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Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Death's dry bones glowed with light...

Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic darkbut he woke not nor felt the two warm bodies merge;the male worm then took heart and in his wife's ear whispered:"With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death!"

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Orpheus' song, Book III, line 178
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 4 weeks ago
The general interest of the masses...

The general interest of the masses might take the place of the insight of genius if it were allowed freedom of action.

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

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

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Line 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 2 weeks ago
The great decisions of human life...

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form-an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.

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p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 3 weeks ago
All persons possessing any portion of...

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Even when there is no law,...

Even when there is no law, there is conscience.

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Maxim 237
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
7 months 1 week ago
It is impossible for someone to...

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
7 months 3 days ago
The world thought well of my...

The world thought well of my schoolmaster guardian, because he was neither a liar, nor a scamp, nor a gambler; but he was coarse, avaricious, and ignorant; he knew nothing beyond the confused lessons which he taught to his classes. He imagined that in forcing a youth to become a monk he would be offering a sacrifice acceptable to God. He used to boast of the many victims which he devoted annually to Dominic and Francis and Benedict.

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As quoted in Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4 (1899) by James Anthony Froude
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Once more I realized to what...

Once more I realized to what an extent earthly happiness is made to the measure of man. It is not a rare bird which we must pursue at one moment in heaven, at the next in our minds. Happiness is a domestic bird found in our own courtyards.

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"Italy", Ch. 18, p. 182
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 3 weeks ago
Corn is a necessary, silver is...

Corn is a necessary, silver is only a superfluity.

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Chapter XI, Part III, (First Period) p. 223.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 months 2 weeks ago
Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses...

Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won't know it, and may even vigorously deny it. Accepting that a virus might be difficult to detect in your own mind, what tell-tale signs might you look out for? I shall answer by imaging how a medical textbook might describe the typical symptoms of a sufferer (arbitrarily assumed to be male).

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
7 months 6 days ago
Rules necessary for demonstrations. To prove...

Rules necessary for demonstrations. To prove all propositions, and to employ nothing for their proof but axioms fully evident of themselves, or propositions already demonstrated or admitted; Never to take advantage of the ambiguity of terms by failing mentally to substitute definitions that restrict or explain them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 3 weeks ago
All-powerful god, who am I but...

All-powerful god, who am I but the fear that I inspire in others?

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King Aegistheus to Jupiter, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 weeks ago
This idea of weapons of mass...

This idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate. I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising a mass massacre of mankind.

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Speech in Birmingham, England encouraging civil disobedience in support of nuclear disarmament, 4/15/1961
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
6 months 3 weeks ago
The history of mankind could... be...

The history of mankind could... be described as a history of outbreaks of fashionable philosophical and religious maladies. These... have... one serious function... evoking criticism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 3 weeks ago
The dead? But the dead have...

The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 months 3 weeks ago
No power can maintain itself if...
No power can maintain itself if only hypocrites represent it.
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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever we know without inference is...

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 4 weeks ago
I know of no country in...

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

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Chapter XV.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nowhere is there more constancy and...

Nowhere is there more constancy and more unanimity than among the French to subordinate that sex which they pretend to honor so highly.

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The Theory of Social Organization
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 1 week ago
Love is not consolation, it is...

Love is not consolation, it is light.

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As quoted in Simone Weil (1954) by Eric Walter Frederick Tomlin, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
7 months 1 day ago
Staying as I am…

Staying as I am, one foot in one country and the other in another, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free.

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Letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine, Paris, June/July 1648
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 3 weeks ago
There is wishful thinking in Hell...

There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
The need to devour oneself absolves...

The need to devour oneself absolves one of the need to believe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
5 months 1 week ago
The discourse on the Text should...

The discourse on the Text should itself be nothing other than text, research, textual activity, since the Text is that social space which leaves no language safe, outside, nor any subject of the enunciation in position as judge, master, analyst, confessor, decoder. The theory of the Text can coincide only with a practice of writing.

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Conclusion
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
5 months 3 weeks ago
Influences of various kinds conspire to...

Influences of various kinds conspire to increase corporate action and decrease individual action. And the change is being on all sides aided by schemers, each of whom thinks only of his pet plan and not at all of the general reorganization which his plan, joined with others such, are working out. It is said that the French Revolution devoured its own children. Here, an analogous catastrophe seems not unlikely. The numerous socialistic changes made by Act of Parliament, joined with the numerous others presently to be made, will by-and-by be all merged in State-socialism-swallowed in the vast wave which they have little by little raised."But why is this change described as 'the coming slavery'?," is a question which many will still ask. The reply is simple. All socialism involves slavery.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 3 weeks ago
Act as if what you do...

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.

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Correspondence with Helen Keller, 1908, in The Correspondence of William James: April 1908-August 1910, Vol. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
Who Rebels? Who rises in arms?...

Who Rebels? Who rises in arms? Rarely the slave, but almost always the oppressor turned slave.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 months 2 weeks ago
Have we really the right to...

Have we really the right to speak of the cause of a phenomenon?

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 3 weeks ago
From another side: is Achilles possible...

From another side: is Achilles possible with powder and lead? Or the Iliad with the printing press, not to mention the printing machine? Do not the song and saga of the muse necessarily come to an end with the printer's bar, hence do not the necessary conditions of epic poetry vanish?

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Introduction, p. 31.
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
3 months 2 days ago
While in the West, the insane...

While in the West, the insane are so many that they are put in an asylum, in China the insane are so unusual that we worship them, as anybody who has a knowledge of Chinese literature will testify.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Agreeably to the request of the...

Agreeably to the request of the House of Representatives, communicated in their resolution of the 16th instant, I proceed to state under the reserve therein expressed, information received touching an illegal combination of private individuals against the peace and safety of the Union, and a military expedition planned by them against the territories of a power in amity with the United States, with the measures I have pursued for suppressing the same....

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 months 2 weeks ago
The sun, with all those planets...

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

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Loose paraphrase of Salviati on Day 3
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
5 months 5 days ago
It seems as if the female...

It seems as if the female spirit of the world were mourning everlastingly over blessings, not lost, but which she has never had, and which, in her discouragement she feels that she never will have, they are so far off.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 3 weeks ago
Catherine: Why commit Evil?

Catherine: Why commit Evil? Goetz: Because Good has already been done. Catherine: Who has done it? Goetz: God the Father. I, on the other hand, am improvising.

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Act 3, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 months 4 days ago
The greater part of human activity...

The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.

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p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 1 week ago
To throw oneself into strange...

To throw oneself into strange teachings is quite dangerous.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
4 months ago
Science is not distinguished from myth...

Science is not distinguished from myth by science being literally true and myth only a type of poetic analogy. While their aims are different, both are composed of symbols we use to deal with a slippery world.

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Beyond the Last Thought: Freud's cigars and the long way round to Nirvana (p. 96)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
It is true that if philosophers...

It is true that if philosophers have suffered their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and though, at present, bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science... Darwiniana: the Origin of Species

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1860
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
Every act of courage is the...

Every act of courage is the work of an unbalanced man. Animals, normal by definition, are always cowardly except when they know themselves to be stronger, which is cowardice itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 3 weeks ago
I am for freedom of religion,...

I am for freedom of religion, & against all maneuvres to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another, for freedom of the press, and against all violations of the Constitution to silence by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of their agents.

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Letter to Elbridge Gerry (26 January 1799); published in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Memorial Edition 20 Vols., Washington, D.C., 1903-04, Volume 10, p. 78
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 2 weeks ago
The entire method....
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Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
5 months 5 days ago
I believe that freedom is not...

I believe that freedom is not a constant attribute that "we have" or "we don't have"; perhaps there is only one reality: the act of liberating ourselves in the process of using choices. Every step in life that heightens the maturity of man heightens his ability to choose the freeing alternative. I believe that "freedom of choice" is not always equal for all men at every moment. The man with an exclusively necrophilic orientation; who is narcissistic; or who is symbiotic-incestuous, can only make a regressive choice. The free man, freed from irrational ties, can no longer make a regressive choice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 3 weeks ago
Out of love, God becomes man....

Out of love, God becomes man. He says: Here you see what it is to be a human being; but he adds: Take care, for I am also God - blessed is he who takes no offense at me. 

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As translated by Howard V. Hong and EdnaH. Hong (1980) Variant translation; Out of love, God becomes man. He says: "See, here is what it is to be a human being."
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
7 months 1 day ago
Fear of evil…

Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.

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Act III, scene xi
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 months 1 week ago
But as far as our own...

But as far as our own world is concerned, its gradual leveling-down - or, we might say, its death - appears to be proved. And how will this process affect the fate of our spirit? Will it wane with the degradation of the energy of our world and return to unconsciousness, or will it grow according as the utilizable energy diminishes and by virtue of the very efforts that it makes to retard this degradation and to dominate Nature? - for this it is that constitutes the life of the spirit. May it be that consciousness and its extended support are two powers in contraposition, the one growing at the expense of the other?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 2 weeks ago
Civil government does by its nature...

Civil government does by its nature include much that is mechanical, and must be treated accordingly. We term it indeed, in ordinary language, the Machine of Society, and talk of it as the grand working wheel from which all private machines must derive, or to which they must adapt, their movements.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
6 months 3 weeks ago
The evil effect of science upon...

The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 52
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 2 weeks ago
And virtue they will curse, speaking...

And virtue they will curse, speaking harsh words.

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XI, 32
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 3 weeks ago
To be shaken out of the...

To be shaken out of the ruts of ordinary perception, to be shown for a few timeless hours the outer and inner world, not as they appear to an animal obsessed with survival or to a human being obsessed with words and notions, but as they are apprehended, directly and unconditionally, by Mind at Large - this is an experience of inestimable value to everyone and especially to the intellectual.

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Philosophical Maxims
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