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Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Anyone who can understand that the...

Anyone who can understand that the Buddhist idea of Nirvana is not merely negative, and that the Buddha himself who (like the Superman) 'looks down on suffering humanity like a hillsman on the planes' is not an atheistic monster, will instantly see how this misses the point. Nietzsche was not an atheist, any more than the Buddha was. Anyone who reads the Night Song and the Dance Song in Zarathustra will recognize that they spring out of the same emotion as the Vedic or Gathic hymns or the Psalms of David. The idea of the Superman is a response to the need for salvation in precisely the same way that Buddhism was a response to the 'three signs'.

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p. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
We are all instruments endowed with...

We are all instruments endowed with feeling and memory. Our senses are so many strings that are struck by surrounding objects and that also frequently strike themselves.

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"Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot"
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
Secrets in manufactures are capable of...

Secrets in manufactures are capable of being longer kept than secrets in trade.

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Chapter VII, p. 72.
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
'Tis only from the selfishness and...

Tis only from the selfishness and confin'd generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.

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Part 2, Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
It was the addition of status...

It was the addition of status that brought the little things: a more comfortable seat here, a better cut of meat there, a shorter wait in line at the other place. To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire.Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 1 week ago
The problem posed by indirect speech...

The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

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Expression and Meaning, p. 31, Cambridge University Press (1979).
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
The act of navigation is not...

The act of navigation is not favourable to foreign commerce, or to the growth of that opulence which can arise from it. ... As defence, however, is of much more importance than opulence, the act of navigation is, perhaps, the wisest of all the commercial regulations of England.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
3 weeks 4 days ago
I never read a book before...

I never read a book before reviewing it: it prejudices a man so.

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Reported in Bon-Mots of Sydney Smith and R. Brinsley Sheridan, edited by Walter Jerrold with grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley (London: J. M. Dent and Company, 1893), p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 4 days ago
The will of man has no...

The will of man has no power whatever over his opinions; he must, and ever did, and ever will, believe what has been, is, or may be impressed on his mind by his predecessors, and the circumstances which surround him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
I'd rather be ruled by a...

I'd rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.

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The earliest published source for such a statement yet located is in Pat Robertson - Where He Stands (1988) by Hubert Morken, p. 42, where such a comment is attributed to Luther without citation.
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 week 3 days ago
We have lived by the assumption...

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. ... We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us. . . We must recover the sense of the majesty of the creation and the ability to be worshipful in its presence. For it is only on the condition of humility and reverence before the world that our species will be able to remain in it.

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"A Native Hill"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
Capital grows in one place to...

Capital grows in one place to a huge mass in a single hand, because it has in another place been lost by many. This is centralisation proper, as distinct from accumulation and concentration.

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Vol. I, Ch. 25, Section 2, pg. 686.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
When you live alone you no...

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

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Diary entry of Tuesday, 30 January
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 4 weeks ago
Scilurus on his death-bed, being about...

Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,-thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.

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31 Scilurus
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 1 day ago
Reason has never really directed social...

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

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p. 9.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
Learning will be cast into the...

Learning will be cast into the mire and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

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Volume iii, p. 335
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 6 days ago
No one should forget: Eros alone...

No one should forget: Eros alone can fulfill life; knowledge, never. Only Eros makes sense; knowledge is empty infinity; - for thoughts, there is always time; life has its time; there is no thought that comes too late; any desire can become a regret.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
What can you ever really know...

What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.

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Book IV, Chapter 10, "Nice People or New Men"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
It was his peculiar doctrine that...

It was his peculiar doctrine that a man has a perfect right to interfere by force with the slaveholder, in order to rescue the slave. I agree with him. They who are continually shocked by slavery have some right to be shocked by the violent death of the slaveholder, but no others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 2 weeks ago
What is called an acute knowledge...

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer's own weaknesses reflected back from others.

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G 7
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 1 week ago
If there are different Notions of...

If there are different Notions of the science of Philosophy, it is the true Notion alone that puts us in a position to understand the writings of philosophers who have worked in the knowledge of it. For in thought, and particularly in speculative thought, comprehension means something quite different from understanding the grammatical sense of the words alone, and also from understanding them in the region of ordinary conception only. Hence we may possess a knowledge of the assertions, propositions, or of the opinions of philosophers; we may have occupied ourselves largely with the grounds of and deductions from these opinions, and the main point in all that we have done may be wanting - the comprehension of the propositions.

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First divsion, Chapter I. - The Metaphysics of the Understanding…
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 5 days ago
The critical ontology of ourselves has...

The critical ontology of ourselves has to be considered not, certainly, as a theory, a doctrine, nor even as a permanent body of knowledge that is accumulating; it has to be conceived as an attitude, an ethos, a philosophical life in which the critique of what we are is at one and the same time the historical analysis of the limits that are imposed on us and an experiment with the possibility of going beyond them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 3 days ago
The ontological concept of truth is...

The ontological concept of truth is in the centre of a logic which may serve as a model of pre- technological rationality. It is the rationality of a two-dimensional universe of discourse which, contrasts with the of thought and behavior that develop in the execution of the technological project.

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p. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 day ago
Religion in most countries, more or...

Religion in most countries, more or less in every country, is no longer what it was, and should be,-a thousand-voiced psalm from the heart of Man to his invisible Father, the fountain of all Goodness, Beauty, Truth, and revealed in every revelation of these; but for the most part, a wise prudential feeling grounded on mere calculation; a matter, as all others now are, of Expediency and Utility; whereby some smaller quantum of earthly enjoyment may be exchanged for a far larger quantum of celestial enjoyment. Thus Religion too is Profit, a working for wages; not Reverence, but vulgar Hope or Fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
Whether or no it be for...

Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 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
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 2 weeks ago
The most dangerous untruths are truths...

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.

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H 7 Variant translation: The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 3 weeks ago
So rolling time….

So rolling time changes the seasons of things. What was of value, becomes in turn of no worth.

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Book V, lines 1276-1277 (tr. Bailey)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
Throughout your treatment you forget that...

Throughout your treatment you forget that you said that 'free-will' can do nothing without grace, and you prove that 'free-will' can do all things without grace! Your inferences and analogies "For if man has lost his freedom, and is forced to serve sin, and cannot will good, what conclusion can more justly be drawn concerning him, than that he sins and wills evil necessarily?

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p. 149
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 5 days ago
Instead of insanity eliminating the crime...

Instead of insanity eliminating the crime according to the original meaning of article 64,every crime and even every offense now carries within it, as a legitimate suspicion, but also as a right that may be claimed, the hypothesis of insanity, in any case of anomaly. And the sentence that condemns or acquits is not simply a judgement of guily, a legal decision that lays down punishment; it bears within it an assessment of normality and a technical prescription for a possible normalization Today the judge- magistrate or juror0 certainly does more than 'judge'.

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pp. 20-21
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
Here am I who have written...

Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies - except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.

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Statement to a friend shortly before his death, as recounted in Men of Letters by Lord Henry Brougham
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
Men can be provincial in time,...

Men can be provincial in time, as well as in place.

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Preface, p. ix
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 4 days ago
That man, I declare, is happy...

That man, I declare, is happy whom nothing makes less strong than he is; he keeps to the heights, leaning upon none but himself; for one who sustains himself by any prop may fall.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 days ago
It's a waste of energy...
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Main Content / General
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 2 weeks ago
But how shall we expect charity...

But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? Charity begins at home, is the voice of the world, yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were, his own executioner.

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Section 4
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
In Oran, as elsewhere, for want...

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
Money does not arise by convention,...

Money does not arise by convention, any more than the state does. It arises out of exchange, and arises naturally out of exchange; it is a product of the same.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 85.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 3 days ago
On fact, the whole machinery of...

On fact, the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices.

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Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. Pt. III, Form; § 30: "The average modified in the direction of pleasure.", p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 months 1 day ago
I'm delighted to hear someone make...

I'm delighted to hear someone make the claim that there is moral progress because it can be such a incendiary thing to say, and its something that I say and deeply believe in.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
2 weeks 6 days ago
Sorel the Dreyfusard eventually developed into...

Sorel the Dreyfusard eventually developed into a bitter anti-semite, calling upon Europe to defend itself against the Jewish peril in the same way as America fought the Yellow peril; he blamed the Chekist terror on the Jewish members of the Bolshevik party.

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Jacob Talmon, "The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century ", University of California Press, 1981, p. 474
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
I am against a League war...

I am against a League war in present circumstances, because the anti-League powers are strong. The analogy is not King v. Barons, but the War of the Roses. If the League were strong enough I should favour sanctions, because the effect would suffice, or the war would be short and small. The whole question is quantitative.

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Letter to Kingsley Martin shortly before the Italo-Abyssinian War (7 August 1935), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 4 days ago
How difficult, how extremely difficult for...

How difficult, how extremely difficult for the soul to sever itself from its body the world: from mountains, seas, cities, people. The soul is an octopus and these are its tentacles. ... No force anywhere on earth is as imperialistic as the human soul. It occupies and is occupied in turn, but it always considers its empire too narrow. Suffocating, it desires to conquer the world in order to breathe freely.

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My Friend The Poet. Mount Athos., Ch. 19, p. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 1 week ago
"Can any good come out of...

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected. Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.

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As quoted in "Voices of the New Time" as translated by C. C. Shackford in The Radical Vol. 7 (1870), p. 329
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 3 days ago
The social conditions that nourished and...

The social conditions that nourished and made use of this ideology can still revive; perhaps - who knows? - the virus is dormant, waiting for the next opportunity. Dreams about the perfect society belong to the enduring stock of civilization.

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New Preface, p. vi
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 3 days ago
But the philosophy that killed off...

But the philosophy that killed off truth proclaims unlimited tolerance for the "language games" (i.e., opinions, beliefs and doctrines) that people find useful. The outcome is expressed in the words of Karl Kraus: "Alles ist wahr und auch das Gegenteil." "Everything is true, and also its opposite."

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"Our Merry Apocalypse" (1997), as quoted in Is God Happy? Selected Essays (Basic Books, 2013), p. 318
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 day ago
Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes...

Man's unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

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Bk. I, ch. 9.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 6 days ago
If a person tells me he...

If a person tells me he has been to the worst places I have no reason to judge him; but if he tells me it was his superior wisdom that enabled him to go there, then I know he is a fraud.

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Conversation of 1930
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 week ago
Whether, then, all ought not immediately...

Whether, then, all ought not immediately to discontinue and renounce it, with grief and abhorrence? Should not every society bear testimony against it, and account obstinate persisters in it bad men, enemies to their country, and exclude them from fellowship; as they often do for much lesser faults?

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
3 months 1 day ago
With the disintegration of all that...

With the disintegration of all that Nietzsche had revered, existence, to him, had become a desert in which only one thing remained, namely that which had relentlessly forced him into this path: truthfulness that knows no limits and is not subject to any condition.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 1 week ago
Gender is a kind of imitation...

Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself.

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"Imitation and Gender Insubordination" in Inside/Out (1991) edited by Diana Fuss
Philosophical Maxims
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