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Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 1 day ago
This book, admirable in so many...

This book, admirable in so many respects, power in its break and style, is even more intimidating for me in that, having formely had the good fortune to study under Michel Foucault, I retain the consciousness of an admiring and grateful disciple. Now, the disciple's consciousness, when he starts, I would not say to dispute, but to engage in dialogue with the master or, better, to articulate the interminable and silent dialogue which made him into a disciple-this disciple's consciousness is an unhappy consciousness.

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Cogito and The History of Madness (Routledge classics edition)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
At the present stage in the...

At the present stage in the development of the art of war, there is only way of coping with them, and that is to keep out of war. In all the densely populated countries of Western Europe, it seems almost certain that, within a few days of the outbreak of war, panic will seize the surviving inhabitants of the capitals and the industrial areas, leading to anarchy, starvation, and paralysis of all warlike effort. The only sensible course, therefore, is to prevent war if possible, and to remain neutral if war occurs.

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Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 4 days ago
We know of no great revolution...

We know of no great revolution which might not have been prevented by compromise early and graciously made... [I]n all movements of the human mind which tend to great revolutions there is a crisis at which moderate concession may amend, conciliate, and preserve.

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'Hallam', The Edinburgh Review (September 1828), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 5 days ago
Of course a war is entertaining....

Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below? When I see the temporal suffering of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied all the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all. The Enemy, true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalize and torment us - to mock the incessant hunger, which, during this present phase of great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing.

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Letter V
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
The pathos of it all is...

The pathos of it all is that the America which is to be protected by a huge military force is not the America of the people, but that of the privileged class; the class which robs and exploits the masses, and controls their lives from the cradle to the grave. No less pathetic is it that so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 4 weeks ago
The animating purpose of James was,...

The animating purpose of James was, on the other hand, primarily moral and artistic. It is expressed in his phrase, "block universe," employed as a term of adverse criticism. Mechanism and idealism were abhorrent to him because they both hold to a closed universe in which there is no room for novelty and adventure. Both sacrifice individuality and all the values, moral and aesthetic, which hang upon individuality; for according to absolute idealism, as to mechanistic materialism, the individual is simply a part determined by the whole of which he is a part. Only a philosophy of pluralism, of genuine indetermination, and of change which is real and intrinsic gives significance to individuality. It alone justifies struggle in creative activity and gives opportunity for the emergence of the genuinely new.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
4 weeks 1 day ago
There are evils, as someone has...

There are evils, as someone has pointed out, that have the ability to survive identification and go on for ever - money, for instance, or war.

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The Dean's December (1982) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-140-18913-0], ch. 13, p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 4 weeks ago
Works of art express space as...

Works of art express space as opportunity for movement and action.

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p. 217
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 1 week ago
The frontiers are not east or...

The frontiers are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man fronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between him and the setting sun, or, farther still, between him and it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 1 week ago
One good schoolmaster is of more...

One good schoolmaster is of more use than a hundred priests.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
4 weeks 1 day ago
Much of junk culture has a...

Much of junk culture has a core of crisis - shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.

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A Second Half Life (1991), p. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
And at once I saw with...

And at once I saw with great clarity that human beings possess two bodies. One is the physical body, the other -- just as real, just as self-contained -- is the emotional body. Like the physical body, the emotional body reaches a certain level of growth, and then stops. But it stops rather sooner than the physical body. So most of us possess the emotional body of a retarded adolescent.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 2 days ago
I have just discovered that without...

I have just discovered that without her father's consent this sweet, trusting, gullible six-year-old is being sent, for weekly instruction, to a Roman Catholic nun. What chance has she?

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Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 days ago
With exceptions so rare they are...

With exceptions so rare they are regarded as miracles of nature, successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular-not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

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p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 days ago
We have become like the most...

We have become like the most primitive Palaeolithic man, once more global wanderers, but information gatherers rather than food gatherers. From now on the source of food, wealth and life itself will be information.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
1 month 2 weeks ago
Instead of gambling on the eternal...

Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?

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from Dialogues with Claire Parnet, p. 147 [emphasis in original].
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
Marriage is for women the commonest...

Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 days ago
The little world of childhood with...

The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process.

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The Theory of Psychoanalysis
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 4 weeks ago
As first a man cannot lay...

As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himself.

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The First Part, Chapter 14, p. 66
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 6 days ago
At least two thirds of our...

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, 1952
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 week ago
There are but few points in...

There are but few points in which the English, as a people, are entitled to the moral pre-eminence with which they are accustomed to compliment themselves at the expense of other nations: but, of these points, perhaps the one of greatest importance is, that the higher classes do not lie, and the lower, though mostly habitual liars, are ashamed of lying. To run any risk of weakening this feeling, a difficult one to create, or, when once gone, to restore, would be a permanent evil too great to be incurred for so very temporary a benefit as the ballot would confer, even on the most exaggerated estimate necessity.

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Thoughts on Parliamentary Reform (1859), pp. 48-49
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 day ago
I can die when I wish...

I can die when I wish to: that is my elixir of life.

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The Republic.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 1 week ago
When one merely states that one...

When one merely states that one has many subscribers and keeps on saying it, then one gets many; just as when one sheep goes to water, the next one also goes, and when it is continually said of a large flock of sheep that they go hither and yon to water, then the rest must also go, so people believe that it must be the demand of the times, that for the sake of use and custom, they must also subscribe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 days ago
The farther men get from God,...

The farther men get from God, the farther they advance into the knowledge of religions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 4 weeks ago
I daresay anything can be made...

I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.

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The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 322.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 6 days ago
The Greeks possessed...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 6 days ago
But genius looks forward: the eyes...

But genius looks forward: the eyes of men are set in his forehead, not in his hindhead: man hopes: genius creates.

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par. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
Parliament is not a congress of...

Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament.

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Speech to the Electors of Bristol (3 November 1774); as published in The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 weeks ago
What odds does it make to...

What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?

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Book I, satire i, line 48
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
Martyrs create faith, faith does not...

Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 2 weeks ago
Males learn to lie as a...

Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power, and females not only do the same but they also lie to pretend powerlessness.

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Chapter 3, pg. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 6 days ago
Every man is free to do...

Every man is free to do that which he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man.

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Ch. 6, The Formula of Justice
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
The principal source of the harm...

The principal source of the harm done by the State is the fact that power is its chief end.

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Principles of Social Reconstruction (1917), Ch. II: The State
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 1 week ago
Force is the midwife of every...

Force is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic power.

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Vol. I, Ch. 31, pg. 824
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 6 days ago
We too often forget that not...

We too often forget that not only is there "a soul of goodness in things evil," but very generally also, a soul of truth in things erroneous.

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Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science; quoting from "There is some soul of goodness in things evil / Would men observingly distil it out", William Shakespeare, Henry V, act iv. sc. i
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
This great increase of the quantity...

This great increase of the quantity of work which, in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing, is owing to three different circumstances; first, to the increase of dexterity in every particular workman; secondly, to the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another; and lastly, to the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.

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Chapter I
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
'Tis from the resemblance of the...

Tis from the resemblance of the external actions of animals to those we ourselves perform, that we judge their internal likewise to resemble ours; and the same principle of reasoning, carry'd one step farther, will make us conclude that since our internal actions resemble each other, the causes, from which they are deriv'd, must also be resembling.

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Part 3, Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 month ago
To preserve permanent good health, the...

To preserve permanent good health, the state of mind must be taken into consideration.

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3rd Part
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 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
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 1 week ago
It is the privilege…

It is the privilege of true genius, and certainly of the genius that opens a new road, to make without punishment great mistakes.

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"Siècle de Louis XIV," ch. 32 (1751), qtd. in Arthur Schopenhauer, "The World as Will and Representation," Criticism of the Kantian philosophy, 1818
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 2 weeks ago
The blame rests with the government....

The blame rests with the government. Why do they not put adulterers to death? Then I would not need to give such advice. Between two evils one is always the lesser, in this case allowing the adulterer to remarry in a distant land in order to avoid fornication . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 4 weeks ago
Animals are born and bred in...

Animals are born and bred in litters. Solitude grows blessed and peaceful only in old age.

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p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 days ago
World War I a railway war...

World War I a railway war of centralization and encirclement. World War II a radio war of decentralization concluded by the Bomb. World War III a TV guerrilla war with no divisions between civil and military fronts.

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(p. 152)
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 4 days ago
It is a very hard undertaking...

It is a very hard undertaking to seek to please everybody.

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Maxim 675
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
When then is time?

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

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XI, 14
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
We may define "faith" as a...

We may define "faith" as a firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith". We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups substitute different emotions.

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p. 215
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 1 day ago
Without the presence of black people...

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.

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(p. 107-108)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week 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
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
The noble simplicity in the works...

The noble simplicity in the works of nature only too often originates in the noble shortsightedness of him who observes it.

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H 1
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 4 days ago
It seems to be almost an...

It seems to be almost an invariable rule that as real power declines, the symbols of power multiply and intensify in compensation.

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Philosophical Maxims
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