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Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 weeks ago
Haikus allow the whole world to...

Haikus allow the whole world to appear within things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Why do you lack the strength...

Why do you lack the strength to escape the obligation to breathe?

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month ago
The dressing up and puffing up...

The dressing up and puffing up of the individual erases the lineaments of protest.

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p. 283
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is only necessary to make...

It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.

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As quoted in The Biblical Museum: A Collection of Notes Explanatory, Homiletic, and Illustrative on the Holy Scriptures, Especially Designed for the Use of Ministers, Bible-students, and Sunday-school Teachers (1873) by James Comper Gray, Vol. V
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
The fundamental defect of fathers, in...

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

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Ch. 14: Freedom Versus Authority in Education
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 5 days ago
Plato and his objectivistic successors ......

Plato and his objectivistic successors ... preserved the awareness of differences that pragmatism has been invented to deny-the difference between thinking in the laboratory and in philosophy, and consequently the difference between the destination of mankind and its present course.

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p. 53.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
The history of science is full...

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 day ago
The immeasurable beauty of life is...

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said.

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(Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.)
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 3 weeks 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
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 4 days ago
See a person's means (of...

See a person's means (of getting things). Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character? See a person's "being", observe his motive, notice his result. How can a person conceal his character?

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 5 days ago
Other dogs bite their enemies…

Other dogs bite only their enemies, whereas I bite also my friends in order to save them.

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Stobaeus, iii. 13. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 day ago
Hegel made famous his aphorism that...

Hegel made famous his aphorism that all the rational is real and all the real rational; but there are many of us who, unconvinced by Hegel, continue to believe that the real, the really real, is irrational, that reason builds upon irrationalities. Hegel, a great framer of definitions, attempted with definitions to reconstruct the universe, like that artillery sergeant who said that cannon were made by taking a hole and enclosing it with steel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 2 weeks ago
In Germany there is much complaining...
In Germany there is much complaining about my "eccentricities." But since it is not known where my center is, it won't be easy to find out where or when I have thus far been "eccentric." That I was a philologist, for example, meant that I was outside my center (which fortunately does not mean that I was a poor philologist). Likewise, I now regard my having been a Wagnerian as eccentric. It was a highly dangerous experiment; now that I know it did not ruin me, I also know what significance it had for me — it was the most severe test of my character.
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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
Democracy is still upon its trial....

Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.

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Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
God creates out of nothing....

God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
All our scientific and philosophic ideals...

All our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods.

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Lecture at the Harvard Divinity School (13 March 1884); published in the The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine as The Dilemma of Determinism
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Noise is the most impertinent of...

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

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"On Noise"
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 week ago
There is simply too much to...

There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless - too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume responsibility for so much. This is what makes packaged opinion so attractive.

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There Is Simply Too Much to Think About (1992), pp. 173-174
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 5 days ago
He once begged alms of a...

He once begged alms of a statue, and, when asked why he did so, replied, "To get practice in being refused."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
I feel safer with a Pyrrho...

I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a St. Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
Poetry - No definition of poetry...

Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

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January 26, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 weeks 3 days ago
Forgetting extermination is part of extermination,...

Forgetting extermination is part of extermination, because it is also the extermination of memory, of history, of the social, etc. This forgetting is as essential as the event in any case unlocatable by us, inaccessible to us in its truth. This forgetting is still too dangerous, it must be effaced by an artificial memory (today, everywhere, it is artificial memories that effect the memory of man, that efface man in his own memory). This artificial memory will be the restaging of extermination-but late, much too late for it to be able to make real waves and profoundly disturb something, and especially, especially through medium that is itself cold, radiating forgetfulness, deterrence, and extermination in a still more systematic way, if that is possible, than the camps themselves.

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"Holocaust," p. 49
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am sorry I can say...

I am sorry I can say nothing more consoling to you, for love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared with love in dreams. Love in dreams is greedy for immediate action, rapidly performed and in the sight of all. Men will even give their lives if only the ordeal does not last long but is soon over, with all looking on and applauding as though on the stage. But active love is labour and fortitude, and for some people too, perhaps, a complete science. But I predict that just when you see with horror that in spite of all your efforts you are getting farther from your goal instead ofnearer to it - at that very moment I predict that you will reach it and behold clearly the miraculous power of the Lord who has been all the time loving and mysteriously guiding you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
I find men victims of illusion...

I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, - for the Power has many names, - is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo.

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Illusions
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks ago
Ivan Ilych saw that he was...

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.

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Ch. VI
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 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
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 5 days ago
It is peculiar to "ressentiment criticism"...

It is peculiar to "ressentiment criticism" that it does not seriously desire that its demands be fulfilled. It does not want to cure the evil. The evil is merely the pretext for the criticism.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month ago
What appears as the positive is...

What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
I do not think that the...

I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

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"The Emotional Factor"
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
...this our world, which is so...

...this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky ways is-nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing is so fatiguing as the...

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

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To Carl Stumpf, 1 January 1886
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 1 week ago
I think that I have succeeded...

I think that I have succeeded in making it clear that this doctrine gives room for explanations of many facts which without it are absolutely and hopelessly inexplicable; and further that it carries along with it the following doctrines: first, a logical realism of the most pronounced type; second, objective idealism; third, tychism, with its consequent thoroughgoing evolutionism. We also notice that the doctrine presents no hindrences to spiritual influences, such as some philosophies are felt to do.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
There was no denying that he...

There was no denying that he would always be conscious of the fact that an Earthman was an Earthman. He couldn't help that. That was the result of a childhood immersed in an atmosphere of bigotry so complete that it was almost invisible, so entire that you accepted its axioms as second nature. Then you left it and saw it for what it was when you looked back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 weeks ago
God functions like a stabilizer of...

God functions like a stabilizer of time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 4 days ago
To worship to other than...

To worship to other than one's own ancestral spirits is brown-nosing. If you see what is right and fail to act on it, you lack courage. Variant: To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage or of principle.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months 2 weeks ago
Everything that is possible…

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

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1686
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 2 weeks ago
As for the life of money-making,...

As for the life of money-making, it is one of constraint, and wealth is manifestly not the good of which we are in search, for it is only useful as a means to something else, and for this reason there is less to be said for it than for the ends mentioned before, which are, at any rate, desired for their own sakes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 2 weeks ago
Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in...

Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man - it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.

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"On Women" (1772), as translated in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 1 week ago
In its most general form, confinement...

In its most general form, confinement was explained, or at least justified, by a will to avoid scandal. It thereby signalled an important change in the consciousness of evil. The Renaissance had let unreason in all its forms come out into the light of day, as public exposure gave evil the chance to redeem itself and to serve as an exemplum.

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Part One: 5. The Insane
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are no nearer heaven on...

We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
How could one speak properly about...

How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth; you who spared nothing but in love gave everything; you who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 3 weeks ago
Above all, every relation must be...

Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.

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Aphorism 29
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
In fact of course, this 'productive'...

In fact of course, this 'productive' worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn't give a damn for the junk.

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Notebook II, The Chapter on Capital, p. 193.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
We live together, we act on,...

We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstacies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude.

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Page 159
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
We are taught to believe that...

We are taught to believe that a desire of domineering over our countrymen is love to our country; and those who hate civil war abet rebellion, and that the amiable and conciliatory virtues of lenity, moderation, and tenderness to the privileges of those who depend on this kingdom are a sort of treason to the state. It is impossible that we should remain long in a situation, which breeds such notions and dispositions, without some great alteration in the national character.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 day ago
One of the greatest...
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Main Content / General
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 day ago
In books of psychology written from...

In books of psychology written from the spiritualist point of view, it is customary to begin the discussion of the existence of the soul as a simple substance, separable from the body, after this style: There is in me a principle which thinks, wills and feels... Now this implies a begging of the question. For it is far from being an immediate truth that there is in me such a principle; the immediate truth is that I think, will and feel. And I - the I that thinks, wills and feels - am immediately my living body with the states of consciousness which it sustains. It is my living body that thinks, wills and feels.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 4 weeks ago
Be bold to look towards God...

Be bold to look towards God and say, "Use me henceforward for whatever you want; I am of one mind with you; I am yours; I refuse nothing that seems good to you; lead me where you will; wrap me in what clothes you will."

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Book II, ch. 16, 42
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is not your strength and...

It is not your strength and your natural power that subjects all these people to you. Do not pretend then to rule them by force or to treat them with harshness. Satisfy their reasonable desires; alleviate their necessities; let your pleasure consist in being beneficent; advance them as much as you can, and you will act like the true king of desire.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 day ago
May we not imagine that possibly...

May we not imagine that possibly this earthly life of ours is to the other life what sleeping is to waking? May not all our life be a dream and death an awakening? But an awakening to what? And supposing that everything is but the dream of God and that God one day will awaken? Will He remember His dream?

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Philosophical Maxims
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