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Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 weeks ago
The stead drip of water….

The steady drip of water causes stone to hollow and yield.

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Book I, line 313 (tr. Stallings) Variant translation: Continual dropping wears away a stone. Compare: "The soft droppes of rain pierce the hard marble; many strokes overthrow the tallest oaks", John Lyly, Euphues, 1579 (Arber's reprint), p. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
I can understand myself in believing,...

I can understand myself in believing, although in addition I can in a relative misunderstanding comprehend the human aspect of this life: but comprehend faith or comprehend Christ, I cannot.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 1 week ago
That which does not kill us...
That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
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Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
3 weeks 5 days ago
Implication is thus the very texture...

Implication is thus the very texture of our web of belief, and logic is the theory that traces it.

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S. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months ago
If you reject absolutely any single...

If you reject absolutely any single sensation without stopping to discriminate with respect to that which awaits confirmation between matter of opinion and that which is already present, whether in sensation or in feelings or in any immediate perception of the mind, you will throw into confusion even the rest of your sensations by your groundless belief and so you will be rejecting the standard of truth altogether. If in your ideas based upon opinion you hastily affirm as true all that awaits confirmation as well as that which does not, you will not escape error, as you will be maintaining complete ambiguity whenever it is a case of judging between right and wrong opinion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 6 days ago
We are asleep. Our Life is...

We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 weeks 1 day ago
Moral activity? There is scarcely such...

Moral activity? There is scarcely such a thing possible! Everything is sketchy. The world does nothing but sketch.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 2 weeks ago
Who will not commend the wit...

Who will not commend the wit of astrology? Venus, born out of the sea, hath her exaltation in Pisces.

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Commonplace notebooks, Part I
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
How many people ruin themselves by...

How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it. All their pockets are stuffed with little conveniences. They contrive new pockets, unknown in the clothes of other people, in order to carry a greater number. They walk about loaded with a multitude of baubles, in weight and sometimes in value not inferior to an ordinary Jew's-box, some of which may sometimes be of some little use, but all of which might at all times be very well spared, and of which the whole utility is certainly not worth the fatigue of bearing the burden.

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Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
People do not deserve to have...

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

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1841
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
When Descartes said, "Conquer yourself rather...

When Descartes said, "Conquer yourself rather than the world," what he meant was, at bottom, - the same - that we should act without hope. Marxists, to whom I have said thus have answered: "Your action is limited, obviously, by your death: but you can rely upon the help of others.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
7 months 6 days ago
Subgroups are secondary

No subgroup, race, nationalism, religious group, gender based groups or other identity essence based groups will ever be more important than, and should never ethically take precedence over the existence based universal group, the human group. Universal identity takes precedence over subgroup identity, and when we are forced to subgroup in reaction to injustice, that is the only ethical subgroup.

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Propositions / General
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
What a human being believes, however,...

What a human being believes, however, no matter with what ardor, is not necessarily objective truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
Tout existant naît sans raison, se...

Tout existant naît sans raison, se prolonge par faiblesse et meurt par rencontre. Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness and dies by chance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much...

Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

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Chapter IX, p. 117.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 month 1 day 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
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 week 6 days ago
If the thought enunciates an object...

If the thought enunciates an object as a truth, it is only as a challenge to this object's own self-fulfillment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
If the importation of foreign cattle,...

If the importation of foreign cattle, for example, were made ever so free, so few could be imported, that the grazing trade of Great Britain could be little affected by it. Live cattle are, perhaps, the only commodity of which the transportation is more expensive by sea than by land.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
6 days ago
If wine is to withdraw its...

If wine is to withdraw its most poetic countenance, the sun of the white dinner-cloth, a deity to be invoked by two or three, all fervent, hushing their talk, degusting tenderly, and storing reminiscences-for a bottle of good wine, like a good act, shines ever in the retrospect-if wine is to desert us, go thy ways, old Jack!

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Pt. I, ch. III
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 weeks 2 days ago
I believe government, organized authority, or...

I believe government, organized authority, or the State is necessary only to maintain or protect property and monopoly. It has proven efficient in that function only. As a promoter of individual liberty, human well-being and social harmony, which alone constitute real order, government stands condemned by all the great men of the world...I believe - indeed, I know - that whatever is fine and beautiful in the human expresses and asserts itself in spite of government, and not because of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
1 week 6 days ago
The problem posed by indirect speech...

The problem posed by indirect speech acts is the problem of how it is possible for the speaker to say one thing and mean that but also to mean something else.

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Expression and Meaning, p. 31, Cambridge University Press (1979).
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks 3 days ago
This in turn suggests an answer...

This in turn suggests an answer to our question: what happened between the birth of De Sade and the birth of Krafft-Ebbing? The rise of the novel taught Europe to use its imagination. And when imagination was applied to sex, the result was the rise of pornography -- and of "sexual perversion."

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p. 86
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
1 month 1 week ago
When one considers the sublime disposition...

When one considers the sublime disposition underlying the tmly universal educatiOn (of traditional India) ... then what IS or has been called religion in Europe seems to us to be scarcely deserving of that name. And one feels compelled to advise those who Wish to witness religion to travel to India for that purpose ....

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quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
A creative economy is the fuel...

A creative economy is the fuel of magnificence.

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Aristocracy
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks 3 days ago
And the central assertion of his...

And the central assertion of his philosophy is that this inner realm is the 'spiritual world' and that once man has learned to enter this realm, he realizes that it is not a mere imaginative reflection of the external world, but a world that possesses its own independent reality.

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p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
The man who...
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Main Content / General
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 6 days ago
The way you use the word...

The way you use the word "God" does not show whom you mean - but, rather, what you mean.

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p. 50e
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 1 week ago
Life is, after all, not a...
Life is, after all, not a product of morality.
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Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 1 week ago
It is impossible for any man,...

It is impossible for any man, when the most favourable circumstances concur, to acquire sufficient knowledge and strength of mind to discharge the duties of a king, entrusted with uncontrolled power; how then must they be violated when his very elevation is an insuperable bar to the attainment of either wisdom or virtue; when all the feelings of a man are stifled by flattery, and reflection shut out by pleasure! Surely it is madness to make the fate of thousands depend on the caprice of a weak fellow creature, whose very station sinks him NECESSARILY below the meanest of his subjects! But one power should not be thrown down to exalt another--for all power intoxicates weak man; and its abuse proves, that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
Under the ideal measure of values...

Under the ideal measure of values there lurks the hard cash.

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Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 1, pg. 116.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 1 week ago
If the world is a precipitation...

If the world is a precipitation of human nature, so to speak, then the divine world is a sublimation of the same. Both occur in one act. No precipitation without sublimation. What goes lost there in agility, is won here.

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Fragment No. 96
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
The Virgin Mary remains in the...

The Virgin Mary remains in the middle between Christ and humankind. For in the very moment he was conceived and lived, he was full of grace. All other human beings are without grace, both in the first and second conception. But the Virgin Mary, though without grace in the first conception, was full of grace in the second ... whereas other human beings are conceived in sin, in soul as well as in body, and Christ was conceived without sin in soul as well as in body, the Virgin Mary was conceived in body without grace but in soul full of grace.

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As quoted in Anderson, H. George; Stafford, J. Francis; Burgess, Joseph A., eds. (1992). The One Mediator, The Saints, and Mary. Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue. VIII. Minneapolis: Augsburg. ISBN 0-8066-2579-1., p. 236
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing appears more surprising to those,...

Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.

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Part I, Essay 4: Of The First Principles of Government
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
My life has been full of...

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
Life is just a notebook with...

Life is just a notebook with blank pages. Every time we make a mistake, the pages get stained and living in it becomes impossible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 1 day ago
Once he saw the officials of...

Once he saw the officials of a temple leading away some one who had stolen a bowl belonging to the treasurers, and said, "The great thieves are leading away the little thief."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 weeks 4 days ago
Creativity is the universal of universals...

Creativity is the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matter of fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity.

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Pt. I, ch. 2, sec. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
When you wander, as you often...

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
When you live alone you no...

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

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Diary entry of Tuesday, 30 January
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 week 6 days ago
The real is not only what...

The real is not only what can be reproduced, but that which is already reproduced, the hyper-real.

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Simulations (1983), New York: Semiotext, p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Don't you know that a good...

Don't you know that a good and excellent person does nothing for the sake of appearances, but only for the sake of having acted right?

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Book III, ch. 24, 50.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
The effect of liberty to individuals...

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 weeks 5 days ago
In an information-rich world, the wealth...

In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.

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Simon, H. A. (1971) "Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World" in: Martin Greenberger, Computers, Communication, and the Public Interest, Baltimore. MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. pp. 40-41.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 1 week ago
As the mathematics are now understood,...

As the mathematics are now understood, each branch - or, if you please, each problem, - is but the study of the relations of a collection of connected objects, without parts, without any distinctive characters, except their names or designating letters. These objects are commonly called points; but to remove all notion of space relations, it may be better to name them monads. The relations between these points are mere complications of two different kinds of elementary relations, which may be termed immediate connection and immediate non-connection. All the monads except as serve as intermediaries for the connections have distinctive designations.

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p. 268
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
The dream is the small hidden...

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.

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The Meaning of Psychology for Modern Man
Philosophical Maxims
Protagoras
Protagoras
1 month 3 weeks ago
As touching the gods, I do...

As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.

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Opening lines of Concerning the Gods (DK 80 B4).
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
[My father] impressed upon me from...

[My father] impressed upon me from the first, that the manner in which the world came into existence was a subject on which nothing was known: that the question, "Who made me?" cannot be answered, because we have no experience or authentic information from which to answer it; and that any answer only throws the difficulty a step further back, since the question immediately presents itself, "Who made God?"

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(pp. 42-43)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
None can be an impartial or...

None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 1 week ago
What man calls Absolute Being, his...

What man calls Absolute Being, his God, is his own being. The power of the object over him is therefore the power of his own being. Thus, the power of the object of feeling is the power of feeling itself; the power of the object of reason is the power of reason itself; and the power of the object of will is the power of will itself.

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Introduction, Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 102
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
The administration of the great system...

The administration of the great system of the universe, however, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his comprehension; the care of his own happiness, of that of his family, his friends, his country: that he is occupied in contemplating the more sublime, can never be an excuse for his neglecting the more humble department.

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Section II, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
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