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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
"I wish I had never been...

"I wish I had never been born," she said. "What are we born for?" "For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. "You can step out into it at any moment..."

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Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months ago
But the Jews are so hardened...

But the Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing; though overcome by testimonies they yield not an inch. It is a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. If they give a prince or magistrate a thousand florins, they extort twenty thousand from the subjects in payment. We must ever keep on guard against them.

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863
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
Each of the parts of philosophy...

Each of the parts of philosophy is a philosophical whole, a circle rounded and complete in itself. In each of these parts, however, the philosophical Idea is found in a particular specificality or medium. The single circle, because it is a real totality, bursts through the limits imposed by its special medium, and gives rise to a wider circle. The whole of philosophy in this way resembles a circle of circles. The Idea appears in each single circle, but, at the same time, the whole Idea is constituted by the system of these peculiar phases, and each is a necessary member of the organisation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 4 days ago
The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive...

The narcissistic, the domineering, the possessive woman can succeed in being a "loving" mother as long as the child is small. Only the really loving woman, the woman who is happier in giving than in taking, who is firmly rooted in her own existence, can be a loving mother when the child is in the process of separation.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
1 month 1 week ago
At root what is needed for...

At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too.

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S.4
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
Self-education is, I firmly believe, the...

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 weeks 6 days ago
Even a single hair casts its...

Even a single hair casts its shadow.

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Maxim 228
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 1 week ago
For it is not death or...

For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.

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(Book II, ch. 1) Book II, ch. 1, 13.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
The pre-atomist multisensory void was an...

The pre-atomist multisensory void was an animate, pulsating, and moving vibrant interval, neither container nor contained, acoustic space penetrated by tactility.

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p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Even when he turns from religion,...

Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create false gods, he then feverishly adopts them; his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
The more I think about it,...

The more I think about it, the more obvious it becomes to me that the Poles are une nation foutue [a finished nation] who can only continue to serve a purpose until such time as Russia herself becomes caught up into the agrarian revolution. From that moment Poland will have absolutely no raison d'étre any more. The Poles' sole contribution to history has been to indulge in foolish pranks at once valiant and provocative. Nor can a single moment be cited when Poland, even if only by comparison with Russia, has successfully represented progress or done anything of historical significance.

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Letter to Karl Marx
Philosophical Maxims
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
3 months 5 days ago
Love hath so long…

Love hath so long possessed me for his ownAnd made his lordship so familiar.

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Chapter XXIV
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 3 weeks ago
Lenin saying things that seem true....
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Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks 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
Parmenides
Parmenides
2 months 1 week ago
There is one story left, one...

There is one story left, one road: that it is. And on this road there are very many signs that, being, is uncreated and imperishable, whole, unique, unwavering, and complete.

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Frag. B 8.1-4, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics, 144
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
Communism is the doctrine of the...

Communism is the doctrine of the conditions of the liberation of the proletariat.

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Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
1 week 6 days ago
Far less import than your belief...

Far less import than your belief of whether god exists is what you think your belief entails. Does it direct your behaviour by rules and commandments that are set out before you or does it require you to think them through yourself? Does it require you to try to make sense of the world, or does it give up on sense itself? And I think these are the crucial distinctions. Not whether you add belief in a god to them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 5 days ago
With the conception that the Revolution...

With the conception that the Revolution was only a means of securing political power, it was inevitable that all revolutionary values should be subordinated to the needs of the Socialist State; indeed, exploited to further the security of the newly acquired governmental power.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 day ago
Human intuitions are systematically biased. Evolutionary...

Human intuitions are systematically biased. Evolutionary psychology explains how our moral intuitions and the rationalisations they spawn have been shaped by millennia of natural selection to maximise the inclusive fitness of our genes, not to track the welfare of other sentient beings impartially conceived. Many human cultures have found nothing intuitively wrong with aggressive warfare, slavery, wife-beating, infanticide or female genital mutilation. Ultimately, folk morality is a doomed enterprise as hopeless as folk physics. A mature posthuman ethics, I'd argue, must be committed to the well-being of all sentient life; and mature posthuman technology offers the means to deliver that commitment.

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"Post-Darwinian Ethics?", H+ Magazine, May 2009
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
1 month 4 weeks ago
Animals and plants are living effects...

Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; this Nature ... is none other than God in things... Diverse living things represent diverse divinities and diverse powers, which, besides the absolute being they possess, obtain the being communicated to all things according to their capacity and measure. Whence all of God is in all things (although not totally, but in some more abundantly and in others less) ... Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion.... To the extent that one communicates with Nature, so one ascends to Divinity through Nature.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 1 week ago
No tyranny is more...

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.

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See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Legal and economic equality are absolutely...

Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
A book can never be anything...

A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author's thoughts [Ein Buch kann nie mehr seyn, als der Abdruck der Gedanken des Verfassers]. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter - that is to say, what he has thought about it.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 day ago
As well as seriously - indeed...

As well as seriously - indeed exhaustively - researching everything that could conceivably go wrong, I think we should also investigate what could go right. The world is racked by suffering. The hedonic treadmill might more aptly be called a dolorous treadmill. Hundreds of millions of people are currently depressed, pain-ridden or both. Hundreds of billions of non-human animals are suffering too. If we weren't so inured to a world of pain and misery, then the biosphere would be reckoned in the throes of a global medical emergency. Thanks to breakthroughs in biotechnology, pain-thresholds, default anxiety levels, hedonic range and hedonic set-points are all now adjustable parameters in human and non-human animals alike. We are living in the final century of life on Earth in which suffering is biologically inevitable. As a society, we need an ethical debate about how much pain and misery we want to preserve and create. How do you break the hedonic treadmill?"

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, Quora, 6 Apr. 2019
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
I do not wish to kill...

I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
Life has no meaning a priori...

Life has no meaning a priori ... It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.

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p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 weeks ago
Every word instantly becomes a concept...
Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.
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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Be ye therefore ready also: for...

Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

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12:40
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks ago
I find that all my thoughts...

I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.

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Sources: David John Tacey (2007)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
God gave us the gift of...

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
There ought to be system of...

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 2 weeks ago
Harvard now, I think, suffers from...

Harvard now, I think, suffers from a kind of self-idolatry, that it needs to be critical of itself in order to grow. And again, if you can be in contact with the best of its past, then it's got a chance. But if it just remains well adjusted to the status quo, generating careerist and opportunist students rather than critically oriented students who have a heart and soul, concerned about suffering here and around the world - then Harvard has a chance. I'm not giving up on Harvard, but I am making my way to New York.

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Speaking in Too Radical for Harvard? Cornel West on Failed Fight for Tenure, Biden's First 50 Days & More, Democracy Now!
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Where are my sensations? They have...

Where are my sensations? They have melted into... me, and what is this me, this self, but the sum of these evaporated sensations?

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 3 weeks ago
Collectively, the more civilized men are,...

Collectively, the more civilized men are, the more they are actors. They assume the appearance of attachment, of esteem for others, of modesty, and of disinterestedness, without ever deceiving anyone, because everyone understands that nothing sincere is meant. Persons are familiar with this, and it is even a good thing that this is so in this world, for when men play these roles, virtues are gradually established, whose appearance had up until now only been affected. These virtues ultimately will become part of the actor's disposition. To deceive the deceiver in ourselves, or the tendency to deceive, is a fresh return to obedience.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 37
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
His disciples said to Him, "When...

His disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?" Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the Kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it."

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months ago
I'd rather be ruled by a...

I'd rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.

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The earliest published source for such a statement yet located is in Pat Robertson - Where He Stands (1988) by Hubert Morken, p. 42, where such a comment is attributed to Luther without citation.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
On the other hand, the cheapest...

On the other hand, the cheapest form of pride is national pride; for the man affected therewith betrays a want of individual qualities of which he might be proud, since he would not otherwise resort to that which he shares with so many millions. The man who possesses outstanding personal qualities will rather see most clearly the faults of his own nation, for he has them constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool, who has nothing in the world whereof he could be proud, resorts finally to being proud of the very nation to which he belongs. In this he finds compensation and is now ready and thankful to defend, ... all the faults and follies peculiar to it.

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From 'Parerga and Paralipomena', Vol. 1, Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life, 'What A Man Represents', pp. 360
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
How much good it would do...

How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.

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A characteristic saying of Russell, reported by Aldous Huxley in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell dated 8 October 1917, as quoted in Bibliography of Bertrand Russell, Routledge, 2013
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 2 weeks ago
As soon as we cease to...

As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs, then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

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"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
Music is an ocean, but the...

Music is an ocean, but the repertory is hardly even a lake; it is a pond.

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Interview, Time magazine, December 1957
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 1 week ago
In peace, as a wise man….

In peace, as a wise man, he should make suitable preparation for war.

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Book II, satire ii, line 111
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
Newspapers are the second hand of...

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 19, § 233
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 weeks 4 days ago
The world becomes full of organisms...

The world becomes full of organisms that have what it takes to become ancestors. That, in a sentence, is Darwinism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Grecian are youthful and erring...

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 day ago
The negative utilitarian might reply that...

The negative utilitarian might reply that this formulation of the problem is misleading. We do not live in a notional world where only a pinprick, minor pains, or even just "mild" suffering exists. In the real world, frightful horrors as well as humdrum malaise occur every day. The intensity of suffering is sometimes so dreadful that its victims are prepared to destroy themselves to bring their torment to an end. Each year, some 800,000 people across the planet kill themselves while in the grip of suicidal despair. Tens of millions of people are severely depressed or suffer chronic neuropathic pain. By way of contrast, the genteel conventions of an ethics seminar in academic philosophy, or the scholarly technicalities of a journal article, simply fail to come to terms with the enormity of what's at stake. To talk of a "pinprick" is to trivialise the NU ethical stance.

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"The Pinprick Argument", BLTC Research, 2005
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 3 weeks ago
Yet it seems extraordinary that the...

Yet it seems extraordinary that the justice of increasing the expectations of the better placed by a billion dollars, say, should turn on whether the prospects of the least favored increase or decrease by a penny.

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Chapter III, Section 26, pg. 157
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
What would really satisfy us would...

What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all".

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
There are more ideas on earth...

There are more ideas on earth than intellectuals imagine. And these ideas are more active, stronger, more resistant, more passionate than "politicians" think. We have to be there at the birth of ideas, the bursting outward of their force: not in books expressing them, but in events manifesting this force, in struggles carried on around ideas, for or against them. Ideas do not rule the world. But it is because the world has ideas (and because it constantly produces them) that it is not passively ruled by those who are its leaders or those who would like to teach it, once and for all, what it must think.

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As quoted in Michel Foucault (1991) by Didier Eribon, as translated by Betsy Wind, Harvard University Press, p. 282
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
If, as I maintain and firmly...

If, as I maintain and firmly believe, there is no objective definition of intelligence, and what we call intelligence is only a creation of cultural fashion and subjective prejudice, what the devil is it we test when we make use of an intelligence test?

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
3 months 1 week ago
All human laws are nourished by...

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.

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Philosophical Maxims
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