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Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
Americans combine to give fêtes, found...

Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.

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Book Two, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 2 weeks ago
God is surrounded with people full...

God is surrounded with people full of love who demand of him the benefits of love which are in his power: thus he is properly the king of love.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 days ago
I fancy that most people who...

I fancy that most people who think at all have done a great deal of their thinking in the first fourteen years.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 1 week 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
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 days ago
We reduce things to mere Nature...

We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may 'conquer' them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 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
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
When you have understood that nothing...

When you have understood that nothing is, that things do not even deserve the status of appearances, you no longer need to be saved, you are saved, and miserable forever.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
Woe to the thinker who is...
Woe to the thinker who is not the gardener but only the soil of the plants that grow in him!
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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 days 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
John Gray
John Gray
1 week 5 days ago
Tyranny offers relief from the burden...

Tyranny offers relief from the burden of sanity and a licence to enact forbidden impulses of hatred and violence. By acting on these impulses and releasing them in their subjects tyrants give people a kind of happiness, which as individuals they may be incapable of achieving.

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An Old Chaos: What a Tyrant Can Do For You (p. 57)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 1 week ago
It is a want of feeling...

It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets, from the want of necessaries.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
An unbiased reader, on opening one...

An unbiased reader, on opening one of their [Fichte's, Schelling's or Hegel's] books and then asking himself whether this is the tone of a thinker wanting to instruct or that of a charlatan wanting to impress, cannot be five minutes in any doubt. ... The tone of calm investigation, which had characterized all previous philosophy, is exchanged for that of unshakeable certainty, such as is peculiar to charlatanry of every kind and at all times. ... From every page and every line, there speaks an endeavor to beguile and deceive the reader, first by producing an effect to dumbfound him, then by incomprehensible phrases and even sheer nonsense to stun and stupefy him, and again by audacity of assertion to puzzle him, in short, to throw dust in his eyes and mystify him as much as possible.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 6 days ago
Since the science of nature is...

Since the science of nature is conversant with magnitudes, motion, and time, each of which must necessarily be either infinite or finite...[we] should speculate the infinite, and consider whether it is or not; and if it is what it is. ...[A]ll those who appear to have touched on a philosophy of this kind... consider it as a certain principle of beings. Some, indeed, as the Pythagoreans and Plato, consider it, per se, not as being an accident to any thing else, but as having an essential subsistence... the Pythagoreans... consider the infinite as subsisting in sensibles; for they do not make number to be separate; and they assert that what is beyond the heavens is infinite; but Plato says that beyond the heavens there is not any body, nor ideas, because these are no where: he affirms, however, that the infinite is both in sensibles, and in ideas. ...Plato establishes two infinities, viz. the great and the small.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
With a pen in my hand...

With a pen in my hand I have successfully stormed bulwarks from which others armed with sword and excommunication have been repulsed.

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E 76
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
But the capacity to enjoy is...

But the capacity to enjoy is impossible without the capacity to suffer; and the faculty of enjoyment is one with that of pain. Whosoever does not suffer does not enjoy, just as whosoever is insensible to cold is insensible to heat.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
The universal and lasting establishment of...

The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 1 day ago
Wherever ideas come together they tend...

Wherever ideas come together they tend to weld into general ideas; and whenever they are generally connected, general ideas govern the connection; and these general ideas are living feelings spread out.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 4 weeks ago
Skepticism is the chastity of the...

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer: there is nobility in preserving it coolly and proudly through long youth, until at last, in the ripeness of instinct and discretion, it can be safely exchanged for fidelity and happiness.

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The Works of George Santayana p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 weeks 5 days ago
The WTO-related events in Seattle created...

The WTO-related events in Seattle created the first experience of a rainbow politics-a successful pluralistic politics, without the working of a master mind, but with the currents and beauty that come out of free thinking. In the new politics, people have different ways of talking, but I feel the core will be living democracy and living economies, and that it will include both taking personal responsibility to make change and being part of national and international movements for change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 days ago
Many receive advice, few profit by...

Many receive advice, few profit by it.

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Maxim 149
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 days ago
It is an odd fact that...

It is an odd fact that anyone who wishes to start a war must always make it appear that he is fighting in a just cause even if the real motive is naked aggression. Fortunately for the would-be aggressor, a "just cause" is very easy to find.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months ago
Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other...

Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation.

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Habermas (1972) "Sprachspiel, intention und Bedeutung. Zu Motiven bei Sellars und Wittgenstein". In R.W. Wiggerhaus (Ed.) Sprachanalyse and Soziologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). p. 334 This is called the paradoxical achievement of intersubjectivity
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 day ago
So in the end when one...

So in the end when one is doing philosophy one gets to the point where one would like just to emit an inarticulate sound.

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§ 261
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 days ago
But, if it will help ease...

But, if it will help ease your irritated souls, please know, dearly departed, that you have ruined our lives.

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Aegistheus, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
The contention that a standing army...

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Religion, mysticism and magic all spring...

Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 weeks ago
Is Man so different from any...

Is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them?

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Ch.2, p. 86
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
What peculiar privilege has this little...

What peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought, that we must thus make it the model of the whole universe? Our partiality in our own favour does indeed present it on all occasions; but sound philosophy ought carefully to guard against so natural an illusion.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part II
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 days ago
The notion of nothingness...
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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 week ago
It is the necessary, though very...

It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 3 days ago
The poem of the understanding is...

The poem of the understanding is philosophy.

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"Logological Fragments," Philosophical Writings, M. Stolijar, trans. (Albany: 1997) #24
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions...

Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; ... But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.

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p. 259.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
I have therefore found it necessary...

I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 weeks ago
If Man be separated by no...

If Man be separated by no greater structural barrier from the brutes than they are from one another-then it seems to follow that if any process of physical causation can be discovered by which the genera and families of ordinary animals have been produced, that process of causation is amply sufficient to account for the origin of Man.

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Ch.2, p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 1 week ago
If reason is both transcendent and...

If reason is both transcendent and immanent, then philosophy, as culture-bound reflection and argument about eternal questions, is both in time and eternity. We don't have an Archimedean point; we always speak the language of a time and place; but the rightness and wrongness of what we say is not just for a time and a place.

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Why reason can't be naturalized
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 6 days ago
The most obvious division of society...

The most obvious division of society is into rich and poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich; and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are in proportion to his labours. In a state of artificial society, it is a law as constant and as invariable, that those who labour most enjoy the fewest things; and that those who labour not at all have the greatest number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the least surprised.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
All traditional logic habitually assumes that...

All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.

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Vagueness', first published in The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, 1 June, 1923
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 month 2 weeks ago
Plagued by Western habits of either-or,...

Plagued by Western habits of either-or, dualistic thinking, we all may fail to understand that race, class and gender interconnect to sustain a corporate ruling class. In the language of African-American essayist bell hooks, they are interlocking systems of oppression. Neither Latina nor Anglo women should yield to the temptation of making a hierarchy of oppressions where battles are fought over whether racism is "worse" than sexism, or class oppression is "deeper" than racism, etc. Instead of hierarchies we need bridges which, after all, exist to make two ends meet.

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Elizabeth Martinez, De Colores Means All of Us
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
To believe in God is to...

To believe in God is to yearn for His existence and, furthermore, it is to act as if He did exist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
2 months 3 weeks ago
Teach him what has been said...

Teach him what has been said in the past; then he will set a good example to the children of the magistrates, and judgement and all exactitude shall enter into him. Speak to him, for there is none born wise.

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Introduction.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 6 days ago
the ultimate end, with reference to...

the ultimate end, with reference to and for the sake of which all other things are desirable...is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain, and as rich as possible in enjoyments...This, being, according to the utilitarian opinion, the end of human action, is necessarily also the standard of morality; which may accordingly be defined, the rules and precepts for human conduct, by the observance of which an existence such as has been described might be, to the greatest extent possible, secured to all mankind; and not to them only, but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
Brief and powerless is Man's life;...

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 week ago
Philosophy ... is a science, and...

Philosophy ... is a science, and as such has no articles of faith; accordingly, in it nothing can be assumed as existing except what is either positively given empirically, or demonstrated through indubitable conclusions.

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Vol I
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 2 weeks ago
If a person gave your body...

If a person gave your body to any stranger he met on his way, you would certainly be angry. And do you feel no shame in handing over your own mind to be confused and mystified by anyone who happens to verbally attack you?

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(28) [tr. Elizabeth Carter]
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 3 weeks ago
A modern factory reaches perhaps almost...

A modern factory reaches perhaps almost the limit of horror. Everybody in it is constantly harassed and kept on edge by the interference of extraneous wills while the soul is left in cold and desolate misery. What man needs is silence and warmth; what he is given is an icy pandemonium.Physical labour may be painful, but it is not degrading as such. It is not art; it is not science; it is something else, possessing an exactly equal value with art and science, for it provides an equal opportunity to reach the impersonal stage of attention.

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p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 4 days ago
There are infinitely many variations of...

There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.

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Chapter III, Section 21, pg. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 6 days ago
The ancient philosophers... all of them...

The ancient philosophers... all of them assert that the elements, and those things which are called by them principles, are contraries, though they establish them without reason, as if they were compelled to assert this by truth itself. They differ, however... that some of them assume prior, and others posterior principles; and some of them things more known according to reason, but others such as are more known according to sense: for some establish the hot and the cold, others the moist and the dry, others the odd and the even, and others strife and friendship, as the causes of generation. ...in a certain respect they assert the same things, and speak differently from each other. They assert different things... but the same things, so far as they speak analogously. For they assume principles from the same co-ordination; since, of contraries, some contain, and others are contained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 weeks ago
...I pray to God to make...

...I pray to God to make me free of God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 weeks ago
Now drown care in wine….

Now drown care in wine.

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Book I, ode vii, line 32
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
The greatest events occur without intention...

The greatest events occur without intention playing any part in them; chance makes good mistakes and undoes the most carefully planned undertaking. The world's greatest events are not produced, they happen.

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K 68
Philosophical Maxims
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