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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is not as a child...

It is not as a child that I believe and confess Jesus Christ. My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt.

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As quoted in Kierkegaard, the Melancholy Dane (1950) by Harold Victor Martin.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Creation was the first act...

The Creation was the first act of sabotage.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 4 weeks ago
Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth...

Nay, number (itself) in armies, importeth not much, where the people is of weak courage; for (as Virgil saith) it never troubles the wolf how many the sheep be.

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Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1597), XXIX: "Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates."
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
The direction of the world overwhelms...

The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
But bounty and hospitality very seldom...

But bounty and hospitality very seldom lead to extravagance; though vanity almost always does.

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Chapter III, Part V, p. 987.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
Don't ask for what….

Don't ask for what you'll wish you hadn't got.

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Line 1 Seneca himself states that he is quoting a 'common saying' here.
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 weeks 3 days ago
There is perhaps nothing more interesting...

There is perhaps nothing more interesting than to listen to a superior man talk of what he does not know. He advances slowly, and scarcely puts his foot down without knowing if the ground is solid; he looks for plausible analogies; he tries to attach his ideas to higher and incontestable principles; he always has the tone of looking, never that of teaching; and it often happens that, even if he is mistaken, he leaves a great enough idea of his mental honesty.

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p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
2 weeks 2 days ago
It has become extremely questionable whether,...

It has become extremely questionable whether, in the flux of life, it is a genuinely worthwhile intellectual problem to seek to discover fixed and immutable ideas or absolutes. It is a more worthy intellectual task perhaps to learn to think dynamically and relationally rather than statically.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Try as I will, I don't...

Try as I will, I don't see what might exist...

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
If the genius is an artist,...

If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 4 weeks ago
The true line is not between...

The true line is not between "hard" natural science and "soft" social sciences, but between precise science limited to highly abstract and simple phenomena in the laboratory and inexact science and technology dealing with complex problems in the real world.

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p. 302.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
There will be a time....

There will be a time when those trying to turn the world into a Colosseum for their own amusement will be raw meat thrown to the wolves themselves, and the rest of us will watch, as justice is served, with a clean conscience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
The same law that shapes the...

The same law that shapes the earth-star shapes the snow-star. As surely as the petals of a flower are fixed, each of these countless snow-stars comes whirling to earth...these glorious spangles, the sweeping of heaven's floor.

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January 5, 1856
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month ago
Indian thought has greatly attracted me...

Indian thought has greatly attracted me since in my youth I first became acquainted with it through reading the works of Arthur Schopenhauer. From the very beginning I was convinced that all thought is really concerned with the great problem of how man can attain to spiritual union with infinite Being. My attention was drawn to Indian thought because it is busied with this problem and because by its nature it is mysticism. What I liked about it also was that Indian ethics are concerned with the behaviour of man to all living beings and not merely with his attitude to his fellow-man and to human society.

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Preface, p. vi
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing is so much to be...

Nothing is so much to be feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular with God himself.

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September 7, 1851
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 2 weeks ago
The plea of anger or of...

The plea of anger or of drunkenness - as having placed the criminal for the moment beyond the control of his reason - relieves him from the charge of premeditated and malicious intent; but a rational legislation will rather provide more severe than milder punishment for such cases, particularly if such a state of mind is habitual with the accused; for a single unlawful act may well constitute an exception from an otherwise blameless life. But a person who pleads, "I habitually get so angry or so drunk as not to be any longer master of my senses!" confesses thereby that he changes himself into a beast on a fixed principle, and that he is, therefore, not fit to live among rational beings.

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P. 351
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
Thus they are deceived by the...

Thus they are deceived by the likeness of blows, and are appeased by the pretended tears of those who deprecate their wrath, and thus an unreal grief is healed by an unreal revenge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 1 week ago
Is it not the interest of...

Is it not the interest of the human race, that every one should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour?

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Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America (1841) 17th of "20 Questions to the Human Race"
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
Leave the ass burdened with laws...

Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the mountain.

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Chapter 2, Verse 14
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 week ago
Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues,...

Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license. Thus his words have respect to his actions, and his actions have respect to his words; is it not just an entire sincerity which marks the superior man?

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Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
2 weeks 5 days ago
There is in the true man...

There is in the true man of science a desire stronger than the wish to have his beliefs upheld; namely, the desire to have them true.

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[Lectures and essays (1879), vol. 2, p. 311]
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 week ago
Therefore every scribe which is instructed...

Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.

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13:52 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
The truth remains that, after adolescence...

The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.

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"The Acquisition of Ideas"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Lucidity is not necessarily compatible with...

Lucidity is not necessarily compatible with life, actually not at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
The price of freedom....
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Main Content / General
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 3 weeks ago
What I am saying, then, is...

What I am saying, then, is that elements of what we call "language" or "mind" penetrate so deeply into what we call "reality" that the very project of representing ourselves as being "mappers" of something "language-independent" is fatally compromised from the very start. Like Relativism, but in a different way, Realism is an impossible attempt to view the world from Nowhere. In this situation it is a temptation to say, "So we make the world," or "our language makes up the world," or "our culture makes up the world"; but this is just another form of the same mistake. If we succumb, once again we view the world-the only world we know-as a product. One kind of philosopher views it as a product from a raw material: Unconceptualized Reality. The other views it as a creation ex nihilo. But the world isn't a product. It's just the world.

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"Realism with a Human Face"
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 week ago
For it is easier for a...

For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

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18:25 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 2 days ago
But if we judge only those...

But if we judge only those things which are in our power to be good or bad, there remains no reason either for finding fault with God or standing in a hostile attitude to man.

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VI, 41
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
I here, on the very threshold,...

I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us never forget this.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 months 2 days ago
Compared with the life-span of a...

Compared with the life-span of a human being the time-span of a civilization is so vast that a human observer cannot hope to take the measure of its curve unless he is in a position to view it in a distant perspective; and he can only obtain this perspective vis-a-vis some society that is extinct. He can never stand back sufficiently far from the history of the society in which he himself lives and moves and has his being. In other words, to assert of any living society, at any moment in its life, that it is the consummation of human history is to hazard a guess which is intrinsically unsusceptible of immediate verification. When we find that a majority of the members of all societies at all times make this assertion about their own civilizations, it becomes evident that their guesses have really nothing to do with any objective calculation of probabilities but are pure expressions of the egocentric illusion.

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Vol. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 2 days ago
The Outsider wants to cease to...

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be 'balanced'. He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway) He would also like to understand the human soul and its working and, be 'possessed' by a Will topower, to more life. (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov) He would like to escape triviality forever. Above all, he would like to know how to express himself because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and hi unknown possibilities.

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Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 1 week ago
As the oil is in the...

As the oil is in the olive, so is the teshuvah, repentance, hidden within sin.

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p. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 2 days ago
By a tranquil mind I mean...

By a tranquil mind I mean nothing else than a mind well ordered.

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IV, 3
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 3 weeks ago
Darwinist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins...

Darwinist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are militant opponents of Christianity. Yet their atheism and humanism are versions of Christian concepts. As a defender of Darwinism, Dawkins is committed to the view that humans are like other animal species in being 'gene machines' ruled by the laws of natural selection. He asserts nevertheless that humans, uniquely, can defy these natural laws: 'We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.' In affirming human uniqueness in this way, Dawkins relies on a Christian world-view.

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Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 265-6)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
This world is but canvas to...

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 3 weeks ago
In default of any other proof,...

In default of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of the existence of a God.

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Stanislas (1856)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
3 months 1 week ago
To confuse our own constructions and...

To confuse our own constructions and inventions with eternal laws or divine decrees is one of the most fatal delusions of men. 

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Essays in Honour of E. H. Carr (1974) edited by Chimen Abramsky, p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 3 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
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
We are all a sort of...

We are all a sort of camelions, that still take a tincture from things near us; nor is it to be wonder'd at in children, who better understand what they see than what they hear.

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Sec. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 2 days ago
There is no reason whatever to...

There is no reason whatever to assume that woman, in her climb to emancipation, has been, or will be, helped by the ballot.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
The blame rests with the government....

The blame rests with the government. Why do they not put adulterers to death? Then I would not need to give such advice. Between two evils one is always the lesser, in this case allowing the adulterer to remarry in a distant land in order to avoid fornication . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
3 months 2 weeks ago
Now we were standing close to...

Now we were standing close to the summit's rim, gazing out into the endless East.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 months 6 days ago
Not to be loved is a...

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

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No. 3. (Zachi writing to Usbek)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 3 weeks ago
For it is with the same...

For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all of the real, coincide with their simulation models.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," pp. 1-2
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
Prejudice is an opinion…

Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.

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"Prejudices", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
4 months 3 weeks ago
Only geometry can hand us….

Only geometry can hand us the thread [which will lead us through] the labyrinth of the continuum's composition, the maximum and the minimum, the infinitesimal and the infinite; and no one will arrive at a truly solid metaphysic except he who has passed through this [labyrinth].

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Spring 1676
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
Put in a nut-shell, my thesis...

Put in a nut-shell, my thesis amounts to this. The repeated attempts made by Rudolf Carnap to show that the demarcation between science and metaphysics coincides with that between sense and nonsense have failed. The reason is that the positivistic concept of 'meaning' or 'sense' (or of verifiability, or of inductive confirmability, etc.) is inappropriate for achieving this demarcation - simply because metaphysics need not be meaningless even though it is not science. In all its variations demarcation by meaninglessness has tended to be at the same time too narrow and too wide: as against all intentions and all claims, it has tended to exclude scientific theories as meaningless, while failing to exclude even that part of metaphysics which is known as 'rational theology'.

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Ch 11. "The Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics." (Summary, p. 253)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 2 days ago
Let this always be plain to...

Let this always be plain to thee, that this piece of land is like any other; and that all things here are the same with all things on the top of a mountain, or on the sea-shore, or wherever thou chooses to be. For thou wilt find just what Plato says, Dwelling within the walls of the city as in a shepherd's fold on a mountain.

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X, 23
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 5 days ago
God judged it better to bring...

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

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Enchiridion (c. 420 ), Ch. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 2 weeks ago
The will is the living principle...

The will is the living principle of the rational soul, is indeed itself reason, when purely and simply apprehended. That reason is itself active, means, that the pure will, as such, rules and is effectual. The infinite reason alone lies immediately and entirely in the purely spiritual order. The finite being lives necessarily at the same time in a sensuous order; that is to say, in one which presents to him other objects than those of pure reason; a material object, to be advanced by instruments and powers, standing indeed under the immediate command of the will, but whose efficacy is conditional also on its own natural laws.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.104
Philosophical Maxims
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