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Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1 month 1 week ago
The philosopher will ask himself ......

The philosopher will ask himself ... if the criticism we are now suggesting is not the philosophy which presses to the limit that criticism of false gods which Christianity has introduced into our history.

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p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 1 day ago
The artist is the person who...

The artist is the person who invents the means to bridge biological inheritance and the environments created by technological innovation.

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p. 98
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 days ago
We make a ladder of our...

We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

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3
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 1 week ago
If our intention now is to...

If our intention now is to reveal classical unreason on its own terms, outside of its ties with dreams and error, it must be understood not as a form of reason that is somehow diseased, lost or mad, but quite simply as reason dazzled.

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Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
The second doctrine of the Perennial...

The second doctrine of the Perennial Philosophy - that it is possible to know the Divine Ground by a direct intuition higher than discursive reasoning - is to be found in all the great religions of the world. A philosopher who is content merely to know about the ultimate Reality - theoretically and by hearsay - is compared by Buddha to a herdsman of other men's cows. Mohammed uses an even homelier barnyard metaphor. For him the philosopher who has not realized his metaphysics is just an ass bearing a load of books. Christian, Hindu, Taoist teachers wrote no less emphatically about the absurd pretensions of mere learning and analytic reasoning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 2 weeks ago
Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies...

Unlike private enterprise which quickly modifies its actions to meet emergencies - unlike the shopkeeper who promptly finds the wherewith to satisfy a sudden demand - unlike the railway company which doubles its trains to carry a special influx of passengers; the law-made instrumentality lumbers on under all varieties of circumstances at its habitual rate. By its very nature it is fitted only for average requirements, and inevitably fails under unusual requirements.

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Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 1 week ago
I am I and….

I am I and my circumstance, and if I don't save it I don't save myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 1 week ago
What is more subjective is not...

What is more subjective is not necessarily more private. In general it is intersubjectively available. I assume that the intersubjective ideas of experience, of action, and of the self are in some sense public or common property. That is why the problems of mind and body, free will, and personal identity are not just problems about one's own case.

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"Subjective and Objective" (1979), p. 207.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 2 weeks ago
Men seem to pursue honour in...

Men seem to pursue honour in order that they may believe themselves to be good. Accordingly, they seek to be honoured by the wise, and by those who know them well, and on the score of virtue; it is clear, therefore, that in their opinion at any rate, virtue is superior to honour. Perhaps, then, one ought to say that virtue rather than honour is the end of the political life; yet even virtue is plainly too imperfect: for it seems that a man might have all the virtues and yet be asleep, or fail to achieve anything all his life; moreover, such a person may suffer the greatest evils and misfortunes. And no one, in this case, would call a man, who passed his life in this manner, happy, except for argument's sake.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
6 days ago
We know no spectacle so ridiculous...

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality.

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p. 315
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 2 days ago
Who are those people by whom...

Who are those people by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not these about whom you are in the habit of saying that they are mad? What then? Do you wish to be admired by the mad?

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Book I, ch. 21, 4.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is an odd circumstance that...

It is an odd circumstance that neither the old nor the new, by itself, is interesting; the absolutely old is insipid; the absolutely new makes no appeal at all. The old in the new is what claims the attention,-the old with a slightly new turn.

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Chapter XI: Attention
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is no method of reasoning...

There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical debates to endeavour to refute any hypothesis by a pretext of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.

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Part 3, Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 3 days ago
For man to be able to...

For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks ago
For lack of empirical data I...

For lack of empirical data I have neither knowledge nor understanding of such forms of being, which are commonly called spiritual. ...Nevertheless, we have good reason to suppose that behind this veil there exists the uncomprehended absolute object which affects and influences us-and to suppose it even, or particularly, in the case of psychic phenomena about which no verifiable statements can be made.

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p.351
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month ago
Sartre observed that he had never...

Sartre observed that he had never felt so free as during the German occupation when (as a member of the French resistance) he was in constant danger of being arrested and shot. Could there be a more conclusive proof that human beings are freer than they realize, and that their freedom is eroded by habit and laziness?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 5 days ago
Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred...

Down in adoration falling,Lo! the sacred Host we hail;Lo! o'er ancient forms departing,Newer rites of grace prevail;Faith for all defects supplying,Where the feeble senses fail.

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Pange, Lingua, stanza 5 (Tantum Ergo)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
It pays to be obvious, especially...

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 days ago
The universities are schools of education,...

The universities are schools of education, and schools of research. But the primary reason for their existence is not to be found either in the mere knowledge conveyed to the students or in the mere opportunities for research afforded to the members of the faculty. Both these functions could be performed at a cheaper rate, apart from these very expensive institutions. Books are cheap, and the system of apprenticeship is well understood. So far as the mere imparting of information is concerned, no university has had any justification for existence since the popularization of printing in the fifteenth century. Yet the chief impetus to the foundation of universities came after that date, and in more recent times has even increased. The justification for a university is that it preserves the connection between knowledge and the zest of life, by uniting the young and the old in the imaginative consideration of learning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Among the celestial bodies that are...

Among the celestial bodies that are revolving over our heads, though the motions are not the same, and though the force is not equal, yet they move, and ever have moved, without clashing, and in perfect harmony.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
...what I look to with seriousness...

...what I look to with seriousness is the Phalanx of Party which exists in the body of the dissenters, who are, at the very least, nine tenths of them entirely devoted, some with greater some with less zeal, to the principles of the French Revolution.

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Letter to the Home Secretary, Henry Dundas (30 September 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 419
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
The Calculus required continuity, and continuity...

The Calculus required continuity, and continuity was supposed to require the infinitely little; but nobody could discover what the infinitely little might be.

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Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
The human understanding is of its...

The human understanding is of its own nature prone to suppose the existence of more order and regularity in the world than it finds. And though there be many things in nature which are singular and unmatched, yet it devises for them parallels and conjugates and relatives which do not exist. Hence the fiction that all celestial bodies move in perfect circles, spirals and dragons being (except in name) utterly rejected.

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Aphorism 45
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
If a lion could talk, we...

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.

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Pt II, p. 223 of the 1968 English edition
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nothing is rich....
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Main Content / General
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 3 days ago
School children and students who love...

School children and students who love God should never say: "For my part I like mathematics"; "I like French"; "I like Greek." They should learn to like all these subjects, because all of them develop that faculty of attention which, directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 days ago
The oneness of the universe, and...

The oneness of the universe, and the oneness of each element of the universe, repeat themselves to the crack of doom in the creative advance from creature to creature, each creature including in itself the whole of history and exemplifying the self-identity of things and their mutual diversities.

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Pt. III, ch. 1, sec. 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
Eh bien, continuons... Well, let's get...

Eh bien, continuons... Well, let's get on with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 4 days ago
Our life is a hope which...

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope. Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like an eternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. Thus do ideas exist in the God-Idea, but not thus do men live in the living God, in the God-Man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
I cannot believe - and I...

I cannot believe - and I say this with all the emphasis of which I am capable - that there can ever be any good excuse for refusing to face the evidence in favour of something unwelcome. It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.

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"The Pursuit of Truth" in The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, 1993
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 1 week ago
I should not really object to...

I should not really object to dying if it were not followed by death.

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"Death" (1970), p. 3 footnote.
Philosophical Maxims
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
1 month 1 day ago
There continue to be complex debates...

There continue to be complex debates about what Nietzsche understood truth to be. Quite certainly, he did not think, in pragmatist spirit, that beliefs are true if they serve our interests or welfare: we have just seen some of his repeated denials of this idea. The more recently fashionable view is that he was the first of the deniers, thinking that there is no such thing as truth, or that truth is what anyone thinks it is, or that it is a boring category that we can do without. This is also wrong, and more deeply so. Nietzsche did not think that the ideal of truthfulness went into retirement when its metaphysical origins were discovered, and he did not suppose, either, that truthfulness could be detached from a concern for the truth. Truthfulness as an ideal retains its power, and so far from his seeing truth as dispensable or malleable, his main question is how it can be made bearable.

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p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is by the Imperial Capital...

It is by the Imperial Capital that contemporaries (and posterity, too) judge an Empire, and its magnificence impresses them mightily and leads them to judge the Emperor a great man and hero, even though it may all be based on robbery, and though the provinces of the Empire may be sunk in misery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
We do not count a man's...

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

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Old Age
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 2 weeks ago
The defiance of established authority, religious...

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

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"Civil Disobedience"
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
"The real saint", Baudelaire pretends to...

"The real saint", Baudelaire pretends to think, "is he who flogs and kills people for their own good." His argument will be heard. A race of real saints is beginning to spread over the earth for the purposes of confirming these curious conclusions about rebellion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 days ago
The term many presupposes the term...

The term many presupposes the term one, and the term one presupposes the term many.

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Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks 6 days ago
One cannot demand of a scholar...

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

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J 85
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
My doubt goes like this: How...

My doubt goes like this: How could the Loving One have the heart to let human beings become so guilty that they got his murder on their consciences?

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 2 weeks ago
To study the meaning of man...

To study the meaning of man and of life - I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.

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Personal correspondence (1839), as quoted in Dostoevsky: His Life and Work (1971) by Konstantin Mochulski, as translated by Michael A. Minihan, p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 3 days ago
The life of Berdyaev spans the...

The life of Berdyaev spans the momentous events of the first half of the twentieth century in Europe. He was no ivory tower philosopher but was intimately affected by these events throughout his life and drew his inspirations from them regarding the nature of the human condition. His writings bear the imprint of the catastrophic situations within which he was destined to live.

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Richard Schain, in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005), Ch. 7 : Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev - A Champion of the Spirit, p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month ago
Full of gods means full of...

Full of gods means full of meaning, full of narration. The world becomes readable, like a picture.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 1 week ago
Is this fight against history part...

Is this fight against history part of the fight against a dimension of the mind in which centrifugal faculties and forces might develop-faculties and forces that might hinder the total coordination of the individual with the society? Remembrance of the Fast may give rise to dangerous insights, and the established society seems to be apprehensive of the subversive contents of memory. Remembrance is a mode of dissociation from the given facts, a mode of "mediation" which breaks, for short moments, the omnipresent power of the given facts. Memory recalls the terror and the hope that passed. Both come to life again.

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p. 98
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks 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
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 week 3 days ago
A civilization is a social entity...

A civilization is a social entity that manifests religious, political , legal, and customary uniformity over an extended period, and which confers on its members the benefits of socially accumulated knowledge.

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"What is Culture?" (p. 2)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Tolerance - the function of an...

Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month ago
The very proclaimers of "America first"...

The very proclaimers of "America first" have long before this betrayed the fundamental principles of real Americanism...the other truly great Americans who aimed to make of this country a haven of refuge, who hoped that all the disinherited and oppressed people in coming to these shores would give character, quality and meaning to the country.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
Few men have been admired by...

Few men have been admired by their own domestics.

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Book iii. Chap 2. Of Repentance
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
Wonder is the foundation of all...

Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy, research is the means of all learning, and ignorance is the end.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
1 month 2 weeks ago
If there be such a thing...

If there be such a thing as truth, it must infallibly be struck out by the collision of mind with mind.

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Vol. 1, bk. 1, ch.4
Philosophical Maxims
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