught the capacity, the element, to Jove the All-perfect without a stingy bargain for personal happiness. It taught that to love him was happiness,-to love him in other's virtues.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 weeks 3 days ago
The French want no-one to be...

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

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Journeys to England and Ireland (1835).
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
1 month 4 weeks ago
There is another form of temptation,...

There is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. It originates in an appetite for knowledge. From this malady of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence do we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know.

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X, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
5 days ago
Sudden Glory, is the passion which...

Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 27 (italics and spelling as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 days ago
The physical change in the thickness...

The physical change in the thickness of walls since the Middle Ages could be shown in a diagram. In the fourteenth century each house was a fortress. Man spent the major portion of his day in them, in secret and well-defended solitude. That solitude, working on the soul hour after hour, forged it, like a transcendent blacksmith, into a compact and forceful character. Under its treatment, man consolidated his individual destiny and sallied forth with impunity, never yielding to the contamination from the public. It is only in isolation that we gain, almost automatically, a certain discrimination in ideas, desires, longings, that we learn which are ours, and which are anonymous, floating in the air, falling on us like dust in the street.

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p. 168
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
The two ways of contemplation are...

The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

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Book I, v, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
5 days ago
The eyes see only what the...

The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

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Robertson Davies as quoted in The White Bedouin‎ (2007) by George Potter, p. 241
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 weeks 3 days ago
You will know that wretched men...

You will know that wretched men are the cause of their own suffering, who neither see nor hear the good that is near them, and few are the ones who know how to secure release from their troubles. Such is the fate that harms their minds; like pebbles they are tossed about from one thing to another with cares unceasing. For the dread companion Strife harms them unawares, whom one must not walk behind, but withdraw from and flee.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 2 weeks ago
Let no man..

Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think.

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Book III, Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 week 3 days ago
A person is strong only when...

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well - in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

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"Appendix A"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 1 week ago
The real point at issue always...

The real point at issue always is Turkey in Europe - the great peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities.

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The Russian Menace to Europe, From Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, edited by Paul Blackstock and Bert Hoselitz, and published by George Allen and Unwin, London, 1953
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 3 days ago
The way of the superior man...

The way of the superior man may be compared to what takes place in traveling, when to go to a distance we must first traverse the space that is near, and in ascending a height, when we must begin from the lower ground.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 week 6 days ago
They say in the grave there...

They say in the grave there is peace, and peace and the grave are one and the same.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 week 3 days ago
There is but one Temple in...

There is but one Temple in the World; and that is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hand on a human body. Variant translation: There is but one temple in the Universe and that is the Body of Man.

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As inscribed on the Library of Congress, quoted in Handbook of the New Library of Congress (1897) by Herbert Small, p. 53
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 1 week ago
One capitalist always kills many...

One capitalist always kills many.

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Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 836.
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
1 month 2 weeks ago
The perfection of a thing does...

The perfection of a thing does not annul its existence, but, on the contrary, asserts it. Imperfection, on the other hand, does annul it ; therefore we cannot be more certain of the existence of anything, than of the existence of a being absolutely infinite or perfect-that is, of God. For inasmuch as his essence excludes all imperfection, and involves absolute perfection, all cause for doubt concerning his existence is done away, and the utmost certainty on the question is given. This, I think, will be evident to every moderately attentive reader.

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Part I, Prop. XI
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 2 weeks ago
Metaphysics has as the proper object...

Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality.

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B 395
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
A man who has no mental...

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

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Personality; or, What a Man Is
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
Understand me: I wish to be...

Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

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Orestes to Electra, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 2 weeks ago
How many things served us…

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

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Ch. 27. Of Friendship
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 1 week ago
The utilitarian morality does recognise in...

The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either of mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by the collective interests of mankind.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 2 days ago
Of all that makes us suffer,...

Of all that makes us suffer, nothing - so much as disappointment - gives us the sensation of at last touching Truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 1 week ago
Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor...

Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in...

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 week 3 days ago
The world must be romanticized. In...

The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again. As

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quoted in The Experience of the Foreign : Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany (1992) by Antoine Berman Variant translation: Romanticize the world.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 days ago
Reason has never really directed social...

Reason has never really directed social reality, but now reason has been so thoroughly purged of any specific trend or preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's actions and way of life. Reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned.

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p. 9.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 week 2 days ago
Some words shall herein be capitalised...

Some words shall herein be capitalised when used, not as vernacular, but as terms defined. Thus an "idea" is the substance of an actual unitary thought or fancy; but "Idea," nearer Plato's idea of ἰδέα, denotes anything whose Being consists in its mere capacity for getting fully represented, regardless of any person's faculty or impotence to represent it.

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I
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
All those movements which took place...

All those movements which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which had the Reformation as their main expression and result should be analyzed as a great crisis of the Western experience of subjectivity and a revolt against the kind of religious and moral power which gave form, during the Middle Ages, to this subjectivity. The need to take a direct part in spiritual life, in the work of salvation, in the truth which lies in the Book-all that was a struggle for a new subjectivity.

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p. 782
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 weeks 3 days ago
Poetry must have something in it...

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
The world is full of conflicts;...

The world is full of conflicts; and, overshadowing all minor conflicts, the titanic struggle between Communism and anti-Communism. Almost everybody who is politically conscious has strong feelings about one or more of these issues; but we want you, if you can, to set aside such feelings and consider yourselves only as members of a biological species which has had a remarkable history, and whose disappearance none of us can desire. We shall try to say no single word which should appeal to one group rather than to another. All, equally, are in peril, and, if the peril is understood, there is hope that they may collectively avert it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
What potent blood hath modest May!...

What potent blood hath modest May!

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May-Day
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 days ago
Everyone knows what made Berkeley notorious....

Everyone knows what made Berkeley notorious. He said that there were no material objects. He said the external world was in some sense immaterial, that nothing existed save ideas - ideas and their authors. His contemporaries thought him very ingenious and a little mad.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Love is better than hate, because...

Love is better than hate, because it brings harmony instead of conflict into the desires of the persons concerned. Two people between whom there is love succeed or fail together, but when two people hate each other the success of either is the failure of the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
It is ugly to be punishable,...

It is ugly to be punishable, but there is no glory in punishing. Hence the double system of protection that justice has set up between itself and the punishment it imposes.

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pp. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
You shall have joy, or you...

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

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October 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
He wanted to assume his entire...

He wanted to assume his entire condition, to carry the world on his shoulders and to become, in defiance of all, what all have made of him.

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p. 384
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month ago
Lamachus chid a captain for a...

Lamachus chid a captain for a fault; and when he had said he would do so no more, "Sir," said he, "in war there is no room for a second miscarriage." Said one to Iphicrates, "What are ye afraid of?" "Of all speeches," said he, "none is so dishonourable for a general as 'I should not have thought of it.'"

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52 Iphicrates
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 week 6 days ago
The Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from...

The Doctrine of Knowledge, apart from all special and definite knowing, proceeds immediately upon Knowledge itself, in the essential unity in which it recognises Knowledge as existing; and it raises this question in the first place - How this Knowledge can come into being, and what it is in its inward and essential Nature? The following must be apparent: - There is but One who is absolutely by and through himself, - namely, God; and God is not the mere dead conception to which we have thus given utterance, but he is in himself pure Life. He can neither change nor determine himself in aught within himself, nor become any other Being; for his Being contains within it all his Being and all possible Being, and neither within him nor out of him can any new Being arise.

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Philosophical Maxims
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