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Will Durant
Will Durant
1 week 5 days ago
Rooted in freedom, bonded in the...

Rooted in freedom, bonded in the fellowship of danger, sharing everywhere a common human blood, we declare again that all men are brothers, and that mutual tolerance is the price of liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
The man who comes back through...

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Considering the optimistic turn taken by...

Considering the optimistic turn taken by world trade AT THIS MOMENT...it is some consolation at least that the revolution has begun in Russia, for I regard the convocation of 'notables' to Petersburg as such a beginning. ... On the Continent revolution is imminent and will, moreover, instantly assume a socialist character.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (8 October 1858), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), pp. 346-347
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
Of all those expensive and uncertain...

Of all those expensive and uncertain projects, however, which bring bankruptcy upon the greater part of the people who engage in in them, there is none perhaps more perfectly ruinous than the search after new silver and gold mines. It is perhaps the most disadvantageous lottery in the world, or the one in which the gain of those who draw the prizes bears the least proportion to the loss of those who draw the blanks: for though the prizes are few and the blanks are many, the common price of a ticket is the whole fortune of a very rich man.

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Chapter VII, Part First, p. 610.
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 5 days ago
When I consider the short duration...

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By whose order and design have this place and time been destined for me? It is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all we want.How many kingdoms know nothing of us! The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.

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"The Misery of Man Without God": "Man's Disproportion," The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal translated from the Text of M. Auguste Molinier Tr. C. Kegan Paul, 1885
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 weeks 4 days ago
Empire is emerging today as the...

Empire is emerging today as the center that supports the globalization of productive networks and casts its widely inclusive net to try to envelop all power relations within its world order - and yet at the same time it deploys a powerful police function against the new barbarians and the rebellious slaves who threaten its order.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 1 week ago
When the objective gaze is turned...

When the objective gaze is turned on human beings and other experiencing creatures, who are undeniably parts of the world, it can reveal only what they are like in themselves. And if the way things are for these subjects is not part of the way things are in themselves, an objective account, whatever it shows, will omit something. So reality is not just objective reality, and the pursuit of objectivity is not an equally effective method of reaching the truth about everything.

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"Subjective and Objective" (1979), pp. 212-213.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 4 days ago
Meditate upon my counsels; love them;...

Meditate upon my counsels; love them; follow them; To the divine virtues will they know how to lead thee. I swear it by the One who in our hearts engraved The sacred Tetrad, symbol immense and pure, Source of Nature and model of the Gods.

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As translated by Fabre d'Olivet
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 2 weeks ago
Wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the...

Wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their representative, the absolute monarchy. The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the entailment of estates - in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition - that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
Men ... ask nothing better, it...

Men ... ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique.

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"Wave Mechanics," p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 3 weeks ago
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct...
Perhaps no philosopher is more correct than the cynic. The happiness of the animal, that thorough cynic, is the living proof of cynicism.
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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
The louder he talked of his...

The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons.

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Worship
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 4 days ago
Placing your stick at the end...

Placing your stick at the end of the shadow of the pyramid, you made by the sun's rays two triangles, and so proved that the pyramid [height] was to the stick [height] as the shadow of the pyramid to the shadow of the stick.

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W. W. Rouse Ball, A Short Account of the History of Mathematics
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 2 weeks ago
Bernie Sanders is...an anti-racist in his...

Bernie Sanders is...an anti-racist in his heart. Two, he's old-school. He's like me. He doesn't know the buzzwords. He doesn't endorse reparations, one moment in the last 30 years, silent on it. He has the consistency over the years decade after decade and therefore it's true in his language, in his rhetoric. There are times in which he doesn't... use the same kind of buzzwords. But when it comes to his fight against racism, going to jail in Chicago as a younger brother and he would go to jail again. He and I would go to jail together again in terms of fighting against police brutality. So in that sense, I would just tell my brothers and sisters, but especially my chocolate ones that they shouldn't be blinded by certain kinds of words they're looking for, that in the end, he is a long distance runner in the struggle against white supremacy.

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Quoted in: Cornel West on Bernie, Trump, and Racism, The Intercept, Mehdi Hasan
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
I do not, therefore, need any...

I do not, therefore, need any penetrating acuteness to see what I have to do in order that my volition be morally good. Inexperienced in the course of the world, incapable of being prepared for whatever might come to pass in it, I ask myself only: can you also will that your maxim become a universal law?

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
Universality is....
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Proclus
Proclus
3 months 6 days ago
But after these, Pythagoras changed that...

But after these, Pythagoras changed that philosophy, which is conversant about geometry itself, into the form of a liberal doctrine, considering its principles in a more exalted manner; and investigating its theorems immaterially and intellectually; who likewise invented a treatise of such things as cannot be explained in geometry, and discovered the constitution of the mundane figures.

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Chap. IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 3 weeks ago
How it could come to pass...

How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 2 weeks ago
By bourgeoisie is meant the class...

By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.

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The Communist Manifesto, footnote
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Lincoln's place in the history of...

Lincoln's place in the history of the United States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington!

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
In a constantly revolving circle every...

In a constantly revolving circle every point is simultaneously a point of departure and a point of return. If we interrupt the rotation, not every point of departure is a point of return.

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Vol. II, Ch. IV, p. 104.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 week 1 day ago
There is no means of avoiding...

There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.

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Chapter XX: Interest, Credit Expansion, The Trade Cycle, § 8 : The Monetary or Circulation Theory of the Trade Cycle
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 days ago
We accepted a definition of ourselves...

We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition is miserably insufficient, for in fact we know how to grow brains and eyes, ears and fingers, hearts and bones, in just the same way that we know how to walk and breathe, talk and think-only we can't put it into words. Words are too slow and too clumsy for describing such things, and conscious attention is too narrow for keeping track of all their details.

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p. 112
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our sadness is not sad, but...

Our sadness is not sad, but our cheap joys.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Haven't people learned yet that the...

Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles?

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
For some identify happiness with virtue,...

For some identify happiness with virtue, some with practical wisdom, others with a kind of philosophic wisdom, others with these, or one of these, accompanied by pleasure or not without pleasure; while others include also external prosperity. Now ... it is not probable that these should be entirely mistaken, but rather that they should be right in at least some one respect or even in most respects.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 6 days ago
The history of the world is...

The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 2 weeks ago
But the more he is alone...

But the more he is alone with nature, the greater man and his doings bulk in the consideration of his fellow-men.

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Toils And Pleasures.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Free trade is not based on...

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 4 days ago
Assist a man in raising a...

Assist a man in raising a burden; but do not assist him in laying it down.

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Symbol 11
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
Persons of genius, it is true,...

Persons of genius, it is true, are, and are always likely to be, a small minority; but in order to have them, it is necessary to preserve the soil in which they grow. Genius can only breathe freely in an atmosphere of freedom.

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Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 1 week ago
It is not a question of...

It is not a question of the mass-man being a fool. On the contrary, to-day he is more clever, has more capacity of understanding than his fellow of any previous period. But that capacity is of no use to him; in reality, the vague feeling that he possesses it seems only to shut him up more within himself and keep him from using it. Once for all, he accepts the stock of commonplaces, prejudices, fag-ends of ideas or simply empty words which chance has piled up within his mind, and with a boldness only explicable by his ingenuousness, is prepared to impose them everywhere.... Why should he listen if he has within him all that is necessary? There is no reason now for listening, but rather for judging, pronouncing, deciding. There is no question concerning public life, in which he does not intervene, blind and deaf as he is, imposing his "opinions."

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Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 1 week ago
September 11, 2001, was just another...

September 11, 2001, was just another day for most of the world's desperately poor people, so presumably close to 30,000 children under five died from these causes on that day-about ten times the number of victims of the terrorist attacks. The publication of these figures did not lead to an avalanche of money for UNICEF or other aid agencies helping to reduce infant mortality. In the year 2000 Americans made private donations for foreign aid of all kinds totaling about $4 per person in extreme poverty, or roughly $20 per family. New Yorkers who were living in lower Manhattan on September 11, 2001, whether wealthy or not, were able to receive an average of $5,300 per family. The distance between these amounts encapsulates the way in which, for many people, the circle of concern for others stops at the boundaries of their own country-if it extends even that far.

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Chapter 5: One Community (p. 176)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
2 weeks 3 days ago
We need a good alternative to...

We need a good alternative to Trumpism. There is a majority in favor of that, but... the other party is really not providing that alternative in a very clear way.

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46:46:00
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
Nature made women mature early and...

Nature made women mature early and had them demand gentle and polite treatment from men, so that they would find themselves imperceptibly fettered by a child due to their own magnanimity; and they would find themselves brought, if not quite to morality itself, then at least to that which cloaks it, moral behavior, which is the preparation and introduction to morality.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 219-220
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week ago
I propose to value them according...

I propose to value them according to their character, and not according to their duties. Each man acquires his character for himself, but accident assigns his duties.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
The child learns to believe...

The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
The secret of happiness is this:...

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
We think it also necessary to...

We think it also necessary to express our astonishment that a government, desirous of being called free, should prefer connection with the most despotic and arbitrary powers in Europe.

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Address and Declaration at a Select Meeting of the Friends of Universal Peace and Liberty (August 20, 1791) p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 6 days ago
It is unlikely that the good...

It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

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Book I, ch. 20, 17.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
You don't have a soul. You...

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

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Commonly attributed to Mere Christianity, where it is not found. Earliest reference seems to be an unsourced attribution to George MacDonald in an 1892 issue of the Quaker periodical The British Friend.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
Most boys or youths who have...

Most boys or youths who have had much knowledge drilled into them, have their mental capacities not strengthened, but over-laid by it. They are crammed with mere facts, and with the opinions or phrases of other people, and these are accepted as a substitute for the power to form opinions of their own: and thus the sons of eminent fathers, who have spared no pains in their education, so often grow up mere parroters of what they have learnt, incapable of using their minds except in the furrows traced for them. Mine, however, was not an education of cram. My father never permitted anything which I learnt to degenerate into a mere exercise of memory. He strove to make the understanding not only go along with every step of the teaching, but, if possible, precede it. Anything which could be found out by thinking I never was told, until I had exhausted my efforts to find it out for myself.

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(p. 31)
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 weeks ago
The utilitarian morality does recognise in...

The utilitarian morality does recognise in human beings the power of sacrificing their own greatest good for the good of others. It only refuses to admit that the sacrifice is itself a good. A sacrifice which does not increase, or tend to increase, the sum total of happiness, it considers as wasted. The only self-renunciation which it applauds, is devotion to the happiness, or to some of the means of happiness, of others; either of mankind collectively, or of individuals within the limits imposed by the collective interests of mankind.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
There are, indeed, things that cannot...

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

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(6.522) Original German: Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 day ago
Another argument of hope may be...

Another argument of hope may be drawn from this - that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

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Aphorism 109
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Verily I say unto you, If...

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3 days ago
A state of war only serves...

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

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The Gulag Archipelago
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 6 days ago
Why not? What is to hinder...

Why not? What is to hinder this Samson from governing? There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern by! There exists in him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious,-that is to say, chaotic, _un_governed; of the Devil, not of God. A man of this kind cannot help governing! He has the living ideal of a governor in him; and the incessant necessity of struggling to unfold the same out of him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 4 days ago
Time is the soul of this...

Time is the soul of this world.

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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 4 days ago
When the wise man opens his...

When the wise man opens his mouth, the beauties of his soul present themselves to the view, like the statues in a temple.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
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