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Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 2 weeks ago
As first a man cannot lay...

As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himself.

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The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 weeks 2 days ago
I don't think there would be...

I don't think there would be many jokes, if there weren't constant frustration and fear and so forth. It's a response to bad troubles like crime.

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Interview Public Radio International
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 weeks 3 days ago
Nothing like a little judicious levity....

Nothing like a little judicious levity.

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The Wrong Box, ch. 7 (1889).
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
As to love our neighbour as...

As to love our neighbour as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity, so it is the great precept of nature to love ourselves only as we love our neighbour, or what comes to the same thing, as our neighbour is capable of loving us. Section I, Chap. V.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is...

Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of short-lived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever." The delay of the Divine Justice - this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, - this was the soul of their religion.

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The Fugitive Slave Law, a lecture in NYC, March 7, 1854
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 5 days ago
Lying takes the form of mass...

Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myth that feminist movement has completely transformed society, so much so that the politics of patriarchal power have been inverted and that men, particularly white men, just like emasculated black men, have become the victims of dominating women. So, it goes, all men (especially black men) must pull together (as in the Clarence Thomas hearings) to support and reaffirm patriarchal domination. Add to this the widely held assumptions that blacks, other minorities, and white women are taking jobs from white men, and that people are poor and unemployed because they want to be, and it becomes most evident that part of our contemporary crisis is created by a lack of meaningful access to truth.

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Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 1 week ago
The State is always, whatever be...

The State is always, whatever be its form - primitive, ancient, medieval, modern - an invitation issued by one group of men to other human groups to carry out some enterprise in common. That enterprise, be its intermediate processes what they may, consists in the long run in the organisation of a certain type of common life. ... [As Renan says,] "To have common glories in the past, a common will in the present; to have done great things together; to wish to do greater; these are the essential conditions which make up a people.... In the past, an inheritance of glories and regrets; in the future, one and the same programme to carry out.... The existence of a nation is a daily plebiscite."

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Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 1 week ago
Ethics is inescapable…

Ethics is inescapable.

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Preface, p. xv
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
4 weeks 1 day ago
Analytic philosophers - both in the...

Analytic philosophers - both in the 'constructivist' camp and in the camp that studies 'the ordinary use of words' - are disturbingly unanimous in regarding 2-valued logic as having a privileged position: privileged, not just in the sense of corresponding to the way we do speak, but in the sense of having no serious rival for logical reasons. If the foregoing analysis is correct, this is a prejudice of the same kind as the famous prejudice in favor of a privileged status for Euclidean geometry (a prejudice that survives in the tendency to cite 'space has three dimensions' as some kind of 'necessary' truth). One can go over from a 2-valued to a 3-valued logic without totally changing the meaning of 'true' and 'false'; and not just in silly ways, like the ones usually cited (e.g. equating truth with high probability, falsity with low probability, and middlehood with 'in between' probability).

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"Three-valued logic"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week ago
Within the last half century, the...

Within the last half century, the labours of such men as Von Baer, Rathke, Reichert, Bischof, and Remak, have almost completely unravelled... the successive stages of development which... are now as well known to the embryologist as are the steps of the metamorphosis of the silk-worm moth to the school boy.

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Ch.2, p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
The radical empiricist onslaught ... provides...

The radical empiricist onslaught ... provides the methodological justification for the debunking of the mind by the intellectuals-a positivism which, in its denial of the transcending elements of Reason, forms the academic counterpart of the socially required behavior.

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p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
I think no virtue goes with...

I think no virtue goes with size; The reason of all cowardice Is, that men are overgrown, And, to be valiant, must come down To the titmouse dimension.

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The Titmouse, st. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
3 months 1 week ago
The double meaning has been given...

The double meaning has been given to suit people's diverse intelligence. The apparent contradictions are meant to stimulate the learned to deeper study.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
1 month 2 weeks ago
:...Vienna is the origin of so...

:...Vienna is the origin of so many schools of its own which were dominant in the 1920s. And one of the most fundamental and influential, in which we all were partially caught, was logical positivism. In fact, Mises' brother, Richard von Mises, became one of the leading figures. Now he and I all grew up in this Ernst Mach philosophy that ultimately everything must be rationally justified...

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Friedrich Hayek, in 1985 interview, quoted in Alan Ebenstein, Hayek's Journey: The Mind of Friedrich Hayek (2003), Ch. 10. Epistemology, Psychology, and Methodology
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Good nature is, of all moral...

Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is natural for us to...

It is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste; a rule, by which the various sentiments of men may be reconciled; at least, a decision, afforded, confirming one sentiment, and condemning another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 5 days ago
All media work us over completely....

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical.

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(p. 26)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
2 months 1 week ago
To abjure the notion of the...

To abjure the notion of the "truly human" is to abjure the attempt to divinize the self as a replacement for a divinized world.

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Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
You talk of Paine with more...

You talk of Paine with more respect than he deserves: He is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learnd the instrumental part of literature, a style, and a method of disposing his ideas, without having ever made a previous preparation of Study or thinking-for the use of it. ... [Paine] possesses nothing more than what a man whose audacity makes him careless of logical consequences, and his total want of honour and morality makes indifferent as to political consequences, may very easily write. They indeed who seriously write upon a principle of levelling ought to be answerd by the Magistrate-and not by the Speculatist.

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Letter to William Cusac Smith (22 July 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), pp. 303-304
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Everything in the universe goes by...

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

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Works and Days
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
Intellect is invisible to the man...

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

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Our Relation to Others, § 23
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Like great works, deep feelings always...

Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1 month 1 week ago
Socrates reminds us that it is...

Socrates reminds us that it is not the same thing, but almost the opposite, to understand religion and to accept it.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is debasing to die the...

It is debasing to die the way one does; it is intolerable to be exposed to an end over which we have no control, an end which lies in wait for us, overthrows us, casts us into the unnameable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 1 week ago
The man who is tenacious….

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.

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Book III, ode iii, line 1
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 2 weeks ago
The Nazis were 'convinced that evil-doing...

The Nazis were 'convinced that evil-doing in our time has a morbid force of attraction,' Bolshevik assurances inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary moral standards have become a mainstay of Communist propaganda, and experience has proven time and again that the propaganda value of evil deeds and general contempt for moral standards is independent of mere self-interest, supposedly the most powerful psychological factor in politics.

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Part 3, Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 weeks ago
We only labor to stuff the...

We only labor to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void.

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Book I, Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 6 days ago
It is sometimes difficult...
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Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 4 weeks ago
Now I say this to keep...

Now I say this to keep the conscience free from mischievous laws and fictitious sins, and not because I would defend images. Nor would I condemn those who have destroyed them, especially those who destroy divine and idolatrous images. But images for memorial and witness, such as crucifixes and images of saints, are to be tolerated.

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p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
How good would it be if...

How good would it be if one could die by throwing oneself into an infinite void.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks ago
We must now turn to the...

We must now turn to the question of how the existence of archetypes can be proved. Since archetypes are supposed to produce certain psychic forms, we must discuss how and where one can get hold of the material demonstrating these forms. The main source, then, is dreams, which have the advantage of being involuntary, spontaneous products of nature not falsified by any conscious purpose. By questioning the individual one can ascertain which of the motifs appearing in the dream are known to him... Consequently, we must look for motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer and yet behave functionally of the archetype known from historical sources.

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p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is not a Musselman alive...

There is not a Musselman alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 1 week ago
Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred...

Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred Host we hail;Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,Newer rites of grace prevail;Faith for all defects supplying,Where the feeble senses fail.

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Pange, Lingua, stanza 5 (Tantum Ergo)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 4 days ago
If space in infinite, how about...

If space in infinite, how about the space inside man? Blake said that eternity opens from the center of an atom. My former terror vanished. Now I saw that I was mistaken in thinking of myself as an object in a dead landscape. I had been assuming that man is limited because his brain is limited, that only so much can be packed into the portmanteau. But the spaces of the mind are a new dimension. The body is a mere wall between two infinities. Space extends to infinity outwards; the mind stretches to infinity inwards.

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p. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 6 days ago
There is a quality of life...

There is a quality of life which lies always beyond the mere fact of life; and when we include the quality in the fact, there is still omitted the quality of the quality.

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Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
We live in the false as...

We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
2 months 1 week ago
Do not be arrogant because of...

Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned. For knowledge has no limits, and none has yet achieved perfection in it. Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the possession of women slaves at the millstones.

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Maxim no. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
Those only are happy

Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.

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(p. 142)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
If the Jew did not exist,...

If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.

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p. 8
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have tried to set forth...

I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.

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Chapter IX, Section 87, p. 586
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
He chooses the most feared, most...

He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.

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p. 165
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
One can say that the author...

One can say that the author is an ideological product, since we represent him as the opposite of his historically real function. (When a historically given function is represented in a figure that inverts it, one has an ideological production.) The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.

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What is an author?
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 week ago
Yes, you see the Trinity if...

Yes, you see the Trinity if you see charity.

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De Trinitate VIII 8,12.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months ago
In this life it is necessary...

In this life it is necessary that we be on our guard. To begin with we must be constantly aware of the fact that life here below is best described as being a type of continual warfare. This is a fact that Job, that undefeated soldier of vast experience, tells us so plainly. Yet in this matter the great majority of mankind is often deceived, for the world, like some deceitful magician, captivates their minds with seductive blandishments, and as a result most individuals behave as if there had been a cessation of hostilities.

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p.61
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 weeks 3 days ago
Our entire linear and accumulative culture...

Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view. "

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The Precession of Simulacra," p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
The needs of the soul can...

The needs of the soul can for the most part be listed in pairs of opposites which balance and complete one another. The human soul has need of equality and of hierarchy. Equality is the public recognition, effectively expressed in institutions and manners, of the principle that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings. Hierarchy is the scale of responsibilities. Since attention is inclined to direct itself upwards and remain fixed, special provisions are necessary to ensure the effective compatibility of equality and hierarchy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 3 days ago
Do not even think of doing...

Do not even think of doing what ought not to be done.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 1 week ago
When Demaratus was asked whether he...

When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue."

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Of Demaratus
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
If consciousness is, as some inhuman...

If consciousness is, as some inhuman thinker has said, nothing more than a flash of light between two eternities of darkness, then there is nothing more execrable than existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
1 month 3 weeks ago
India is pre-eminently distinguished for the...

India is pre-eminently distinguished for the many traits of original grandeur of thought and of the wonderful remains of immediate knowledge.

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quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
Philosophical Maxims
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