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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
Nobody ever saw a dog make...

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.

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Chapter II, p. 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
What has to be accepted, the...

What has to be accepted, the given, is - so one could say - forms of life.

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Pt II, p. 226 of the 1968 English edition
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
2 weeks 4 days ago
There are no conventions, no tabus,...

There are no conventions, no tabus, no gods, no priests, princes, fathers, or revelations which they must accept. ... The prison door is wide open. They stagger out into trackless space under a blinding sun.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
I: My consciousness of the object...

I: My consciousness of the object is only a yet unrecognised consciousness of my production of the representation of an object. Of this production I know no more than that it is I who produce, and thus is all consciousness no more than a consciousness of myself, and so far perfectly comprehensible. Am I in the right? Spirit. Perfectly so ; but whence then is derived the necessity and universality thou hast ascribed to these propositions, to that of causality for instance?

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 days ago
So in this idea, then, everybody...

So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama.

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The Nature of Consciousness; also published as What Is Reality?
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
He that is without sin among...

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

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8:7 (King James Version)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
The magic of the cave image...

The magic of the cave image lies in its being, not in its being seen. The symbolic does not refer. It is.

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(p. 350)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Every man is a new method....

Every man is a new method.

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"The Natural History of Intellect", p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
2 weeks 3 days ago
There is an unquestionable relationship between...

There is an unquestionable relationship between economic development and liberal democracy, which one can observe simply by looking around the world. But the exact nature of that relationship is more complicated than it first appeared, and is not adequately explained by any of the theories presented up to this point. The logic of modern natural science and the industrialization process it fosters does not point in a single direction in the sphere of politics, as it does in the sphere of economics. Liberal democracy is compatible with industrial maturity, and is preferred by the citizens of many industrially advanced states, but there does not appear to be a necessary connection between the two. The Mechanism underlying our directional history leads equally well to a bureaucratic-authoritarian future as to a liberal one. We will therefore have to look elsewhere in trying to understand the current crisis of authoritarianism and the worldwide democratic revolution.

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p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is hardly a member of...

There is hardly a member of Congress who can make up his mind to go home without having despatched at least one speech to his constituents; nor who will endure any interruption until he has introduced into his harangue whatever useful suggestions may be made touching the four-and-twenty States of which the Union is composed, and especially the district which he represents.

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Book One, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Where popular authority is absolute and...

Where popular authority is absolute and unrestrained, the people have an infinitely greater, because a far better founded, confidence in their own power. They are themselves, in a great measure, their own instruments. They are nearer to their objects. Besides, they are less under responsibility to one of the greatest controlling powers on the earth, the sense of fame and estimation. The share of infamy that is likely to fall to the lot of each individual in public acts is small indeed; the operation of opinion being in the inverse ratio to the number of those who abuse power. Their own approbation of their own acts has to them the appearance of a public judgment in their favor. A perfect democracy is, therefore, the most shameless thing in the world. As it is the most shameless, it is also the most fearless. No man apprehends in his person that he can be made subject to punishment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 4 weeks ago
Everything that makes diversity of kinds,...

Everything that makes diversity of kinds, of species, differences, properties... everything that consists in generation, decay, alteration and change is not an entity, but a condition and circumstance of entity and being, which is one, infinite, immobile, subject, matter, life, death, truth, lies, good and evil.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
As long as one believes in...

As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
1 week 5 days ago
Out-of-date theories are not in principle...

Out-of-date theories are not in principle unscientific because they have been discarded. That choice, however, makes it difficult to see scientific development as a process of accretion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 1 week ago
Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with...

Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker.

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Vahishto-Ishti Gatha; Yasna 53, 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Through the emancipation of private property...

Through the emancipation of private property from the community, the State has become a separate entity, beside and outside civil society; but is it nothing more than the form of organization which the bourgeois necessarily adopt both for internal and external purposes, for the mutual guarantee of their property and interests.

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Part One The Marx-Engels Reader, p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 4 days ago
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology...

The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.

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"Psychoanalyse und Soziologie" (1929); published as "Psychoanalysis and Sociology" as translated by Mark Ritter, in Critical Theory and Society : A Reader (1989) edited by S. E. Bronner and D. M. Kellner
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
I did not know that mankind...

I did not know that mankind were suffering for want of gold. I have seen a little of it. I know that it is very malleable, but not so malleable as wit. A grain of gold will gild a great surface, but not so much as a grain of wisdom.

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p. 488
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
Do you think that I count...

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

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Act 10, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 4 days 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
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
The only purpose for which power...

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.

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Ch. 1: Introductory
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
I hear beyond the range of...

I hear beyond the range of sound, I see beyond the range of sight,New earths and skies and seas around, And in my day the sun doth pale his light.

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"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
If I made laws for Shakers...

If I made laws for Shakers or a school, I should gazette every Saturday all the words they were wont to use in reporting religious experience, as "spiritual life," "God," "soul," "cross," etc., and if they could not find new ones next week, they might remain silent.

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June 15, 1844
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
A man's reach must exceed his...

A man's reach must exceed his grasp or what's a metaphor?

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(p.7) A play on the lines in Robert Browning's poem "Andrea del Sarto":Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for?
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever concept one may hold, from...

Whatever concept one may hold, from a metaphysical point of view, concerning the freedom of the will, certainly its appearances, which are human actions, like every other natural event are determined by universal laws. However obscure their causes, history, which is concerned with narrating these appearances, permits us to hope that if we attend to the play of freedom of the human will in the large, we may be able to discern a regular movement in it, and that what seems complex and chaotic in the single individual may be seen from the standpoint of the human race as a whole to be a steady and progressive though slow evolution of its original endowment.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
[M]y father's rejection of all that...

[M]y father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.

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(pp. 39-40)
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 5 days ago
Zen Buddhism is inspired by a...

Zen Buddhism is inspired by a basic trust in the Here, a basic trust in the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 5 days ago
The chief impression left by a...

The chief impression left by a study of Crowley's life and works is that he wasted an immense amount of time and energy trying to shock everyone he came into contact with, and his dislike of orthodoxy turned him into an unconsciously comic figure, like Don Quixote.

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pp. 153-154
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 week ago
Love all men, even your enemies;...

Love all men, even your enemies; love them, not because they are your brothers, but that they may become your brothers. Thus you will ever burn with fraternal love, both for him who is already your brother and for your enemy, that he may by loving become your brother. Even he that does not as yet believe in Christ, love him, and love him with fraternal love. He is not yet thy brother, but love him precisely that he may be thy brother.

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p.436
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 4 weeks ago
Part of what makes moral philosophy...

Part of what makes moral philosophy an anachronistic field is that its practitioners continue to argue in this very traditional and aprioristic way even though they themselves do not claim that one can provide a systematic and indubitable 'foundation' for the subject. Most of them rely on what are supposed to be 'intuitions' without claiming that those intuitions deliver uncontroversial ethical premises, on the one hand, or that they have an ontological or epistemological explanation of the reliability of those intuitions, on the other.

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How Not to Solve Ethical Problems
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
4 months 1 week ago
With regard to the abuse of...

With regard to the abuse of authority, this also may come about in two ways. First, when what is ordered by an authority is opposed to the object for which that authority was constituted (if, for example, some sinful action is commanded or one which is contrary to virtue, when it is precisely for the protection and fostering of virtue that authority is instituted). In such a case, not only is there no obligation to obey the authority, but one is obliged to disobey it, as did the holy martyrs who suffered death rather than obey the impious commands of tyrants. Secondly, when those who bear such authority command things which exceed the competence of such authority; as, for example, when a master demands payment from a servant which the latter is not bound to make, and other similar cases. In this instance the subject is free to obey or disobey.

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in Aquinas: Selected Political Writings (Basil Blackwell: 1974), p. 183
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
Diversity makes critical argument fruitful. ...[P]artners...

Diversity makes critical argument fruitful. ...[P]artners in an argument must share ...the wish to know, and the readiness to learn from the other ...by severely criticizing his views... and hearing... [the] reply. ...the so-called method of science consists in this kind of criticism.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
And if he be too forward...

And if he be too forward to venture upon his own strength and skill, and perplexity and trouble of a misadventure now and then, that reaches not his innocence, his health, or reputation, may not be an ill way to teach him more caution.

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Sec. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
It appears then, that capitalist production...

It appears then, that capitalist production comprises conditions independent of good or bad will, conditions which permit the working-class to enjoy that relative prosperity only momentarily, and at that always only as the harbinger of a coming crisis.

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Vol. II, Ch. XX, p. 415.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
I shall, without further discussion of...

I shall, without further discussion of the other theories, attempt to contribute something towards the understanding and appreciation of the Utilitarian or Happiness theory, and towards such proof as it is susceptible of. It is evident that this cannot be proof in the ordinary and popular meaning of the term. Questions of ultimate ends are not amenable to direct proof. Whatever can be proved to be good, must be so by being shown to be a means to something admitted to be good without proof.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Herschel
John Herschel
1 day ago
In whatever state of knowledge we...

In whatever state of knowledge we may conceive man to be placed, his progress towards a yet higher state need never fear a check, but must continue till the last existence of society.

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Ch. 6 Of the Causes of the actual rapid Advance of the Physical Sciences compared with their Progress at an earlier Period
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
I long to be free -...

I long to be free - desperately free. Free as the stillborn are free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
When one rational being affects another...

When one rational being affects another rational being as mere matter, then the lower sense of that being is also affected, it is true, and is so affected necessarily and altogether independently of the freedom of that being, (as the lower sense is indeed always affected;) but it is not to be assumed that this affection was in the intention of the person who produced it. His intention was merely to attain his purpose, to express his conception in matter, and he never took into consideration whether that matter would feel it or not. Hence, the reciprocal influence of rational beings upon each other, as such, always occurs by means of the higher sense; for only the higher sense is one which cannot be affected without having been presupposed. Our criterion of this reciprocal influence remains, therefore, correct.

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P. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 days ago
For a country to have a...

For a country to have a great writer ... is like having another government. That's why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

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Innokenty, in Ch. 57
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
Setting the mind to remember... involves...

Setting the mind to remember... involves a continual minimal irradiation of excitement into paths which lead thereto... the continued presence of the thing in the 'fringe' of our consciousness. Letting the thing go involves withdrawal of the irradiation, unconsciousness of the thing, and... obliteration of the paths.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 4 days ago
To spare...
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Main Content / General
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
With the greater part of rich...

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

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Chapter XI, Part II, p. 202 (See also Thorstein Veblen).
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 day ago
Prejudices are so to speak the...

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

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A 58
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 days ago
I am of course confident that...

I am of course confident that I will fulfil my tasks as a writer in all circumstances - from my grave even more successfully and more irrefutably than in my lifetime. No one can bar the road to truth, and to advance its cause I am prepared to accept even death. But may it be that repeated lessons will finally teach us not to stop the writer's pen during his lifetime? At no time has this ennobled our history.

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Open letter to the Fourth Soviet Writers' Congress (16 May 1967); as translated in Solzhenitsyn: A Documentary Record (1970) edited by Leopold Labedz
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
He needs no library, for he...

He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.

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December 26, 1839
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
2 months 2 weeks ago
To disappear into deep water or...

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
Though you give no countenance to...

Though you give no countenance to the complaints of the querulous, yet take care to curb the insolence and ill nature of the injurious. When you observe it yourself, reprove it before the injur'd party: but if the complaint be of something really worth your notice, and prevention another time, then reprove the offender by himself alone, out of sight of him who complain'd and make him go and ask pardon, and make reparation; which ooming thus, as it were from himself, will be the more cheerfully performed, and more kindly receiv'd, the love strenghten'd between them, and a custom of civility grow familiar amongst your children.

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Sec. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
A new moral outlook is called...

A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous.

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Attributed to Russell at the end of Isaac Asimov's short story Franchise with no specific source given.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
Religion in its humility restores man...

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 day ago
I make known unto thee how...

I make known unto thee how He hath provided for the bodily health of us all, by having produced Æsculapius, the Preserver of the universe; and how he hath communicated to us virtue of every kind, by sending down Aphrodite in company with Athene for our guardian; having made it all but a law that no one should use copulation except for the end of generating his like. For this reason truly, according to his revolutions and seasons, do the various vegetable and animal races feel themselves stirred towards the generation of their kind. What need is there to magnify the glory of his rays, and of his light? A night without moon, and without stars, how terrible is it! Let anyone reflect on this, in order that he may estimate how great a blessing is the light we derive from the Sun!

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Philosophical Maxims
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