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Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 4 weeks ago
Since it is every man's interest...

Since it is every man's interest to be happy through the whole of life, it is the wisdom of every one to employ philosophy in the search of felicity without delay; and there cannot be a greater folly, than to be always beginning to live.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
In place of the bourgeois society,...

In place of the bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, shall we have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

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Section 2, paragraph 72 (last paragraph).
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 1 week ago
Man grows used to everything, the...

Man grows used to everything, the scoundrel.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 1 week ago
Descartes may have made a lot...

Descartes may have made a lot of mistakes, but he was right about this: you cannot doubt the existence of your own consciousness. That's the first feature of consciousness, it's real and irreducible. You cannot get rid of it by showing that it's an illusion in a way that you can with other standard illusions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
3 months 4 weeks ago
I do not accept any absolute...

I do not accept any absolute formulas for living. No preconceived code can see ahead to everything that can happen in a man's life. As we live, we grow and our beliefs change. They must change. So I think we should live with this constant discovery. We should be open to this adventure in heightened awareness of living. We should stake our whole existence on our willingness to explore and experience.

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As quoted in Martin Buber : An Intimate Portrait (1971), p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
Romeo wants Juliet as the filings...

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

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Ch. 1 : The Scope of Psychology
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 5 days ago
How important can it be that...

How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 3 weeks ago
Il n'est possible d'aimer et d'être...

Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.

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p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 2 weeks ago
I like to think of criticism...

I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.

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"The Function of Criticism at the Present Time", in The China Critic, Vol. III, no. 4 (23 January 1930), p. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
Keep cool: it will be all...

Keep cool: it will be all one a hundred years hence.

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Montaigne; or, The Skeptic
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 5 days ago
Man starts over again everyday, in...

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 1 week ago
Go further, and require each of...

Go further, and require each of them to make a contribution: you will see how many things are still missing, and you will be obliged to get the assistance of a large number of men who belong to different classes, priceless men, but to whom the gates of the academies are nonetheless closed because of their social station. All the members of these learned societies are more than is needed for a single object of human science; all the societies together are not sufficient for a science of man in general.

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Article on Encyclopedia
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 1 week ago
Truths obtained by Induction are made...

Truths obtained by Induction are made compact and permanent by being expressed in 'Technical Terms'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 6 days ago
Every day should be passed as...

Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

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Maxim 633
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
The unitive knowledge of the Divine...

The unitive knowledge of the Divine Ground has, as its necessary condition, self-abnegation and charity. Only by means of self-abnegation and charity can we clear away the evil, folly and ignorance which constitute the thing we call our personality and prevent us from becoming aware of the spark of divinity illuminating the inner man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 5 days ago
The erotic instinct is something questionable,...

The erotic instinct is something questionable, and will always be so whatever a future set of laws may have to say on the matter. It belongs, on the one hand, to the original animal nature of man, which will exist as long as man has an animal body. On the other hand, it is connected with the highest forms of the spirit. But it blooms only when the spirit and instinct are in true harmony. If one or the other aspect is missing, then an injury occurs, or at least there is a one-sided lack of balance which easily slips into the pathological. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 week ago
All that is not eternal is...

All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.

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"Charity"
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 6 days ago
There are degrees of justice, Elijah....

There are degrees of justice, Elijah. When the lesser is incompatible with the greater, the lesser must give way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 2 weeks ago
Evil destroyeth itself.

Evil destroyeth itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iamblichus
Iamblichus
1 month 6 days ago
The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect"...

The Pythagoreans called the monad "intellect" because they thought that intellect was akin to the One; for among the virtues, they likened the monad to moral wisdom; for what is correct is one. And they called it "being," "cause of truth," "simple," "paradigm," "order," "concord," "what is equal among the greater and the lesser," "the mean between intensity and slackness," "moderation in plurality," "the instant now in time," and moreover they call it "ship," "chariot," "friend," "life," "happiness."

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On the Monad
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
2 months 4 days ago
The idea of universal human dignity...

The idea of universal human dignity ultimately comes out of Christianity... the view that all human beings are equal in the sight of God because they have the capacity for moral choice. As Western thought developed in the 17th-18th centuries, this took on a secular form under thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau or Immanuel Kant or Georg Hegel, who argued that human equality is... based on human autonomy.

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11:12
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 2 weeks ago
Blair has been the modern man...

Blair has been the modern man he claims to be: for him, a sense of subjective certainty is all that is needed for an action to be right. If deception is needed to realise the providential design, it cannot be truly deceitful.

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Neoconned!: How Blair took New Labour for a ride, The Independent
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
The images of mankind have become...

The images of mankind have become the most basic thing about them. And they're all software, and disembodied.

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(p. 346)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
The doctrines of Jesus are simple,...

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 1 week ago
Lying... is so ill a quality,...

Lying... is so ill a quality, and the mother of so many ill ones that spawn from it, and take shelter under it, that a child should be brought up in the greatest abhorrence of it imaginable. It should be always spoke of before him with the utmost detestation, as a quality so wholly inconsistent with the name and character of a gentleman, that no body of any credit can bear the imputation of a lie; a mark that is judg'd in utmost disgrace, which debases a man to the lowest degree of a shameful meanness, and ranks him with the most contemptible part of mankind and the abhorred rascality; and is not to be endured in any one who would converse with people of condition, or have any esteem or reputation in the world.

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Sec. 131
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 2 weeks ago
If we already lived in a...

If we already lived in a cruelty-free world, the notion of re-introducing suffering, exploitation and creatures eating each other would seem not so much frightful as unimaginable - no more seriously conceivable than reverting to surgery without anaesthesia today.

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Reprogramming Predators, BLTC Research, 2009
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 5 days ago
"This is the truth," we say....

"This is the truth," we say. "You can discuss it as much as you want; we aren't interested. But in a few years there'll be the police who will show you we are right."

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 1 week ago
You can hardly convince a man...

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 2 weeks ago
Some will object that the Law...

Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me that I must be justified by it.

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Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
Where the preamble declares, that coercion...

Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting "Jesus Christ," so that it would read "A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;" the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.

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Referring to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom, in his Autobiography, 1821
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
4 months 6 days ago
You know I am not born...

You know I am not born to tread in the beaten track - the peculiar bent of my nature pushes me on.

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Letter to Everina Wollstonecraft
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 months 2 days ago
Never in the history of the...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 3 weeks ago
We are really no longer ourselves...

We are really no longer ourselves a part of nature at the moment when we notice, when we recognize, that we are a part of nature.

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Probleme der Moralphilosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1996), p. 154; as quoted in Andrew Bowie, Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy (Cambridge: Polity, 2013), p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 5 days ago
We are accustomed to speak of...

We are accustomed to speak of ideas as reproduced, as passed from mind to mind, as similar or dissimilar to one another, and, in short, as if they were substantial things; nor can any reasonable objection be raised to such expressions. But taking the word "idea" in the sense of an event in an individual consciousness, it is clear that an idea once past is gone forever, and any supposed recurrence of it is another idea. These two ideas are not present in the same state of consciousness, and therefore cannot possibly be compared.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
2 months 2 weeks ago
Any plea ... for institutionalized risk-assessment,...

Any plea ... for institutionalized risk-assessment, beefed-up bioethics panels, academic review bodies, worse-case scenario planning, more intensive computer simulations, systematic long-term planning and the institutionalized study of existential risks is admirable. But so is urgent action to combat the global pandemic of suffering. "The easiest pain to bear is someone else's"

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Objections, No 34
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
Too little liberty brings stagnation, and...

Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.

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Authority and the Individual (1949), p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
Communism... is the genuine resolution of...

Communism... is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.

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Private Property and Communism, p. 43.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 1 week ago
The present state of France was...

The present state of France was ten times worse than a tyranny. The new constitution was said to be an experiment but the assertion was not true. It had already been tried, and had been found to be only productive of evils. They would go on from tyranny to tyranny, from oppression to oppression, till at last the whole system would terminate in the destruction of that miserable and deluded people... He sincerely hoped that no member of that House would ever barter the constitution of this country, the eternal jewel of their souls, for a wild and visionary system, which could only lead to confusion and disorder.

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Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 397
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
...the prisoner's dreams is the guard's...

...the prisoner's dreams is the guard's spirituality.

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p. 400
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 1 week ago
Those who believe that they are...

Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something.

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"Note on Dogma"
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 1 day ago
We are again confronted with one...

We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, ... the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
4 months 1 week ago
There is something beautiful about virtue,...

There is something beautiful about virtue, Captain. But I am just a poor guy.

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Scene VI.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 week ago
He did not, and could not,...

He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation of an activity unknown to him, which was his life.

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About Platon Karataev in Bk. XII, ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
When the changes of our times...

When the changes of our times gave you an opportunity, you restored to the use of man that genius of your father for which he had suffered, and made him in real truth immortal by publishing as an eternal memorial of him those books which that bravest of men had written with his own blood. You have done a great service to Roman literature: a large part of Cordus's books had been burned; a great service to posterity, who will receive a true account of events, which cost its author so dear; and a great service to himself, whose memory flourishes and ever will flourish, as long as men set any value upon the facts of Roman history, as long as anyone lives who wishes to review the deeds of our fathers, to know what a true Roman was like - one who still remained unconquered when all other necks were broken in to receive the yoke of Sejanus, one who was free in every thought, feeling, and act.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 1 week ago
I deplore with you the putrid...

I deplore with you the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed, and the malignity, the vulgarity, & mendacious spirit of those who write for them: and I enclose you a recent sample, the production of a New England judge, as a proof of the abyss of degradation into which we are fallen. These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our functionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief. That this has in a great degree been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit I agree with you...

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Letter to Walter Jones (2 January 1814)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Genet is a man-failure....
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Main Content / General
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Look now, this is the starting...

Look now, this is the starting point of philosophy: the recognition that different people have conflicting opinions, the rejection of mere opinion so that it comes to be viewed with mistrust, an investigation of opinion to determine whether it is rightly held, and the discovery of a standard of judgement, comparable to the balance that we have devised for the determining of weights, or the carpenter's rule for determining whether things are straight or crooked.

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Book II, ch. 11, 13.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
I am the center of my...

I am the center of my universe, the center of the universe, and in my supreme anguish I cry with Michelet, "Mon moi, ils m'arrachent mon moi!" What is a man profited if he shall gain the world and lose his own soul? (Matt. xvi. 26).

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 5 days ago
The leadership has failed. Even so,...

The leadership has failed. Even so, the leadership can and must be recreated from the masses and out of the masses. The masses are the decisive element, they are the rock on which the final victory of the revolution will be built. The masses were on the heights; they have developed this 'defeat' into one of the historical defeats which are the pride and strength of international socialism. And that is why the future victory will bloom from this 'defeat'. 'Order reigns in Berlin!' You stupid henchmen! Your 'order' is built on sand. Tomorrow the revolution will already 'raise itself with a rattle' and announce with fanfare, to your terror: I was, I am, I will be!

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"Order reigns in Berlin", Last written words. Collected Works 4
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 3 weeks ago
It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that...

It cannot be sufficiently emphasized that revolution is in vain unless inspired by its ultimate ideal. Revolutionary methods must be in tune with revolutionary aims. The means used to further the revolution must harmonize with its purposes. In short, the ethical values which the revolution is to establish in the new society must be initiated with the revolutionary activities of the so-called transitional period. The latter can serve as a real and dependable bridge to the better life only if built of the same material as the life to be achieved.

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Philosophical Maxims
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