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Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks ago
The day of your birth is...

The day of your birth is one day's advance towards the grave.

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Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination (tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877) Cf. Dávid Baróti Szabó, Nem kímíl meg senkit halál, wr. 1786; ed. 1914
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute...

Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute precision to all the precepts of geometry as to all the properties of space there demonstrated, this being the subjective condition, not hypothetically but intuitively given, of every phenomenon in which nature can ever be revealed to the senses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
I think I can hardly overrate...

I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendancy, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil.

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Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (26 May 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 5 days ago
...the relatively unconscious man driven by...

...the relatively unconscious man driven by his natural impulses because, imprisoned in his familiar world, he clings to the commonplace, the obvious, the probable, the collectively valid, using for his motto: 'Thinking is difficult. Therefore, let the herd pronounce judgement.'

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Frequently misquoted as "Thinking is difficult, that's why most people judge" and close variants. Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. (1959), C.G. Jung, R.F.C. Hull (translator) (Princeton Press, 1979, ISBN 9780691018225
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 1 week ago
Capital is money, capital is commodities....

Capital is money, capital is commodities. ... By virtue of it being value, it has acquired the occult ability to add value to itself. It brings forth living offspring, or, at the least, lays golden eggs.

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Vol. I, Ch. 4, pp. 171-172
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 4 days ago
In the case of colors, there...

In the case of colors, there is a tridimensional spread of feelings. Originally all feelings may have been connected in the same way, and the presumption is that the number of dimensions was endless. For development essentially involves a limitation of possibilities. But given a number of dimensions of feeling, all possible varieties are obtainable by varying the intensities of the different elements.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 4 days ago
Even the constantly reiterated insistence that...

Even the constantly reiterated insistence that we are miserable offenders, born in sin, is a kind of inverted arrogance: such vanity, to presume that our moral conduct has some sort of cosmic significance, as though the Creator of the Universe wouldn't have better things to do than tot up our black marks and our brownie points. The universe is all concerned with me. Is that not the arrogance that passeth all understanding? The Intellectual and Moral Courage of Atheism

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Originally from 2007; quotes are from the slightly revised 2019 version on the website
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 1 week ago
As there must be moderation in...

As there must be moderation in other things, so there must be moderation in self-criticism. Perpetual contemplation of our own actions produces a morbid consciousness, quite unlike that normal consciousness accompanying right actions spontaneously done; and from a state of unstable equilibrium long maintained by effort, there is apt to be a fall towards stable equilibrium, in which the primitive nature reasserts itself. Retrogression rather than progression may hence result.

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Ch. 10, General Conclusions
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
There were honest people long before...

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true Christianity corresponds to what they would have been even if Christianity did not exist.

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L 16
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Take the question whether other people...

Take the question whether other people exist. ...It is plain that it makes for happiness to believe that they exist - for even the greatest misanthropist would not wish to be deprived of the objects of his hate. Hence the belief that other people exist is, pragmatically, a true belief. But if I am troubled by solipsism, the discovery that a belief in the existence of others is 'true' in the pragmatist's sense is not enough to allay my sense of loneliness: the perception that I should profit by rejecting solipsism is not alone sufficient to make me reject it. For what I desire is not that the belief in solipsism should be false in the pragmatic sense, but that other people should in fact exist. And with the pragmatist's meaning of truth, these two do not necessarily go together. The belief in solipsism might be false even if I were the only person or thing in the universe.

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"William James's Conception of Truth" , published in Philosophical Essays, London, 1910
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 day ago
He that is not with me...

He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.

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Luke 11:23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 4 weeks ago
Without consciousness the mind-body problem would...

Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

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p. 166.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
When I, who conduct this inquiry,...

When I, who conduct this inquiry, love something, then three things are found: I, what I love, and the love itself. There are, therefore three things: the lover, the beloved and the love.

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(Cambridge: 2002), Book 9, Chapter 2, Section 2, p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 3 days ago
Farewell to the monsters...
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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
Though the profusion of Government must...

Though the profusion of Government must undoubtedly have retarded the natural progress of England to wealth and improvement, it has not been able to stop it.

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Chapter III.
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months 2 weeks ago
I assert once again as a...

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

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Book 2, Ch. 29 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 3 weeks ago
That passivity was the essence of...

That passivity was the essence of the problem. The human being was intended to be passive only in a condition of fatigue, and not always then. Too much passivity of body produced surplus fat, short-windedness, indigestion: passivity of mind produced the same symptoms on the mental level. a feeling of spiritual dyspepsia. Since the average human being has no purposes that are not connected with the activities of keeping alive, the black room was bound to produce passivity, increasing dullness, a state in which the mind is at once awake and static, motionless, stagnant. This sense of dullness was nothing less than the collapse of the sense of reality and of values, the retreat into one's inner world.

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p. 72
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 2 weeks ago
Let us not flutter too high,...

Let us not flutter too high, but remain by the manger and the swaddling clothes of Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

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50
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Catholic faith..

The Catholic faith, I now realized could be maintained without presumption. This was especially true after I had heard one or two parts of the Old Testament explained allegorically, whereas before this, when I had interpreted them literally, they had killed me spiritually.

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A. Outler, trans. (Dover: 2002), Book 5, Chapter 14, p. 81.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 1 week 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
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 1 week ago
Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition,...

Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition, and ambition can easily have caused the inspiration or what we thought to be inspiration. But reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition. He tumbles where his vehement drive calls him; no longer does he choose his position, but rather chance and luster determine it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 4 days ago
Unfortunately, instead of working out that...

Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false.

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Heat the Hornet, a review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
One is rarely an impulsive innovator...

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the more skilled at educating those who have already been procreated, and education is procreation of another kind.

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K 51
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 days ago
In a single second we do...

In a single second we do away with all seconds; God himself could not do as much.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 days ago
Your suffering like your fate is...

Your suffering like your fate is without motive. To suffer, truly to suffer, is to accept the invasion of ills without the excuse of causality, as a favor of demented nature, as a negative miracle...

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Outsider's miseries are the prophet's...

The Outsider's miseries are the prophet's teething pains. He retreats into his room, like a spider in a dark corner; he lives alone, wishes to avoid people.

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Chapter Four The Attempt to Gain Control
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
Scientific Method... [is] even less existent...

Scientific Method... [is] even less existent than some other non-existent subjects.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 4 weeks ago
Plato and his objectivistic successors ......

Plato and his objectivistic successors ... preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny-the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course.

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p. 53.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 1 week ago
God said, I am tired of...

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

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Boston Hymn, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Global rationality, the rationality of neoclassical...

Global rationality, the rationality of neoclassical theory, assumes that the decision maker has a comprehensive, consistent utility function, knows all the alternatives that are available for choice, can compute the expected value of utility associated with each alternative, and chooses the alternative that maximizes expected utility. Bounded rationality, a rationality that is consistent with our knowledge of actual human choice behavior, assumes that the decision maker must search for alternatives, has egregiously incomplete and inaccurate knowledge about the consequences of actions, and chooses actions that are expected to be satisfactory (attain targets while satisfying constraints).

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Simon (1997, p. 17); As cited in: Gustavo Barros (2010, p. 460).
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
If, while hurrying ostensibly to the...

If, while hurrying ostensibly to the temple of truth, we hand the reins over to our personal interests which look aside at very different guiding stars, for instance at the tastes and foibles of our contemporaries, at the established religion, but in particular at the hints and suggestions of those at the head of affairs, then how shall we ever reach the high, precipitous, bare rock whereon stands the temple of truth?

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 22-23
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
Two things in America are astonishing:...

Two things in America are astonishing: the changeableness of most human behavior and the strange stability of certain principles. Men are constantly on the move, but the spirit of humanity seems almost unmoved.

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Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 day ago
Bourgeois political economy ... never gets...

Bourgeois political economy ... never gets to see man who is its real subject. It disregards the essence of man and his history and is thus in the profoundest sense not a 'science of people' but of non-people and of an inhuman world of objects and commodities.

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"The Foundations of Historical Materialism," Studies in Critical Philosophy (1972), p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 weeks 1 day ago
There is no more consensus on...

There is no more consensus on what justice means than there is on the character of the good. If anything, there is less. Among the virtues, justice is one of the most shaped by convention. For that reason it is among the most changeable.

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'Modus Vivendi' (p.34)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 2 weeks ago
When you wander, as you often...

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
All gods are homemade, and it...

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours Vijaya in Island.

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1962
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 4 weeks ago
Natural justice is a symbol or...

Natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefulness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 4 weeks ago
Virtuous, worthy, wise and capable people...

Virtuous, worthy, wise and capable people are chosen as leaders.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months ago
Freed from the sublimated form which...

Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams-a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told-sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. ... This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.

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pp. 77-78
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 4 weeks ago
Tomorrow we will….

Tomorrow we will be back on the vast ocean.

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The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations: The Illiterati's Guide to Latin Maxims, Mottoes, Proverbs and Sayings
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 days ago
My difficulty is only an -...

My difficulty is only an - enormous - difficulty of expression.

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Journal entry (8 March 1915) p. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
The world neither ever saw, nor...

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

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Chapter X, Part I.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 month 2 days ago
Man is the creature of circumstances....

Man is the creature of circumstances.

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"The Philanthropist"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
We used to think that Hitler...

We used to think that Hitler was wicked when he wanted to kill all the Jews, but what Kennedy and Macmillan and others both in the East and in the West pursue policies which will probably lead to killing not only all the Jews but all the rest of us too. They are much more wicked than Hitler and this idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly and absolutely horrible and it is a thing which no man with one spark of humanity can tolerate and I will not pretend to obey a government which is organising the massacre of the whole of mankind. I will do anything I can to oppose such Governments in any non-violent way that seems likely to be fruitful, and I should exhort all of you to feel the same way. We cannot obey these murderers. They are wicked and abominable. They are the wickedest people that ever lived in the history of man and it is our duty to do what we can.

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On Civil Disobedience, April 15th, 1961
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
4 days ago
In the contemporary economy, however, and...

In the contemporary economy, however, and with the labor relations of post-Fordism, mobility increasingly defines the labor market as a whole, and all categories are tending toward the condition of mobility and cultural mixture common to the migrant.

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130
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 week ago
Genet is a man-failure: he wills...

Genet is a man-failure: he wills the impossible in order to derive from the tragic grandeur of this defeat the assurance that there is something other than the possible.

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p. 213
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 days ago
To read is to let someone...

To read is to let someone else work for you - the most delicate form of exploitation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 6 days ago
The user of the electric light...

The user of the electric light -- or a hammer, or a language, or a book -- is the content. As such, there is a total metamorphosis of the user by the interface. It is the metamorphosis that I consider the message.

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Letter to Edward T. Hall, 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 397
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
I was seeing what Adam had...

I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence.

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Pages 160-61
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 days ago
To think we could have spared...

To think we could have spared ourselves from living all that we have lived!

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Philosophical Maxims
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