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Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
6 months 3 weeks ago
A prudent man…

A prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent.

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The Prince (1513), Ch. 6; translated by Luigi Ricci
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
The unfortunate thing about public misfortunes...

The unfortunate thing about public misfortunes is that everyone regards himself as qualified to talk about them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
6 months 2 weeks ago
Forgiveness is the key to action...

Forgiveness is the key to action and freedom.

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As quoted in The Concise Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1989) edited by Robert Andrews, p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
5 months 2 days ago
To have no food for our...

To have no food for our heads no food for our hearts, no food for our activity, is that nothing? If we have no food for the body, how do we cry out, how all the world hears of it, how all the newspapers talk of it, with a paragraph headed in great capital letters, DEATH FROM STARVATION! But suppose one were to put a paragraph in the Times, Death of Thought from Starvation, or Death of Moral Activity from Starvation, how people would stare, how they would laugh and wonder! One would think we had no heads nor hearts, by the total indifference of the public towards them. Our bodies are the only things of any consequence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months 4 weeks ago
Broadly stated, the task is to...

Broadly stated, the task is to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist.

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Simon (1955) "A behavioral model of rational choice", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 69 (1); As cited in: Gustavo Barros (2010, p. 462).
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
7 months 4 days ago
Any one thing in the creation...

Any one thing in the creation is sufficient to demonstrate a Providence to an humble and grateful mind.

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Book I, ch. 16,7.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
6 months 1 week ago
Men have fashioned an image of...

Men have fashioned an image of Chance as an excuse for their own stupidity. For Chance rarely conflicts with intelligence, and most things in life can be set in order by an intelligent sharpsightedness.

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Freeman (1948), p. 155
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 2 weeks ago
Human beings are not born identical....

Human beings are not born identical. There are many different temperaments and constitutions; and within each psycho-physical class one can find people at very different stages of spiritual development. Forms of worship and spiritual discipline which may be valuable for one individual maybe useless or even positively harmful for another belonging to a different class and standing, within that class, at a lower or higher level of development.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
5 months 2 weeks ago
Thus far, gentlemen, I have been...

Thus far, gentlemen, I have been insisting very strenuously upon what the most vulgar common sense has every disposition to assent to and only ingenious philosophers have been able to deceive themselves about. But now I come to a category which only a more refined form of common sense is prepared willingly to allow, the category which of the three is the chief burden of Hegel's song, a category toward which the studies of the new logico-mathematicians, Georg Cantor and the like, are steadily pointing, but to which no modern writer of any stripe, unless it be some obscure student like myself, has ever done anything approaching to justice.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.59
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
4 months 3 days ago
Compared with the life-span of a...

Compared with the life-span of a human being the time-span of a civilization is so vast that a human observer cannot hope to take the measure of its curve unless he is in a position to view it in a distant perspective; and he can only obtain this perspective vis-a-vis some society that is extinct. He can never stand back sufficiently far from the history of the society in which he himself lives and moves and has his being. In other words, to assert of any living society, at any moment in its life, that it is the consummation of human history is to hazard a guess which is intrinsically unsusceptible of immediate verification. When we find that a majority of the members of all societies at all times make this assertion about their own civilizations, it becomes evident that their guesses have really nothing to do with any objective calculation of probabilities but are pure expressions of the egocentric illusion.

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Vol. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
6 months 1 week ago
One thing underpins, makes consistent, and...

One thing underpins, makes consistent, and gives meaning to all our other activities on behalf of animals. This one thing is that we take responsibility for our own lives, and make them as free of cruelty as we can. The first step is that we cease to eat animals. Many people who are opposed to cruelty to animals draw the line at becoming a vegetarian. It was of such people that Oliver Goldsmith, the eighteenth-century humanitarian essayist, wrote: "They pity, and they eat the objects of their compassion."

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Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 1 week ago
A man perfects himself by work...

A man perfects himself by work much more than by reading.

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
5 months 2 days ago
The "dreams of youth" have become...

The "dreams of youth" have become a proverb. That organisations, early rich, fall far short of their promise has been repeated to satiety. But is it extraordinary that it should be so? For do we ever utilise this heroism? Look how it lives upon itself and perishes for lack of food. We do not know what to do with it. We had rather that it should not be there. Often we laugh at it. Always we find it troublesome. Look at the poverty of our life! Can we expect anything else but poor creatures to come out of it?

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
The refutation of suicide: is it...

The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 2 weeks ago
We took the liberty to make...

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
5 months 1 week ago
Historians of ideas, however scrupulous and...

Historians of ideas, however scrupulous and minute they may feel it necessary to be, cannot avoid perceiving their material in terms of some kind of pattern.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 months 5 days ago
Every love to which there clings...

Every love to which there clings but the smallest speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that he owes the object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 260
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
5 months 4 days ago
Without doubt, if we are to...

Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.

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Pt. II, ch. 10, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
6 months 2 weeks ago
Truly to escape Hegel involves an...

Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.

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Discourse on Language, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France, 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 5 days ago
Live among men…

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak with God as if men were listening.

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Line 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
4 months 1 week ago
A free society is a community...

A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral constraint-for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no hope of economic, let alone social, order.

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"The Limits of Liberty," The American Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 months 4 weeks ago
They are irreverent to the gods...

They are irreverent to the gods and disobedient to our edicts, lenient as they are. For we allow none of them to be dragged to the altars unwillingly...It is therefore my pleasure to announce and publish to all the people by this edict, that they must not abet the seditions of the clergy...They may hold their meetings, if they wish, and offer prayers according to their established use...and for the future, let all people live in harmony...Men should be taught and won over by reason, not by blows, insults, and corporal punishments. I therefore most earnestly admonish the adherents of the true religion not to injure or insult the Galilaeans in any way...Those who are in the wrong in matters of supreme importance are objects of pity rather than of hate...

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Edict to the people of Bostra, reported in Henry Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
5 months 1 week ago
If the subjectivist view hold true,...

If the subjectivist view hold true, thinking cannot be of any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral or esthetic decisions.

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pp. 7-8.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 2 weeks ago
It is because you yourself fear...

It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
6 months 2 weeks ago
No rational argument will have a...

No rational argument will have a rational effect on a man who does not want to adopt a rational attitude.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 2 days ago
Our grand business.....
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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 weeks ago
In the fact of being born...

In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left-ignorant how to react-with a foolish grin

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
6 months 2 weeks ago
Ideally a just constitution would be...

Ideally a just constitution would be a just procedure arranged to insure a just outcome.

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Chapter IV, Section 31, pg. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing is troublesome that we do...

Nothing is troublesome that we do willingly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 2 weeks ago
I felt that human partitions -...

I felt that human partitions - bodies, brains, and souls - were capable of being demolished, and that humanity might return again, after frightfully bloody wandering, to its primeval, divine oneness. In this condition, there is no such thing as "me", "you", and "he"; everything is a unity and this unity is a profound mystic intoxication in which death loses its scythe and ceases to exist. Separately, we die one by one, but all together we are immortal. Like prodigal sons, after so much hunger, thirst, and rebellion, we spread our arms and embrace our two parents: heaven and earth.

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Liberty, Ch. 12, p. 105
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 months 1 week ago
Jesus said to His disciples, "Compare...

Jesus said to His disciples, "Compare me to someone and tell Me whom I am like." Simon Peter said to Him, "You are like a righteous angel." Matthew said to Him, "You are like a wise philosopher." Thomas said to Him, "Master, my mouth is wholly incapable of saying whom You are like." Jesus said, "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated by the bubbling spring which I have measured out." And He took him and withdrew and told him three things. When Thomas returned to his companions, they asked him, "What did Jesus say to you?" Thomas said to them, "If I tell you one of the things which he told me, you will pick up stones and throw them at me; a fire will come out of the stones and burn you up."

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 3 weeks ago
The greatest danger, that of losing...

The greatest danger, that of losing one's own self, may pass off as quietly as if it were nothing; every other loss, that of an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife etc., is sure to be noticed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 6 days ago
Mathematics may be compared to a...

Mathematics may be compared to a mill of exquisite workmanship, which grinds you stuff of any degree of fineness; but, nevertheless, what you get out depends upon what you put in; and as the grandest mill in the world will not extract wheat-flour from peascod, so pages of formulae will not get a definite result out of loose data.

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Geological Reform, Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, Vol. 25 (1869); as reprinted in Huxley, Discourses, Biological and Geological essays (1909), pp. 335-336
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
5 months 3 days ago
This is a strange -- and...

This is a strange -- and rather alarming -- realisation. For it clearly implies that masturbation is one of our highest faculties that human beings have developed. Many animals masturbate -- but never without the presence of another animal, or some similar stimulus. A human being can masturbate in an empty room: a triumph of pure imagination.

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p. 90
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
5 months 1 week ago
Dialogue and monologue are silenced. Bundled...

Dialogue and monologue are silenced. Bundled together, men march without Thou and without I, those of the left who want to abolish memory, and those of the right who want to regulate it: hostile and separated hosts, they march into the common abyss.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 months 1 week ago
The philosophy of the soul of...

The philosophy of the soul of my people appears to me as an expression of an inward tragedy analogous to the tragedy of the soul of Don Quixote, as the expression of conflict between what the world is as scientific reason shows it to be and what we wish that it might be, as our religious faith affirms it to be. And in this philosophy is to be found the explanation of what is usually said about us - namely, that we are fundamentally irreducible to Kultur - or in other words, that we refuse to submit to it. No, Don Quixote does not resign himself either to the world, or to science or logic, or to art or esthetics, or to morality or ethics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
4 months 1 week ago
Take our politicians: they're a bunch...

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches.

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As quoted in The Portable Curmudgeon (1987) by Jon Winokur, p. 219
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 3 weeks ago
Do not shorten the morning by...

Do not shorten the morning by getting up late, or waste it in unworthy occupations or in talk; look upon it as the quintessence of life, as to a certain extent sacred. Evening is like old age: we are languid, talkative, silly. Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 2: Our Relation To Ourselves
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
5 months 2 days ago
Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen,...

Mysticism: to dwell on the unseen, to withdraw ourselves from the things of sense into communion with God - to endeavour to partake of the Divine nature; that is, of Holiness. When we ask ourselves only what is right, or what is the will of God (the same question), then we may truly be said to live in His light.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
5 months 1 week ago
I have told you that... we...

I have told you that... we know nothing save what we have first, in one way or another, desired; and it may even be added that we can know nothing well save what we love, save what we pity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 3 weeks ago
It is very important to note...

It is very important to note that some 2,500 years ago at the least Pythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learn geometry...But he would certainly not have undertaken such a strange journey had the reputation of the Brahmins' science not been long established in Europe...

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Voltaire, Fragments historiques sur l'Inde. Quoted in Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
5 months 3 days ago
The purpose of consciousness is to...

The purpose of consciousness is to illuminate the world. If we try to run consciousness at half its proper voltage, the result will be a "devalued" world. But that is not the fault of the world; it is our fault. Low-voltage consciousness shows us less of the world than high-voltage consciousness, just as we would see an art gallery less clearly by candlelight than by sunlight.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 months 1 week ago
Hatred is a feeling which leads...

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

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Cited in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject, ed. Susan Ratcliffe (2010), p. 223
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 3 weeks ago
I recall an endless desert of...

I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing, crying in the wilderness. And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air, trembling. It clutches the soil, steadies itself, raises its head and hands, grasps the air, the water, the light, and sucks at the Universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
5 months 2 weeks ago
But no mental action seems necessary...

But no mental action seems necessary or invariable in its character. In whatever manner the mind has reacted under a given sensation, in that manner it is the more likely to react again; were this, however, an absolute necessity, habits would become wooden and ineradicable, and no room being left for the formulation of new habits, intellectual life would come to a speedy close. Thus, the uncertainty of the mental law is no mere defect of it, but is on the contrary of its essence. The truth is, the mind is not subject to "law," in the same rigid sense that matter is. It only experiences gentle forces which merely render it more likely to act a given way than it otherwise would be. There always remains a certain amount of arbitrary spontaneity in its action, without which it would be dead.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
6 months 2 weeks ago
The dissimulation of the woven texture...

The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread.

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Plato's Pharmacy
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
5 months 2 weeks ago
Wit is the appearance, the external...

Wit is the appearance, the external flash of imagination. Thus its divinity, and the witty character of mysticism.

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Aphorism 26, as translated in Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms (1968)
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
5 months 2 weeks ago
The rights and duties of man...

The rights and duties of man thus simplified, it seems almost impertinent to attempt to illustrate truths that appear so incontrovertible: yet such deeply rooted prejudices have clouded reason, and such spurious qualities have assumed the name of virtues, that it is necessary to pursue the course of reason as it has been perplexed and involved in error, by various adventitious circumstances, comparing the simple axiom with casual deviations.Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they cannot trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves. Yet the imperfect conclusions thus drawn, are frequently very plausible, because they are built on partial experience, on just, though narrow, views.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 4 weeks ago
Our preaching does not stop with...

Our preaching does not stop with the law. That would lead to wounding without binding up, striking down and not healing, killing and not making alive, driving down to hell and not bringing back up, humbling and not exalting. Therefore, we must also preach grace and the promise of forgiveness - this is the means by which faith is awakened and properly taught. Without this word of grace, the law, contrition, penitence, and everything else are done and taught in vain.

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pp. 78-79
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
4 months 3 weeks ago
Photography and cinema contributed in large...

Photography and cinema contributed in large part to the secularization of history, to fixing it in its visible, "objective" form at the expense of the myths that once traversed it. Today cinema can place all its talent, all its technology in the service of reanimating what it itself contributed to liquidating. It only resurrects ghosts, and it itself is lost therein.

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"History: A Retro Scenario," p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
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