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Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 3 weeks ago
Who is going to educate the...

Who is going to educate the human race in the principles and practice of conservation?

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Chapter 12 (p. 112)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 3 weeks ago
'But why,' (some ask), 'why, if...

But why,' (some ask), 'why, if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own?' Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality. One can see the principle at work in his characterization. Much that in a realistic work would be done by 'character delineation' is here done simply by making the character an elf, a dwarf, or a hobbit. The imagined beings have their insides on the outside; they are visible souls. And Man as a whole, Man pitted against the universe, have we seen him at all till we see that he is like a hero in a fairy tale?

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p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 1 week ago
The first thing that we know...

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 3 weeks ago
An old proverb fetched from the...

An old proverb fetched from the outward and visible world says: "Only the man that works gets the bread." Strangely enough this proverb does not aptly apply in that world to which it expressly belongs. For the outward world is subjected to the law of imperfection, and again and again the experience is repeated that he too who does not work gets the bread, and that he who sleeps gets it more abundantly than the man who works. In the outward world everything is made payable to the bearer, this world is in bondage to the law of indifference, and to him who has the ring, the spirit of the ring is obedient, whether he be Noureddin or Aladdin, and he who has the world's treasure, has it, however he got it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 2 weeks ago
I regard Peter as one of...

I regard Peter as one of the great moralists, because I suspect that more than anyone he has helped to change the attitudes of very many people to the sufferings of animals. Peter is a utilitarian in normative ethics, and a humane attitude to animals is a natural corollary of utilitarianism. Utilitarian concern for animals goes back to Bentham, who, presumably alluding to the Kantians, said that the question was not whether animals can reason, but whether they can suffer.

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J. J. C. Smart, Reply to Singer, in Philip Pettit, Richard Sylvan and Jean Norman (eds.), Metaphysics and Morality: Essays in Honour of J. J. C. Smart, Oxford, 1987, p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
A straightforward, honest person should be...

A straightforward, honest person should be like someone who stinks: when you're in the same room with him, you know it.

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(Hays translation) XI, 15
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 3 weeks ago
As for him who neither possesses...

As for him who neither possesses nor can acquire them, let him take to heart the words of Hesiod: He is the best of all who thinks for himself in all things. He, too, is good who takes advice from a wiser (person). But he who neither thinks for himself, nor lays to heart another's wisdom, this is a useless man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 3 weeks ago
A man who is so exceedingly...

A man who is so exceedingly civil that for the sake of quietude and a peaceable name will silently see the community imposed upon, or their rights invaded, may, in his principles, be a good man, but cannot be stiled a useful one, neither does he come up to the full mark of his duty; for silence becomes a kind of crime when it operates as a cover or an encouragement to the guilty. 

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"To the People of America", Pennsylvania Packet, January 23, 1779
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 2 weeks ago
Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too....

Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 months 4 days ago
For us in Russia, communism is...

For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while, for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.

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BBC Radio broadcast, Russian service, as quoted in The Listener
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
5 months 2 weeks ago
Common sense doesn't have the last...

Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

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p. 166.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 6 days ago
This, I feel, is missing a...

This, I feel, is missing a vital point: that the sceptic is often a totally honest person who, for perfectly good, sound reasons, simply cannot see a case for belief. In fact many -- like Courty Bryan -- admit that they would like to be convinced, but find it impossible.

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p. 77
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 2 weeks ago
At the end of the Middle...

At the end of the Middle Ages, leprosy disappeared from the Western world. In the margins of the community, at the gates of cities, there stretched wastelands which sickness had ceased to haunt but had left sterile and long uninhabitable. For centuries, these reaches would belong to the non-human. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, they would wait, soliciting with strange incantations a new incarnation of disease, another grimace of terror, renewed rites of purification and exclusion.

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Part One: 1. Stultifera Navis
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 3 weeks ago
One of the many effects of...

One of the many effects of television on radio has been to shift radio from an entertainment medium into a kind of nervous information system.

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(p. 298)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 day ago
Even opinion is of force enough...

Even opinion is of force enough to make itself to be espoused at the expense of life.

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Book I, Ch. 40. Of Good and Evil, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 1 week ago
Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself...

Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny.

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"Wave Mechanics," p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 3 weeks ago
The present is always invisible because...

The present is always invisible because it's environmental. No environment is perceptible, simply because it saturates the whole field of attention.

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Mademoiselle: the magazine for the smart young woman, Volume 64, 1966, p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 1 week ago
The meaning of relativity has...

The meaning of relativity has been widely misunderstood. Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. Relativity, as I see it, merely denotes that certain physical and mechanical facts, which have been regarded as positive and permanent, are relative with regard to certain other facts in the sphere of physics and mechanics. It does not mean that everything in life is relative and that we have the right to turn the whole world mischievously topsy-turvy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 2 days ago
Death is a friend of ours;...

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

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An Essay on Death, published in The Remaines of the Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam (1648), which may not have been written by Bacon
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 3 weeks ago
Lands for the purposes of pleasure...

Lands for the purposes of pleasure and magnificence, parks, gardens, public walks, &c. possessions which are every where considered as causes of expence, not as sources of revenue, seem to be the only lands which, in a great and civilized monarchy, ought to belong the crown.

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Chapter II, Part I, p. 891.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is a very hard undertaking...

It is a very hard undertaking to seek to please everybody.

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Maxim 675
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
6 months 1 week ago
They are such fools that they...

They are such fools that they seem to expect that, though the Republic is lost, their fish-ponds will be safe.

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Letters to Atticus, Book I, 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 3 weeks ago
Since my earliest childhood a barb...

Since my earliest childhood a barb of sorrow has lodged in my heart. As long as it stays I am ironic - if it is pulled out I shall die.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 3 weeks ago
There is no method of reasoning...

There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blameable, than in philosophical debates to endeavour to refute any hypothesis by a pretext of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality. When any opinion leads us into absurdities, 'tis certainly false; but 'tis not certain an opinion is false, because 'tis of dangerous consequence.

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Part 3, Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 months 6 days ago
A life which does not go...

A life which does not go into action is a failure.

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Vol. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 3 weeks ago
The young today cannot follow narrative...

The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.

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Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 3 weeks ago
Much of the obscurity of our...

Much of the obscurity of our effort so far against terrorism originates in the now official idea that the enemy is evil and that we are (therefore) good, which is the precise mirror image of the official idea of the terrorists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 weeks ago
Darwin made it possible to be...

Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

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Chapter 1 "Explaining the Very Improbable" (p. 6)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 3 weeks ago
In England, success in the profession...

In England, success in the profession of the law leads to some very great objects of ambition; and yet how few men, born to easy fortunes, have ever in this country been eminent in that profession?

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Chapter I, Part III, p. 824.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted...

Rousseau's writings are so admirably adapted to touch both these classes that the effect they produced, especially in France, is easily intelligible.

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"On The Natural Inequality of Men"
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 3 weeks ago
Good and strong will. Mechanism must...

Good and strong will. Mechanism must precede science (learning). Also in morals and religion? Too much discipline makes one narrow and kills proficiency. Politeness belongs, not to discipline, but to polish, and thus comes last.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 9
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
I am convinced our own happiness...

I am convinced our own happiness requires that we should continue to mix with the world, and to keep pace with it as it goes; and that every person who retires from free communication with it is severely punished afterwards by the state of mind into which he gets, and which can only be prevented by feeding our sociable principles. I can speak from experience on this subject. From 1793 to 1797 I remained closely at home, saw none but those who came there, and at length became very sensible of the ill effect it had on my own mind, and of its direct and irresistible tendency to render me unfit for society and uneasy when necessarily engaged in it. I felt enough of the effect of withdrawing from the world then to see that it led to an anti-social and misanthropic state of mind, which severely punishes him who gives in to it; and it will be a lesson I never shall forget as to myself.

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Letter to Maria Jefferson Eppes
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 3 weeks ago
And thus Christianity is played in...

And thus Christianity is played in, Christendom. Artists in dramatic costumes make their appearance in artistic buildings-there really is no danger at all, anything but that: the teacher is a royal functionary, steadily promoted, making a career-and how he dramatically plays Christianity, in short, he plays comedy. He lectures about renunciation, but he himself is being steadily promoted; he teaches all that about despising worldly titles and rank, but he himself is making a career.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 3 weeks ago
For in spite of language, in...

For in spite of language, in spite of intelligence and intuition and sympathy, one can never really communicate anything to anybody.

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"Sermons in Cats"
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 months 1 week ago
Sir William Hunter, estimated that 40,000,000...

Sir William Hunter, estimated that 40,000,000 of the people of India were seldom or never able to satisfy their hunger. In 1901, 272,000 died of plague introduced from abroad, in 1902, 500,000 died of plague; in 1903, 800,000; in 1904, 1,000,000. We can now understand why there are famines in India. Their cause, in plain terms, is not the absence of food, but the inability of the people to pay for it. It was hoped the railways would solve the problem...the fact that the worst famines have come since the building of the railways...behind all these, as the fundamental source of the terrible famines in India, lies such merciless exploitation, such unbalanced exploitation of goods, and such brutal collection of high taxes in the very midst of famine....

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(source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p.50-53).
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 3 weeks ago
The "second sight"....
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Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
4 months 1 week ago
He was arrested twice; he was...

He was arrested twice; he was taken in 1922 for a midnight interrogation with Dzerjinsky; Kamenev was also there. ... But Berdyaev did not humiliate himself, he did not beg, he firmly professed the moral and religious principles by virtue of which he did not adhere to the party in power; and not only did they judge that there was no point in putting him on trial, but he was freed. Now there is a man who had a "point of view"!

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Richard Schain, in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005), Ch. 7 : Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev - A Champion of the Spirit, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
Fear? If I have gained anything...

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Another parable put he forth unto...

Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field: But while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest: and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them: but gather the wheat into my barn.

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13:24-30 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 months 4 days ago
Ego is a social institution with...

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word "water" is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.

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Buddhism : The Religion of No-Religion
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 1 week ago
Heaven, in the production of things,...

Heaven, in the production of things, is sure to be bountiful to them, according to their qualities. Hence the tree that is flourishing, it nourishes, while that which is ready to fall, it overthrows.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 months 6 days ago
No being can be what he...

No being can be what he is unless he is putting his essence into action in his field.

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Vol. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 1 week ago
Live always in the best company...

Live always in the best company when you read.

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Vol. I, ch. 10, p. 370
Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
5 months 1 week ago
What needs saying…

What needs saying is worth saying twice.

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fr. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
2 months 2 days ago
I truly cannot say what the...

I truly cannot say what the person who still has hope for man should think of the imminence of quasi-apocalyptic destruction. It would certainly force many to face the existential problem in all its nakedness, and subject them to extreme trials; but is this a worse evil than that of mankind's safe, secure, satisfied, and total consignment to the kind of happiness that befits Nietzsche's "last man": a comfortable consumer civilization of socialized human animals, aided by all the discoveries of science and industry and reproducing demographically in a squirming, catastrophic crescendo?

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p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
5 months 2 weeks ago
Almost as soon as I began...

Almost as soon as I began to study philosophy, I was impressed by the way in which philosophical problems appeared, disappeared, or changed shape, as a result of new assumptions or vocabularies.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 3 weeks ago
It is simply no good trying...

It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go-let it die away-go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow-and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. It is because so few people understand this that you find many middle-aged men and women maundering about their lost youth, at the very age when new horizons ought to be appearing and new doors opening all round them. It is much better fun to learn to swim than to go on endlessly (and hopelessly) trying to get back the feeling you had when you first went paddling as a small boy.

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Book III, Chapter 6, "Christian Marriage"
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 3 weeks ago
Universal is known according to reason,...

Universal is known according to reason, but that which is particular, according to sense...

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Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
2 months 1 week ago
God has given to all things...

God has given to all things their course and decided how high and how far they may go, not higher, not lower.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
4 months 2 weeks ago
Perhaps misguided moral passion is better...

Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.

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The Book and the Brotherhood (1987) p. 248.
Philosophical Maxims
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