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Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Like strawberry wives, that laid two...

Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.

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No. 54
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
5 days ago
To all my friends...
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Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 week 3 days ago
Education will enable young people quickly...

Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 days ago
To imagine that Caesar aspired to...

To imagine that Caesar aspired to do something in the way Alexander did it - and this is what almost all historians have believed - is definitely to give up trying to understand him. Caesar is very nearly the opposite of Alexander. ...[I]t is not merely a universal kingdom that Caesar has in view. His purpose is a deeper one. He wants a Roman empire which does not live on Rome, but on the periphery, on the provinces, and this implies the complete supersession of the City-State. It implies a State in which the most diverse peoples collaborate, in regard to which all feel solidarity.

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Chapter XIV: Who Rules The World?
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
The hair is the finest ornament...

The hair is the finest ornament women have. . . . I like women to let their hair fall down their back, it is a most agreeable sight.

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-- Table Talk, quoted in Luther On "Woman"
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
The law of nature teaches me...

The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence: With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any man born on St. Innocents Day. I never had a bribe or reward in my eye or thought when pronouncing judgment or order. I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the King.

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(17 April 1621) Quoted by Baron John Campbell (1818), J. Murray in "The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England"
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 3 weeks ago
One man will say a thing...

One man will say a thing of himself without comprehending its excellence, in which another will discern a marvelous series of conclusions, which makes us affirm that it is no longer the same expression, and that he is no more indebted for it to the one from whom he has learned it, than a beautiful tree belongs to the one who cast the seed, without thinking of it, or knowing it, into the fruitful soil which caused its growth by its own fertility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
4 weeks ago
The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts...

The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts a training in humanity and pity.

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3, 20, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
We are aware of all the...

We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot 'see' how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without.

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Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
Man is condemned to be free;...

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 weeks 5 days ago
Reason is immortal, all else mortal....

Reason is immortal, all else mortal.

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As quoted in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, Sect. 30, as translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 3 days ago
We have lost, being born, as...

We have lost, being born, as much as we shall lose, dying. Everything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 week 5 days ago
Tools arm the man. One can...

Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.

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Fragment No. 88
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
6 days ago
What happens in the movement of...

What happens in the movement of art is emergence of new materials of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving in their expression new forms and techniques.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months ago
I too have sworn heedlessly and...

I too have sworn heedlessly and all the time, I have had this most repulsive and death-dealing habit. I'm telling your graces; from the moment I began to serve God, and saw what evil there is in forswearing oneself, I grew very afraid indeed, and out of fear I applied the brakes to this old, old, habit.

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180:10:1
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
I trust a good deal to...

I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

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February 1855
Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
4 weeks ago
If two right lines cut one...

If two right lines cut one another, they will form the angles at the vertex equal. ...This... is what the present theorem evinces, that when two right lines mutually cut each other, the vertical angles are equal. And it was first invented according to Eudemus by Thales...

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Proposition XV. Thereom VIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 1 week ago
The desire to philosophize from the...

The desire to philosophize from the standpoint of standpointlessness, as a purportedly genuine and superior objectivity, is either childish, or, as is usually the case, disingenuous.

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The Essence of Truth, 1931-32
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 2 weeks ago
As much in vain, perhaps, will...

As much in vain, perhaps, will they search ancient history for examples of the modern Slave-Trade. Too many nations enslaved the prisoners they took in war. But to go to nations with whom there is no war, who have no way provoked, without farther design of conquest, purely to catch inoffensive people, like wild beasts, for slaves, is an hight of outrage against Humanity and Justice, that seems left by Heathen nations to be practised by pretended Christians. How shameful are all attempts to colour and excuse it!

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Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 2 days ago
The Military-Industrial Complex

We fund wars but not healthcare, bombs but not schools, empire but not infrastructure. Military spending is jobs program for districts, profit for contractors, political power for hawks. The military-industrial complex bleeds resources that could transform lives, wasted on death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 2 weeks ago
To these spurious principles must be...

To these spurious principles must be added some others of great affinity with them... First, that by which we assume that everything in the universe is done according to the order of nature, which principle by Epicurus was proclaimed without any restriction, and by all other philosophers unanimously with extremely rare exceptions, not to be admitted but from supreme necessity.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
6 days ago
This new philosophy, however, was far...

This new philosophy, however, was far from giving the temporal an inherent position and function in the constitution of things. Change was acting on the side of man but only because of fixed laws which governed the changes that take place. There was hope in change just because the laws that govern it do not change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 3 days ago
A minimum of unconsciousness is necessary...

A minimum of unconsciousness is necessary if one wants to stay inside history. To act is one thing; to know one is acting is another. When lucidity invests the action, insinuates itself into it, action is undone, and with it, prejudice, whose function consists, precisely, in subordinating, in enslaving consciousness to action. The man who unmasks his fictions renounces his own resources and, in a sense, himself. Consequently, he will accept other fictions which will deny him, since they will not have cropped up from his own depths. No man concerned with his equilibrium may exceed a certain degree of lucidity and analysis.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is a great art to...

It is a great art to saunter.

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April 26, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 2 days ago
Gentrification as Colonization

Gentrification isn't neighborhood improvement - it's displacement. Working-class communities are made unaffordable, long-time residents forced out, culture erased, replaced with boutiques serving new affluent populations. Urban colonization by cappuccino, making cities playgrounds for the rich while exiling the poor.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
My father was as well aware...

My father was as well aware as anyone that Christians do not, in general, undergo the demoralizing consequences which seem inherent in such a creed, in the manner or to the extent which might have been expected from it. The same slovenliness of thought, and subjection of the reason to fears, wishes, and affections, which enable them to accept a theory involving a contradiction in terms, prevents them from perceiving the logical consequences of the theory. Such is the facility with which mankind believe at one and the same time things inconsistent with one another, and so few are those who draw from what they receive as truths, any consequences but those recommended to them by their feelings, that multitudes have held the undoubting belief in an Omnipotent Author of Hell, and have nevertheless identified that being with the best conception they were able to form of perfect goodness.

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(pp. 41-42)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 weeks 5 days ago
In cities men cannot be prevented...

In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention. Variant translation: In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.

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Chapter XVII.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
... a penny saved is better...

... a penny saved is better than a penny earned.

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The Duty of a Husband and Wife (17 March 1539), No. 4408. LW 54:337
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
5 days ago
To its very core, the mind...

To its very core, the mind of ressentiment man is filled with envy, the impulse to detract, malice, and secret vindictiveness. These affects have become fixed attitudes, detached from all determinate objects. Independently of his will, this man's attention will be instinctively drawn by all events which can set these affects in motion. The ressentiment attitude even plays a role in the formation of perceptions, expectations, and memories. It automatically selects those aspects of experience which can justify the factual application of this pattern of feeling.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
Undeterred by this examination, the French...

Undeterred by this examination, the French Revolution gave rise to ideas which led beyond the ideas of the entire old world order. The revolutionary movement which began in 1789 in the Cercle Social, which in the middle of its course had as its chief representatives Leclerc and Roux, and which finally with Babeuf's conspiracy was temporarily defeated, gave rise to the communist idea which Babeuf's friend Buonarroti re-introduced in France after the Revolution of 1830. This idea, consistently developed, is the idea of the new world order.

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Chapter 6, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
1 month 3 weeks ago
This return of Republics back to...

This return of Republics back to their principles also results from the simple virtue of one man, without depending on any law that excites him to any execution: none the less, they are of such influence and example that good men desire to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life contrary to those examples.

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Book 3, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
We are born to inquire after...

We are born to inquire after truth; it belongs to a greater power to possess it. It is not, as Democritus said, hid in the bottom of the deeps, but rather elevated to an infinite height in the divine knowledge.

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Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
2 months 2 days ago
What! You would convict me from...

What! You would convict me from my own words, and bring against me what I had said or written elsewhere. You may act in that manner with those who dispute by established rules. We live from hand to mouth, and say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the only people who are really at liberty.

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Book 5 Section 11
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
When all is said and done,...

When all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice is undergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary, surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any case is necessary; and if it be the only agency that can accomplish this result, its vital importance as a human faculty stands vindicated beyond dispute. It becomes an essential organ of our life, performing a function which no other portion of our nature can so successfully fulfill.

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Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 2 weeks ago
In the long-run the workman may...

In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.

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Chapter VIII, p. 80.
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 day ago
Raillery is a mode…

Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
1 month 4 days ago
There is no work so mean,...

There is no work so mean, but it would amply serve me to furnish me with sustenance.

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iv. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month 5 days ago
The resolute one who moved by...

The resolute one who moved by the principles of Thy FaithExtends the prosperity of order to his neighbors And works the land the evil now hold desolate, Earns through Righteousness, the Blessed Recompense Thy Good Mind has promised in Thy Kingdom of Heaven.

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Spenta Mainyu Gatha; Yasna 50, 3.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
6 days ago
This idea is that laws which...

This idea is that laws which purport to be statements of what actually occurs are statistical in character as distinct from so-called dynamic laws that are abstract and mathematical, and disguised definitions. Recognition of the statistical nature of physical laws was first effected in the case of gases when it became evident that generalizations regarding the behavior of swarms of molecules were not descriptions or predictions of the behavior of any individual particle. A single molecule is not and cannot be a gas. It is consequently absurd to suppose that a scientific law is about the elementary constituents of a gas. It is a statement of what happens when a large number of such constituents interact with one another under certain conditions.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months ago
Laudare te vult homo, aliqua portio...

Man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.

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I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
The more rational statement is that...

The more rational statement is that we feel sorry because we cry, angry because we strike, afraid because we tremble, and not that we cry, strike, or tremble, because we are sorry, angry, or fearful, as the case may be. Without the bodily states following on the perception, the latter would be purely cognitive in form, pale, colorless, destitute of emotional warmth.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and...

Adam was created righteous, acceptable, and without sin. He had no need from his labor in the garden to be made righteous and acceptable to God. Rather, the Lord gave Adam work in order to cultivate and protect the garden. This would have been the freest of all works because they were done simply to please God and not to obtain righteousness. ... The works of the person who trusts God are to be understood in a similar manner. Through faith we are restored to paradise and created anew. We have no need of works in order to be righteous; however, in order to avoid idleness and so that the body might be cared for an disciplined, works are done freely to please God.

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pp. 73-74
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 1 day ago
If I seem happy to you...

If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.

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Book II, Chapter 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
The plague of man is boasting...

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

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Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
One must care about a world...

One must care about a world one will not see.

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Attributed to Russell in The Wordsworth Dictionary of Quotations (1997), p. 450, and in Robertson's Dictionary of Quotations (1998), p. 362, but no specific source is given.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 3 days ago
Old age, after all, is merely...

Old age, after all, is merely the punishment for having lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week ago
Entertainment and learning are not opposites;...

Entertainment and learning are not opposites; entertainment may be the most effective mode of learning.

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pp. 66-67
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 day ago
Martyrs create faith, faith does not...

Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
Catherine: Why commit Evil?

Catherine: Why commit Evil? Goetz: Because Good has already been done. Catherine: Who has done it? Goetz: God the Father. I, on the other hand, am improvising.

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Act 3, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 1 day ago
Deny them this participation of freedom,...

Deny them this participation of freedom, and you break that sole bond, which originally made, and must still preserve the unity of the empire.

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Philosophical Maxims
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