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Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 6 days ago
Democracy, which means despair of finding...

Democracy, which means despair of finding any Heroes to govern you, and contented putting up with the want of them,-alas, thou too, mein Lieber, seest well how close it is of kin to Atheism, and other sad Isms: he who discovers no God whatever, how shall he discover Heroes, the visible Temples of God?

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
2 weeks ago
Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises,...

Liberalism, with its contradictions and compromises, existed for Donoso Cortés only in that short interim period in which it was possible to answer the question "Christ or Barabbas?" with a proposal to adjourn or appoint a commission of investigation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 1 day ago
I am owner of my might,...

I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the unique one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for myself, the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: All things are nothing to me.

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Dover 2005, p. 366
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
If reason (I mean abstract reason,...

If reason (I mean abstract reason, derived from inquiries a priori) be not alike mute with regard to all questions concerning cause and effect, this sentence at least it will venture to pronounce, That a mental world, or universe of ideas, requires a cause as much, as does a material world, or universe of objects; and, if similar in its arrangement, must require a similar cause. For what is there in this subject, which should occasion a different conclusion or inference? In an abstract view, they are entirely alike; and no difficulty attends the one supposition, which is not common to both of them.

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Philo to Cleanthes, Part IV
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
The doctrine that there is as...

The doctrine that there is as much science in a subject as... mathematics in it, or as much... measurement or 'precision' in it, rests upon... misunderstanding.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The ideal being? An angel ravaged...

The ideal being? An angel ravaged by humor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 4 weeks ago
In order to enter into a...

In order to enter into a real knowledge of your condition, consider it in this image: A man was cast by a tempest upon an unknown island, the inhabitants of which were in trouble to find their king, who was lost; and having a strong resemblance both in form and face to this king, he was taken for him, and acknowledged in this capacity by all the people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
It is perhaps typical of very...

It is perhaps typical of very creative minds that they hit very large nails not quite on the head.

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Kenneth Boulding in McLuhan: Hot & Cool (1967) p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 1 day ago
The acquisition of Canada this year,...

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.

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Statement during an early stage of the War of 1812, in a letter to William Duane
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 2 weeks ago
To expect truth to come from...

To expect truth to come from thinking signifies that we mistake the need to think with the urge to know.

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p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
We live in the false as...

We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
No man's knowledge here can go...

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

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Book II, Ch. 1, sec. 19
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 5 days ago
A mouse and a human....
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Main Content / General
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The only interesting philosophers are the...

The only interesting philosophers are the ones who have stopped thinking and have begun to search for happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 1 week ago
He that is to govern a...

He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himself, not this, or that particular man; but Mankind; which though it be hard to do, harder than to learn any Language, or Science; yet, when I shall have set down my own reading orderly, and perspicuously, the pains left another, will be only to consider, if he also find not the same in himself. For this kind of Doctrine, admitteth no other Demonstration.

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The Introduction, p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 6 days ago
We have chosen Mahomet not as...

We have chosen Mahomet not as the most eminent Prophet; but as the one we are freest to speak of. He is by no means the truest of Prophets; but I do esteem him a true one. Farther, as there is no danger of our becoming, any of us, Mahometans, I mean to say all the good of him I justly can. It is the way to get at his secret: let us try to understand what he meant with the world; what the world meant and means with him, will then be a more answerable question. Our current hypothesis about Mahomet, that he was a scheming Impostor, a Falsehood incarnate, that his religion is a mere mass of quackery and fatuity, begins really to be now untenable to any one. The lies, which well-meaning zeal has heaped round this man, are disgraceful to ourselves only.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 3 weeks ago
A lot of people recoil from...

A lot of people recoil from the word "drugs" - which is understandable given today's noxious street drugs and their uninspiring medical counterparts. Yet even academics and intellectuals in our society typically take the prototypical dumb drug, ethyl alcohol. If it's socially acceptable to take a drug that makes you temporarily happy and stupid, then why not rationally design drugs to make people perpetually happier and smarter? Presumably, in order to limit abuse-potential, one would want any ideal pleasure drug to be akin - in one limited but important sense - to nicotine, where the smoker's brain finely calibrates its optimal level: there is no uncontrolled dose-escalation.

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"The Abolitionist Project", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 1 week ago
They [the wise spirits of antiquity...

They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life.

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Obiter Scripta
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 weeks ago
Jews hate the name of Christ...

Jews hate the name of Christ and have a secret and innate rancor against the people among whom they live.

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See Silent Truth by Mark Edwards
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock...

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

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Quoted in Look (New York, 23 February 1954). Cf. Russell (1928), Sceptical Essays
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month ago
Fortune has taken away, but Fortune...

Fortune has taken away, but Fortune has given.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 weeks ago
And surely, he that hath taken...

And surely, he that hath taken the true Altitude of Things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this Age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred Years hence, when no Man can comfortably imagine what Face this World will carry.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is an almost universal tendency,...

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. ... It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

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"The Importance of Critical Discussion" in On the Barricades: Religion and Free Inquiry in Conflict (1989) by Robert Basil
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
Not only must philosophy be in...

Not only must philosophy be in agreement with our empirical knowledge of Nature, but the origin and formation of the Philosophy of Nature presupposes and is conditioned by empirical physics. However, the course of a science's origin and the preliminaries of its construction are one thing, while the science itself is another. In the latter, the former can no longer appear as the foundation of the science; here, the foundation must be the necessity of the Concept.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 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
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 3 weeks ago
Ideology is a symptom

This is probably the fundamental dimension of 'ideology': ideology is not simply a 'false consciousness', an illusory representation of reality, it is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as 'ideological' - 'ideological' is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence -that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals 'do not know what they are doing'. 'Ideological is not the false consciousness of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by "false consciousness"'. Thus we have finally reached the dimension of the symptom, because one of its possible definitions would also be 'a formation whose very consistency implies a certain non-knowledge on the part of the subject': the subject can 'enjoy his symptom' only in so far as its logic escapes him - the measure of the success of its interpretation is precisely its dissolution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
Whenever a theory appears to you...

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

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Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1 month 4 weeks ago
By and large, mothers and housewives...

By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
You have dreamed of setting the...

You have dreamed of setting the world ablaze, and you have not even managed to communicate your fire to words, to light up a single one!

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month ago
Why then do you occupy me...

Why then do you occupy me with the words rather than with the works of wisdom? Make me braver, make me calmer, make me the equal of Fortune, make me her superior.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 6 days ago
In most cases, to be reasonable...

In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.

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p. 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months ago
Although life is a matter of...

Although life is a matter of indifference, the use which you make of it is not a matter of indifference.

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Book II, ch. 6, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
Friendship, I have said, is born...

Friendship, I have said, is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself..."

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 1 day ago
It cannot be doubted, I think,...

It cannot be doubted, I think, that Mr. Darwin has satisfactorily proved that what he terms selection, or selective modification, must occur, and does occur, in nature; and he has also proved to superfluity that such selection is competent to produce forms as distinct, structurally, as some genera even are. If the animated world presented us with none but structural differences, I should have no hesitation in saying that Mr. Darwin has demonstrated the existence of a true physical cause, amply competent to account for the origin of living species, and of man among the rest.

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Ch.2, p. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months ago
Never trust her at any time….

Never trust her at any time, when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

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Book II, lines 557-559 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Declining from the public ways, walk...

Declining from the public ways, walk in unfrequented paths.

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Symbol 5
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 week ago
One of the scribes came to...

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, "Which is the first of all commandments?" Jesus replied,"The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is like: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."

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Mark 12:28-34
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
3 weeks 5 days ago
If I first see a tree...

If I first see a tree in the winter, I might assume that it is not a fruit-tree. But when I return in the summer to find it covered with plums, I must exclaim, 'Excuse me! You were a fruit-tree after all.' Imagine, then, that a billion years ago some beings from another part of the galaxy made a tour through the solar system in their flying saucer and found no life. They would dismiss it as 'Just a bunch of old rocks!' But if they returned today, they would have to apologize: 'Well - you were peopling rocks after all!' You may, of course, argue that there is no analogy between the two situations. The fruit-tree was at one time a seed inside a plum, but the earth - much less the solar system or the galaxy - was never a seed inside a person. But, oddly enough, you would be wrong.

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p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 1 week ago
Nihilism is not overcome by arguments...

Nihilism is not overcome by arguments or analyses; it is tamed by love and care. Any disease of the soul must be conquered by a turning of one's soul.

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(p19)
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 week ago
Even the most wretched individual of...

Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom - and the more he is the product of society, the more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it.

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As quoted in The Philosophy of Bakunin (1953) edited by G. P. Maximoff, p. 158
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
3 weeks 3 days ago
Himmler approved the idea of recruiting...

Himmler approved the idea of recruiting divisions of the Waffen-SS with volunteers from all nations under the banner of the struggle against Communist Russia and in defence of Europe and its civilisation. This was the restoration of the function that the Order of Teutonic Knights had in the beginning as guardian of the East and, at the same time, of the spirit that had animated the Freikorps, the voluntary groups that, on their own initiative, had fought against the Bolsheviks in the eastern regions and the Baltic countries after the end of the First World War. In the end, more than seventeen nations were represented in the Waffen-SS, often with their own complete divisions: French, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, Spaniards, even Swiss, with a total of about 800,000 men, of whom only a part came from the Germanic area.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 4 weeks ago
Males learn to lie as a...

Males learn to lie as a way of obtaining power, and females not only do the same but they also lie to pretend powerlessness.

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Chapter 3, pg. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 1 day ago
The idea of creating a national...

The idea of creating a national bank I do not concur in, because it seems now decided that Congress has not that power (although I sincerely wish they had it exclusively), and because I think there is already a vast redundancy rather than a scarcity of paper medium.

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Letter to Thomas Law, 1813. FE 9:433
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
We suffer not only from the...

We suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead.

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Preface to the First Edition, Capital Volume 1, Peinguin Classics edition 1976.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 weeks ago
A man of intellect is like...

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument - a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself - in solitude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Order thyself so, that thy Soul...

Order thyself so, that thy Soul may always be in good estate; whatsoever become of thy body.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 week ago
A person is strong only when...

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well - in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

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"Appendix A"
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 2 weeks ago
Possibility is not a luxury; it...

Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread. Undoing Gender.

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Psychology Press. 2004. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-415-96922-2.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
I am often accused of expressing...

I am often accused of expressing contempt and despising religious people. I don't despise religious people, I despise what they stand for. I like to quote the British journalist Johann Hari who said, "I have so much respect for you, that I cannot respect your ridiculous ideas."

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Reason Rally, National Mall, Washington, DC, 2012-03-24 Richard Dawkins and his Foundation at the Reason Rally, YouTube, 7 April 2012
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
God whispers to us in our...

God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.

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Philosophical Maxims
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