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Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 1 week ago
The evil that has resulted from...

The evil that has resulted from the error of the schools in teaching natural philosophy as an accomplishment only has been that of generating in the pupils a species of atheism. Instead of looking through the works of creation to the Creator Himself, they stop short and employ the knowledge they acquire to create doubts of His existence. They labor with studied ingenuity to ascribe everything they behold to innate properties of matter and jump over all the rest by saying that matter is eternal.

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A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 1 week ago
We, on the contrary, now send...

We, on the contrary, now send to the Brahmans English clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in order out of sympathy to put them right, and to point out to them that they are created out of nothing, and that they ought to be grateful and pleased about it. But it is Just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff. " In India, our religions wIll never at any time take root; the ancient wisdom of the human race will not be supplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary, Indian Wisdom flows back to Europe, and will produce a fundamental change in our knowledge and thought.

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Schopenhauer, Arthur The world as will and representation. Translated from the German by E. F. J. Payne. New York, Dover Publications [c1969 - Volume I, & 63 p. 356-357. quoted in Londhe, S. (2008).
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 1 week ago
The Grecian are youthful and erring...

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
1 month 1 week ago
I want you to read the...

I want you to read the true system of the heart, drafted by a decent man and published under another name. I do not want you to be biased against good and useful books merely because a man unworthy of reading them has the audacity to call himself the Author.

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First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 1 week ago
Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only...

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show. The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry. What is best in mathematics deserves not merely to be learnt as a task, but to be assimilated as a part of daily thought, and brought again and again before the mind with ever-renewed encouragement.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week ago
Think of something...
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Main Content / General
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 2 weeks ago
For man seeketh in society comfort,...

For man seeketh in society comfort, use, and protection: and they be three wisdoms of divers natures, which do often sever: wisdom of the behaviour, wisdom of business, and wisdom of state.

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Book II, xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
Plotinus
Plotinus
1 month 4 weeks ago
Hence, as Narcissus, by catching at...

Hence, as Narcissus, by catching at the shadow, plunged himself in the stream and disappeared, so he who is captivated by beautiful bodies, and does not depart from their embrace, is precipitated, not with his body, but with his soul, into a darkness profound and repugnant to intellect (the higher soul), through which, remaining blind both here and in Hades, he associates with shadows.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 week 3 days ago
Free trade is not based on...

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 weeks ago
Consider any individual at any period...

Consider any individual at any period of his life, and you will always find him preoccupied with fresh plans to increase his comfort.

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Book Three, Chapter XXI.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 days ago
It is written, Man shall not...

It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

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4:4 (KJV) Said to Satan. The reference is to Deuteronomy 8:3, "... that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 week 3 days ago
I could show, that the same...

I could show, that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny; I could show, that they have all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause, and their own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last importance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 1 week ago
Where there is a lull of...

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

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p. 494
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
It is important to remember that...

It is important to remember that the viciousness and wrongs of life stick out very plainly but that even at the worst times there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 day ago
So we are always esthetically disappointed...

So we are always esthetically disappointed when the sensuous qualities and the intellectual properties of an object do not coalesce.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 1 week ago
How many people ruin themselves by...

How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden.

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Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 week 2 days ago
To enrich God, man must become...

To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 week 3 days ago
They who bow to the enemy...

They who bow to the enemy abroad will not be of power to subdue the conspirator at home.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
2 weeks 2 days ago
A grievous crime indeed against religion...

A grievous crime indeed against religion has been committed by the man who imagines that Islam is defended by the denial of the mathematical sciences.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 1 week ago
All human knowledge begins with intuitions,...

All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

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B 730; Variant translation: All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
1 month 4 days ago
This investigation aims to analyze the...

This investigation aims to analyze the type "bourgeois public sphere". Its particular approach is required, to begin with, by the difficulties specific to an object whose complexity precludes exclusive reliance on the specialized methods of a single discipline. Rather, the category. "public sphere" must be investigated within the broad field formerly reflected in the perspective of the traditional science of "politics."' When particular social-scientific discipline, this object disintegrates. The problems that result from fusing aspects of sociology and economics, of constitutional law and political science, and of social and intellectual history are obvious: given the present state of differentiation and specialization in the social sciences, scarcely anyone will be able to master several, let alone all, of these disciplines.

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p.xvii
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 1 week ago
He asked my religion and I...

He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God. This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month ago
He who abhors and shuns the...

He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun, He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God, He who leads the good to wickedness, He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate, He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent, An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 32, 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 4 days ago
My intention was not to deal...

My intention was not to deal with the problem of truth, but with the problem of the truth-teller, or of truth telling... [W]ho is able to tell the truth, about what, with what consequences, and with what relations to power. ...[W]ith the question of the importance of telling the truth, knowing who is able to tell the truth, and knowing why we should tell the truth, we have the roots of what we could call the 'critical' tradition in the West.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 1 week ago
The evil effect of science upon...

The evil effect of science upon men is principally this, that by far the greatest number of those who wish to display a knowledge of it accomplish no improvement at all of the understanding, but only a perversity of it, not to mention that it serves most of them as a tool of vanity.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 52
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 1 week ago
There is no more miserable human...

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month 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
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 days ago
Death poses a problem which replaces...

Death poses a problem which replaces all the others. What is deadly to philosophy, to the naive belief in the hierarchy of perplexities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
The purpose of aphorisms is to...

The purpose of aphorisms is to keep fools who have memorised them from having nothing to say.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 weeks ago
Place is the greatest thing….

Place is the greatest thing, as it contains all things.

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As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
To the rest of the Galaxy,...

To the rest of the Galaxy, if they are aware of us at all, Earth is but a pebble in the sky. To us it is home, and all the home we know.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 5 days ago
Technology is in its essence something...

Technology is in its essence something that human beings cannot master of their own accord.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 1 week ago
But it is clear there is...

But it is clear there is a difference in the ends proposed: for in some cases they are activities, and in others results beyond the mere activities, and where there are certain ends beyond and beside the actions, the results are naturally superior to the activities. Now, as there are numerous kinds of actions and numerous arts and sciences, it follows that the ends are also various. Thus the end of the healing art is health, of ship-building ships, of strategy victory, of economy wealth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is...

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.

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Culture
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
1 month 3 weeks ago
As the soul is the life...

As the soul is the life of the body, so God is the life of the soul. As therefore the body perishes when the soul leaves it, so the soul dies when God departs from it.

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p. 277
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 1 week ago
I maintain that in every special...

I maintain that in every special natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with as mathematics; for... science proper, especially of nature, requires a pure portion, lying at the foundation of the empirical, and based upon à priori knowledge of natural things. ...the conception should be constructed. But the cognition of the reason through construction of conceptions is mathematical. A pure philosophy of nature in general, namely, one that only investigates what constitutes a nature in general, may thus be possible without mathematics; but a pure doctrine of nature respecting determinate natural things (corporeal doctrine and mental doctrine), is only possible by means of mathematics; and as in every natural doctrine only so much science proper is to be met with therein as there is cognition à priori, a doctrine of nature can only contain so much science proper as there is in it of applied mathematics.

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Preface, Tr. Ernest Belfort Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
...the reality of society involves the...

...the reality of society involves the socialization of certain unrealities.

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p. 455
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
It is the same: a chosen...

It is the same: a chosen one is a man whom God's finger crushes against the wall.

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Act 2, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 1 week ago
From each according to his abilities,...

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

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The Criticism of the Gotha Program (1875) Variant translation: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
5 months 2 weeks ago
Subdue petty bourgeois passions and prejudices

First, [the bourgeoisie] must recognize his own impotence, his incapacity to believe in a sense of history, even if his reason leans towards the truth, the passions and prejudices produced by his class position, prevent him from accepting it. So he should not exert himself with proving the truth of the historical mission of the working class; rather, he should learn to subdue his petty bourgeois passions and prejudices. He should take lessons from those who were once as important as he is now but are ready to risk all for the revolutionary Cause.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 6 days ago
Hungary conquered and in chains has...

Hungary conquered and in chains has done more for freedom and justice than any people for twenty years. But for this lesson to get through and convince those in the West who shut their eyes and ears, it was necessary, and it can be no comfort to us, for the people of Hungary to shed so much blood which is already drying in our memories. In Europe's isolation today, we have only one way of being true to Hungary, and that is never to betray, among ourselves and everywhere, what the Hungarian heroes died for, never to condone, among ourselves and everywhere, even indirectly, those who killed them. It would indeed be difficult for us to be worthy of such sacrifices.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 1 week ago
Truth that has been merely learned...

Truth that has been merely learned is like an artificial limb, a false tooth, a waxen nose; at best, like a nose made out of another's flesh; it adheres to us only because it is put on. But truth acquired by thinking of our own is like a natural limb; it alone really belongs to us. This is the fundamental difference between the thinker and the mere man of learning. The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 22, § 261
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 days ago
Although a poem be not made...

Although a poem be not made by counting of syllables upon the fingers, yet "numbers" is the most poetical synonym we have for verse, and "measure" the most significant equivalent for beauty, for goodness, and perhaps even for truth. Those early and profound philosophers, the followers of Pythagoras, saw the essence of all things in number, and it was by weight, measure, and number, as we read in the Bible, that the Creator first brought Nature out of the void.

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Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (1900), p. 251
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 1 week ago
The tyrant dies and his rule...

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 days ago
At this very moment, I am...

At this very moment, I am suffering - as we say in French, j'ai mal. This event, crucial for me, is nonexistent, even inconceivable for anyone else, for everyone else. Except for God, if that word can have a meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
6 days ago
I find that all my thoughts...

I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.

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Sources: David John Tacey (2007)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 days ago
There is no means of proving...

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
1 week 3 days ago
Whether directly or indirectly all nations...

Whether directly or indirectly all nations are originally nothing but Indian colonies... the oriental antiquity could, if we consented to deepen it, bring us back more safely towards the divine....

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Friedrich Schlegel, Essay on the Language and Wisdom of the Indians, quoted by Roger-Pol Droit in L'Oubli de I'Inde, Paris Presses Universitaires de France, 1989, p. 129.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 weeks ago
As the past has ceased to...

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity. Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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Book Four, Chapter VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
That is precisely what we should...

That is precisely what we should have expected, since Genet wants to live simultaneously creation, destruction, the impossibility of destroying and the impossibility of creating, since he wants both to show his rejection of the divine creation and to manifest, in the absolute, human impotence as man's reproval of God and as the testimony of his grandeur.

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p. 424
Philosophical Maxims
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