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St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 4 days ago
Let each look to his own...

Let each look to his own heart: let him not keep hatred against his brother for any hard word; on account of earthly contention let him not become earth.

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First Homily, Paragraph 11, as translated by H. Browne, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7 (1888)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
One of the scribes came to...

One of the scribes came to Jesus and asked him, "Which is the first of all commandments?" Jesus replied,"The first is this: Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is like: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these."

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Mark 12:28-34
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 2 weeks ago
Where danger shews it self, apprehension...

Where danger shews it self, apprehension cannot, without stupidity, be wanting; where danger is, sense of danger should be; and so much fear as should keep us awake, and excite our attention, industry, and vigour; but not to disturb the calm use of our reason, nor hinder the execution of what that dictates.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 3 weeks ago
That which is good...

The Prince: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10827

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Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 2 days ago
Certainly the Art of Writing is...

Certainly the Art of Writing is the most miraculous of all things man has devised.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 4 days ago
Our reverence for the nobility of...

Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge, that Man, is in substance and in structure, one with the brutes; for, he alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech, whereby, in the secular period of his existence, he has slowly accumulated and organized the experience which is almost wholly lost with the cessation of every individual life in other animals; so that now he stands raised upon it as on a mountain top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting, here and there, a ray from the infinite source of truth.

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Ch.2, p. 132
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Great joys, why do they bring...

Great joys, why do they bring us sadness? Because there remains from these excesses only a feeling of irrevocable loss and desertion which reaches a high degree of negative intensity. At such moments, instead of a gain, one keenly feels loss. sadness accompanies all those events in which life expends itself. its intensity is equal to its loss. Thus death causes the greatest sadness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 2 weeks ago
The population of the US is...

The population of the US is nearly 300 million, including many of the best educated, most talented, most resourceful, humane people on earth. By almost any measure of civilised attainment, from Nobel prize-counts on down, the US leads the world by miles. You would think that a country with such resources, and such a field of talent, would be able to elect a leader of the highest quality. Yet, what has happened? At the end of all the primaries and party caucuses, the speeches and the televised debates, after a year or more of non-stop electioneering bustle, who, out of that entire population of 300 million, emerges at the top of the heap? George Bush.

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"Bin Laden's victory " The Guardian
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is but a step between...

There is but a step between a proud man's glory and his disgrace.

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Maxim 138
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 3 weeks ago
If we want a theory explaining...

If we want a theory explaining how people play billiards, we do not want a theory of perfect billiard balls; we want a theory of what heuristics a human billiard player uses in order to plan and make a (often not quite accurate) shot. These heuristics and actions do not involve solving the differential equations of the billiard board; they involve rules of thumb and it is these practice guides to action we are trying to discover in order to explain the behavior.

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An Empirically Based Microeconomics (1997), p. 173
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
If I were asked to summarize...

If I were asked to summarize as briefly as possible my vision of things, to reduce it to its most succinct expression, I should replace words with an exclamation point, a definitive !

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 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
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 days ago
Just as an enemy…

Just as an enemy is more dangerous to a retreating army, so every trouble that fortune brings attacks us all the harder if we yield and turn our backs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are things I can't force....

There are things I can't force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

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As quoted in Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe : The Key to a Whole New World of Enlightenment and Enrichment (2006) by Matthew M Radmanesh, p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months ago
By necrophilia is meant love for...

By necrophilia is meant love for all that is violence and destruction; the desire to kill; the worship of force; attraction to death, to suicide, to sadism; the desire to transform the organic into the inorganic by means of "order." The necrophile, lacking the necessary qualities to create, in his impotence finds it easy to destroy because for him it serves only one quality: force.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
The more remote and unreal the...

The more remote and unreal the personal mother is, the more deeply will the son's yearning for her clutch at his soul, awakening that primordial and eternal image of the mother for whose sake everything that embraces, protects, nourishes, and helps assumes maternal form, from the Alma Mater of the university to the personification of cities, countries, sciences and ideals.

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"Paracelsus as a Spiritual Phenomenon" (1942) In CW 13: Alchemical Studies P.47
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
The peculiar and amusing nature of...

The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them. If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question - in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible - is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books. All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.

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Vol 2, pt 5, p 236 - Selected Works, Moscow, 1869
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
Never wholly separate in your Mind...

Never wholly separate in your Mind the merits of any Political Question from the Men who are concerned in it.

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Letter to Charles-Jean-François Depont (November 1789), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
Two things fill the mind with...

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

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Translated by Lewis White Beck Two things fill the heart with renewed and increasing awe and reverence the more often and the more steadily that they are meditated on: the starry skies above me and the moral law inside me.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
In plain truth, lying is an...

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

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Book I, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
There is only one way to...

There is only one way to science-or to philosophy... to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part-unless you should meet another... more fascinating problem, or... obtain a solution. But even if you do... you may... discover, to your delight, the... a whole family of enchanting... perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 week 4 days ago
It seems to us that the...

It seems to us that the past is our property. Well, on the contrary - we are its property, because we are not able to make changes in it, while it fills the whole of our existence.

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Original: "Otóż przeciwnie - to my jesteśmy jej własnością, ponieważ nie jesteśmy w stanie dokonać w niej zmian, ona natomiast wypełnia całość naszego istnienia." Klucz niebieski albo opowieści biblijne zebrane ku pouczeniu i przestrodze
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 3 weeks ago
Rights are, then, the fruits of...

Rights are, then, the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law-no rights contrary to the law-no rights anterior to the law. Before the existence of laws there may be reasons for wishing that there were laws-and doubtless such reasons cannot be wanting, and those of the strongest kind;-but a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, does not constitute a right. To confound the existence of a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, with the existence of the right itself, is to confound the existence of a want with the means of relieving it. It is the same as if one should say, everybody is subject to hunger, therefore everybody has something to eat.

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Pannomial Fragments (c. 1831), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. III (1838), p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
All is in a man's hands...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
Let a man take time enough...

Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell imperceptibly, without hurry or confusion; as if the short spring days were an eternity.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 175
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 2 weeks ago
We should be offended when children...

We should be offended when children are denied a proper education. We should be offended when children are told they will spend eternity in hell. We should be offended when medical science, for example stem-cell research, is compromised by the bigoted opinions of powerful and above all well-financed ignoramuses. We should be offended when voodoo, of all kinds, is given equal weight to science. We should be offended by hymen reconstruction surgery. We should be offended by 'female circumcision', euphemism for genital mutilation. We should be offended by stoning.

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I Am Offended!, August 3, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
Verily, verily, I say unto you,...

Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

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6:53-56
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 week 6 days ago
A Muslim who knows French will...

A Muslim who knows French will never be a dangerous Muslim.

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quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.'(107)
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1 month 1 day ago
I have been overcome by the...

I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light. ... Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us - many days, many nights of stars.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
For the Supernatural, entering a human...

For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul. If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God.

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Reflections on the Psalms (1958), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Each new ontological theory, propounded in...

Each new ontological theory, propounded in lieu of previous ones shown to be untenable, has been followed by a new criticism leading to a new scepticism. All possible conceptions have been one by one tried and found wanting; and so the entire field of speculation has been gradually exhausted without positive result: the only result reached being the negative one above stated, that the reality existing behind all appearances is, and must ever be, unknown.

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Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. IV, The Relativity of All Knowledge
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 4 days ago
Perhaps the most valuable result of...

Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly.

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Technical Education
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 week ago
When the whole is at stake,...

When the whole is at stake, there is no crime except that of rejecting the whole, or not defending it. ... Those who identify themselves with the whole, who are installed as the leaders and defenders of the whole can make mistakes, but they cannot do wrong-they are not guilty. They may become guilty again when this identification no longer holds, when they are gone.

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pp. 82-83
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 1 week ago
To be honest, I was somewhat...

To be honest, I was somewhat disappointed... It's had effects around the margins, of course, but they have mostly been minor. When I wrote it, I really thought the book would change the world. I know it sounds a little grand now, but at the time the sixties still existed for us. It looked as if real changes were possible, and I let myself believe that this would be one of them. All you have to do is walk around the corner to McDonald's to see how successful I have been.

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Quoted by Michael Specter on the impact of the book Animal Liberation, "The Dangerous Philosopher", The New Yorker, 6 September 1999.
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
3 days ago
Macaulay is like a book in...

Macaulay is like a book in breeches...He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

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Vol. I, ch. 11, p. 415
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
[H]e regarded it with the feelings...

[H]e regarded it with the feelings due not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil. He looked upon it as the greatest enemy of morality: first, by setting up factitious excellencies,-belief in creeds, devotional feelings, and ceremonies, not connected with the good of human kind,-and causing these to be accepted as substitutes for genuine virtues: but above all, by radically vitiating the standard of morals; making it consist in doing the will of a being, on whom it lavishes indeed all the phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it depicts as eminently hateful.

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(p. 40)
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 weeks ago
All men by nature desire to...

All men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer sight to almost everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
The civilized pagan recognizes life not...

The civilized pagan recognizes life not in himself alone, but in societies of men-in the tribe, the clan, the family, the kingdom -and sacrifices his personal good for these societies. The motive power of his life is glory. His religion consists in the exaltation of the glory of those who are allied to him-the founders of his family, his ancestors, his rulers-and in worshiping gods who are exclusively protectors of his clan, his family, his nation, his government.

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Chapter IV, Christianity Misunderstood by Men of Science
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is only the ignorant who...

It is only the ignorant who despise education.

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Maxim 571
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
The establishment of any new manufacture,...

The establishment of any new manufacture, of any new branch of commerce, or any new practice in agriculture, is always a speculation, from which the projector promises himself extraordinary profits. These profits sometimes are very great, and sometimes, more frequently, perhaps, they are quite otherwise; but in general they bear no regular proportion to those of other older trades in the neighbourhood. If the project succeeds, they are commonly at first very high. When the trade or practice becomes thoroughly established and well known, the competition reduces them to the level of other trades.

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Chapter X, Part I, p. 136 (tendency of the rate of profit to fall).
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
If names be not correct,...

If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. Paraphrased as a chinese proverb stating "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name."

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
If a poor person envies a...

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

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p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 1 week ago
Democracies owe their existence to national...

Democracies owe their existence to national loyalties - the loyalties that are supposedly shared by government and opposition, by all political parties, and by the electorate as a whole. Wherever the experience of nationality is weak or non-existent, democracy has failed to take root. For without national loyalty, opposition is a threat to government, and political disagreements create no common ground.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
The body of all true religion...

The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are two ways in which...

There are two ways in which a science develops; in response to problems which is itself creates, and in response to problems that are forced on it from the outside.

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Chapter 1, An Absent Family Of Ideas, p. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 weeks ago
For the lesson of such stories...

For the lesson of such stories [of resistance to Nazi atrocities] is simple and within everybody's grasp. Politically speaking, it is that under conditions of terror, most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that "it could happen" in most places but it did not happen everywhere. Humanly speaking, no more is required, and no more can reasonably be asked, for this planet to remain a place fit for human habitation.

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Ch. XIV
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
We have convictions only if we...

We have convictions only if we have studied nothing thoroughly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
The attitude of the ruling classes...

The attitude of the ruling classes to the laborers is that of a man who has felled his adversary to the earth and holds him down, not so much because he wants to hold him down, as because he knows that if he let him go, even for a second, he would himself be stabbed, for his adversary is infuriated and has a knife in his hand. And therefore, whether their conscience is tender or the reverse, our rich men cannot enjoy the wealth they have filched from the poor as the ancients did who believed in their right to it. Their whole life and all their enjoyments are embittered either by the stings of conscience or by terror.

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Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 week 3 days ago
The principles of great men illuminate...

The principles of great men illuminate the universe.

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Discipline and Character, no. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 3 weeks ago
I know my heart, and have...

I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after having read this work. 

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Variant translations: I may not be better than other people, but at least I am different. If I am not better, at least I am different.
Philosophical Maxims
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