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David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 days ago
And why should man, added he,...

And why should man, added he, pretend to an exemption from the lot of all other animals? The whole earth, believe me, PHILO, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: Weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and it is at last finished in agony and horror.

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Demea to Philo, Part X
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 weeks ago
Every poet and musician and artist,...

Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 weeks ago
To whomever gives a kiss…

To whomever gives a kiss or a blowRender a kiss or blow, but to whomever gives when you are unable to return, offer all the hatred in your hear, for you were slaves and he enslaves you.

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Acts 8 & 9
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 2 days ago
Materialism ends up denying the existence...

Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness.

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Consciousness and Language (2002) p. 47.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The foundation of morality is to...

The foundation of morality is to have done, once and for all, with lying; to give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

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Science and Morals
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 5 days ago
Life itself is but the shadow...

Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living: All things fall under this name. The Sun itself is but the dark simulacrum, and the light but the shadow of God.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
3 months 2 weeks ago
Asked where he came from, he...

Asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 4 weeks ago
Opinion is ultimately determined by the...

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

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Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
The new overkill is simply an...

The new overkill is simply an extension of our nervous system into a total ecological service environment. Such a service environment can liquidate or terminate its beneficiaries as naturally as it sustains them.

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(p. 152)
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 weeks ago
Maurras, with perfect logic, is an...

Maurras, with perfect logic, is an atheist. The Cardinal [Richelieu], in postulating something whose whole reality is confined to this world as an absolute value, committed the sin of idolatry. ... The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.

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p. 199
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
What is a weed? A plant...

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.

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Fortune of the Republic, 1878
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 6 days ago
By awakening the Heroic that slumbers...

By awakening the Heroic that slumbers in every heart, can any Religion gain followers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy ... must not bargain away...

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Don't turn back when you are...

Don't turn back when you are just at the goal.

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Maxim 580
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 1 week ago
If we don't address the genetic...

If we don't address the genetic causes of suffering (physical and mental) we will find ourselves in 500 years enjoying material abundance via nanotech, living in a perfect democracy, colonizing space, and still sitting around wondering "Why are we miserable so much of the time? Why can't we all just get along? Why are we not all happy?"

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David Pearce in SF, Qualia Computing, 7 Oct. 2018
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 weeks 2 days ago
The advance of science….

The advance of science is not comparable to the changes of a city, where old edifices are pitilessly torn down to give place to new, but to the continuous evolution of zoologic types which develop ceaselessly and end by becoming unrecognizable to the common sight, but where an expert eye finds always traces of the prior work of the centuries past. One must not think then that the old-fashioned theories have been sterile or vain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
Only after Winter comes do we...

Only after Winter comes do we know that the pine and the cypress are the last to fade.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 weeks ago
Who can exhaust a man? Who...

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 days ago
All thought must, directly or indirectly,...

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

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B 33
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 week ago
They are ill discoverers that think...

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

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Book II, vii, 5
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 months 2 weeks ago
When we rise out of [the...

When we rise out of [the night] into the new life and there begin to receive the signs, what can we know of that which - of him who gives them to us? Only what we experience from time to time from the signs themselves. If we name the speaker of this speech God, then it is always the God of a moment, a moment God.

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Between Man and Man (1965), p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
As soon as laws are necessary...

As soon as laws are necessary for men, they are no longer fit for freedom.

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As quoted in Short Sayings of Great Men: With Historical and Explanatory Notes‎ (1882) by Samuel Arthur Bent, p. 454
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 day ago
And the final event to himself...

And the final event to himself has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

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On Edmund Burke's reactions to the American and French revolutions.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
There is no belief, however foolish,...

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
There is no need for you...

There is no need for you to develop an armed insurrection. Christ himself has already begun an insurrection with his mouth.

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pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 weeks 2 days ago
It always seems to me extreme...

It always seems to me extreme rashness on the part of some when they want to make human abilities the measure of what nature can do. On the contrary, there is not a single effect in nature, even the least that exists, such that the most ingenious theorists can arrive at a complete understanding of it. This vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never understanding anything. For anyone who had experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.

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Day One
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks ago
"It is nothing-a trifling matter at...

"It is nothing-a trifling matter at most; keep a stout heart and it will soon cease"; then in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion; ambition, luxury, greed, hark back to opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
The most momentous thing in human...

The most momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or to evil.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, as translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925)
Philosophical Maxims
David Wood
David Wood
1 month 1 week ago
To say that all philosophy is...

To say that all philosophy is writing is, minimally, to say that it is never the transparent expression of thought.

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Chapter 3, Deconstruction and Criticism, p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
2 months 2 weeks ago
We are sorely deficient in talking...

We are sorely deficient in talking with each other and listening to each other. We lack mobility, criticism and self-criticism. We incline to doctrinism. What makes it worse is that so many people do not really want to think. They want only slogans and obedience. They ask no questions and they give no answers, except by repeating drilled-in phrases. They can only assert and obey, neither probe nor apprehend. Thus they cannot be convinced, either. How shall we talk with people who will not go where others probe and think, where men seek independence in insight and conviction?

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
Radio provides a speed-up of information...

Radio provides a speed-up of information that also causes acceleration in other media. It certainly contracts the world to village size and creates insatiable village tastes for gossip, rumour, and personal malice.

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(p. 24)
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 3 weeks ago
We do not merely study the...

We do not merely study the past: we inherit it, and inheritance brings with it not only the rights of ownership, but the duties of trusteeship. Things fought for and died for should not be idly squandered. For they are the property of others, who are not yet born.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
The meaning of experience is typically...

The meaning of experience is typically one generation behind the experience. The content of new situations, both private and corporate, is typically the preceding situation.

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quoted in "The Prospects of Recording" by Glenn Gould, The Glenn Gould reader, 1984, p. 345
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
Those who devote themselves to rituals...

Those who devote themselves to rituals must ignore themselves. Rituals produce a distance from the self, a self-transcendence.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 days ago
Truth is the cry....
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Main Content / General
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 weeks ago
The English, generally remarkable for doing...

The English, generally remarkable for doing very good things in a very bad manner, seem to have reserved the maturity and plenitude of their awkwardness for the pulpit.

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Vol. I, ch. 3, p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months ago
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next...

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

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Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 1 week ago
What would you say of that...

What would you say of that man who was made king by the error of the people, if he had so far forgotten his natural condition as to imagine that this kingdom was due to him, that he deserved it, and that it belonged to him of right? You would marvel at his stupidity and folly. But is there less in the people of rank who live in so strange a forgetfulness of their natural condition?

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 3 days ago
If I had as clear an...

If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which is.

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Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week ago
Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it...

Phenomenology is not a philosophy; it is a philosophical method, a tool. It is like an adjustable spanner that can be used for dismantling a refrigerator or a car, or used for hammering in nails, or even for knocking somebody out.

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p. 92
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
A good Soul hath neither too...

A good Soul hath neither too great joy, nor too great sorrow: for it rejoiceth in goodness; and it sorroweth in wickedness. By the means whereof, when it beholdeth all things, and seeth the good and bad so mingled together, it can neither rejoice greatly; nor be grieved with over much sorrow.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 days ago
If nature has been frugal in...

If nature has been frugal in her gifts and endowments, there is the more need of art to supply her defects. If she has been generous and liberal, know that she still expects industry and application on our part, and revenges herself in proportion to our negligent ingratitude. The richest genius, like the most fertile soil, when uncultivated, shoots up into the rankest weeds; and instead of vines and olives for the pleasure and use of man, produces, to its slothful owner, the most abundant crop of poisons.

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Part I, Essay 16: The Stoic
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 weeks 5 days ago
Life is that which can hold...

Life is that which can hold a purpose for three thousand years and never yield. The individual fails, but life succeeds. The individual is foolish, but life holds in its blood and seed the wisdom of generations. The individual dies, but life, tireless and undiscourageble, goes on, wondering, longing, planning, trying, mounting, longing.

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Ch. 5 : On Death
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 days ago
'Tis from the resemblance of the...

Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry'd one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv'd, must also be resembling.

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Part 3, Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months ago
The most obvious division of society...

The most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labours. In a state of artificial society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labour most enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labour not at all have the greatest number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Without the faculty of forgetting, our...

Without the faculty of forgetting, our past would weigh so heavily on our present that we should not have the strength to confront another moment, still less to live through it. Life would be bearable only to frivolous natures, those in fact who do not remember.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 2 weeks ago
Whether he be an original or...

Whether he be an original or a plagiarist, man is the novelist of himself.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 days ago
The concept of space, therefore, is...

The concept of space, therefore, is a pure intuition, being a singular concept, not made up by sensations, but itself the fundamental form of all external sensation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 2 days ago
Watergate was thus nothing but a...

Watergate was thus nothing but a lure held out by the system to catch its adversaries-a simulation of scandal for regenerative ends.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 6 days ago
Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief...

Alas! the fearful Unbelief is unbelief in yourself.

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Bk. II, ch. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
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