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Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
Jews are angry and brutish people,...

Jews are angry and brutish people, vile and vulgar men, slaves worthy of the yoke [Talmudism] which you bear... Go, take back your books and remove yourselves from me. [ The Talmud ] taught the Jews to steal the goods of Christians, to regard them as savage beasts, to push them over the precipice... to kill them with impunity and to utter every morning the most horrible imprecations against them.

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See The Jews: A History, Second Edition, by John Efron, Steven Weitzman and Matthias Lehmann
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Can anybody remember when the times...

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

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Works and Days
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is not a Musselman alive...

There is not a Musselman alive who would not imagine that he was performing an action pleasing to God and his Holy Prophet by exterminating every Christian on earth, while the Christians are scarcely more tolerant on their side.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
The notion of nothingness is not...

The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave's virtue.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
3 weeks 4 days ago
Ichthyophils imagine that human beings want...

Ichthyophils imagine that human beings want a life in which they can make their own choices. But what if they can be fulfilled only by a life in which they follow each other? The majority who obey the fashion of the day may be acting on a secret awareness that they lack the potential for a truly individual existence. Liberalism - the ichthyophil variety, at any rate - teaches that everyone yearns to be free. Herzen's experience of the abortive European revolutions of 1848 led him to doubt that this was so. It was because of his disillusionment that he criticized Mill so sharply. But if it is true that Mill was deluded in thinking that everyone loves freedom, it may also be true that without this illusion there would be still less freedom in the world. The charm of a liberal way of life is that it enables most people to renounce their freedom unknowingly.

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An Old Chaos: Ichthyophils and Liberals (p. 62)
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
4 months 1 week ago
A happy and eternal being has...

A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Just now
Everyone has a religion, whether admitted...

Everyone has a religion, whether admitted or not, because it is impossible to be human without having some basic assumptions (or intuitions) about existence and the good life.

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p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 3 weeks ago
We must fight those who are...

We must fight those who are committed to destruction, without replicating their destructiveness. Understanding how to fight in this way is the task and the bind of a nonviolent ethics and politics.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 3 weeks ago
The liar is a person who...
The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
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Philosophical Maxims
Polybius
Polybius
1 week 4 days ago
It is a course which perhaps...

It is a course which perhaps would not have been necessary had it been possible to form a state composed of wise men, but as every multitude is fickle, full of lawless desires, unreasoned passion, and violent anger, the multitude must be held in by invisible terrors and suchlike pageantry. For this reason I think, not that the ancients acted rashly and at haphazard in introducing among the people notions concerning the gods and beliefs in the terrors of hell, but that the moderns are most rash and foolish in banishing such beliefs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
Just now
The de-eroticization of the world, a...

The de-eroticization of the world, a companion to its disenchantment ... seems to result from a combination of causes-our democratic regime and its tendencies toward leveling and self-protection, a reductionist-materialist science that inevitably interprets eros as sex, and the atmosphere generated by "the death of God" and of the subordinate god, Eros.

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p. 15.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 1 week ago
The characteristic activity of science is...

The characteristic activity of science is not construction, but induction. The more often something has occurred in the past, the more certain that it will in all the future. Knowledge relates solely to what is and to its recurrence. New forms of being, especially those arising from the historical activity of man, lie beyond empiricist theory. Thoughts which are not simply carried over from the prevailing pattern of consciousness, but arise from the aims and resolves of the individual, in short, all historical tendencies that reach beyond what is present and recurrent, do not belong to the domain of science.

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p. 144.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 3 weeks ago
Yet there is a certain solitude...

Yet there is a certain solitude like no other - that of the man preparing his meal in public on a wall, or on the hood of his car, or along a fence, alone. You see that all the time here. It is the saddest sight in the world. Sadder than destitution, sadder than the beggar is the man who eats alone in public. Nothing more contradicts the laws of man or beast, for animals always do each other the honour of sharing or disputing each other's food. He who eats alone is dead (but not he who drinks alone. Why is this?).

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New York (p. 15)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
Perfect is the virtue which is...

Perfect is the virtue which is according to the Mean! Rare have they long been among the people, who could practice it!

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 1 week ago
The fact that no one has...

The fact that no one has come up with a really convincing reason for giving greater moral weight to members of our own species, simply because they are members of our species, strongly suggests that there is no such reason. Like racism and sexism, speciesism is wrong.

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p. 343
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 5 days ago
For every man the world is...

For every man the world is as fresh as it was at the first day, and as full of untold novelties for him who has the eyes to see them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
What do we mean by saying...

What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world-and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist see him is not definable, it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself. Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conception of it. Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives himself after already existing - as he wills to be after that leap towards existence. Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
Character means that the person derives...

Character means that the person derives his rules of conduct from himself and from the dignity of humanity. Character is the common ruling principle in man in the use of his talents and attributes. Thus it is the nature of his will, and is good or bad. A man who acts without settled principles, with no uniformity, has no character. A man may have a good heart and yet no character, because he is dependent upon impulses and does not act according to maxims. Firmness and unity of principle are essential to character.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 14
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
The vicomte was a nice-looking young...

The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in which he found himself. Anna Pávlovna was obviously serving him up as a treat to her guests. As a clever maître d'hôtel serves up as a specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pávlovna served up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbé, as peculiarly choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.

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Bk. I, Ch. III
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
The only thing we are naturally...

The only thing we are naturally afraid of is pain, or loss of pleasure. And because these are not annexed to any shape, colour, or size of visible objects, we are frighted of none of them, till either we have felt pain from them, or have notions put into us that they will do us harm.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
If there is anyone who owes...

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Christian Religion not only was...

The Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
Those things which now most engage...

Those things which now most engage the attention of men, as politics and the daily routine, are, it is true, vital functions of human society, but should be unconsciously performed, like the corresponding functions of the physical body. They are infra-human, a kind of vegetation. I sometimes awake to a half-consciousness of them going on about me, as a man may become conscious of some of the processes of digestion in a morbid state, and so have the dyspepsia, as it is called.

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p. 495
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
All that the conscious ego can...

All that the conscious ego can do is to formulate wishes, which are then carried out by forces which it controls very little and understands not at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is normal to hate what...

It is normal to hate what we fear, and it happens frequently, though not always, that we fear what we hate. I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar. They have their own herd, originally a very small one. And within one herd, all are friends, unless there is some special ground of enmity. Other herds are potential or actual enemies; a single member of one of them who strays by accident will be killed. An alien herd as a whole will be avoided or fought according to circumstances. It is this primitive mechanism which still controls our instinctive reaction to foreign nations. The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards a member of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if his herd is to prosper, it must, to some degree, become amalgamated with other herds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Just now
A person who thinks all the...

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 3 weeks ago
For the world, I count it...

For the world, I count it not an Inn, but a Hospital, and a place, not to live, but to die in.

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Section 11
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
People seem good while they are...

People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

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Letter to Ottoline Morrell, 17 December, 1920
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
The error arises from the learned...

The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.

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Chapter VI, Attitude of Men of the Present Day to War Variant translation: Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
The Yin based its propriety...

The Yin based its propriety on that of the Xia, and what it added and subtracted is knowable. The Zhou has based its propriety on that of the Shang and what it added and subtracted is knowable. In this way, what continues from the Chou, even if 100 generations hence, is knowable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 week ago
In the form of the oeuvre,...

In the form of the oeuvre, the actual circumstances are placed in another dimension where the given reality shows itself as that which it is. Thus it tells the truth about itself; its language ceases to be that of deception, ignorance, and submission. Fiction calls the facts by their name and their reign collapses; fiction subverts everyday experience and shows it to be mutilated and false.

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p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
There has never been any custom,...

There has never been any custom, however useless it may become with changing conditions, that isn't clung to desperately simply because it is something old and familiar.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 4 weeks ago
If people should ever start to...

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

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C 54 Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 3 weeks ago
Liberty therefore not being more fit...

Liberty therefore not being more fit than other words in some of the instances in which it has been used, and not so fit in others, the less the use that is made of it the better. I would no more use the word liberty in my conversation when I could get another that would answer the purpose, than I would brandy in my diet, if my physician did not order me: both cloud the understanding and inflame the passions.

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Jeremy Bentham, quoted in P. J. Kelly, Utilitarianism and Distributive Justice: Jeremy Bentham and the Civil Law, Oxford, 1990, p. 96
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
The way of the world is...

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
Leave the ass burdened with laws...

Leave the ass burdened with laws behind in the valley. But your conscience, let it ascend with Isaac into the mountain.

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Chapter 2, Verse 14
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 days ago
America had declared war with Spain.......

America had declared war with Spain.... It did not require much political wisdom to see that America's concern was a matter of sugar and had nothing to do with humanitarian feelings. Of course there were plenty of credulous people, not only in the country at large, but even in liberal ranks, who believed in America's claim. I could not join them. I was sure that no one, be it individual or government, engaged in enslaving and exploiting at home, could have the integrity or the desire to free people in other lands.

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(p. 226)
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 months 1 week ago
The role of philosophy might be...

The role of philosophy might be said to be to extend and deepen the self-awareness of mankind.

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Ch. 9, p. 137
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
In this distribution of functions, the...

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

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pars. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months 3 weeks ago
I assert once again as a...

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

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Book 2, Ch. 29 (as translated by LJ Walker and B Crick)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
4 days ago
People do not cooperate under the...

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
In the world of today can...

In the world of today can there be peace anywhere until there is peace everywhere?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is one of the chief...

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

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Journal entry
Philosophical Maxims
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
4 months 2 days ago
In his arms, my lady lay asleep…

In his arms, my lady lay asleep, wrapped in a veil. He woke her then and trembling and obedient. She ate that burning heart out of his hand; Weeping I saw him then depart from me.

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Chapter I, First Sonnet (tr. Mark Musa)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is likely...
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Main Content / General
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
The national debt has given rise...

The national debt has given rise to joint stock companies, to dealings in negotiable effects of all kinds, and to agiotage, in a word to stock-exchange gambling and the modern bankocracy.

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Vol. I, Ch. 31, pg. 827.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
I do myself a greater injury...

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

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Book II, Ch. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 3 days ago
In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel, of...

In brief, all this Mammon-Gospel, of Supply-and-demand, Competition, Laissez-faire, and Devil take the hindmost, begins to be one of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached on Earth; or altogether the shabbiest.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 2 weeks ago
I am well aware of how...

I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 1 week ago
Never in the history of the...

Never in the history of the world have there been so many migrants. And almost all of them are migrating from regions where nationality is weak or non-existent to the established nation states of the West. They are not migrating because they have discovered some previously dormant feeling of love or loyalty towards the nations in whose territory they seek a home. On the contrary, few of them identify their loyalties in national terms and almost none of them in terms of the nation where they settle. They are migrating in search of citizenship which is the principal gift of national jurisdictions, and the origin of the peace, law, stability and prosperity that still prevail in the West.

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Philosophical Maxims
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