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Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
6 months 6 days ago
It is the business of the...

It is the business of the future to be dangerous; and it is among the merits of science that it equips the future for its duties.

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Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
7 months 1 week ago
For a thinking man is where...

For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 30, 9.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
6 months 2 weeks ago
To the degree to which they...

To the degree to which they correspond to the given reality, thought and behavior express a false consciousness, responding to and contributing to the preservation of a false order of facts. And this false consciousness has become embodied in the prevailing technical apparatus which in turn reproduces it.

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p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
5 months 3 weeks ago
THERE IS NEVER ANYTHING TO PRO-DUCE....

THERE IS NEVER ANYTHING TO PRO-DUCE. In spite of all its materialist efforts, production remains a utopia. We can wear ourselves out in materializing things, in rendering them visible, but we will never cancel the secret.

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(p. 65)
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
6 months 2 weeks ago
No explanation is required for Holy...

No explanation is required for Holy Writing. Whoso speaks truly is full of eternal life, and wonderfully related to genuine mysteries does his Writing appear to us, for it is a Concord from the Symphony of the Universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
6 months 3 weeks ago
[France is] a Country where the...

[France is] a Country where the people, along with their political servitude, have thrown off the Yoke of Laws and morals.

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Letter to William Windham (27 September 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 3 weeks ago
Our chief want in life is...

Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
6 months 3 weeks ago
All is in a man's hands...

All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most. Variant translation: "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most."

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
3 months 2 weeks ago
One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward,...

One Step Forward, Two Steps Backward, written by Lenin, an outstanding member of the Iskra group, is a methodical exposition of the ideas of the ultra-centralist tendency in the Russian movement. The viewpoint presented with incomparable vigor and logic in this book, is that of pitiless centralism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
4 months 1 day ago
By the gods I do not...

By the gods I do not want the Galileans to be killed or beaten unjustly nor to suffer any other ill. I do, however, state that the god-fearing (theosebeis) should be preferred to them ... honour should go to the gods and to the men and cities that worship them.

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As quoted in Julian the Apostate (1978), by G. W. Bowersock, Ch. 8 : The Puritanical Pagan, p, 83
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
They who know the....
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Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
6 months 3 weeks ago
The French want no-one to be...

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

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Journeys to England and Ireland (1835).
Philosophical Maxims
William Kingdon Clifford
William Kingdon Clifford
3 months 3 weeks ago
Riemann has shewn that as there...

Riemann has shewn that as there are different kinds of lines and surfaces, so there are different kinds of space of three dimensions; and that we can only find out by experience to which of these kinds the space in which we live belongs. In particular, the axioms of plane geometry are true within the limits of experiment on the surface of a sheet of paper, and yet we know that the sheet is really covered with a number of small ridges and furrows, upon which (the total curvature not being zero) these axioms are not true. Similarly, he says although the axioms of solid geometry are true within the limits of experiment for finite portions of our space, yet we have no reason to conclude that they are true for very small portions; and if any help can be got thereby for the explanation of physical phenomena, we may have reason to conclude that they are not true for very small portions of space.

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Abstract
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
7 months 3 weeks ago
He blamed as severely what he...

He blamed as severely what he thought a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as if the agents had been consciously evil doers. He would not have accepted as a plea in mitigation for inquisitors, that they sincerely believed burning heretics to be an obligation of conscience. But though he did not allow honesty of purpose to soften his disapprobation of actions, it had its full effect on his estimation of characters. No one prized conscientiousness and rectitude of intention more highly, or was more incapable of valuing any person in whom he did not feel assurance of it.

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(pp. 49-50)
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
4 months ago
Isolated material particles are abstractions, their...

Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.

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"Atomic Physics and the Description of Nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 3 weeks ago
One capitalist always kills many...

One capitalist always kills many.

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Vol. I, Ch. 32, p. 836.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
6 months 1 week ago
In the ancient notion of love,...

In the ancient notion of love, on the other hand, there is an element of anxiety. The noble fears the descent to the less noble, is afraid of being infected and pulled down. The "sage" of antiquity does not have the same firmness, the same inner certainty of himself and his own value, as the genius and hero of Christian love.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 92
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
6 months 4 days ago
Fairness means not to use fraud...

Fairness means not to use fraud and trickery in the exchange of commodities and services and the exchange of feelings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
7 months 3 weeks ago
I do not overlook the fact...

I do not overlook the fact that there are irrationalists who love mankind, and that not all forms of irrationalism engender criminality. But I hold that he who teaches that not reason but love should rule opens up the way for those who rule by hate. (Socrates, I believe, saw something of this when he suggested that mistrust or hatred of argument is related to mistrust or hatred of man).

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Vol. 2, Ch. 24 "Oracular Philosophy and the Revolt against Reason"
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
6 months 1 week ago
The philosophical thought of Kant, the...

The philosophical thought of Kant, the supreme flower of the Germanic people, has its roots in the religious feeling of Luther, and it is not possible for Kantism, especially the practical part of it, to take root and bring forth flower and fruit in peoples who have not undergone the experience of the Reformation and who perhaps were incapable of experiencing it. Kantism is Protestant, and we Spaniards are fundamentally Catholic. And if Krause struck some roots here - more numerous and more permanent than is commonly supposed - it is because Krause has roots in pietism, and pietism, as Ritschl has demonstrated in his Geschichte des Pietismus, has specifically Catholic roots and may be described as the irruption, or rather the persistence of Catholic mysticism in the heart of Protestant rationalism. And this explains why not a few Catholic thinkers in Spain became followers of Krause.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
6 months 2 weeks ago
We must now turn to the...

We must now turn to the question of how the existence of archetypes can be proved. Since archetypes are supposed to produce certain psychic forms, we must discuss how and where one can get hold of the material demonstrating these forms. The main source, then, is dreams, which have the advantage of being involuntary, spontaneous products of nature not falsified by any conscious purpose. By questioning the individual one can ascertain which of the motifs appearing in the dream are known to him... Consequently, we must look for motifs which could not possibly be known to the dreamer and yet behave functionally of the archetype known from historical sources.

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p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
5 months 2 weeks ago
Much of junk culture has a...

Much of junk culture has a core of crisis - shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.

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A Second Half Life (1991), p. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
5 months 2 weeks ago
I don't explain-I explore.

I don't explain-I explore.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
7 months 3 weeks ago
Morality is a subject that interests...

Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: We fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it; and 'tis evident, that this concern must make our speculations appear more real and solid, than where the subject is, in a great measure, indifferent to us. What affects us, we conclude can never be a chimera; and as our passion is engag'd on the one side or the other, we naturally think that the question lies within human comprehension; which, in other cases of this nature, we are apt to entertain some doubt of. Without this advantage I never should have ventur'd upon a third volume of such abstruse philosophy, in an age, wherein the greatest part of men seem agreed to convert reading into an amusement, and to reject every thing that requires any considerable degree of attention to be comprehended.

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Part 1, Section 1
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
3 months 2 weeks ago
Either every imaginable institution is founded...

Either every imaginable institution is founded on a religious concept or it is only a passing phenomenon. Institutions are strong and durable to the degree that they are, so to speak, deified. Not only is human reason, or what is ignorantly called philosophy, incapable of supplying these foundations, which with equal ignorance are called superstitious, but philosophy is, on the contrary, an essentially disruptive force.

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Chapter V, p. 41
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
6 months 2 weeks ago
Another doctrine repugnant to Civill Society,...

Another doctrine repugnant to Civill Society, is that whatsoever a man does against his Conscience, is Sinne; and it dependeth on the presumption of making himself judge of Good and Evill. For a man's Conscience and his Judgement are the same thing, and as the Judgement, so also the Conscience may be erroneous.

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The Second Part, Chapter 29, p. 168
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
6 months 3 weeks ago
A great profusion of things, which...

A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

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Part II Section XIII
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
7 months 3 weeks ago
All gods are homemade, and it...

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours Vijaya in Island.

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1962
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
6 months 2 days ago
A clever child brought up with...

A clever child brought up with a foolish one can itself become foolish. Man is so perfectable and corruptible he can become a fool through good sense.

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F 69
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
7 months 3 weeks ago
It would seem that common sense...

It would seem that common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think it our bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to bring the peace-party and the war-party together, and I believe that the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the program of pacifism which set the military imagination strongly, and to a certain extent justifiably, against it. In the whole discussion both sides are on imaginative and sentimental ground. It is but one utopia against another, and everything one says must be abstract and hypothetical.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
6 months 5 days ago
For me fiction is a manner...

For me fiction is a manner of philosophizing ... Philosophy may be only a shadow of the reality it tries to grasp, but the novel is altogether more satisfactory. I am almost tempted to say that no philosopher is qualified to do his job unless he is also a novelist ... I would certainly exchange any of the works of Whitehead or Wittgenstein for the novels they ought to have written.

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p. 160-1
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
7 months 3 weeks ago
It is the highest impertinence and...

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expence, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. They are themselves always, and without any exception, the greatest spendthrifts in the society. Let them look well after their own expence, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of their subjects never will.

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Chapter III, p. 381.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 months 2 weeks ago
The sphere of consciousness shrinks in...

The sphere of consciousness shrinks in action; no one who acts can lay claim to the universal, for to act is to cling to the properties of being at the expense of being itself, to form a reality to reality's detriment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Pain will force even the truthful...

Pain will force even the truthful to speak falsely.

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Maxim 232
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
7 months 3 weeks ago
Opinion considers the opposition of what...

Opinion considers the opposition of what is true and false quite rigid, and, confronted with a philosophical system, it expects agreement or contradiction. And in an explanation of such a system, opinion still expects to find one or the other.

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Preface, § 2
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
6 months 3 weeks ago
Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue...

Whilst shame keeps its watch, virtue is not wholly extinguished in the heart; nor will moderation be utterly exiled from the minds of tyrants.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plotinus
Plotinus
8 months 1 week ago
We may treat of the Soul...

We may treat of the Soul as in the body whether it be set above it or actually within it since the association of the two constitutes the one thing called the living organism, the Animate. Now from this relation, from the Soul using the body as an instrument, it does not follow that the Soul must share the body's experiences: a man does not himself feel all the experiences of the tools with which he is working.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
8 months 1 week ago
Don't hold yourselves cheap, seeing that...

Don't hold yourselves cheap, seeing that the creator of all things and of you estimates your value so high, so dear, that he pours out for you every day the most precious blood of his only-begotten Son.

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216:3:1
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
4 months 2 weeks ago
Among all the great men who...

Among all the great men who have philosophized about this remarkable effect, I am more astonished at Kepler than at any other. Despite his open and acute mind, and though he has at his fingertips the motions attributed to the earth, he nevertheless lent his ear and his assent to the moon's dominion over the waters, to occult properties, and to such puerilities.

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In regard to Kepler's belief of the moon affecting the tides of the Earth, p. 328
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 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
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
7 months 3 weeks ago
You must be afraid, my son....

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

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Mother to her young son, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 months 1 week ago
There is clear truth in the...

There is clear truth in the idea that a struggle from the lower classes of society, towards the upper regions and rewards of society, must ever continue. Strong men are born there, who ought to stand elsewhere than there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for...

Philosophers write for professors; thinkers for writers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
11 months 4 weeks ago
You are the buyer of your own life

They are trying as directly as possible to sell you experiences, i.e. what you are able to do with the car, not the car as a product itself. An extreme example of this is this existing economic marketing concept, which basically evaluates the value of you as a potential consumer of your own life. Like how much are you worth, in the sense of all you will spend to buy back your own life as a certain quality life. You will spend so much in doctors, so much in beauty, so much in transcendental meditation, so much for music, and so on. What you are buying is a certain image and practice of your life. So what is your market potential, as a buyer of your own life in this sense?

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
7 months 1 week ago
Philip being arbitrator betwixt two wicked...

Philip being arbitrator betwixt two wicked persons, he commanded one to fly out of Macedonia and the other to pursue him.

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36 Philip
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible...

Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of Nature. She shows us only surfaces, but she is million fathoms deep.

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p. 183
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
5 months 2 weeks ago
In particular, it is certainly wrong...

In particular, it is certainly wrong to condemn poor old Homo sapiens as the only species to kill his own kind, the only inheritor of the mark of Cain, and similar melodramatic charges. Whether a naturalist stresses the violence or the restraint of animal aggression depends partly on the kinds of animals he is used to watching, and partly on his evolutionary preconceptions-Lorenz is, after all, a 'good of the species' man. Even if it has been exaggerated, the gloved fist view of animal fights seems to have at least some truth. Superficially this looks like a form of altruism. The selfish gene theory must face up to the difficult task of explaining it. Why is it that animals do not go all out to kill rival members of their species at every possible opportunity?

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Ch. 5. Aggression: stability and the selfish machine
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
6 months 2 weeks ago
There is nothing impossible in the...

There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.

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The Genteel Tradition at Bay
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
4 months 4 weeks ago
In thinking of history in this...

In thinking of history in this [progressive & eschatological] way Islam shares common ground with Christianity and with the secular creeds of the modern West. It is misleading to represent Islam and 'the West' as forming civilisations that have nothing in common. Christianity and Islam are integral parts of western monotheism, and as such they share a view of history that marks them off from the rest of the world. Both are militant faiths that seek to convert all humankind. Other religions have been implicated in twentieth-century violence-the state cult of Shintō in Japan during the militarist period and Hindu nationalism in contemporary India, for example. But only Christianity and Islam have engendered movements that are committed to the systematic use of force to achieve universal goals.

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Enlightenment and Terror in the Twentieth Century: Terror and the Western Tradition
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
7 months 3 weeks ago
I regard religion as a disease...

I regard religion as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

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Philosophical Maxims
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