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Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 days ago
Science does not stand still, and...

Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.

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Afterword To The 2011 Edition, p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
The worst of my actions or...

The worst of my actions or conditions seem not so ugly unto me as I find it both ugly and base not to dare to avouch for them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Why don't I kill myself? If...

Why don't I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 1 week ago
A tragedy, then, is the imitation...

A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language ... not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 weeks 4 days ago
What is patriotism? Is it love...

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls?

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 5 days ago
The vocation of every man and...

The vocation of every man and woman is to serve other people.

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What Is To Be Done? (1886) Chap. XL
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Love's great (and sole) originality is...

Love's great (and sole) originality is to make happiness indistinct from misery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 1 week ago
The spirit of Poesy is the...

The spirit of Poesy is the morning light, which makes the Statue of Memnon sound.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
On est ce qu'on veut. A...

On est ce qu'on veut. A man is what he wills himself to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 6 days ago
There is hardly a philosophy which...

There is hardly a philosophy which has not invoked something like the will or desire to know, the love of truth, etcetera. But, in truth, very few philosophers-apart, perhaps, from Spinoza and Schopenhauer-have accorded it more than a marginal status; as if there was no need for philosophy to say first of all what the name that it bears actually refers to. As if placing at the head of its discourse the desire to know, which it repeats in its name, was enough to justify its own existence and show-at a stroke-that it is necessary and natural: All men desire to know. Who, then, is not a philosopher, and how could philosophy not be the most necessary thing in the world?

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pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
If the stars should appear one...

If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.

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Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 1 week ago
On the whole, Borne, Heine, Feuerbach,...

On the whole, Borne, Heine, Feuerbach, and such authors are the individualities who have great interest for someone who is composing an imaginary construction. They frequently are well informed about the religious-that is, they know definitely that they do not want to have anything to do with it. This is a great advantage over the systematicians, who without knowing where the religious really is located take it upon themselves to explain it-sometimes obsequiously, sometimes superciliously, but always unsuccessfully.

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Soren Kierkegaard, Stages on Life's Way, 1845, Hong 1988 p. 452
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 5 days ago
If the room...
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Main Content / General
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
Even if the whole world were...

Even if the whole world were to fall to pieces, the unity of the psyche would never be shattered. And the wider and more numerous the fissures on the surface, the more the unity is strengthened in the depths.

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Civilization in Transition
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is too difficult to think...

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living. 

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Variant translation: It is too difficult to think nobly when one only thinks to get a living.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 1 week ago
Apart from logical cogency, there is...

Apart from logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Himself adequately rewarded by the final emergence of Hitler and Stalin and the H-bomb. 

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
Predicting the future is a hopeless,...

Predicting the future is a hopeless, thankless task, with ridicule to begin with and, all too often, scorn to end with.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 1 day ago
The happiness which belongs to man,...

The happiness which belongs to man, is that state in which he enjoys as many of the good things, and suffers as few of the evils incident to human nature as possible; passing his days in a smooth course of permanent tranquility. A wise man, though deprived of sight or hearing, may experience happiness in the enjoyment of the good things which yet remain; and when suffering torture, or laboring under some painful disease, can mitigate the anguish by patience, and can enjoy, in his afflictions, the consciousness of his own constancy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
For the first time in sixty...

For the first time in sixty years, the priests, the old aristocracy and the people met in a common sentiment-a feeling of revenge, it is true, and not of affection; but even that is a great thing in politics, where a community of hatred is almost always the foundation of friendships.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 weeks 1 day ago
Once animals had a more sacred,...

Once animals had a more sacred, more divine character than men. There is not even a reign of the "human" in primitive societies, and for a long time the animal order has been the order of reference. Only the animal is worth being sacrificed, as a god, the sacrifice of man only comes afterward, according to a degraded order. Men qualify only by their affiliation to the animal: the Bororos "are" macaws. "

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The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses," p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 1 week ago
Till society is very differently constituted,...

Till society is very differently constituted, parents, I fear, will still insist on being obeyed, because they will be obeyed, and constantly endeavour to settle that power on a Divine right, which will not bear the investigation of reason.

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Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
Our inventions are wont to be...

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

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pp. 60-61
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 2 days ago
Man is a universe in little...

Man is a universe in little [Microcosm].

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Freeman (1948), p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 4 days ago
The soul, too, has her virginity...

The soul, too, has her virginity and must bleed a little before bearing fruit.

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"Normal Madness," Ch. 3, P. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 1 week ago
The infinite... happens to subsist in...

The infinite... happens to subsist in a way contrary to what is asserted by others: for the infinite is not that beyond which there is nothing, but it is that of which there is always something beyond. ...But that pertaining to which there is nothing beyond is perfect and whole. ...that of which nothing is absent pertaining to the parts ...the whole is that pertaining to which there is nothing beyond. But that pertaining to which something external is absent, that is not all ...But nothing is perfect which has not an end; and the end is a bound. On this account... Parmenides spoke better than Melissus: for the latter says that the infinite is a whole; but the former, that the whole is finite, and equally balanced from the middle: for to conjoin the infinite with the universe and the whole, is not to connect line with line.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
When the throne of God is...

When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 2 days ago
If any one hearken with understanding...

If any one hearken with understanding to these sayings of mine many a deed worthy of a good man shall he perform and many a foolish deed be spared.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks ago
To err is human also in...

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

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G 30
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 2 days ago
If by enlightenment and intellectual progress...

If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate-in short, emancipation of fear-then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
1 month 1 week ago
There was a time when religion...

There was a time when religion was kept secret from popular belief within the mystery cults like a holy fire, sharing a common sanctuary with philosophy. The legends of antiquity name the earliest philosophers as the originators of these mystery cults, from which the most enlightened among the later philosophers, notably Plato, liked to educe their divine teachings. At that time philosophers still had the courage and the right to discuss the singly great themes, the only ones worthy of philosophizing and rising above common knowledge.

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P. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 weeks 1 day ago
The truth is sum, ergo cogito...

The truth is sum, ergo cogito - I am, therefore I think, although not everything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above all consciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without feeling, without that species of materiality which feelings lends to it? Do we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the act of knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove [Descartes] have said: "I feel, therefore I am"? or "I will, therefore I am"? And to feel oneself, is it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable?

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 6 days ago
It is understandable then that tragic...

It is understandable then that tragic heroes, unlike the baroque characters who had preceded them, could never be mad, and that inversely madness could never take on the tragic value we have known since Nietzsche and Artaud. In the classical epoch, tragic characters and the mad face each other without any possible dialogue or common language, for the one can only pronounce the decisive language of being, where the truth of light and the depths of night meet in a flash, and the other repeats endlessly an indifferent murmur where the empty chatter of the day is cancelled out by the deceptive lies of the shadows.

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Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
The blame rests with the government....

The blame rests with the government. Why do they not put adulterers to death? Then I would not need to give such advice. Between two evils one is always the lesser, in this case allowing the adulterer to remarry in a distant land in order to avoid fornication . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
In public, as well as in...

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

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Chapter V, p. 563.
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 weeks ago
I remember well a junior seminar...

I remember well a junior seminar I gave with Paul Tillich shortly before the outbreak of the Third Reich. A participant spoke out against the idea of the meaning of existence. She said life did not seem very meaningful to her and she didn't know whether it had a meaning. The very voluble Nazi contingent became very excited by this and scraped the floor noisily with their feet. Now, I do not wish to maintain that this Nazi foot-shuffling proves or refutes anything in particular, but I do find it highly significant. I would say it is a touchstone for the relation of thinking to freedom. It raises the question whether thought can bear the idea that a given reality is meaningless and that mind is unable to orientate itself; or whether the intellect has become so enfeebled that it finds itself paralysed by the idea that all is not well with the world.

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pp. 19-20
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
A person who wakes up after...

A person who wakes up after a night of unbroken sleep has the illusion of beginning something new. When one instead remains awake the whole night long, nothing new begins.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 4 days 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 Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 1 week ago
In this third period

In this third period (as it may be termed) of my mental progress, which now went hand in hand with hers, my opinions gained equally in breadth and depth, I understood more things, and those which I had understood before, I now understood more thoroughly. I had now completely turned back from what there had been of excess in my reaction against Benthamism. I had, at the height of that reaction, certainly become much more indulgent to the common opinions of society and the world, and more willing to be content with seconding the superficial improvement which had begun to take place in those common opinions, than became one whose convictions on so many points, differed fundamentally from them. I was much more inclined, than I can now approve, to put in abeyance the more decidedly heretical part of my opinions, which I now look upon as almost the only ones, the assertion of which tends in any way to regenerate society.

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(p. 229)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 1 week ago
Strange incongruities....

Strange incongruities must ever perplex those, who confound the unhappiness of civil dissensions with the crime of treason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 1 week ago
I think so badly of philosophy...

I think so badly of philosophy that I don't like to talk about it. ... I do not want to say anything bad about my dear colleagues, but the profession of teacher of philosophy is a ridiculous one. We don't need a thousand of trained, and badly trained, philosophers - it is very silly. Actually most of them have nothing to say.

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As quoted in "At 90, and Still Dynamic : Revisiting Sir Karl Popper and Attending His Birthday Party" by Eugene Yue-Ching Ho, in Intellectus 23
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 weeks ago
The assertion fallacy ... is the...

The assertion fallacy ... is the fallacy of confusing the conditions for the performance of the speech act of assertion with the analysis of the meaning of particular words occurring in certain assertions.

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P. 141.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
The dominion of bad men is...

The dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture treats, it says, For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.

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IV, 3 Variant translation: The good man, though a slave, is free; the wicked, though he reigns, is a slave, and not the slave of a single man, but — what is worse — the slave of as many masters as he has vices.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 2 weeks ago
The origin of our passions, the...

The origin of our passions, the root and spring of all the rest, the only one which is born with man, which never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-love; this passion is primitive, instinctive, it precedes all the rest, which are in a sense only modifications of it. In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications are the result of external influences, without which they would never occur, and such modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are harmful. They change the original purpose and work against its end; then it is that man finds himself outside nature and at strife with himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 1 week ago
A purely disembodied human emotion is...

A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
The surest means of not losing...

The surest means of not losing your mind on the spot: remembering that everything is unreal, and will remain so...

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 2 weeks ago
Lead, follow, or get out of...

Lead, follow, or get out of the way.

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George S. Patton: "Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way", as quoted in Pocket Patriot: Quotes from American Heroes (2005) edited by Kelly Nickell, p. 157
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 weeks 1 day ago
Once the needs of hunger are...

Once the needs of hunger are satisfied - and they are soon satisfied - the vanity, the necessity - for it is a necessity - arises of imposing ourselves upon and surviving in others. Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts even of his weakness and his misfortunes, for want of anything better to boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 days ago
One common strategy on which we...

One common strategy on which we should all be able to agree is to take steps to reduce the risk of human extinction when those steps are also highly effective in benefiting existing sentient beings. For example, eliminating or decreasing the consumption of animal products will benefit animals, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and lessen the chances of a pandemic resulting from a virus evolving among the animals crowded into today's factory farms, which are an ideal breeding ground for viruses. That therefore looks like a high-priority strategy.

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Chapter 15: Preventing Human Extinction (p. 177)
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 weeks ago
There are clear cases in which...

There are clear cases in which "understanding" literally applies and clear cases in which it does not apply; and these two sorts of cases are all I need for this argument.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 weeks ago
Whoever is versed...

Whoever is versed in the jargon does not have to say what he thinks, does not even have to think it properly. The jargon takes over this task.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
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