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Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
The superior man honors his virtuous...

The superior man honors his virtuous nature, and maintains constant inquiry and study, seeking to carry it out to its breadth and greatness, so as to omit none of the more exquisite and minute points which it embraces, and to raise it to its greatest height and brilliancy, so as to pursue the course of the Mean. He cherishes his old knowledge, and is continually acquiring new. He exerts an honest, generous earnestness, in the esteem and practice of all propriety. Thus, when occupying a high situation he is not proud, and in a low situation he is not insubordinate. When the kingdom is well governed, he is sure by his words to rise; and when it is ill governed, he is sure by his silence to command forbearance to himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
The class of big capitalists, who,...

The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
My sympathies are, of course, with...

My sympathies are, of course, with the Government side, especially the Anarchists; for Anarchism seems to me more likely to lead to desirable social change than highly centralized, dictatorial Communism.

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Authors Take Sides on the Spanish War (1937) edited by Nancy Cunard and publisehd by the Left Review
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 weeks ago
In brief, it is my thesis...

In brief, it is my thesis that human misery is the most urgent problem of a rational public policy and that happiness is not such a problem.

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p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 2 weeks ago
The world is a perpetual caricature...

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.

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"Dickens"
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
No longer enslaved or made dependent...

No longer enslaved or made dependent by force of law, the great majority are so by force of poverty; they are still chained to a place, to an occupation, and to conformity with the will of an employer, and debarred, by the accident of birth both from the enjoyments, and from the mental and moral advantages, which others inherit without exertion and independently of desert. That this is an evil equal to almost any of those against which mankind have hitherto struggled, the poor are not wrong in believing.

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John Stuart Mill, Chapters On Socialism, London, 1879, 'Introductory'
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 weeks ago
Malice sucks up the greatest part...

Malice sucks up the greatest part of its own venom, and poisons itself.

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Of Repentance, Book III, Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 weeks ago
As far as physicians go, chance...

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

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Ch. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 6 days ago
A culture is in its finest...

A culture is in its finest flower before it begins to analyze itself.

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Ch. 22, August 17, 1941.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 2 weeks ago
A certain maxim of Logic which...

A certain maxim of Logic which I have called Pragmatism has recommended itself to me for diverse reasons and on sundry considerations. Having taken it as my guide for most of my thought, I find that as the years of my knowledge of it lengthen, my sense of the importance of it presses upon me more and more. If it is only true, it is certainly a wonderfully efficient instrument. It is not to philosophy only that it is applicable. I have found it of signal service in every branch of science that I have studied. My want of skill in practical affairs does not prevent me from perceiving the advantage of being well imbued with pragmatism in the conduct of life.

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Lecture I : Pragmatism : The Normative Sciences, CP 5.14
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
If the true is what...

If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week ago
I really have no claim to...

I really have no claim to rank myself among fatalistic, materialistic, or atheistic philosophers. Not among fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to have a logical, and not a physical foundation; not among materialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence; not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of these philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
2 months 1 week ago
Be a craftsman in speech that...

Be a craftsman in speech that thou mayest be strong, for the strength of one is the tongue, and speech is mightier than all fighting.

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Translated by J. H. Breasted, The Dawn of Conscience (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1933) p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 weeks 2 days ago
Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal...

Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.

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Public conversation with Lee Stringer, in Like Shaking Hands With God
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
England, it is true, in causing...

England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution.

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"The British Rule in India," New York Daily Tribune, 10 June 1853.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 1 day ago
Here take back the stuff that...

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me me.

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B 37 "Speech of a suicide composed shortly before the act."
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
We live, in fact, in a...

We live, in fact, in a world starved for solitude, silence, and privacy: and therefore starved for meditation and true friendship.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
Avarice, the spur of industry, is...

Avarice, the spur of industry, is so obstinate a passion, and works its way through so many real dangers and difficulties, that it is not likely to be scared by an imaginary danger, which is so small, that it scarcely admits of calculation. Commerce, therefore, in my opinion, is apt to decay in absolute governments, not because it is there less secure, but because it is less honourable.

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Part I, Essay 12: Of Civil Liberty
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
When I walk along with...

When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
Our greatest stupidities may be very...

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

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p. 39e
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 month 1 week ago
God ... demands everything, in order...

God ... demands everything, in order to give everything anew to him who loves Him, after that loving has truly given up all.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
The slave is sold once and...

The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian, property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the class as a whole.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 weeks 3 days ago
Where questions of style and exposition...

Where questions of style and exposition are concerned I try to follow a simple maxim: if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself.

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P. x.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is unjust that the whole...

It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.

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Chapter I, Part IV, Conclusion, p. 881.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
When profit diminishes, merchants are very...

When profit diminishes, merchants are very apt to complain that trade decays; though the diminution of profit is the natural effect of its prosperity, or of a greater stock being employed in it than before.

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Chapter IX
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 4 days ago
Corruption of politics has nothing to...

Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
The ancient Romans….

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture for wild beasts to fight in.

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Letter addressed to "un premier commis" [name unknown] (20 June 1733), from Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire: Correspondance [Garnier frères, Paris, 1880], vol. I, letter # 343 (p. 354)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
If there is a sin against...

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is wishful thinking in Hell...

There is wishful thinking in Hell as well as on Earth.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is a woman's outstanding characteristic...

It is a woman's outstanding characteristic that she can do anything for the love of a man. But those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with their nature. Love for a thing is a man's prerogative. But since masculine and feminine elements are united in our human nature, a man can live in the feminine part of himself, I and a woman in her masculine part. None the less the feminine element in man is only something in the background, as is the masculine element in woman. If one lives out the opposite sex in oneself one is living in one's own background, and one's real individuality suffers. A man should live as a man and a woman as a woman.

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P. 243
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
'Tis the good reader that makes...

Tis the good reader that makes the good book; in every book he finds passages which seem confidences or asides hidden from all else and unmistakenly meant for his ear.

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Success
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks ago
Understand that all the evils from...

Understand that all the evils from which you suffer, you yourselves cause by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!

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Patriotism and Government
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
I don't think that there are...

I don't think that there are any sinister persons deliberately trying to rob people of their freedom but I do think, first of all, that there are a number of impersonal forces which are pushing in the direction of less and less freedom. And I also thing there are a number of technological devices which anybody who wishes to use, can use, to accelerate this process of going away from freedom, of imposing control.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 5 days ago
The purpose of consciousness is to...

The purpose of consciousness is to illuminate the world. If we try to run consciousness at half its proper voltage, the result will be a "devalued" world. But that is not the fault of the world; it is our fault. Low-voltage consciousness shows us less of the world than high-voltage consciousness, just as we would see an art gallery less clearly by candlelight than by sunlight.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 weeks 5 days ago
It takes a long time to...

It takes a long time to bring excellence to maturity.

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Maxim 780
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
A character is never the author...

A character is never the author who created him. It is quite likely, however, that an author may be all his characters simultaneously.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding....

My faculty for disappointment surpasses understanding. It is what lets me comprehend Buddha, but also what keeps me from following him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 weeks 4 days ago
Each generation is a filter, a...

Each generation is a filter, a sieve; good genes tend to fall through the sieve into the next generation; bad genes tend to end up in bodies that die young or without reproducing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 3 weeks ago
England and France, the two most...

England and France, the two most civilized nations on earth, who are in contrast to each other because of their different characters, are, perhaps chiefly for that reason, in constant feud with one another. Also, England and France, because of their inborn characters, of which the acquired and artificial character is only the result, are probably the only nations who can be assumed to have a particular and, as long as both national characters are not blended by the force of war, unalterable characteristics. That French has become the universal language of conversation, especially in the feminine world, and that English is the most widely used language of commerce among tradesmen, probably reflects the difference in their continental and insular geographic situation.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 226
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 weeks ago
In principle and in practice...
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Main Content / General
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
I am my world.

I am my world.

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(The microcosm.) (5.63) Original German: Ich bin meine welt (Der Mikrokosmos.)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is not by genius, it...

It is not by genius, it is by suffering, and suffering alone, that one ceases to be a marionette.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
"I ask myself; Why is it...

I ask myself; Why is it that only some people suffer? Why are only some selected from the ranks of normal people and put on the torture rack? Some religions maintain that God is trying us through suffering, or that we expiate evil and unbelief through it. If such an explanation can satisfy the religious man, it is not sufficient for anyone who notices that suffering is arbitrary and unjust, because the innocent often suffer most. There is no valid justification for suffering. Suffering has no hierarchy of values.

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in essay: the monopoly of suffering
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
She with one breath attunes the...

She with one breath attunes the spheres, And also my poor human heart.

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"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
I am dreaming ...? Let me...

I am dreaming ...? Let me dream, if this dream is my life. Do not awaken me from it. I believe in the immortal origin of this yearning for immortality, which is the very substance of my soul. But do I really believe in it ...? And wherefore do you want to be immortal? you ask me, wherefore? Frankly, I do not understand the question, for it is to ask the reason of the reason, the end of the end, the principle of the principle.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 5 days ago
In refusing to face evil, Sinclair...

In refusing to face evil, Sinclair has gained nothing and lost a great deal; the Buddhist scripture expenses it: those who refuse to discriminate might as well be dead.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 3 weeks ago
But the chief design of this...

But the chief design of this paper is not to disprove it, which many have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 weeks 3 days ago
Disneyland exists in order to hide...

Disneyland exists in order to hide that it is the "real" country, all of "real" America that is Disneyland (a bit like prisons are there to hide that it is the social in its entirety, in its banal omnipresence, that is carceral). Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
Frugality is founded on the principle...

Frugality is founded on the principle that all riches have limits.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 weeks ago
I have never seen a greater...

I have never seen a greater monster or miracle in the world than myself.

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Book III, Ch. 11. Of Cripples
Philosophical Maxims
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