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Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
3 weeks 3 days ago
Do not know the truth by...

Do not know the truth by the men, but know the truth, and then you will know who are truthful.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 29.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
Writing is hard work. The fact...

Writing is hard work. The fact that I love doing it doesn't make it less hard work. People who love tennis will sweat themselves to exhaustion playing it, and the love of the game doesn't stop the sweating. The casual assumption that writers are unemployed bums because they don't go to the office and don't have a boss is something every writer has to live with. I have never known a writer who hasn't suffered as a result of this, hasn't resented it, and hasn't dreamed of murdering the next person who says "Boy, you've sure got it made. You just sit there and toss off a story or something whenever you feel like it."

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
1 month 1 week ago
To be an intellectual really means...

To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak. That is, it creates a vision of the world that puts into the limelight the social misery that is usually hidden or concealed by the dominant viewpoints of a society. "Intellectual" in that sense simply means those who are willing to reflect critically upon themselves as well as upon the larger society and to ascertain whether there is some possibility of amelioration and betterment.

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"Chekhov, Coltrane, and Democracy: Interview by David Lionel Smith." in The Cornel West Reader. Basic Books. 2000. p. 551. ISBN 978-0-465-09110-2.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 weeks 3 days ago
The blindness of those who think...

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 2 weeks ago
Criticism alone can sever the root...

Criticism alone can sever the root of materialism, fatalism, atheism, free-thinking, fanaticism, and superstition, which can be injurious universally; as well as of idealism and skepticism, which are dangerous chiefly to the Schools, and hardly allow of being handed on to the public.

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B xxxiv
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 week 2 days ago
As long as politics is the...

As long as politics is the shadow cast on society by big business, the attenuation of the shadow will not change the substance.

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Quoted in John Dewey and American Democracy by Robert Westbrook (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 440
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 week 2 days ago
What happens in the movement of...

What happens in the movement of art is emergence of new materials of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving in their expression new forms and techniques.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
Just now
What would become of the rich,...

What would become of the rich, if not for the poor? What would become of these idle, parasitic ladies, who squander more in a week than their victims earn in a year, if not for the eighty million wage-workers? Equality, who ever heard of such a thing?

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 6 days ago
Philosophy's error is to be too...

Philosophy's error is to be too endurable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
1 week 1 day ago
No one is guiltless...But no one...

No one is guiltless...But no one is beyond the pale of human existence, provided he pays for his guilt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 2 weeks ago
Kant [...] stated that he had...

Kant [...] stated that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge [...] to make room for faith," but all he had "denied" was knowledge of things that are unknowable, and he had not made room for faith but for thought.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 1 week ago
Neither our distance from a preventable...

Neither our distance from a preventable evil nor the number of other people who, in respect to that evil, are in the same situation as we are, lessens our obligation to mitigate or prevent that evil.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
A man's face as a rule...

A man's face as a rule says more, and more interesting things, than his mouth, for it is a compendium of everything his mouth will ever say, in that it is the monogram of all this man's thoughts and aspirations.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 29, § 377
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 2 weeks ago
I hate victims who respect their...

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

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Loser Wins (Les Séquestrés d'Altona: A Play in Five Acts)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
1 month 3 weeks ago
During such calm sunshine of the...

During such calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of false divinity never make their appearance.

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Part XIV - Bad influence of popular religions on morality
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week 3 days ago
Now precisely because Galilean science is...

Now precisely because Galilean science is, in the formation of its concepts, the technic of a specific Lebenswelt, it does not and cannot transcend this Lebenswelt. It remains essentially within the basic experiential framework and within the universe of ends set by this reality.

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p. 164
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 6 days ago
Having destroyed all my connections, burned...

Having destroyed all my connections, burned my bridges, I should feel a certain freedom, and in fact I do. One so intense I am afraid to rejoice in it.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 4 days ago
You don't choose universality....
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Main Content / General
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
1 month 2 weeks ago
There as here, passions are the...

There as here, passions are the motive of all action, but they are livelier, more ardent, or merely simpler and purer, thereby assuming a totally different character. All the first movements of nature are good and right.

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First Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
A son is a mirror in...

A son is a mirror in which the father sees himself reflected, and the father is a mirror in which the son sees himself as he will be in the future.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
A man who has no mental...

A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.

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Personality; or, What a Man Is
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 1 week ago
I do not open up...

I do not open up the truth to one who is not eager to get knowledge, nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 4 days ago
They sang the praises of nature,...

They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Brief and powerless is Man's life;...

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Happiness implied a choice, and within...

Happiness implied a choice, and within that choice a concerted will, a lucid desire.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
As for large landed property, its...

As for large landed property, its defenders have always, sophistically, identified the economic advantages offered by large-scale agriculture with large-scale landed property, as if it were not precisely as a result of the abolition of property that this advantage, for one thing, would receive its greatest possible extension, and, for another, only then would be of social benefit.

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Rent of Land, p. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 week 3 days ago
To understand this for sense it...

To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad. On the proposition that the volume generated by revolving the region under 1/x from 1 to infinity has finite volume.

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Quoted in Mathematical Maxims and Minims by N. Rose
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
2 weeks 1 day ago
You know I am not born...

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

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Letter to Everina Wollstonecraft
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
All those movements which took place...

All those movements which took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and which had the Reformation as their main expression and result should be analyzed as a great crisis of the Western experience of subjectivity and a revolt against the kind of religious and moral power which gave form, during the Middle Ages, to this subjectivity. The need to take a direct part in spiritual life, in the work of salvation, in the truth which lies in the Book-all that was a struggle for a new subjectivity.

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p. 782
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Let no man..

Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think.

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Book III, Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 4 days ago
I could never stand more than...

I could never stand more than three months of dreaming at a time without feeling an irresistible desire to plunge into society. To plunge into society meant to visit my superior, Anton Antonich Syetochkin. He was the only permanent acquaintance I have had in my life, and I even wonder at the fact myself now. But I even went to see him only when that phase came over me, and when my dreams had reached such a point of bliss that it became essential to embrace my fellows and all mankind immediately. And for that purpose I needed at least one human being at hand who actually existed. I had to call on Anton Antonich, however, on Tuesday - his at-home day; so I always had to adjust my passionate desire to embrace humanity so that it might fall on a Tuesday.

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Part 2, Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
New truth is often uncomfortable, especially...

New truth is often uncomfortable, especially to the holders of power; nevertheless, amid the long record of cruelty and bigotry, it is the most important achievement of our intelligent but wayward species.

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Religion and Science (1935), Ch. X: Conclusion
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
Just now
Stories on digital platforms like Facebook...

Stories on digital platforms like Facebook or Instagram are not genuine stories. They have no narrative duration. Rather, they are just sequences of momentary impressions that do not tell us anything.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
[M]y father's rejection of all that...

[M]y father's rejection of all that is called religious belief, was not, as many might suppose, primarily a matter of logic and evidence: the grounds of it were moral, still more than intellectual. He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an Author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness.

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(pp. 39-40)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 week 3 days ago
As for [...] Of all passions,...

As for [...] Of all passions, that which inclineth men least to break the laws is fear.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 2 weeks ago
Kant stated defensively that he had...

Kant stated defensively that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge. . . to make room for faith," but he had not made room for faith; he had made room for thought, and he had not "denied knowledge" but separated knowledge from thinking.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
Between the fine point of the...

Between the fine point of the brush and the steely gaze, the scene is about to yield up its volume.

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Las Meninas
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 5 days ago
O saving Victim, opening wideThe gate...

O saving Victim, opening wideThe gate of heaven to man below,Our foes press on from every side,Thine aid supply, Thy strength bestow.

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Verbum Supernum Prodiens (hymn for Lauds on Corpus Christi), stanza 5 (O Salutaris Hostia)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
Courtiers don't take wagers against the...

Courtiers don't take wagers against the king's skill.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 6 days ago
Impossible to spend sleepless nights and...

Impossible to spend sleepless nights and accomplish anything: if, in my youth, my parents had not financed my insomnias, I should surely have killed myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 1 week ago
When we see men of...

When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 6 days ago
Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning...

Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 weeks 1 day ago
Bad company is as instructive as...

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
1 month 1 week ago
Do not be arrogant because of...

Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned. For knowledge has no limits, and none has yet achieved perfection in it. Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the possession of women slaves at the millstones.

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Maxim no. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week 1 day ago
The primary meaning of the words...

The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.

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Chap. III: The Height Of The Times
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
1 month 3 weeks ago
Only geometry can hand us….

Only geometry can hand us the thread [which will lead us through] the labyrinth of the continuum's composition, the maximum and the minimum, the infinitesimal and the infinite; and no one will arrive at a truly solid metaphysic except he who has passed through this [labyrinth].

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Spring 1676
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
2 weeks 1 day ago
I see not the shadow of...

I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

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-26
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am well aware of how...

I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month 1 week ago
In speaking of the fear of...

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper-namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

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The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 130-131.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 5 days ago
Natural inclinations are present in things...

Natural inclinations are present in things from God, who moves all things. So it is impossible for the natural inclinations of a species to be toward evil in itself. But there is in all perfect animals a natural inclination toward carnal union. Therefore it is impossible for carnal union to be evil in itself.

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III, 126, 3
Philosophical Maxims
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