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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 week 3 days ago
The moment a sovereign removes the...

The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then declares war upon them: he is no longer sovereign; they are no longer subjects.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 459
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 1 week ago
The Guide sang: The new age,...

The Guide sang: The new age, the new art, the new ethic and thought, And fools crying, Because it has begun It will continue as it has begun! The wheel runs fast, therefore the wheel will run Faster for ever. The old age is done, We have new lights and see without the sun. (Though they lay flat the mountains and dry up the sea, Wilt thou yet change, as though God were a god?)

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Pilgrim's Regress 186-187
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 weeks 6 days ago
The measure of a man's life...

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
1 month 3 weeks ago
Now what has been said about...

Now what has been said about the Jews is also to be understood about Cahorsins, and anyone else depending upon the depravity of usury.

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art. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 2 weeks ago
Man is by nature unable to...

Man is by nature unable to want God to be God. Indeed, he himself wants to be God, and does not want God to be God.

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Thesis 17
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 1 week ago
Suicide may also be regarded as...

Suicide may also be regarded as an experiment - a question which man puts to Nature, trying to force her to answer. The question is this: What change will death produce in a man's existence and in his insight into the nature of things? It is a clumsy experiment to make; for it involves the destruction of the very consciousness which puts the question and awaits the answer.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 13, § 160
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
I should as soon think of...

I should as soon think of swimming across Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue.

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Books
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
5 days ago
Philosophy, as I understand the word,...

Philosophy, as I understand the word, is a positive theoretical science, and a science in an early stage of development. As such it has no more to do with belief than any other science. Indeed, I am bound to confess that it is at present in so unsettled a condition, that if the ordinary theorems of molecular physics and of archaeology are but the ghosts of beliefs, then to my mind, the doctrines of the philosophers are little better than the ghosts of ghosts. I know this is an extremely heretical opinion.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.61
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 1 week ago
To desire you to read my...

To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make...would oblige me greatly: I know how much I shall be benefitted and I shall at the same time preserve the pretious right of private judgement for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infalliable than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.

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Letter to William Strahan (4 April 1760), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 days ago
It is a great force, and...

It is a great force, and a great fortune, to be able to live without any ambition whatever. I aspire to it, but the very fact of so aspiring still participates in ambition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 1 week ago
One sticks one's finger into the...

One sticks one's finger into the soil to tell by the smell in what land one is: I stick my finger in existence - it smells of nothing. Where am I? Who am I? How came I here? What is this thing called the world? What does this world mean? Who is it that has lured me into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs instead of throwing me into the ranks, as if I had been bought by a kidnapper, a dealer in souls? How did I obtain an interest in this big enterprise they call reality? Why should I have an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? I should like to make a remark to him. Is there no director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 1 week ago
The world at present is obsessed...

The world at present is obsessed by the conflict of rival ideologies, and one of the apparent causes of conflict is the desire for the victory of our own ideology and the defeat of the other. I do not think that the fundamental motive here has much to do with ideologies. I think the ideologies are merely a way of grouping people, and that the passions involved are merely those which always arise between rival groups. Ideologies, in fact, are one of the methods by which herds are created, and the psychology is much the same however the herd may have been generated.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 days ago
Thought is led, by the situation...

Thought is led, by the situation of its objects, to measure their truth in terms of another logic, another universe of discourse. And this logic projects another mode of existence: the realization of the truth in the words and deeds of man. And inasmuch as this project involves man as societal animal," the polis, the movement of thought has a political content. Thus, the Socratic discourse is political discourse inasmuch as it contradicts the established political institutions. The search for the correct definition, for the "concept" of virtue, justice, piety, and knowledge becomes a subversive undertaking, for the concept intends a new polis.

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pp. 133-134
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 days ago
For he that hath strength enough...

For he that hath strength enough to protect all, wants not sufficiency to oppresse all.

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De Cive (1642) Ch. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month ago
In speaking of the move from...

In speaking of the move from subjective to objective characterization, I wish to remain noncommittal about the existence of an endpoint, the completely objective intrinsic nature of the thing, which one might or might not be able to reach. It may be more accurate to think of objectivity as a direction in which the understanding can travel. And in understanding a phenomenon like lightning, it is legitimate to go as far away as one can from a strictly human viewpoint.But in the case of experience, on the other hand, the connexion with a particular point of view seems much closer. It is difficult to understand what could be meant by the objective character of an experience, apart from the particular point of view from which its subject apprehends it. After all, what would be left of what it was like to be a bat if one removed the viewpoint of the bat?

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p. 173.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 1 week ago
We are as much as we...

We are as much as we see. Faith is sight and knowledge. The hands only serve the eyes.

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April 9, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 days ago
Outside the academic establishment, the "far-reaching...

Outside the academic establishment, the "far-reaching change in all our habits of thought" is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of "Worship together this week," "Why not try God," Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.

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pp. 13-14
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 days ago
The world is a perpetual caricature...

The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.

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"Dickens"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 days ago
If the room...
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Main Content / General
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
1 month 1 week ago
Everything that is possible…

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

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1686
Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
1 week 4 days ago
The Student Loan Scam

Education requires massive debt because society refuses to collectively fund what benefits everyone. You pay individually for public good, then work decades repaying loans while universities and banks profit. Student loans aren't unfortunate necessity - they're wealth extraction disguised as opportunity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 1 week ago
It is not by prayer and...

It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 2 weeks ago
The greatest error of all the...

The greatest error of all the rest is the mistaking or misplacing of the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate.

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Book I, v, 11
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
6 days ago
We Shall Naturally look round in...

We Shall Naturally look round in vain the macrophysical world for acausal events, for the simple reason that we cannot imagine events that are connected non-causally and are capable of a non-causal explanation. But that does not mean that such events do not exist... The so-called "scientific view of the world" based on this can hardly be anything more than a psychologically biased partial view which misses out all those by no means unimportant aspects that cannot be grasped statistically.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 5 days ago
If you use a trick in...

If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?

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p. 24e
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 2 weeks ago
Faith, like light, should ever be...

Faith, like light, should ever be simple and unbending; while love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side, and bend to every necessity of our brethren.

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p. 220
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 6 days ago
"My field," said Goethe, "is time."...

"My field," said Goethe, "is time." That is indeed the absurd speech. What, in fact, is the Absurd Man? He who, without negating it, does nothing for the eternal. Not that nostalgia is foreign to him. But he prefers his courage and his reasoning. The first teaches him to live without appeal and to get along with what he has; the second informs him of his limits. Assured of his temporally limited freedom, of his revolt devoid of future, and of his mortal consciousness, he lives out his adventure within the span of his lifetime.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 6 days ago
One recognizes one's course by discovering...

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
1 month 3 weeks ago
We are members of this Head,...

We are members of this Head, and this body cannot be decapitated. If the Head is in glory forever, so too are the members in glory forever, that Christ may be undivided forever.

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p.433
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
1 month 4 days ago
This investigation aims to analyze the...

This investigation aims to analyze the type "bourgeois public sphere". Its particular approach is required, to begin with, by the difficulties specific to an object whose complexity precludes exclusive reliance on the specialized methods of a single discipline. Rather, the category. "public sphere" must be investigated within the broad field formerly reflected in the perspective of the traditional science of "politics."' When particular social-scientific discipline, this object disintegrates. The problems that result from fusing aspects of sociology and economics, of constitutional law and political science, and of social and intellectual history are obvious: given the present state of differentiation and specialization in the social sciences, scarcely anyone will be able to master several, let alone all, of these disciplines.

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p.xvii
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to...

Pyrrhus, when his friends congratulated to him his victory over the Romans under Fabricius, but with great slaughter of his own side, said to them, "Yes; but if we have such another victory, we are undone".

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No. 193
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 1 week ago
It is, I think, safe to...

It is, I think, safe to say that nothing was more alien to the minds of the scientists, who brought about the most radical and most rapid revolutionary process the world has ever seen, than any will to power. Nothing was more remote than any wish to 'conquer space' and to go to the moon. It was indeed their search for 'true reality' that led them to lose confidence in appearances, in the phenomena as they reveal themselves of their own accord to human sense and reason. They were inspired by an extraordinary love of harmony and lawfulness which taught them that they would have to step outside any merely given sequence or series of occurrences if they wanted to discover the overall beauty and order of the whole, that is, the universe.

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On scientific discovery, in Between Past and Future (1961) as quoted in Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today's political times
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 2 weeks ago
In the same manner as we...

In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works we may very properly apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works; accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention.

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Aphorism 73
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 1 week ago
In the course of instruction which...

In the course of instruction which I have partially retraced, the point most superficially apparent is the great effort to give, during the years of childhood an amount of knowledge in what are considered the higher branches of education, which is seldom acquired (if acquired at all) until the age of manhood.

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(p. 30)
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 5 days ago
It's only by thinking even more...

It's only by thinking even more crazily than philosophers do that you can solve their problems.

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p. 75e
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
1 month 5 days ago
The critique of the highest values...

The critique of the highest values hitherto does not simply refute them or declare them invalid. It is rather a matter of displaying their origins as impositions which must affirm precisely what ought to be negated by the values established.

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
1 week 3 days ago
If there is to be any...

If there is to be any philosophy at all, this contradiction must be resolved - and the solution of this problem, or answer to the question: how can we think both of Presentations as conforming to objects, and objects as conforming to presentations? is, not the first, but the highest task of transcendental philosophy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
5 days ago
I define a Sign as anything...

I define a Sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its Interpretant, that the latter is thereby mediately determined by the former.

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Letter to Victoria, Lady Welby (1908) SS 80-81
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 1 week ago
I cannot guess what may be...

I cannot guess what may be the fate of Quakerism in America; but I perceive it loses ground daily in England. In all countries, where the established religion is of a mild and tolerating nature, it will at length swallow up all the rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
I, for my part, do not...

I, for my part, do not conceive an act as having causes, and I consider myself satisfied when I have found in it not its 'factors' but the general themes which it organizes: for our decisions gather into new syntheses and on new occasions the leitmotif that governs our life

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p. 461
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
Scientific theories can always be improved...

Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the Universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever.

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Just now
Lichtenberg ... held something of the...

Lichtenberg ... held something of the following kind: one should neither affirm the existence of God nor deny it. ... It is not that he wished to leave certain perspectives open, nor to please everyone. It is rather that he was identifying himself, for his part, with a consciousness of self, of the world, and of others that was "strange" (the word is his) in a sense which is equally well destroyed by the rival explanations.

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pp. 45-46
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 days ago
Society: an inferno of saviors!

Society: an inferno of saviors!

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 1 week ago
The Nazis were 'convinced that evil-doing...

The Nazis were 'convinced that evil-doing in our time has a morbid force of attraction,' Bolshevik assurances inside and outside Russia that they do not recognize ordinary moral standards have become a mainstay of Communist propaganda, and experience has proven time and again that the propaganda value of evil deeds and general contempt for moral standards is independent of mere self-interest, supposedly the most powerful psychological factor in politics.

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Part 3, Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 1 week ago
In justice as fairness society is...

In justice as fairness society is interpreted as a cooperative venture for mutual advantage.

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Chapter II, Section 14, pg. 84
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 2 weeks ago
Not being able to govern events,...

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself.

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Book II, Ch. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 1 week ago
The adjective…

The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.

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Variants: The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Quote attributed in Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by Mrs Rudolf Dircks), Essays of Schopenhauer (2004), Kessinger Publishing, p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 1 week ago
The proper study of mankind is...

The proper study of mankind is books.

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Ch. XXVIII
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 1 week ago
Metaphysics has as the proper object...

Metaphysics has as the proper object of its enquiries three ideas only: God, freedom, and immortality.

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B 395
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 1 week ago
Do not be too timid and...

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

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November 11, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
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