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Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
Democracy can hardly be expected to...

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.

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Chapter 3 (p. 19)
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 3 weeks ago
The cheapest sort of pride is...

The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

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Vol. 1, Ch. 3, Section 2: Pride
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is no spirit-driven life force,...

There is no spirit-driven life force, no throbbing, heaving, pullulating, protoplasmic, mystic jelly. Life is just bytes and bytes and bytes of digital information.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 5 days ago
I am not indeed ignorant that...

I am not indeed ignorant that certain over-wise people will call these legends "old wives' fables," and not worth listening to; but I think, for my part, that in such matters it is better to believe the testimony of nations than of those witty individuals, whose little soul is acute indeed, but has a clear insight into no one thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 3 weeks ago
There are ideal series of events...

There are ideal series of events which run parallel with the real ones. They rarely coincide. Men and circumstances generally modify the ideal train of events, so that it seems imperfect, and its consequences are equally imperfect. Thus with the Reformation; instead of Protestantism came Lutheranism.

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Epigraph, "The Mystery Of Marie Rogêt" (1842) by Edgar Allan Poe, adapted from Fragments from German Prose Writers (1841) by Sarah Austin
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
Unbelievers

Unbelievers (so called) as well as of believers, there are many species, including almost every variety of moral type. But the best among them, as no one who has had opportunities of really knowing them will hesitate to affirm (believers rarely have that opportunity), are more genuinely religious, in the best sense of the word religion, than those who exclusively arrogate to themselves the title.

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(pp. 45-46)
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 2 weeks ago
Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts...

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 weeks 2 days ago
We shall, therefore, assume the...

We shall, therefore, assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and a corresponding acceleration of the reference system.

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Statement of the equivalence principle in Yearbook of Radioactivity and Electronics (1907)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Imaginary pains are by far the...

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 1 week ago
One thing that specially saddened me...

One thing that specially saddened me was that the unfortunate animals had to suffer so much pain and misery. The sight of an old limping horse, tugged forward by one man while another kept beating it with a stick to get it to the knacker's yard at Colmar, haunted me for weeks. It was quite incomprehensible to me - this was before I began going to school - why in my evening prayers I should pray for human beings only. So when my mother had prayed with me and had kissed me good-night, I used to add silently a prayer that I had composed myself for all living creatures. It ran thus: "O, heavenly Father, protect and bless all things that have breath; guard them from all evil, and let them sleep in peace."

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 3 weeks ago
The deep critical thinker has become...

The deep critical thinker has become the misfit of the world. This is not a coincidence. To maintain order and control you must isolate the intellectual, the sage, the philosopher, the savant before their ideas awaken people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Fine manners need the support of...

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others, and this is a gift interred only by the self.

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Behavior
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 4 days ago
If we allow them any influence...

If we allow them any influence in our conscience, they become the cloak of evil, heresies and blasphemies.

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Marthin Luther, Comment, ad Galat., 310. As cited by Rev. Msgr. Patrick F. O'Hare (1916), The Facts about Luther, p. 119. OCLC 4200594.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
The absurd ... is an experience...

The absurd ... is an experience to be lived through, a point of departure, the equivalent, in existence of Descartes' methodical doubt. Absurdism, like methodical doubt, has wiped the slate clean. It leaves us in a blind alley. But, like methodical doubt, it can, by returning upon itself, open up a new field of investigation, and in the process of reasoning then pursues the same course. I proclaim that I believe in nothing and that everything is absurd, but I cannot doubt the validity of my proclamation and I must at least believe in my protest. The first and only evidence that is supplied me, within the terms of the absurdist experience, is rebellion ... Rebellion is born of the spectacle of irrationality, confronted with an unjust and incomprehensible condition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 2 days ago
Let your occupations be few," says...

Let your occupations be few, says the sage, "if you would lead a tranquil life."

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IV, 24
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
In some lyceums they tell me...

In some lyceums they tell me that they have voted to exclude the subject of religion. But how do I know what their religion is, and when I am near to or far from it? I have walked into such an arena and done my best to make a clean breast of what religion I have experienced, and the audience never suspected what I was about.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
3 months 1 week ago
Modern empiricism has been conditioned in...

Modern empiricism has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma is reductionism: the belief that each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to immediate experience. Both dogmas, I shall argue, are ill-founded. One effect of abandoning them is, as we shall see, a blurring of the supposed boundary between speculative metaphysics and natural science. Another effect is a shift toward pragmatism.

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"Two dogmas of Empiricism"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
A marvel that has nothing to...

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 2 days ago
From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable...

From Apollonius, true liberty, and unvariable steadfastness, and not to regard anything at all, though never so little, but right and reason: and always..that it was possible for the same man to be both vehement and remiss: a man not subject to be vexed, and offended with the incapacity of his scholars and auditors in his lectures and expositions.

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I, 5
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
Communism... is the genuine resolution of...

Communism... is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.

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Private Property and Communism, p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Skepticism is slow suicide.

Skepticism is slow suicide.

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p. 240
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 4 days ago
The strangest, most generous, and proudest...

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
And the soul, my soul at...

And the soul, my soul at least, longs for something else, not absorption, not quietude, not peace, not appeasement, it longs ever to approach and never to arrive, it longs for the never-ending longing, for an eternal hope which is eternally renewed but never wholly fulfilled. And together with all this, it longs for an eternal lack of something and an eternal suffering. A suffering, a pain, thanks to which it grows without ceasing in consciousness and longing. Do not write upon the gate of heaven that sentence which Dante placed over the threshold of hell, Lasciate ogni speranza! [Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate: All hope abandon, ye who enter in] Do not destroy time!

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 5 days ago
I say, the earth belongs to...

I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence.

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Letter to James Madison (6 September 1789) ME 7:455, Papers 15:393
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 3 weeks ago
The third kind of life is...

The third kind of life is the life of contemplation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 2 weeks ago
A true friend will partake of...

A true friend will partake of the wants and sorrows of his friend, as if they were his own; if he be in want, he will relieve him; if he be in prison, he will visit him; if he be sick, he will come to him; nay-situations may occur, in which he would not scruple to die for him. It cannot then be doubted, that friendship is one of the most useful means of procuring a secure, tranquil, and happy life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is easy for us to...

It is easy for us to criticize the prejudices of our grandfathers, from which our fathers freed themselves. It is more difficult to search for prejudices among the beliefs and values that we hold.

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Ch. 3: Equality for Animals? (p. 49)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 4 weeks ago
To hold a pen…

To hold a pen is to be at war.

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Letter to Jeanne-Grâce Bosc du Bouchet, comtesse d'Argental (4 October 1748)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
A sect or party is an...

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

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June 20, 1831
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 5 days ago
I cannot live without books. Letter...

I cannot live without books.

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Letter to John Adams
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 3 weeks ago
He was not merely a chip...

He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.

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On Pitt's First Speech (26 February 1781), from Wraxall's Memoirs, First Series, vol. i. p. 342
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 4 days ago
If it were art to overcome...

If it were art to overcome heresy with fire, the executioners would be the most learned doctors on earth.

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To the Christian Nobility of the German States (1520), translated by Charles M. Jacobs, reported in rev. James Atkinson, The Christian in Society, I (Luther's Works, ed. James Atkinson, vol. 44), p. 207
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Even a minor event in the...

Even a minor event in the life of a child is an event of that child's world and thus a world event.

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The Phoenix, a Linguistic Phenomenon, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
It was the period of my...

It was the period of my mental progress which I have now reached that I formed the friendship which has been the honour and chief blessing of my existence, as well as the source of a great part of all that I have attempted to do, or hope to effect hereafter, for human improvement. My first introduction to the lady who, after a friendship of twenty years, consented to become my wife, was in 1830, when I was in my twenty-fifth and she in her twenty-third year.

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(p. 184)
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 6 days ago
I strive to discover how to...

I strive to discover how to signal my companions before I die, how to give them a hand, how to spell out for them in time one complete word at least, to tell them what I think this procession is, and toward what we go. And how necessary it is for all of us together to put our steps and hearts in harmony. To say in time a simple word to my companions, a password, like conspirators. Yes, the purpose of Earth is not life, it is not man. Earth has existed without these, and it will live on without them. They are but the ephemeral sparks of its violent whirling. Let us unite, let us hold each other tightly, let us merge our hearts, let us create - so long as the warmth of this earth endures, so long as no earthquakes, cataclysms, icebergs or comets come to destroy us - let us create for Earth a brain and a heart, let us give a human meaning to the superhuman struggle. This anguish is our second duty.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
People are not aware how entirely,...

People are not aware how entirely, in former ages, the law of superior strength was the rule of life; how publicly and openly it was avowed, I do not say cynically or shamelessly - for these words imply a feeling that there was something in it to be ashamed of, and no such notion could find a place in the faculties of any person in those ages, except a philosopher or a saint.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising...

The supreme maxim in scientific philosophising is this: wherever possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities.

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Quoted in Hawes The Logic of Contemporary English Realism (1923), p. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 3 weeks ago
In fact, the old Marxist distinctions...

In fact, the old Marxist distinctions between productive and unproductive labor, as well as that between productive and reproductive labor, which were always dubious, should now be completely thrown out.

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135
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
I should say....
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Main Content / General
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 4 days ago
As a social bond, now one...

As a social bond, now one does not find even a faith of the warrior kind, that is, relationships of loyalty and honour. The social bond assumes a utilitarian and economic character; it is an agreement based on convenience and material interest - a type only a merchant would accept.

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p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 1 week ago
Bad times, hard times, this is...

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

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80:8
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 1 week ago
Yes, to seek power….

Yes, to seek power that's vain and never grantedand for it to suffer hardship and endless pain:this is to heave and strain to push uphilla boulder, that still from the very top rolls backand bounds and bounces down to the bare, broad field.

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Book III, lines 998-1002 (tr. Frank O. Copley)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
So nigh is grandeur to our...

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

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Voluntaries, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
For many years I was self-appointed...

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

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After February 22, 1846
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 5 days ago
If the present Congress errs in...

If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, and to talk by the hour?

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1782, reported in Henry Brougham, Baron Brougham and Vaux, Historical Sketches of Statesmen who Flourished in the Time of George III (1845), Vol. II, p. 62.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 2 weeks ago
A single breaker may recede; but...

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

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pp. 266-267
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
4 months 2 weeks ago
With a drunken man do not...

With a drunken man do not walk on the road.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 1 week ago
When I made my theoretical model,...

When I made my theoretical model, I could not have guessed that people would try to realise it with Molotov cocktails.

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As quoted in The Dialectical Imagination : A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research (1973) by M Jay, p. 279.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 1 week ago
Those who will not worship at...

Those who will not worship at the shrine of money, need not hope for recognition. On the other hand, they will also not have to think other people's thoughts or wear other people's political clothes. They will not have to proclaim as true that which is false, nor praise that as humanitarian which is brutal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 4 weeks ago
He thinks like a philosopher, but...

He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

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Of Frederick the Great XII
Philosophical Maxims
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