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Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 5 days ago
The hypostasis of the particular methods...

The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science ... results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a "crucial experiment" rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature.

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p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 weeks 6 days ago
Revolution is indeed a violent process....

Revolution is indeed a violent process. But if it is to result only in a change of dictatorship, in a shifting of names and political personalities, then it is hardly worth while. It is surely not worth all the struggle and sacrifice, the stupendous loss in human life and cultural values that result from every revolution. If such a revolution were even to bring greater social well being (which has not been the case in Russia) then it would also not be worth the terrific price paid: mere improvement can be brought about without bloody revolution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 2 days ago
After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at...

After he routed Pharnaces Ponticus at the first assault, he wrote thus to his friends: "I came, I saw, I conquered."

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Cæsar
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
To believe is to know you...

To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 days ago
A life of action, if it...

A life of action, if it is to be useful, must be a life of compromise. But speculation admits of no compromise. A public-man is often under the necessity of consenting to measures which he dislikes, lest he should endanger the success of measures which he thinks of vital importance.

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War of the Succession in Spain', The Edinburgh Review (January 1833), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are some defeats more triumphant...

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

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Ch. 30. Of Cannibals, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
1 month 1 week ago
Simplify the social system, in the...

Simplify the social system, in the manner which every motive, but those of usurpation and ambition, powerfully recommends; render the plain dictates of justice level to every capacity; remove the necessity of implicit faith; and we may expect the whole species to become reasonable and virtuous.

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Portable Enlightenment Reader, p. 477
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 days ago
And what is its moral proof?...

And what is its moral proof? We may formulate it thus: Act so that in your own judgment and in the judgment of others you may merit eternity, act so that you may become irreplaceable, act so that you may not merit death. Or perhaps thus: Act as if you were to die tomorrow, but to die in order to survive and be eternalized. The end of morality is to give personal, human finality to the Universe; to discover the finality that belongs to it - if indeed it has any finality - and to discover it by acting.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 1 week ago
It is the man of science,...

It is the man of science, eager to have his every opinion regenerated, his every idea rationalized, by drinking at the fountain of fact, and devoting all the energies of his life to the cult of truth, not as he understands it, but as he does not yet understand it, that ought properly to be called a philosopher. To an earlier age knowledge was power - merely that and nothing more; to us it is life and the summum bonum. Emancipation from the bonds of self, of one's own prepossessions, importunately sought at the hands of that rational power before which all must ultimately bow, - this is the characteristic that distinguishes all the great figures of nineteenth-century science from those of former periods.

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"The Century's Great Men in Science" in The 19th Century : A Review of Progress During the Past One Hundred Years in the Chief Departments of Human Activity (1901), published by G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
In fact of course, this 'productive'...

In fact of course, this 'productive' worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn't give a damn for the junk.

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Notebook II, The Chapter on Capital, p. 193.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 days ago
The ambassador [of Russia] and the...

The ambassador [of Russia] and the grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to stare at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came to the court balls dropping pearls and vermin.

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Vol. V, ch. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
1 month 6 days ago
The very desire for guarantees that...

The very desire for guarantees that our values are eternal and secure in some objective heaven is perhaps only a craving for the certainties of childhood or the absolute values of our primitive past.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 1 week ago
Indeed, even this last moment will...

Indeed, even this last moment will be recognized like the rest, at least, be just beginning to be so.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 1 week ago
Without the presence of black people...

Without the presence of black people in America, European-Americans would not be "white"-- they would be Irish, Italians, Poles, Welsh, and other engaged in class, ethnic, and gender struggles over resources and identity.

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(p. 107-108)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
One ought to fast, watch, and...

One ought to fast, watch, and labor to the extent that such activities are needed to harness the body's desires and longings; however, those who presume that they are justified by works pay no attention to the need for self-discipline but see the works themselves as the way to righteousness. They believe that if they do a great number of impressive works all will be well and righteousness will be the result. Sometimes this is pursued with such zeal that they become mentally unstable and their bodies are sapped of all strength. Such disastrous consequences demonstrate that the belief that we are justified and saved by works without faith is extremely foolish.

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p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks ago
Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty,...

Wealth brings a heavy purse; poverty, a light spirit.

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p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
1 month 1 week ago
The mental operation by which one...

The mental operation by which one achieves new concepts and which one denotes generally by the inadequate name of induction is not a simple but rather a very complicated process. Above all, it is not a logical process although such processes can be inserted as intermediary and auxiliary links. The principle effort that leads to the discovery of new knowledge is due to abstraction and imagination.

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3rd edition, p. 318ff, As quoted by Phillip Frank, Philosophy of Science: The Link Between Science and Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 6 days ago
The automated presidential surrogate is the...

The automated presidential surrogate is the superlative nobody.

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(p. 157)
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 week 5 days ago
By doing nothing men learn to...

By doing nothing men learn to do ill.

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Maxim 318 Compare Ecclesiasticus 33:27 (KJV): "idleness teacheth much evil".
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
But men must know that in...

But men must know that in this theater of man's life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

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Book II, xx, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 weeks ago
Twenty-first-century society is no longer a...

Twenty-first-century society is no longer a disciplinary society, but rather an achievement society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 1 week ago
The world must be romanticized. In...

The world must be romanticized. In this way the originary meaning may be found again.

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As quoted in The Experience of the Foreign : Culture and Translation in Romantic Germany (1992) by Antoine Berman Variant translation: Romanticize the world.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 4 days ago
Let the states of equilibrium and...

Let the states of equilibrium and harmony exist in perfection, and a happy order will prevail throughout heaven and earth, and all things will be nourished and flourish.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 weeks 1 day ago
In conclusion, then, no satisfactory interpretation...

In conclusion, then, no satisfactory interpretation of quantum mechanics exists today. The questions posed by the confrontation between the Copenhagen interpretation and the hidden variable theorists go to the very foundations of microphysics, but the answers given by hidden variable theorists and Copenhagenists are alike unsatisfactory. Human curiosity will not rest until those questions are answered, but whether they will be answered by conceptual innovations within the framework of the present theory or only within the framework of an as yet unforeseen theory is unknown. The first step toward answering them has been attempted here. It is the modest but essential step of becoming clear on the nature and magnitude of the difficulties.

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A philosopher looks at quantum mechanics
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 2 days ago
Agesilaus was very fond of his...

Agesilaus was very fond of his children; and it is reported that once toying with them he got astride upon a reed as upon a horse, and rode about the room; and being seen by one of his friends, he desired him not to speak of it till he had children of his own.

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Of Agesilaus the Great
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 5 days ago
Bats ... present a range of...

Bats ... present a range of activity and a sensory apparatus so different from ours that the problem I want to pose is exceptionally vivid (though it certainly could be raised with other species). Even without the benefit of philosophical reflection, anyone who has spent some time in an enclosed space with an excited bat knows what it is to encounter a fundamentally alien form of life.

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p. 168.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
To have time was at once...

To have time was at once the most magnificent and the most dangerous of experiments. Idleness is fatal only to the mediocre.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 1 week ago
In solitude it is possible to...

In solitude it is possible to love mankind; in the world, for one who knows the world, there can be nothing but secret or open war.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
Just now
In an ideal University, as I...

In an ideal University, as I conceive it, a man should be able to obtain instruction in all forms of knowledge, and discipline in the use of all the methods by which knowledge is obtained. In such a University, the force of living example should fire the student with a noble ambition to emulate the learning of learned men, and to follow in the footsteps of the explorers of new fields of knowledge. And the very air he breathes should be charged with that enthusiasm for truth, that fanaticism of veracity, which is a greater possession than much learning; a nobler gift than the power of increasing knowledge; by so much greater and nobler than these, as the moral nature of man is greater than the intellectual; for veracity is the heart of morality.

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Universities, Actual and Ideal
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists...

Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists who can no longer be . . . optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why should they have any to die?

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is necessary to have regard...

It is necessary to have regard to the person whom we wish to persuade, of whom we must know the mind and the heart, what principles he acknowledges, what things he loves; and then observe in the thing in question what affinity it has with the acknowledged principles, or with the objects so delightful by the pleasure which they give him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 5 days ago
Education is an ornament for the...

Education is an ornament for the prosperous, a refuge for the unfortunate.

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Freeman (1948), p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
When we assume God to be...

When we assume God to be a guiding principle-well, sure enough, a god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum: God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God.

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Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1988), p. 40
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
After all, why should ordinary people...

After all, why should ordinary people want to contemplate the End, especially when we see the condition of those who do?

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
Fear? If I have gained anything...

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
There must then be something that...

There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?

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Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 6 days ago
Facts do not cease...
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Main Content / General
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Language is a city to the...

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
Then I dreamed that one day...

Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them and the jailer said as he put down the pipkin:'Our relations with the cow are not delicate-as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.' ... John said, 'Thank heavens! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense. You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.' 'And pray, what difference is there except by custom?''Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?'

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Pilgrim's Regress 49
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Dissimulation is innate in woman, and...

Dissimulation is innate in woman, and almost as much a quality of the stupid as of the clever.

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"Of Women"
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 days ago
"The bitterest sorrow that man can...

"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to achieve nothing"... so Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can embrace everything , or almost everything; with the will nothing, or almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness - no! not if this contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our knowledge and our power pity arises.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
What will be left of the...

What will be left of the power of example if it is proved that capital punishment has another power, and a very real one, which degrades men to the point of shame, madness, and murder?

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 2 weeks ago
It says nothing against the ripeness...
It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.
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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
What a monstrous thing that a...

What a monstrous thing that a University should teach journalism! I thought that was only done at Oxford. This respect for the filthy multitude is ruining civilisation.

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Letter to Lucy Martin Donnely, July 6, 1902
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 week 1 day ago
Believe me, my friends, you are...

Believe me, my friends, you are yet very deficient with regard to the best modes of training your children, or of arranging your domestic concerns.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
The true test of civilization is,...

The true test of civilization is, not the census, nor the size of the cities, nor the crops - no, but the kind of man the country turns out.

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Civilization
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 2 weeks ago
The venerability, reliability, and utility of...
The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 1 week ago
You can choose whatever name you...

You can choose whatever name you like for the two types of government. I personally call the type of government which can be removed without violence "democracy", and the other "tyranny".

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As quoted in Freedom: A New Analysis (1954) by Maurice William Cranston, p. 112
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 weeks ago
Man should possess an infinite appetite...

Man should possess an infinite appetite for life. It should be self-evident to him, all the time, that life is superb, glorious, endlessly rich, infinitely desirable. At present, because he is in a midway position between the brute and the truly human, he is always getting bored, depressed, weary of life. He has become so top-heavy with civilisation that he cannot contact the springs of pure vitality. Control of the prefrontal cortex will change all of this. He will cease to cast nostalgic glances towards the womb, for he will realise that death is no escape. Man is a creature of life and the daylight; his destiny lies in total objectivity.

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pp. 317-318
Philosophical Maxims
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