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Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 weeks 4 days ago
Man is an enigma whose knot...

Man is an enigma whose knot has not ceased to occupy observers. The contradictions that he contains astonish reason and impose silence on it. So what is this inconceivable being who carries within him powers that clash and who is obliged to hate himself in order to esteem himself?

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 1 week ago
The modern world gives proof at...

The modern world gives proof at every point that it is far easier to destroy institutions than to create them. Nevertheless, few people seem to understand this truth.

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Rousseau & the origins of liberalism, The New Criterion
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
4 weeks ago
It is a cliché that the...

It is a cliché that the modern scientific vision has desacralized the world, and the world desacralized by scientific knowledge has become one of the existential elements that make up modern man, all the more so to the degree that he is "civilized." Ever since he has been subject to compulsory education, his mind has been stuffed with "positive" scientific notions; he cannot avoid seeing in a soulless light everything that surrounds him, and therefore acts destructively. What, for example, could the symbol of the sunset of a dynasty, like the Japanese, mean to him when he knows scientifically what the sun is: merely a star, at which one can even fire missiles.

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p. 138
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
It takes two to speak the...

It takes two to speak the truth, - one to speak, and another to hear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Who does not believe in Fate...

Who does not believe in Fate proves that he has not lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Only those moments count when the...

Only those moments count when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than to exchange a word with someone.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 week 3 days ago
As a child, I received...

As a child, I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 6 days ago
I allow nothing for losses by...

I allow nothing for losses by death, but, on the contrary, shall presently take credit four per cent. per annum, for their increase over and above keeping up their own numbers.

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On his profits from slavery as quoted in The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry Wiencek, Smithsonian Magazine,
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The mind advances only when it...

The mind advances only when it has the patience to go in circles, in other words, to deepen.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
4 months 2 days ago
All things are full…

All things are full of gods.

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As quoted in Aristotle, De Anima, 411a
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The effects of opposition are wonderful....

The effects of opposition are wonderful. There are men who rise refreshed on hearing of a threat, - men to whom a crisis which intimidates and paralyzes the majority - demanding, not the faculties of prudence and thrift, but comprehension, immovableness, the readiness of sacrifice - comes graceful and beloved as a bride!

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p. 189
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 6 days ago
History, I believe, furnishes no example...

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

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Letter to Alexander von Humboldt (6 December 1813) Scanned letter at The Library of Congress Transcript at The Library of Congress
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 weeks 6 days ago
Politics, like religion, hold up the...

Politics, like religion, hold up the torches of martyrdom to the reformers of error.

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Letter to James Ogilvie
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
All natural philosophers, who wished to...

All natural philosophers, who wished to proceed mathematically in their work, have hence invariably (although unknown to themselves) made use of metaphysical principles, and must make use of such, it matters not how energetically they may otherwise repudiate any claim of metaphysics on their science.

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Preface, Tr. Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
To speak impartially, the best men...

To speak impartially, the best men that I know are not serene, a world in themselves. For the most part, they dwell in forms, and flatter and study effect only more finely than the rest. We select granite for the underpinning of our houses and barns; we build fences of stone; but we do not ourselves rest on an underpinning of granitic truth, the lowest primitive rock. Our sills are rotten.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
1 month 1 day ago
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of...

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property were just what Aristotle did not talk about. They are the conditions of happiness; but the essence of happiness, according to Aristotle, is virtue. So the moderns decided to deal with the conditions and to let happiness take care of itself.

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Commerce and Culture, p. 284.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 4 weeks ago
Writing does not cause misery. It...

Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 1 week ago
If you are to be kept...

If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will warn you, the other will expose you.

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Plutarch, Moralia, 74C
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 1 day ago
To the man who is truly...

To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of view seems lower in the scale. He makes distinctions only as each case comes before him, and under the pressure of necessity, as, for example, when it falls to him to decide which of two lives he must sacrifice in order to preserve the other. But all through this series of decisions he is conscious of acting on subjective grounds and arbitrarily, and knows that he bears the responsibility for the life which is sacrificed.

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p. 269
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 4 weeks ago
Fear of evil…

Fear of evil is greater than the evil itself.

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Act III, scene xi
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
They reckon ill who leave me...

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

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Brahma, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 2 days ago
Holding fast to these things, you...

Holding fast to these things, you will know the worlds of gods and mortals which permeates and governs everything. And you will know, as is right, nature similar in all respects, so that you will neither entertain unreasonable hopes nor be neglectful of anything.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 3 weeks ago
That which is desirable on its...

That which is desirable on its own account and for the sake of knowing it is more of the nature of wisdom than that which is desirable on account of its results.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
There is no means of proving...

There is no means of proving it is preferable to be than not to be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The world is nothing, the man...

The world is nothing, the man is all; in yourself is the law of all nature, and you know not yet how a globule of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the whole of Reason; it is for you to know all, it is for you to dare all.

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par. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
One always dies too soon...

One always dies too soon - or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

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Inès, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
5 months 5 days ago
What is food to one...

What is food to one, is to others bitter poison.

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Book IV, line 637 (reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations) Compare: "What's one man's poison, signor, / Is another's meat or drink", Beaumont and Fletcher, Love's Cure (1647), Act III, scene 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
It goes without saying that the...

It goes without saying that the normal durability of fixed capital is calculated on the supposition that all the conditions under which it can perform its functions normally during that time are fulfilled, just as we assume, in placing a mans life at 30 years on the average,that he will wash himself.

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Volume II, Ch. VIII, p. 176-177.
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
3 months 1 week ago
The open society...

The open society is one that is deemed in principle to embrace all humanity.

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Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month 2 weeks ago
Where all think alike, no one...

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 months 3 days ago
Of the twenty or so civilizations...

Of the twenty or so civilizations known to modern Western historians, all except our own appear to be dead or moribund, and, when we diagnose each case, in extremis or post mortem, we invariably find that the cause of death has been either War or Class or some combination of the two. To date, these two plagues have been deadly enough, in partnership, to kill off nineteen out of twenty representatives of this recently evolved species of human society; but, up to now, the deadliness of these scourges has had a saving limit.

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Ch. 2: The Present Point in History
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 3 days ago
Why dost thou not pray... to...

Why dost thou not pray... to give thee the faculty of not fearing any of the things which thou fearest, or of not desiring any of the things which thou desirest, or not being pained at anything, rather than pray that any of these things should not happen or happen?

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IX, 40
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The flesh spreads, further and further,...

The flesh spreads, further and further, like a gangrene upon the surface of the globe. It cannot impose limits upon itself, it continues to be rife despite its rebuffs, it takes its defeats for conquests, it has never learned anything. It belongs above all to the realm of the Creator, and it is indeed in the flesh that He has projected His maleficent instincts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 4 weeks ago
A true prayer and religious reconciling...

A true prayer and religious reconciling of ourselves to Almighty God cannot enter into an impure soul, subject at the very time to the dominion of Satan. He who calls God to his assistance whilst in a course of vice, does as if a cut-purse should call a magistrate to help him, or like those who introduce the name of God to the attestation of a lie.

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Ch. 56, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
The world begins and ends with...

The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is the poets and painters...

It is the poets and painters who react instantly to a new medium like radio or TV.

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(p. 53)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is a great mortification to...

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.

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Part I, Essay 15: The Epicurean
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
1 month 1 day ago
The old view was that delicacy...

The old view was that delicacy of language was part of the nature, the sacred nature, of eros and that to speak about it in any other way would be to misunderstand it. What has disappeared is the risk and the hope of human connectedness embedded in eros. Ours is a language that reduces the longing for an other to the need for individual, private satisfaction and safety.

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pp. 13-14.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 5 days ago
It is in literature that the...

It is in literature that the concrete outlook of humanity receives its expression.

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Ch. 5: "The Romantic Reaction", p. 106
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Alas! in the clothes of the...

Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?

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The Suicide Club, Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 5 days ago
What anger is has been sufficiently...

What anger is has been sufficiently explained. The difference between it and irascibility is evident: it is the same as that between a drunken man and a drunkard; between a frightened man and a coward. It is possible for an angry man not to be irascible; an irascible man may sometimes not be angry. I shall omit the other varieties of anger, which the Greeks distinguish by various names, because we have no distinctive words for them in our language, although we call men bitter and harsh, and also peevish, frantic, clamorous, surly and fierce: all of which are different forms of irascibility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
In the Hindoo scripture the idea...

In the Hindoo scripture the idea of man is quite illimitable and sublime. There is nowhere a loftier conception of his destiny. He is at length lost in Brahma himself 'the divine male.' ... there is no grandeur conception of creation anywhere .... The very indistinctness of its theogeny implies a sublime truth.

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A Tribute to Hinduism, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 1 week ago
Man's being is made of such...

Man's being is made of such strange stuff as to be partly akin to nature and partly not, at once natural and extranatural, a kind of ontological centaur, half immersed in nature, half transcending it.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 3 weeks ago
The endeavour to do a thing…

This endeavour to do a thing or leave it undone, solely in order to please men, we call ambition, especially when we so eagerly endeavour to please the vulgar, that we do or omit certain things to our own or another's hurt : in other cases it is generally called kindliness.

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Part III, Prop. XXIX
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
We all look for hapiness…

We all look for happiness, but without knowing where to find it: like drunkards who look for their house, knowing dimly that they have one.

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Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 2 weeks ago
Of course I base my characters...

Of course I base my characters partly on the people I know-one can't escape it-but fictional characters are oversimplified; they're much less complex than the people one knows.

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Interview, The Paris Review, 1960
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
War is never anything less than...

War is never anything less than accelerated technological change.

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(p. 102)
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 3 weeks ago
For well-being and health, again, the...

For well-being and health, again, the homestead should be airy in summer, and sunny in winter. A homestead possessing these qualities would be longer than it is deep; and its main front would face the south.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Personally, people know...
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Main Content / General
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 1 week ago
When it is evening, ye say,...

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.

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16:2-4 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
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