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Plato
Plato
5 months 3 weeks ago
The orators

The orators and the despots have the least power in their cities since they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever they think to be best.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 1 week ago
I have learned by some experience,...

I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
It is better…

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

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Line 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months ago
How every line is of such...

How every line is of such strong, determined, and consistent meaning! And on every page we encounter deep, original, lofty thoughts, while the whole world is suffused with a high and holy seriousness.

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About Indian sacred scriptures. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008).
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Every man is his own doctor...

Every man is his own doctor of divinity, in the last resort.

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An Inland Voyage (1878).
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is in applied psychology, if...

It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation.

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p. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months 6 days ago
The problem with all this--the problem...

The problem with all this--the problem I discussed in the first lecture--is that if the causes/background conditions distinction is fundamentally subjective, not descriptive of the world in itself, then current philosophical explanations of the metaphysical nature of reference are bankrupt.

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Lecture II: Realism and Reasonableness
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 4 weeks ago
We are all ready to be...

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

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Letter to E.L. Godkin, 24 December 1895
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
4 weeks 1 day ago
I am not the light, I...

I am not the light, I am the night; but a flame stabs through my entrails and consumes me. I am the night devoured by light.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
The Catholic faith..

The Catholic faith, I now realized could be maintained without presumption. This was especially true after I had heard one or two parts of the Old Testament explained allegorically, whereas before this, when I had interpreted them literally, they had killed me spiritually.

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A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 14, p. 81.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months ago
There are, in every country, some...

There are, in every country, some magnificent charities established by individuals. It is, however, but little that any individual can do, when the whole extent of the misery to be relieved is considered. He may satisfy his conscience, but not his heart. He may give all that he has, and that all will relieve but little. It is only by organizing civilization upon such principles as to act like a system of pulleys, that the whole weight of misery can be removed.

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Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
4 months 2 weeks ago
If I had to lay bets,...

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

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"Richard Rorty Interviewed by Gideon Lewis-Kraus." The Believer, June 2003.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months ago
The presence of thought…

The presence of a thought is like the presence of a lover.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 4 weeks ago
It appears... that a work similar...

It appears... that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The Wealth of Nations is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy... has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith; and the philosophy of society... has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it.

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Preface, 1848
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months ago
I am convinced...
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Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
3 months 2 weeks ago
Art is the final cunning of...

Art is the final cunning of the human soul which would rather do anything than face the gods.

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"Art and Eros: A Dialogue about Art", Acastos: Two Platonic Dialogues (1986).
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 month 3 weeks ago
A noble person attracts noble people,...

A noble person attracts noble people, and knows how to hold on to them.

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Torquato Tasso, Act I, sc. i
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is for the sake of...

It is for the sake of order that I seduced Clytemnestra, for the sake of order that I killed my king. I wanted for order to rule and that it rule through me. I have lived without desire, without love, without hope: I made order. Oh! terrible and divine passion!

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Aegistheus, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 week ago
Truths dead and forgotten long ago,...

Truths dead and forgotten long ago, conceptions of the world and its people, covered with mould, even during the times of our grandmothers, are being hammered into the heads of our young generation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 month 3 weeks ago
You may take great comfort from...

You may take great comfort from the fact that suffering inwardly for the sake of truth proves abundantly that one loves it and marks one out as being of the elect.

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Saint Sulpice and the Hidden God.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 weeks ago
Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters....

Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

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Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 week ago
The oneness of the universe, and...

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.

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Pt. III, ch. 1, sec. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 weeks ago
Of all the systems of morality,...

Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus. He who follows this steadily need not, I think, be uneasy, although he cannot comprehend the subtleties and mysteries erected on his doctrines by those who, calling themselves his special followers and favorites, would make him come into the world to lay snares for all understandings but theirs. These metaphysical heads, usurping the judgment seat of God, denounce as his enemies all who cannot perceive the Geometrical logic of Euclid in the demonstrations of St. Athanasius, that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three nor the three one.

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Letter to William Canby
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 1 week ago
Both dreams and myths are important...

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

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As quoted in The New York Times
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 week ago
The American who first discovered Columbus...

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

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G 42
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
One age misunderstands another; and a...

One age misunderstands another; and a petty age misunderstands all the others in its own ugly way.

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p. 98e
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
3 months 4 weeks ago
The earth with yellow pears And...

The earth with yellow pears And overgrown with roses wild Upon the pond is bent, And swans divine, With kisses drunk You drop your heads In the sublimely sobering water. But where, with winter come, am I To find, alas, the floweres, and where The sunshine And the shadow of the world? Cold the walls stand And the wordless, in the wind The weathercocks are rattling.

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"Halves of Life"
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 1 week ago
People often say to me, You...

People often say to me, You don't know what a wife and mother feels. No, I say, I don't and I'm very glad I don't. And they don't know what I feel. ... I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from his own experience.

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Letter to Madame Mohl
Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
1 month 1 week ago
Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive the desire...

Revolutionary syndicalism keeps alive the desire to strike in the masses and only prospers when important strikes, accompanied by violence, take place.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 weeks ago
We can know only one thing...

We can know only one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

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p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
I cannot get from the nature...

I cannot get from the nature of the proposition to the individual logical operations!!! That is, I cannot bring out how far the proposition is the picture of the situation. I am almost inclined to give up all my efforts.

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Journal entries (12 March 1915 and 15 March 1915) p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 4 days ago
I have often wondered how it...

I have often wondered how it should come to pass, that every man loving himself best, should more regard other men's opinions concerning himself than his own.

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XII, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 3 weeks ago
In the Thirty Years' War... a...

In the Thirty Years' War... a third of the population of central Europe were killed in a bloody struggle between different Christian religious sects, and the pragmatic part of liberalism was to take final ends [defined by religions] out of political discussion... and to lower the sights of politics to defend life itself, and not "the good life"... as defined by a particular sect of a particular religion.

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8:28
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
3 weeks 6 days ago
On bourgeois ground ... change is...

On bourgeois ground ... change is impossible anyway even if it were desired. In fact, bourgeois interest would like to draw every other interest opposed to it into its own failure; so, in order to drain the new life, it makes its own agony apparently fundamental, apparently ontological. The futility of bourgeois existence is extended to be that of the human situation in general, of existence per se.

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The Principle of Hope (1959), N. Plaice, trans. (1986), p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 weeks ago
All government - indeed, every human...

All government - indeed, every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue and every prudent act - is founded on compromise and barter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 4 days ago
Pain is the opposite of strength,...

Pain is the opposite of strength, and so is anger.

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(Hays translation) XI, 18
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 1 week ago
The best and greatest winning is...

The best and greatest winning is a true friend; and the greatest loss is the loss of time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 3 weeks ago
A mother-complex is not got rid...

A mother-complex is not got rid of by blindly reducing the mother to human proportions. Besides that we run the risk of dissolving the experience "Mother" into atoms, thus destroying something supremely valuable and throwing away the golden key which a good fairy laid in our cradle. That is why mankind has always instinctively added the pre-existent divine pair to the personal parents-the "god"father and "god"-mother of the newborn child-so that, from sheer unconsciousness or shortsighted rationalism, he should never forget himself so far as to invest his own parents with divinity.

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"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious P.172
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 1 day ago
But let us not forget this...
But let us not forget this either: it is enough to create new names and estimations and probabilities in order to create in the long run new "things."
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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 week ago
The universities are schools of education,...

The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Xunzi
Xunzi
1 month 3 weeks ago
If an action ... involves little...

If an action ... involves little profit but much righteousness, do it.

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Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 1 week ago
What is it, in your opinion,...

What is it, in your opinion, to be a great nobleman? It is to be master of several objects that men covet, and thus to be able to satisfy the wants and the desires of many. It is these wants and these desires that attract them towards you, and that make them submit to you: were it not for these, they would not even look at you; but they hope, by these services... to obtain from you some part of the good which they desire, and of which they see that you have the disposal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
All truth, in the long run,...

All truth, in the long run, is only common sense clarified.

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"On the Study of Biology"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 weeks ago
Men must be governed by those...

Men must be governed by those laws which they love. Where thirty millions are to be governed by a few thousand men, the government must be established by consent, and must be congenial to the feelings and to the habits of the people. That which creates tyranny is the imposition of a form of government contrary to the will of the governed: and even a free and equal plan of government, would be considered as despotic by those who desired to have their old laws and their ancient system.

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Speech in the House of Commons on India (27 June 1781), quoted in The Parliamentary Register: Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, Volume III (1782), pp. 666-667
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 4 days ago
The art of life is more...

The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected.

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VII, 61
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
2 months 2 days ago
Individuals have rights and there are...

Individuals have rights and there are things no person or group may do to them (without violating their rights). So strong and far-reaching are these rights that they raise the question of what, if anything, the state and its officials may do. How much room do individual rights leave for the state?

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Preface, p. ix
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is often said that experiments...

It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is impossible. Not only would it make every experiment fruitless, but even if we wished to do so, it could not be done. Every man has his own conception of the world, and this he cannot so easily lay aside. We must, for example, use language, and our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas.

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Ch. IX: Hypotheses in Physics, Tr. George Bruce Halsted
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
3 weeks 6 days ago
Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or...

Every religious, moral, economic, ethical, or other antithesis transforms into a political one if it is sufficiently strong to group human beings effectively according to friend and enemy. The political does not reside in the battle itself, which. possesses its own technical, psychological, and military laws, but in the mode of behavior which is determined by this possibility, by clearly evaluating the concrete situation and thereby being able to distinguish correctly the real friend and the real enemy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 weeks ago
It is so rare to meet...

It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the labor of his hands.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Truth, like light....

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

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Philosophical Maxims
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