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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
If anyone can be considered the...

If anyone can be considered the greatest writer who ever lived, it is Shakespeare.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 days ago
An army and navy represents the...

An army and navy represents the people's toys.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 2 weeks ago
Then the case is the same...

Then the case is the same in all the other arts for the orator and his rhetoric; there is no need to know the truth of the actual matters, but one merely needs to have discovered some device of persuasion which will make one appear to those who do not know to know better than those who know.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 weeks ago
There are many difficulties impeding the...

There are many difficulties impeding the rapid spread of reasonableness. One of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
The concessions of the weak are...

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks 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
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 2 weeks ago
I frequently asked myself, if I...

I frequently asked myself, if I could, or if I was bound to go on living, when life must be passed in this manner. I generally answered to myself, that I did not think I could possibly bear it beyond a year.

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(p. 140)
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
3 months 1 week ago
Since our leading men think themselves...

since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish-ponds that will come to hand for food, and neglect everything else, do not you think that I am doing no mean service if I secure that those who have the power, should not have the will, to do any harm?

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Letters to Atticus, Book II, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
The monopoly of capital becomes a...

The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.

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Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 837.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 1 day ago
It is only necessary to make...

It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.

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As quoted in The Biblical Museum: A Collection of Notes Explanatory, Homiletic, and Illustrative on the Holy Scriptures, Especially Designed for the Use of Ministers, Bible-students, and Sunday-school Teachers (1873) by James Comper Gray, Vol. V
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 2 weeks ago
To be a good mother -...

To be a good mother - a woman must have sense, and that independence of mind which few women possess who are taught to depend entirely on their husbands. Meek wives are, in general, foolish mothers; wanting their children to love them best, and take their part, in secret, against the father, who is held up as a scarecrow.

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Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness....

To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness. Not ceasing, it continues long. Continuing long, it evidences itself. Evidencing itself, it reaches far. Reaching far, it becomes large and substantial. Large and substantial, it becomes high and brilliant. Large and substantial; this is how it contains all things. High and brilliant; this is how it overspreads all things. Reaching far and continuing long; this is how it perfects all things. So large and substantial, the individual possessing it is the co-equal of Earth. So high and brilliant, it makes him the co-equal of Heaven. So far-reaching and long-continuing, it makes him infinite. Such being its nature, without any display, it becomes manifested; without any movement, it produces changes; and without any effort, it accomplishes its ends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 week 5 days ago
When truth cannot make itself known...

When truth cannot make itself known in words, it will make itself known in deeds.

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Should he have spoken?, The New Criterion (September 2006), p. 22; also in The Roger Scruton Reader (2009) edited by Mark Dooley
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Why don't I commit suicide? Because...

Why don't I commit suicide? Because I am as sick of death as I am of life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
If any ask me what a...

If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, - and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is too difficult to think...

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living. 

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Variant translation: It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks to get a living.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 days ago
Some will ask, what about weak...

Some will ask, what about weak natures, must they not be protected? Yes, but to be able to do that, it will be necessary to realize that education of children is not synonymous with herdlike drilling and training. If education should really mean anything at all, it must insist upon the free growth and development of the innate forces and tendencies of the child. In this way alone can we hope for the free individual and eventually also for a free community, which shall make interference and coercion of human growth impossible.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 2 weeks ago
Capacity for the nobler feelings is...

Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by the mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in existence.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
Lastly, we must also know what...

Lastly, we must also know what Baptism signifies, and why God has ordained just such external sign and ceremony for the Sacrament by which we are first received into the Christian Church. But the act or ceremony is this, that we are sunk under the water, which passes over us, and afterwards are drawn out again. These two parts, to be sunk under the water and drawn out again, signify the power and operation of Baptism, which is nothing else than putting to death the old Adam, and after that the resurrection of the new man, both of which must take place in us all our lives, so that a truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism, once begun and ever to be continued.

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On Infant Baptism, Large Catechism
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 5 days ago
The uniting of Orthodoxy with state...

The uniting of Orthodoxy with state absolutism came about on the soil of a non-belief in the Divineness of the earth, in the earthly future of mankind; Orthodoxy gave away the earth into the hands of the state because of its own non-belief in man and mankind, because of its nihilistic attitude towards the world. Orthodoxy does not believe in the religious ordering of human life upon the earth, and it compensates for its own hopeless pessimism by a call for the forceful ordering of it by state authority.

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Nihilism On A Religious Soil
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 days ago
With the conception that the Revolution...

With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Take a book, the poorest one...

Take a book, the poorest one written, but read it with the passion that it is the only book you will read-ultimately you will read everything out of it, that is, as much as there was in yourself, and you could never get more out of reading, even if you read the best of books.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
Romeo wants Juliet as the filings...

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

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Ch. 1 : The Scope of Psychology
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
To rank the effort above the...

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 1 week ago
Now drown care in wine….

Now drown care in wine.

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Book I, ode vii, line 32
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week 1 day ago
We hold that the most wonderful...

We hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am myself deeply convinced that...

I am myself deeply convinced that imagination is the basis of a sound reason. It is by dint of feeling, and of putting ourselves in fancy into the place of other men, that we can learn how we ought to treat them, and be moved to treat them as we ought. Man, to express the thing in familiar language, is a complex being, made up of a head and a heart. So far as we are employed in heaping up facts and in reasoning upon them merely, we are a species of machine; it is our impulses and our sentiments, that are the glory of our nature.

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Of Religion (1818), quoted in Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, Volume 7: Religious Writings, ed. Mark Philp
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 days ago
The value of the goal lies...

The value of the goal lies in the goal itself; and therefore the goal cannot be attained unless it is pursued for its own sake.

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Vol. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
1 month 1 week ago
A judgment, for me is not...

A judgment, for me is not the mere grasping of a thought, but the admission of its truth.

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Gottlob Frege (1892). On Sense and Reference, note 7.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 2 weeks ago
Every pleasure raises the tide of...

Every pleasure raises the tide of life; every pain lowers the tide of life.

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Ch. 6, The Biological View
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the visible world, the Milky...

In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of this speck our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical properties, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded. They divide their time between labour designed to postpone the moment of dissolution for themselves and frantic struggles to hasten it for others of their kind.

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Dreams and Facts, 1919
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
See thou tell no man; but...

See thou tell no man; but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them.

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8:4 (KJV) Said to a man cured of leprosy.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
We can hope that the ways...

We can hope that the ways of peace will attract the Arabic nations, for their territory and opportunities are broad enough for immeasurable advance, if the energies vented in spleen, are turned instead to a modernisation of the technology, a restoration of the soil, and a renovation of the economic, social, and political structure of those great and venerable lands.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
Education to true religion is the...

Education to true religion is the final task of the new education.

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General Nature of New Eduction p. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 6 days ago
History is full of religious wars;...

History is full of religious wars; but, we must take care to observe, it was not the multiplicity of religions that produced these wars, it was the intolerating spirit which animated that one which thought she had the power of governing.

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No. 65. (Usbek writing to his wives)
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
1 month 3 weeks ago
If man's love for himself be...

If man's love for himself be necessary, then his love for Him through whom, first his coming-to-be, and second, his continuance in his essential being with all his inward and outward traits, his substance and his accidents, occur must also be necessary. Whoever is so besotted by his fleshy appetites as to lack this love neglects his Lord and Creator. He possesses no authentic knowledge of Him; his gaze is limited to his cravings and to things of sense. 

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Al-Ghazali on Love, Longing, Intimacy & Contentment, Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby. Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society (2011), p. 25.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 4 days ago
All science must start with some...

All science must start with some assumptions as to the ultimate analysis of the facts with which it deals. These assumptions are justified partly by their adherence to the types of occurrence of which we are directly conscious, and partly by their success in representing the observed facts with a certain generality, devoid of ad hoc suppositions.

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Ch. 8: "The Quantum Theory", p. 189
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 3 weeks ago
When one compares the talents one...

When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz, one is tempted to throw away one's books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.

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Oeuvres complètes, vol. 7, p. 678
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
1 month 1 week ago
If the result of a war...

If the result of a war is to change nothing, but only to destroy, with the mere result that a group of human beings who do not differ notably from the conquered acquires preponderant advantages for the future, there is lacking the affective strength of an existence that has inspired faith, of an existence whose destiny would have been decided by the war.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 2 weeks ago
I think that the principal and...

I think that the principal and most basic spiritual need of the Russian People is the need for suffering, incessant and unslakeable suffering, everywhere and in everything. I think the Russian People have been infused with this need to suffer from time immemorial. A current of martyrdom runs through their entire history, and it flows not only from external misfortunes and disasters but springs from the very heart of the People themselves. There is always an element of suffering even in the happiness of the Russian People, and without it their happiness is incomplete.

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A Writer's Diary, Vol. 1: 1873-1876 (1994), pp. 161-162
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 days ago
Taken as a whole, the Cross...

Taken as a whole, the Cross Correspondences and the Willet scripts are among the most convincing evidence that at present exists for life after death. For anyone who is prepared to devote weeks to studying them, they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Myers, Gurney, and Sidgwick went on communicating after death.

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p. 136
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 1 week ago
It is peculiar to "ressentiment criticism"...

It is peculiar to "ressentiment criticism" that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 weeks ago
If you have hitherto believed that...
If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?
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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 days ago
The Outsider wants to cease to...

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be 'balanced'. He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway) He would also like to understand the human soul and its working and, be 'possessed' by a Will topower, to more life. (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov) He would like to escape triviality forever. Above all, he would like to know how to express himself because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and hi unknown possibilities.

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Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 weeks ago
He who thinks....
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Main Content / General
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
It appears, accordingly, from the experience...

It appears, accordingly, from the experience of all ages and nations, I believe, that the work done by freemen comes cheaper in the end than that performed by slaves.

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Chapter VIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
Reflect how you are to govern...

Reflect how you are to govern a people who think they ought to be free, and think they are not. Your scheme yields no revenue; it yields nothing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; and such is the state of America, that after wading up to your eyes in blood, you could only end just where you begun; that is, to tax where no revenue is to be found, to - my voice fails me; my inclination indeed carries me no farther - all is confusion beyond it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
Well is it known that ambition...

Well is it known that ambition can creep as well as soar.

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No. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 2 weeks ago
Were the ends of a person...

Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality. The mere carrying out of predetermined purposes is mechanical. This remark has an application to the philosophy of religion. It is that genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal creator, that it is really inseparable from that idea; while a necessitarian religion is in an altogether false position and is destined to become disintegrated. But a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
Someone who knows too much finds...

Someone who knows too much finds it hard not to lie.

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p. 64e
Philosophical Maxims
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