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Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
1 week 5 days ago
In the philosophy of Mach a...

In the philosophy of Mach a world without matter is unthinkable. Matter in Mach's philosophy is not merely required as a test body to display properties of something already there ...it is an essential feature in causing those properties which it able to display, Inertia, for example, would not appear by the insertion of one test body in the world; in some way the presence of other matter is a necessary condition. It will be seen how welcome to such a philosophy is the theory that space and the inertial frame come into being with matter, and grow as it grows.

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Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
Just now
Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are...

Revolutionary feminism embraces men who are able to change, who are capable of responding mutually in a subject-to-subject encounter where desire and fulfillment are in no way linked to coercive subjugation. This feminist vision of the sexual imaginary is the space few men seem able to enter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 weeks ago
Surely this voice meant our Teacher;...

Surely this voice meant our Teacher; for it is he that can collect the indications which lie scattered on all sides. A singular light kindles in his looks, when at length the high Rune lies before us, and he watches in our eyes whether the star has yet risen upon us, which is to make the Figure visible and intelligible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 2 weeks ago
The man, who in a fit….

The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.

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"Cato", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
To understand the actual world as...

To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 week 2 days ago
The living have never shown me...

The living have never shown me how to live.

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"On My Friendly Critics"
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 weeks ago
The plebeian must expect to find...

The plebeian must expect to find himself neglected and despised in proportion as he is remiss in cultivation the objects of esteem; the lord will always be surrounded with sycophants and slaves. The lord therefore has no motive to industry and exertion; no stimulus to rouse him from the lethargic 'oblivious pool', out of which every human intellect originally arose.

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Book V, Chapter 10, "Of Hereditary Distinction"
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 4 weeks ago
The method of not erring is...

The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 days ago
The combination of these two facts...

The combination of these two facts - the longing in the depth of the heart for absolute good, and the power, though only latent, of directing attention and love to a reality beyond the world and of receiving good from it - constitutes a link which attaches every man without exception to that other reality. Whoever recognizes that reality recognizes also that link. Because of it, he holds every human being without any exception as something sacred to which he is bound to show respect. This is the only possible motive for universal respect towards all human beings. Whatever formulation of belief or disbelief a man may choose to make, if his heart inclines him to feel this respect, then he in fact also recognizes a reality other than this world's reality. Whoever in fact does not feel this respect is alien to that other reality also.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
Start with a planet like the...

Start with a planet like the earth, with a complement of simple compounds bound to exist upon it, add the energy of a nearby sun, and you are bound to end with nucleic acids. You can't avoid it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 week 2 days ago
Therefore every scribe which is instructed...

Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.

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13:52 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
Beauty is the main positive form...

Beauty is the main positive form of the aesthetic assimilation of reality, in which aesthetic ideal finds it direct expression... 

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About Beauty
Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 4 days ago
The Opioid Epidemic's Roots

Pharmaceutical companies created addicts for profit, lied about addiction risks, bribed doctors, targeted vulnerable communities. When people died, companies paid fines smaller than their profits and executives avoided prison. The opioid epidemic is corporate murder at scale, treated as public health crisis instead of criminal enterprise.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 week 2 days ago
To understand this for sense it...

To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad. On the proposition that the volume generated by revolving the region under 1/x from 1 to infinity has finite volume.

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Quoted in Mathematical Maxims and Minims by N. Rose
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 2 weeks ago
He [Jesus] not only forbids actual...

He [Jesus] not only forbids actual uncleanness, but all irregular desires, upon pain of hell-fire; causeless divorces; swearing in conversation, as well as forswearing in judgment; revenge; retaliation; ostentation of charity, of devotion, and of fasting; repetitions in prayer, covetousness, worldly care, censoriousness: and on the other side commands loving our enemies, doing good to those that hate us, blessing those that curse us, praying for those that despitefully use us; patience and meekness under injuries, forgiveness, liberality, compassion: and closes all; his particular injunctions, with this general golden rule, Matt. VII. 12, "All things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do you even so to them, for this is the law and the prophets." And to show how much He is in earnest, and expects obedience to these laws, He tells them, Luke VI. 35, That if they obey, " great shall be their reward".

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§ 116
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 weeks ago
Hear gladly!

Hear gladly!

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 2 weeks ago
Have patience awhile; slanders are not...

Have patience awhile; slanders are not long-lived. Truth is the child of time; erelong she shall appear to vindicate thee.

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As quoted in Gems of Thought (1888) edited by Charles Northend
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 2 weeks ago
The single harmony produced by all...

The single harmony produced by all the heavenly bodies singing and dancing together springs from one source and ends by achieving one purpose, and has rightly bestowed the name not of "disordered" but of "ordered universe" upon the whole.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
Anything could be found in figures...

Anything could be found in figures if the search were long enough and hard enough and if the proper pieces of information were ignored or overlooked.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
1 month 3 weeks ago
We must learn how to imitate...

We must learn how to imitate Cicero from Cicero himself. Let us imitate him as he imitated others.

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in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
1 month 6 days ago
You want a new book….

Antisthenes ... said once to a youth from Pontus who was on the point of coming to him to be his pupil, and was asking him what things he wanted, "You want a new book, and a new pen, and a new tablet;"

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meaning a new mind. § 4
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is clear that thought is...

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search.

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Ch. 12: Free Thought and Official Propaganda, books.google.com, archive.org
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The stars awaken a certain reverence,...

The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible; but all natural objects make a kindred impression, when the mind is open to their influence. Nature never wears a mean appearance. Neither does the wisest man extort her secret, and lose his curiosity by finding out all her perfection. Nature never became a toy to a wise spirit. The flowers, the animals, the mountains, reflected the wisdom of his best hour, as much as they had delighted the simplicity of his childhood.

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Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 week 5 days ago
The consciousness of a general idea...

The consciousness of a general idea has a certain "unity of the ego" in it, which is identical when it passes from one mind to another. It is, therefore, quite analogous to a person, and indeed, a person is only a particular kind of general idea.

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Man's Glassy Essence in The Monist, Vol. III, No. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 week 6 days ago
Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of...

Metaphysical assertions, however, are statements of the psyche, and are therefore psychological. ... Whenever the Westerner hears the word "psychological," it always sounds to him like "only psychological."

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Psyche and Symbol (1958), p. 285
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 5 days ago
Self-pity is not as sterile as...

Self-pity is not as sterile as we suppose. Once we feel its mere onset, we assume a thinker's attitude, and come to think of it, we come to think!

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 2 weeks ago
All the entertainment and talk of...

All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerers (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudible business of mankind, and the most heroick of virtues. By these steps unnatural cruelty is planted in us; and what humanity abhors, custom reconciles and recommends to us, by laying it in the way to honour. Thus, by fashioning and opinion, that comes to be a pleasure, which in itself neither is, nor can be any.

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Sec. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 4 weeks ago
In reading this author Montaigne...

In reading this author Montaigne and comparing him with Epictetus, I have found that they are assuredly the two greatest defenders of the two most celebrated sects of the world, and the only ones conformable to reason, since we can only follow one of these two roads, namely: either that there is a God, and then we place in him the sovereign good; or that he is uncertain, and that then the true good is also uncertain, since he is incapable of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 5 days ago
What I know at sixty, I...

What I know at sixty, I knew as well at twenty. Forty years of a long, a superfluous, labor of verification.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 2 weeks ago
I saw men go up and...

I saw men go up and down, In the country and the town, With this tablet on their neck,- 'Judgement and a judge we seek.' Not to monarchs they repair, Nor to learned jurist's chair; But they hurry to their peers, To their kinsfolk and their dears; Louder than with speech they pray,- 'What am I? companion, say.'

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Astræa
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 4 weeks ago
They [men] have corrupted this [God's...

They [men] have corrupted this [God's supernatural] order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
The wisest man preaches no doctrines;...

The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one time than at another, the medium through which I see is clearer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: "Either...

In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: "Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad," as if to say: "Let the one who wishes to have good fruit begin by planting a good tree." Therefore, let the person who wishes to do good works being not with the works but with the believing, for this alone makes a person good.

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p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 days ago
In order to be able to...

In order to be able to go on living it is possible that the bankrupt peoples will have to enter on a new path of self-denial, by curbing their covetousness and putting a check on the indefinite expansion of their wants, and by having smaller families.

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p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
Value, therefore, does not stalk about...

Value, therefore, does not stalk about with a label describing what it is.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 4, pg. 85.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 day ago
The study of mathematics is apt...

The study of mathematics is apt to commence in disappointment... We are told that by its aid the stars are weighed and the billions of molecules in a drop of water are counted. Yet, like the ghost of Hamlet's father, this great science eludes the efforts of our mental weapons to grasp it.

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ch. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
Christ speaks of two debtors, one...

Christ speaks of two debtors, one of whom owed much and the other little, and who both found forgiveness. He asks: Which of these two ought to love more? The answer: The one who has forgiven much. When you love much, you are forgiven much-and when you are forgiven much, you love much. See here the blessed recurrence of salvation in love!

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 week 2 days ago
Persons who feel themselves to be...

Persons who feel themselves to be exiles in this world-and what noble mind, from Empedocles down, has not had that feeling?-are mightily inclined to believe themselves citizens of another.

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pp. 39-40
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened...

Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs.

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Ch. 2: Dreams and Facts
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 5 days ago
It is trifling to believe in...

It is trifling to believe in what you do or in what others do. You should avoid simulacra and even "realities"; you should take up a position external to everything and everyone, drive off or grind down your appetites, live, according to a Hindu adage, with as few desires as a "solitary elephant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
A robot must protect its own...

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 day ago
In the first place for over...

In the first place for over two centuries religion has been on the defensive, and on a weak defensive. The result of the repetition of this undignified retreat, during many generations, has at last almost entirely destroyed the intellectual authority of religious thinkers. Consider this contrast: when Darwin or Einstein proclaim theories which modify our ideas, it is a triumph for science. We do not go about saying that there is another defeat for science, because its old ideas have been abandoned. We know that another step of scientific insight has been gained.Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
1 month 6 days ago
When some one reminded him that...

When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
It is forbidden...
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Main Content / General
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 days ago
Myth is depoliticized speech. p. 145

Myth is depoliticized speech.

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p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 2 days ago
The true servants of God are...

The true servants of God are not solicitous that He should order them to do what they desire to do, but that they may desire to do what He orders them to do.

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p. 616
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
I maintain that inversion is the...

I maintain that inversion is the effect of neither a prenatal choice nor an endocrinal malformation nor even the passive and determined result of complexes. It is an outlet that a child discovers when he is suffocating.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Time, which is the author of...

Time, which is the author of authors.

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Book I, iv, 12
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 week ago
The great man, whether we comprehend...

The great man, whether we comprehend him in the most intense activity of his work or in the restful equipoise of his forces, is powerful, involuntarily and composedly powerful, but he is not avid for power. What he is avid for is the realization of what he has in mind, the incarnation of the spirit.

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p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 weeks ago
The good of the people must...

The good of the people must be the great purpose of government. By the laws of nature and of reason, the governors are invested with power to that end. And the greatest good of the people is liberty. It is to the state what health is to the individual.

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Article on Government
Philosophical Maxims
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