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Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 months 2 weeks ago
Credit expansion can bring about a...

Credit expansion can bring about a temporary boom. But such a fictitious prosperity must end in a general depression of trade, a slump.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 months ago
So long as we love we...

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

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"Lay Morals" Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911).
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months 1 week ago
All natural capacities of a creature...

All natural capacities of a creature are destined to evolve completely to their natural end. First Thesis Variant translations: All natural capacities of a creature are destined sooner or later to be developed completely and in conformity with their end. All natural capacities of a creature are destined to develop themselves completely and to their purpose.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 4 days ago
Liberty, as we all know, cannot...

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

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Chapter 1 (p. 14)
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months 1 week ago
All the interests of my reason,...

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

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B 832-833
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 months 1 week 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
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 5 days ago
Where there is a lull of...

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

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p. 494
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 1 day ago
There is a limit to the...

There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return.

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(Hays translation) II, 4
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 3 weeks ago
The immeasurable beauty of life is...

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said.

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(Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 1 week ago
The world you perceive...
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Main Content / General
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
3 months ago
The regular rhythms of factory production...

The regular rhythms of factory production and its clear divisions of work time and nonwork time tend to decline in the realm of immaterial labor. Think how at the high end of labor market companies like Microsoft try to make the office more like home, offering free meals and exercise programs to keep employees in the office as many of their waking hours as possible. At the low end of the labor market workers have to juggle several job to make ends meet. Such practices always existed, but today, with the passage from Fordism to post-Fordism, the increased flexibility and mobility imposed on workers, and the decline of the stable, long-term employment typical of factory work, this tends to become the norm. At both the high end and low ends or labor market the new paradigm undermines the division between work time and the time of life.

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145
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The individual begins that long effort...

The individual begins that long effort as an Outsider; he may finish it as a saint.

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Chapter Nine, Breaking the Circuit, final sentence
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 5 days ago
Neither of us cares a straw...

Neither of us cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.

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Remarks against personality cults from a letter to W. Blos (10 November 1877).
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months 2 days ago
Lover works magic…

Love works magic. It is the final purpose Of the world story, The Amen of the universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
What is all Knowledge too, but...

What is all Knowledge too, but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials.

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On History.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 3 days ago
Our cause is never more in...

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

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Letter VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
4 months 2 weeks ago
There are people who believe everything...

There are people who believe everything is sane and sensible that is done with a solemn face. ... It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth ... into a liar - that I call an achievement.

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E 59 Variant translation: There are people who think that everything one does with a serious face is sensible…
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
6 months 2 weeks ago
Thus he had a double thought:...

Thus he had a double thought: the one by which he acted as king, the other by which he recognized his true state, and that it was accident alone that had placed him in his present condition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Notwithstanding their attacks on the basic...

Notwithstanding their attacks on the basic conception of rationalism, on synthetic a priori judgments, that is, material propositions that cannot be contradicted by any experience, the empiricist posits the forms of being as constant.

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p. 146.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
Is Man so different from any...

Is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them?

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Ch.2, p. 86
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 2 days ago
Disarmament is illogical and futile, unless...

Disarmament is illogical and futile, unless one is prepared to regard the available means of production and social organization as affording unique social ends. To divert electrical energy and circuitry into atomic bombs shows the same imaginative power as wiring the dining-room chairs to enable one to electrocute the sitter in the event that he might prove hostile. It is part of the age-old habit of using new means for old purposes instead of discovering what are the new goals contained in the new means.

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(p.202)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 2 days ago
Newton, and 'proper scientific method' after...

Newton, and 'proper scientific method' after him, conducted attention to 'continuous description' of experimental phenomena instead of to causes.

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p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 6 days ago
The superfluous…

The superfluous, a very necessary thing. 

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Variant translation: The superfluous is very necessary, Le Mondain, 1736
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
Fame and tranquility can never be...

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.

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Book I, Ch. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 4 weeks ago
Absurdity destroys the and of the...

Absurdity destroys the and of the enumeration by making impossible the in where the things enumerated would be divided up.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
2 months 3 weeks ago
A modern philosopher who has never...

A modern philosopher who has never once suspected himself of being a charlatan must be such a shallow mind that his work is probably not worth reading.

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Metaphysical Horror
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months 1 week ago
They [theologians] will explain to...

They [theologians] will explain to you how Christ was formed in the Virgin's womb; how accident subsists in synaxis without domicile in place. The most ordinary of them can do this. Those more fully initiated explain further whether there is an instans in Divine generation; whether in Christ there is more than a single filiation; whether 'the Father hates the Son' is a possible proposition; whether God can become the substance of a woman, of an ass, of a pumpkin, or of the devil, and whether, if so, a pumpkin could preach a sermon, or work miracles, or be crucified. And they can discover a thousand other things to you besides these. They will make you understand notions, and instants, formalities, and quiddities, things which no eyes ever saw, unless they were eyes which could see in the dark what had no existence.

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as quoted by Froude ibid.,
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
What if he has borrowed the...

What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?

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Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
What is all Knowledge too but...

What is all Knowledge too but recorded Experience, and a product of History; of which, therefore, Reasoning and Belief, no less than Action and Passion, are essential materials?

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Carlyle, Essays, On History. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 2 weeks ago
You will thus understand that what...

You will thus understand that what you fear is either insignificant or short-lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 5 days ago
Our sadness is not sad, but...

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 4 days ago
The whole plan of our order...

The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of conviction-aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice.

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Book VI, Chapter VII
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 6 days ago
Epicurus, the great teacher of happiness,...

Epicurus, the great teacher of happiness, has correctly and finely divided human needs into three classes. First there are the natural and necessary needs which, if they are not satisfied, cause pain. Consequently, they are only victus et amictus [food and clothing] and are easy to satisfy. Then we have those that are natural yet not necessary, that is, the needs for sexual satisfaction. ... These needs are more difficult to satisfy. Finally, there are those that are neither natural nor necessary, the needs for luxury, extravagance, pomp, and splendour, which are without end and very difficult to satisfy.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 346
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 5 days ago
I will not talk about people...

I will not talk about people a thousand miles off, but come as near home as I can. As the time is short, I will leave out all the flattery, and retain all the criticism. Let us consider the way in which we spend our lives.

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p. 484
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 1 week ago
The good of the people must...

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

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Article on Government
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 1 week ago
Reason is the greatest enemy that...

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but--more frequently than not--struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

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353
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 5 days ago
The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness...

The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is odd that the last...

It is odd that the last twenty-five years which have witnessed the greatest progress ever made in physical science-the greatest victories ever achieved by mind over matter-should have produced hardly a volume that will be remembered in 1900.

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Journal entry (9 March 1850), quoted in Thomas Macaulay, The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay: Volume 5, January 1849-December 1855, ed. Thomas Pinney (1981), p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
6 months 1 week ago
When we run over libraries, persuaded...

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

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Section 12 : Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy Pt. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 1 week 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
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is the highest service to...

It is the highest service to submit the evil impulse to God through the power of love.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months ago
The worst is not ennui nor...

The worst is not ennui nor despair but their encounter, their collision. To be crushed between the two!

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 months 2 weeks ago
The republic is nothing whatever but...

The republic is nothing whatever but - absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a 'majesty'.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 202, 203
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
5 months 4 days ago
Hegel ... proceeds abstractly from the...

Hegel ... proceeds abstractly from the pre-existence of the intellect. ... He does not appeal to the intellect within us.

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Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
5 months 3 weeks ago
One who is serious all day...

One who is serious all day will never have a good time, while one who is frivolous all day will never establish a household.

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Maxim no. 25.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 3 weeks ago
Physiology does not teach us how...

Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to discourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics how to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be hypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be pedantry of logic, or of esthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 5 days ago
Science, ever since the time of...

Science, ever since the time of the Arabs, has had two functions: (1) to enable us to know things, and (2) to enable us to do things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
6 months 5 days ago
The Being of the universe, at...

The Being of the universe, at first hidden and concealed, has no power which can offer resistance to the search for knowledge ; it has to lay itself open before the seeker - to set before his eyes and give for his enjoyment, its riches and its depths.

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p xii Ibid
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months 2 weeks ago
Anger begins in folly, and ends...

Anger begins in folly, and ends in repentance.

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As quoted in Treasury of Thought: Forming an Encyclopædia of Quotations from Ancient and Modern Authors (1894) by Maturin Murray Ballou
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 5 days ago
Knowledge can in part be set...

Knowledge can in part be set aside, and one can then go further in order to collect new; the natural scientist can set aside insects and flowers and then go further, but if the existing person sets aside the decision in existence, it is eo ipso lost, and he is changed.

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Philosophical Maxims
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