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Will Durant
Will Durant
3 weeks 5 days ago
Man is as young as the...

Man is as young as the risks he takes.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
The criminal law has, from the...

The criminal law has, from the point of view of thwarted virtue, the merit of allowing an outlet for those impulses of aggression which cowardice, disguised as morality, restrains in their more spontaneous forms. War has the same merit. You must not kill you neighbor, whom perhaps you genuinely hate, but by a little propaganda this hate can be transferred to some foreign nation, against whom all your murderous impulses become patriotic heroism.

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Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 17: Fear, p. 175
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 1 week ago
For an author to write as...

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

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The Art of Literature
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 4 weeks ago
Can the children of the bridechamber...

Can the children of the bridechamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them? but the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken from them, and then shall they fast. No man putteth a piece of new cloth unto an old garment, for that which is put in to fill it up taketh from the garment, and the rent is made worse. Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved.

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9:15-17 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
The conviction that it is important...

The conviction that it is important to believe this or that, even if a free inquiry would not support the belief, is one which is common to almost all religions and which inspires all systems of state education. The consequence is that the minds of the young are stunted and are filled with fanatical hostility both to those who have other fanaticisms, and, even more virulently, to those who object to all fanaticisms.

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preface xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
1 month 1 week ago
From each as they choose, to...

From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen.

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Ch. 7 : Distributive Justice, Section I, Patterning, p. 160
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 3 weeks ago
The mind is not a vessel...

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

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On Listening to Lectures (Tr. Waterfield)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
You have theories enough concerning the...

You have theories enough concerning the Rights of Men. It may not be amiss to add a small degree of attention to their Nature and disposition.

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Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
In our university of Virginia you...

In our university of Virginia you know there is no Professorship of Divinity. A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion. Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed on the minds of some honest friends to the institution.

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Letter to Thomas Cooper (3 November 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12, p. 272
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 4 days ago
It is the poets and painters...

It is the poets and painters who react instantly to a new medium like radio or TV.

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(p. 53)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 4 weeks ago
Are ye come out as against...

Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.

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26:55-56 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week ago
I recall an endless desert of...

I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing, crying in the wilderness. And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air, trembling. It clutches the soil, steadies itself, raises its head and hands, grasps the air, the water, the light, and sucks at the Universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong,...

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Science ... commits suicide when it...

Science ... commits suicide when it adopts a creed.

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"The Darwin Memorial"
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 2 weeks ago
If an angel were ever to...

If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.

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B 44
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
To tell the truth, I couldn't...

To tell the truth, I couldn't care less about the relativity of knowledge, simply because the world does not deserve to be known.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
I think that democratic communities have...

I think that democratic communities have a natural taste for freedom: left to themselves, they will seek it, cherish it, and view any privation of it with regret. But for equality, their passion is ardent, insatiable, incessant, invincible: they call for equality in freedom; and if they cannot obtain that, they still call for equality in slavery.

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Book Two, Chapter I.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
An intellectual is....
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Main Content / General
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 6 days ago
Raise your eyes and count the...

Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
2 weeks 2 days ago
The brutality of a man purely...

The brutality of a man purely motivated by monetary considerations ... often does not appear to him at all as a moral delinquency, since he is aware only of a rigorously logical behavior, which draws the objective consequences of the situation.

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"Domination" (1908), in On Individuality and Social Forms (1971), p. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
I find that the whiter my...

I find that the whiter my hair becomes the more ready people are to believe what I say.

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Bertrand Russell Speaks His Mind (1960), p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
I am entirely of the opinion...

I am entirely of the opinion that the papacy is the Antichrist. But if anyone wants to add the Turk, then the Pope is the spirit of the Antichrist, and the Turk is the flesh of the Antichrist. They help each other in their murderous work. The latter slaughters bodily and by the sword, the former spiritually and by doctrine.

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330
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
And what is its moral proof?...

And what is its moral proof? We may formulate it thus: Act so that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that you may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to die tomorrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of morality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; to discover the finality that belongs to it - if indeed it has any finality - and to discover it by acting.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks 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
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues,...

Earnest in practicing the ordinary virtues, and careful in speaking about them, if, in his practice, he has anything defective, the superior man dares not but exert himself; and if, in his words, he has any excess, he dares not allow himself such license. Thus his words have respect to his actions, and his actions have respect to his words; is it not just an entire sincerity which marks the superior man?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Water is the first principle of...

Water is the first principle of everything.

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As quoted in Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983b
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 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
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
6 days ago
What one has to say to...

What one has to say to begin with is that, as humans, we are limited in intelligence and we really have no reliable foresight. So none of us will come up with answers to the whole great problem. What we can do is judge our behavior, our history, and our present situation by a better standard than "efficiency" or "profit," or those measures that we're still using to determine economic decisions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
3 months 3 weeks ago
Ill repute is a good thing….

Ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain.

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§ 5
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 2 days ago
Who is to determine what the...

Who is to determine what the perfect is? It could only be those who are themselves perfect and who therefore know what it means. Here yawns the abyss of that circularity in which the whole of human Dasein moves. What health is, only the healthy can say. Yet healthfulness is measured according to the essential starting point of health. What truth is, only one who is truthful can discern; but the one who is truthful is determined according to the essential starting point of truth.

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p. 127
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
The most profound joy has more...

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.

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Book II, Ch. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 days ago
In that daily effort in which...

In that daily effort in which intelligence and passion mingle and delight each other, the absurd man discovers a discipline that will make up the greatest of his strengths. The required diligence and doggedness and lucidity thus resemble the conqueror's attitude. To create is likewise to give a shape to one's fate. For all these characters, their work defines them at least as much as it is defined by them. The actor taught us this: There is no frontier between being and appearing.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Herschel
John Herschel
2 weeks 1 day ago
Man is constituted as a speculative...

Man is constituted as a speculative being; he contemplates the world, and the objects around him, not with a passive indifferent eye, but as a system disposed with order and design.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
Though experience be our only guide...

Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 6 days ago
And so in City after City,...

And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions-students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,-might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
The whole conception of God is...

The whole conception of God is a conception derived from the ancient Oriental despotisms. It is a conception quite unworthy of free men. When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages. A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past, or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men.

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"What We Must Do"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
A man cannot become a child...

A man cannot become a child again, or he becomes childish.

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Introduction, p. 31.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 5 days ago
What is now common to all...

What is now common to all men is a mere abstract universal, an H.C.F. [Highest Common Factor], and Man's conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 3 weeks ago
The light will not shame you,...

The light will not shame you, if it shows you your own ugliness, and that ugliness so offends you that you perceive the beauty of the light.

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First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 262
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 1 week ago
The Few assume to be the...

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.

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Pt. IV, sec. 3, ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
I know of no country in...

I know of no country in which there is so little independence of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.

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Chapter XV.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Most people, at a crisis, feel...

Most people, at a crisis, feel more loyalty to their nation than to their class.

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Ch. 8: Economic Power
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 weeks ago
The smartphone seems to be a...

The smartphone seems to be a playground, but it is a digital panopticon.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
For a people who are free,...

For a people who are free, and who mean to remain so, a well organized and armed militia is their best security.

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Thomas Jefferson's Eighth State of the Union Address
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 week ago
Many of these were not prisoners...

Many of these were not prisoners of war, and redeemed from savage conquerors, as some plead; and they who were such prisoners, the English, who promote the war for that very end, are the guilty authors of their being so; and if they were redeemed, as is alleged, they would owe nothing to the redeemer but what he paid for them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 4 days ago
There was no denying that he...

There was no denying that he would always be conscious of the fact that an Earthman was an Earthman. He couldn't help that. That was the result of a childhood immersed in an atmosphere of bigotry so complete that it was almost invisible, so entire that you accepted its axioms as second nature. Then you left it and saw it for what it was when you looked back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
I have always said, and always...

I have always said, and always will say, that the studious perusal of the sacred volume will make better citizens, better fathers, and better husbands.

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Attributed to Jefferson by Daniel Webster in a letter of 15 June 1852 addressed to Professor Pease, recalling a Sunday spent with Jefferson more than a quarter of a century before.
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
3 months 1 week ago
The proximity between the counterfeit and...

The proximity between the counterfeit and the good coin does not make the good coin counterfeit nor the counterfeit good. In the same way the proximity between truth and falsehood does not make truth falsehood nor falsehood truth.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 33.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 2 days ago
Big industry has brought all the...

Big industry has brought all the people of the Earth into contact with each other, has merged all local markets into one world market, has spread civilization and progress everywhere and has thus ensured that whatever happens in civilized countries will have repercussions in all other countries. It follows that if the workers in England or France now liberate themselves, this must set off revolution in all other countries - revolutions which, sooner or later, must accomplish the liberation of their respective working class.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 6 days ago
The nature of the Absolute State...

The nature of the Absolute State consists herein, -that all individual powers be directed towards the Life of the Race,-in place of which Race, the State puts the aggregate of its own Citizens. It therefore becomes necessary, first, that all Individuals, without exception, should be taken into equal consideration by the State; and second, that every Individual, with all his individual powers, without exception or reserve, should be taken into equal consideration. In a State so constituted, where all, as Individuals, are dedicated to the Race, it follows at the same time, that all without exception, with all the Rights which belong to them as component parts of the Race, are dedicated to all the other individual members of the State.

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p. 150-151
Philosophical Maxims
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