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Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 day ago
Philosophy is a battle….

Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language.

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§ 109
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Not to be a proud and...

Not to be a proud and haughty person, you have to follow the old proverb and "know thyself." That is to say, you must regard your special talents, whatever beauty or fame you have, as gifts from God, and not as things you earned for yourself. Whatever is low and mean is not God's doing, however. Here you can only blame yourself. Remember the squalor of your birth and how naked and poor you were when you crawled into the light of day like a little animal.

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p.154
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 weeks ago
All which a man loves, for...

All which a man loves, for which he leaves everything else but that, is his god, thus the glutton and drunkard has for his idol his own flesh, the fornicator has for his idol the harlot and the greedy has for his idol silver and gold, and so the same for every other sinner.

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Ch. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 3 days ago
No explanation is required for Holy...

No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 days ago
Memento mori-remember death! These are important...

Memento mori-remember death! These are important words. If we kept in mind that we will soon inevitably die, our lives would be completely different. If a person knows that he will die in a half hour, he certainly will not bother doing trivial, stupid, or, especially, bad things during this half hour. Perhaps you have half a century before you die-what makes this any different from a half hour?

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p. 209
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
What a pity and what a...

What a pity and what a poverty of spirit, to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which affect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, &c. [...] Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table, and dissect him living, to show the mezarian veins. You discover in him all the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves to be incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature. [...] The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts, who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.

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"Beasts", in A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 2, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824, p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 weeks ago
My atheism, like that of Spinoza,...

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

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"On My Friendly Critics"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
We plant trees, we build stone...

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
The rulers of Great Britain have,...

The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only.

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Chapter III, Part V, p. 1032 (Last Page).
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months ago
As soon as we cease to...

As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs, then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

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"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined...

Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined to lasciviousness, vengeance, theft and lies.

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As quoted in David Johnson, 'Representing the Cape "Hottentots"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 days ago
It is difficulties...
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Main Content / General
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 6 days ago
We do not directly go about...

We do not directly go about the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors behind us, and ramble with prepared minds, as if the half were already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward, which is fed by their own albumen, ere they send one upwards to the light.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 weeks 3 days ago
If the individual realizes his self...

If the individual realizes his self by spontaneous activity and thus relates himself to the world, he ceases to be an isolated atom; he and the world become part of one structuralized whole; he has his rightful place, and thereby his doubt concerning himself and the meaning of life disappears. This doubt sprang from his separateness and from the thwarting of life; when he can live, neither compulsively nor automatically but spontaneously, the doubt disappears. He is aware of himself as an active and creative individual and recognizes that there is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

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Ch. 7, p. 262-3
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 4 days ago
This year, or this month, or,...

This year, or this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people.

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Book I, Chapter 1, "The Law of Human Nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
A creative economy is the fuel...

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.

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Aristocracy
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 weeks 5 days ago
When contemporary feminist movement first began,...

When contemporary feminist movement first began, feminist writings and scholarship by black women was groundbreaking. The writings of black women like Cellestine Ware, Toni Cade Bambara, Michele Wallace, Barbara Smith, and Angela Davis, to name a few, were all works that sought to articulate, define, speak to and against the glaring omissions in feminist work, the erasure of black female presence.

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Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 days ago
Division of labor is a justification...

Division of labor is a justification for sloth.

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p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 1 week ago
Even opinion is of force enough...

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

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Book I, Ch. 40. Of Good and Evil, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 6 days ago
It is only when we think...

It is only when we think abstractly that we have such a high opinion of man. Of men in the concrete, most of us think the vast majority very bad. Civilized states spend more than half their revenue on killing each other's citizens. Consider the long history of the activities inspired by moral fervour: human sacrifices, persecutions of heretics, witch-hunts, pogroms leading up to wholesale extermination by poison gases ... Are these abominations, and the ethical doctrines by which they are prompted, really evidence of an intelligent Creator? And can we really wish that the men who practised them should live for ever? The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident; but if it is the outcome of a deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis.

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Essay Do We Survive Death?, 1936
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 4 days ago
I am trying here to prevent...

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 1 week ago
The world that I regard is...

The world that I regard is my selfe, it is the Microcosme of mine owne frame, that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but like my Globe, and turne it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing onely my condition, and fortunes, do erre in my altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders.

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Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 5 days ago
In regard to man's final end,...

In regard to man's final end, all the higher religions are in complete agreement. The purpose of human life is the discovery of Truth, the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. The degree to which this unitive knowledge is achieved here on earth determines the degree to which it will be enjoyed in the posthumous state. Contemplation of truth is the end, action the means.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 days ago
Scientists have pushed back the horizon...

Scientists have pushed back the horizon of time from the biblical 6,000 years to 4,600,000,000 years for the age of Earth a 760,000-fold increase.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 3 weeks ago
Cato requested old men not to...

Cato requested old men not to add the disgrace of wickedness to old age, which was accompanied with many other evils.

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Cato the Elder
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 6 days ago
Therefore only an utterly senseless person...

Therefore only an utterly senseless person can fail to know that our characters are the result of our conduct.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 days ago
It is an article of passionate...

It is an article of passionate faith among "politically correct" biologists and anthropologists that brain size has no connection with intelligence; that intelligence has nothing to do with genes; and that genes are probably nasty fascist things anyway.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 1 week ago
To keep our eyes open longer...

To keep our eyes open longer were but to set our Antipodes. The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all shall awake again?

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Ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 6 days ago
Nor is prescription of government formed...

Nor is prescription of government formed upon blind unmeaning prejudices-for man is a most unwise, and a most wise, being. The individual is foolish. The multitude, for the moment, is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it almost always acts right.

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Speech in the House of Commons against William Pitt's motion for parliamentary reform (7 May 1782)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 6 days ago
What are the earth and all...

What are the earth and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces and scatters them?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
Heroism feels and never reasons and...

Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right.

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Heroism
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 weeks 3 days ago
Society triumphs over many. They wish...

Society triumphs over many. They wish to regenerate the world with their institutions, with their moral philosophy, with their love. Then they sink to living from breakfast till dinner, from dinner till tea, with a little worsted work, and to looking forward to nothing but bed. When shall we see a life full of steady enthusiasm, walking straight to its aim, flying home, as that bird is now, against the wind - with the calmness and the confidence of one who knows the laws of God and can apply them?

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
Every man has his dignity. I'm...

Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 6 days ago
[The church] is in its major...

[The church] is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

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"How The Churches Have Retarded Progress"
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 5 days ago
Pray go back and recollect one...

Pray go back and recollect one of the conclusions to which I sought to lead you in my very first lecture. You may remember how I there argued against the notion that the worth of a thing can be decided by its origin. Our spiritual judgment, I said, our opinion of the significance and value of a human event or condition, must be decided on empirical grounds exclusively. If the fruits for life of the state of conversion are good, we ought to idealize and venerate it, even though it be a piece of natural psychology; if not, we ought to make short work of it, no matter what supernatural being may have infused it.

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Lecture IX, "Conversion, concluded"
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 days ago
The bible belt is oral territory...

The bible belt is oral territory and therefore despised by the literati.

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The Critic, Volume 33, Thomas More Association, 1974, p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 1 week ago
Time is the father of truth,...

Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.

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Quote as translated in The Encyclopedia of Religion Vol. 11 (1987), by Mircea Eliade, p. 459
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 weeks ago
The intellectual is called on the...

The intellectual is called on the carpet. ... Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.

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p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
God may forgive sins, he said,...

God may forgive sins, he said, but awkwardness has no forgiveness in heaven or earth.

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Society and Solitude
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 4 days ago
What do we mean by saying...

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist see him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing - as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 6 days ago
Kings will be tyrants from policy,...

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

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Volume iii, p. 334
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 weeks 5 days ago
Self-expression is impossible in relation with...

Self-expression is impossible in relation with other men; their self-expression interferes with it. The greatest heights of self-expression in poetry, music, painting - are achieved by men who are supremely alone.

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Chapter Eight, The Outsider as a Visionary
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 6 days ago
I am not much an advocate...

I am not much an advocate for travelling, and I observe that men run away to other countries because they are not good in their own, and run back to their own because they pass for nothing in the new places. For the most part, only the light characters travel. Who are you that have no task to keep you at home? I have been quoted as saying captious things about travel; but I mean to do justice. .... He that does not fill a place at home, cannot abroad. He only goes there to hide his insignificance in a larger crowd. You do not think you will find anything there which you have not seen at home? The stuff of all countries is just the same. Do you suppose there is any country where they do not scald milk-pans, and swaddle the infants, and burn the brushwood, and broil the fish? What is true anywhere is true everywhere. And let him go where he will, he can only find so much beauty or worth as he carries.

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Culture
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 days ago
"This is the truth," we say....

"This is the truth," we say. "You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right."

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 4 days ago
Some day you will be old...

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), Dedication: "To Lucy Barfield"
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
1 month 3 weeks ago
When Demaratus was asked whether he...

When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue."

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Of Demaratus
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 2 weeks ago
As soon as the soul has...

As soon as the soul has been made to perceive that a thing can conduct it to that which it loves supremely, it must inevitably embrace it with joy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months 1 week ago
Even in the games…

Even in the games of children there are things to interest the greatest mathematician.

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1688-1690
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 days ago
I believe in the salvation of...

I believe in the salvation of humanity, in the future of cyanide . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 6 days 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
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