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Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 1 week ago
Frazer is much more savage than...

Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 week 3 days ago
All they that take the sword...

All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

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Matthew 26:52 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 5 days ago
The Nonprofit Industrial Complex

Nonprofits let capitalism off the hook. Instead of demanding systemic change, we fund charities to address symptoms. Corporations donate money they should have paid in taxes, get public relations benefits, and maintain the status quo. Charity becomes a pressure valve that prevents revolution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 week 6 days ago
Our whole past experience is continually...

Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way.

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Vol. VII, par. 547
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha,...

Jehovah, Allah, the Trinity, Jesus, Buddha, are names for a great variety of human virtues, human mystical experiences, human remorses, human compensatory fantasies, human terrors, human cruelties. If all men were alike, all the world would worship the same God.

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"One and Many," p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The survival of democracy depends on...

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

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Chapter 6 (p. 47)
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 days ago
There remains the final reflection, how...

There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.

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Preface, p. 16 (Corrected Edition)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Make your educational laws strict and...

Make your educational laws strict and your criminal ones can be gentle; but if you leave youth its liberty you will have to dig dungeons for ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 4 days ago
The march of the human mind...

The march of the human mind is slow.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 weeks 1 day ago
The proper method for hastening the...

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is not by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavour to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

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Vol. 2, bk. 8, ch. 6
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 week 3 days ago
Beauty is a pledge of the...

Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.

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Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 270
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week 1 day ago
Every intellectual effort sets us apart...

Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Among these Jews there suddenly turns...

Among these Jews there suddenly turns up a man who goes about talking as if He was God. He claims to forgive sins. He says He has always existed. He says He is coming to judge the world at the end of time. Now let us get this clear. Among Pantheists, like the Indians, anyone might say that he was a part of God, or one with God: there would be nothing very odd about it. But this man, since He was a Jew, could not mean that kind of God. God, in their language, meant the Being outside of the world, who had made it and was infinitely different from anything else. And when you have grasped that, you will see that what this man said was, quite simply, the most shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Yes, if you happen to be...

Yes, if you happen to be interested in philosophy and good at it, but not otherwise - but so does bricklaying. Anything you're good at contributes to happiness. When asked "Does philosophy contribute to happiness?"

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(SHM 76), as quoted in The quotable Bertrand Russell (1993), p. 149
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 days ago
Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes...

Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes away, for in some way or another everything is perpetuated; and everything, after passing through time, returns to eternity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 5 days ago
The Criminalization of Poverty

Being poor is increasingly illegal. You're fined for sleeping outside, arrested for panhandling, jailed for unpaid fines. The legal system extracts revenue from those least able to pay, then imprisons them when they can't. Debtors' prisons were abolished in law but reconstituted in practice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Man, being the servant and interpreter...

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

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Aphorism 1
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
1 month 1 week ago
Look round and round….

Look round and round the man you recommend, for yours will be the shame should he offend.

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Book I, epistle xviii, line 76 (translated by John Conington).
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Yes, there was an element of...

Yes, there was an element of abstraction and unreality in misfortune. But when an abstraction starts to kill you, you have to get to work on it.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Exclusion....

You're either excluding the right people or including the wrong people.

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ComfortDragon
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
1 month 2 weeks ago
The thirst after happiness is never...

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

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IX
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
4 weeks 1 day ago
Time is the wisest…

Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.

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As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months ago
God only pours out his light...

God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 2 days ago
If what the philosophers say be...

If what the philosophers say be true,—that all men's actions proceed from one source; that as they assent from a persuasion that a thing is so, and dissent from a persuasion that it is not, and suspend their judgment from a persuasion that it is uncertain, so likewise they seek a thing from a persuasion that it is for their advantage.

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Book I, ch. 18, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 weeks 3 days ago
The Age of Empty Freedom ......

The Age of Empty Freedom ... does not know that man must first through labour, industry, and art, learn how to know; but it has a certain fixed standard for all conceptions, and an established Common Sense of Mankind always ready and at hand, innate within itself and there present without trouble on its part;-and those conceptions and this Common Sense are to it the measure of the efficient and the real. It has this great advantage over the Age of Science, that it knows all things without having learned anything; and can pass judgment upon whatever comes before it at once and without hesitation,-without needing any preliminary evidence:-'That which I do not immediately comprehend by the conceptions which dwell within me, is nothing,'-says Empty Freedom.

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p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Just now
The period of the actual revolution,...

The period of the actual revolution, the so-called transitory stage, must be the introduction, the prelude to the new social conditions. It is the threshold to the NEW LIFE, the new HOUSE OF MAN AND HUMANITY. As such it must be of the spirit of the new life, harmonious with the construction of the new edifice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
It seems clear to me that...

It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter.

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Letter to Ottoline Morrell, January 30, 1916
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 5 days ago
Let's put a limit...
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Main Content / General
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Philosophy of Nature takes up...

The Philosophy of Nature takes up the material, prepared for it by physics out of experience, at the point to which physics has brought it, and again transforms it, without basing it ultimately on the authority of experience. Physics therefore must work into the hands of philosophy, so that the latter may translate into a true comprehension (Begriff) the abstract universal transmitted to it, showing how it issues from that comprehension as an intrinsically necessary whole.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Why may not a goose say...

Why may not a goose say thus: "All the parts of the universe I have an interest in: the earth serves me to walk upon, the sun to light me; the stars have their influence upon me; I have such an advantage by the winds and such by the waters; there is nothing that yon heavenly roof looks upon so favourably as me. I am the darling of Nature! Is it not man that keeps and serves me?"

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 6 days ago
What surrounds us we endure better...

What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
The worker's existence is thus brought...

The worker's existence is thus brought under the same condition as the existence of every other commodity. The worker has become a commodity, and it is a bit of luck for him if he can find a buyer, And the demand on which the life of the worker depends, depends on the whim of the rich and the capitalists.

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Wages of Labor, p. 20.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 1 week ago
You get tragedy where the tree,...

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 days ago
Einstein analyses the ideas of time-order...

Einstein analyses the ideas of time-order and of simultaneity. Primarily (according to his analysis) time-order only refers to the succession of events at a given place. Accordingly each given place has its own time-order. But these time-orders are not independent in the system of nature, and their correlation is known to us by means of physical measurement. Now ultimately all physical measurement depends upon coincidence in time and place.

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p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week 3 days ago
For thought and speech are of...

For thought and speech are of a thinking and speaking subject, and if the life of the latter depends on the performance of a superimposed function, it depends on fulfilling the requirements of this function - thus it depends on those who control these requirements.

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p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
1 month 1 week ago
In adversity, remember….

In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.

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Book II, ode iii, line 1
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 1 week ago
When the Superior Man (Junzi)...

When the Superior Man (Junzi) eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Tao and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning."

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month 1 week ago
Ethics increases the range of what...

Ethics increases the range of what it is about ourselves that we can will-extending it from our actions to the motives and character traits and dispositions from which they arise. We want to be able to will the sources of our actions down to the very bottom.

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p. 135.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 2 weeks ago
There cannot be a greater rudeness,...

There cannot be a greater rudeness, than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse... To which, if there be added, as is usual, a correcting of any mistake, or a contradiction of what has been said, it is a mark of yet greater pride and self-conceitedness, when we thus intrude our selves for teachers, and take upon us either to set another right in his story, or shew the mistakes of his judgement.

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Sec. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
1 month 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
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 weeks 1 day ago
Government in reality, as has abundantly...

Government in reality, as has abundantly appeared, is a question of force, and not of consent. It is desirable that a government should be made as agreeable as possible to the ideas and inclinations of its subjects and that they should be consulted, as extensively as may be, respecting its construction and regulations. But, at last, the best constituted government that can be formed particularly for a large community, will contain many provisions that, far from having obtained the consent of all its members, encounter even in their outset a strenuous, thought ineffectual opposition.

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Book III, "Of Obedience"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 6 days ago
"I am like a broken puppet...

"I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside." This remark of a mental patient weighs more heavily than a whole stack of works on introspection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 weeks 1 day ago
When superstition is allowed to perform...

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

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Ch. 3, as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
In early youth, as we contemplate...

In early youth, as we contemplate our coming life, we are like children in a theatre before the curtain is raised, sitting there in high spirits and eagerly waiting for the play to begin. It is a blessing that we do not know what is really going to happen. Could we foresee it, there are times when children might seem like innocent prisoners, condemned, not to death, but to life, and as yet all unconscious of what their sentence means.

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
The method of "postulating" what we...

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

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Ch. 7: Rational, Real and Complex Numbers
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 weeks 1 day ago
There is hardly a pioneer's hut...

There is hardly a pioneer's hut which does not contain a few odd volumes of Shakespeare. I remember reading the feudal drama of Henry V for the first time in a log cabin.

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Book One, Chapter XIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 6 days ago
We replace God as best we...

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 days ago
What is the Church? She is...

What is the Church? She is the body of Christ. Join to it the Head, and you have one man: The Head and the body make up one man. Who is the head? He who was born of the Virgin Mary. And what is His body? It is His Spouse, that is, the Church.... The Father willed that these two, the God Christ and the Church, should be one man. All men are one man in Christ, and the unity of the Christians constitutes but one man. And this man is all men, all men are this man; for all are one, since Christ is one.

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p. 414
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
If any philosopher had been asked...

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

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Ch. 5: Mathematics and the Metaphysicians
Philosophical Maxims
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