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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
He realized now that to be...

He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence — they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 week ago
Reason alone does not suffice. p...

Reason alone does not suffice.

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p 98
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 2 weeks ago
For do our Theologians pretend to...

For do our Theologians pretend to make a monopoly of the word, action, and may not the atheists likewise take possession of it, and affirm that plants, animals, men, &c. are nothing but particular actions of one simple universal substance, which exerts itself from a blind and absolute necessity?

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Part 4, Section 5
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
The slave begins by demanding justice...

The slave begins by demanding justice and ends by wanting to wear a crown. He must dominate in his turn.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 weeks ago
And surely to know what this...

And surely to know what this good is, is of great importance for the conduct of life, for in that case we shall be like archers shooting at a definite mark, and shall be more likely to do what is right. But, if this is the case, we must try to comprehend, in outline at least, what it is and to which of the sciences it belongs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Decision making processes are aimed at...

Decision making processes are aimed at finding courses of action that are feasible or satisfactory in the light of multiple goals and constraints.

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p. 274.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 5 days ago
Is it conceivable....
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Main Content / General
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
Resolved to die in the last...

Resolved to die in the last dike of prevarication.

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Speech on the sixth article of charge in the impeachment of Warren Hastings (7 May 1789), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), p. 406
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 week 1 day 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
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
Experience teaches only the teachable... Tragedy...

Experience teaches only the teachable...

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Tragedy and the Whole Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 2 weeks ago
Judges of elegance and taste consider...

Judges of elegance and taste consider themselves as benefactors to the human race, whilst they are really only the interrupters of their pleasure ... There is no taste which deserves the epithet good, unless it be the taste for such employments which, to the pleasure actually produced by them, conjoin some contingent or future utility: there is no taste which deserves to be characterized as bad, unless it be a taste for some occupation which has mischievous tendency.

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Théorie des peines et des récompenses (1811); translation by Richard Smith, The Rationale of Reward, J. & H. L. Hunt, London, 1825, Bk. 3, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months ago
It is the act of an...

It is the act of an ill-instructed man to blame others for his own bad condition; it is the act of one who has begun to be instructed, to lay the blame on himself; and of one whose instruction is completed, neither to blame another, nor himself.

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(5) [tr. George Long (1888)].
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 5 days ago
To no one but the Son...

To no one but the Son of Heaven does it belong to order ceremonies, to fix the measures, and to determine the written characters.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 4 weeks ago
Capitalism lacks narrativity.

Capitalism lacks narrativity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 2 days ago
People here argue about religion interminably,...

People here argue about religion interminably, but it appears that they are competing at the same time to see who can be the least devout.

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No. 46. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
This is approximately the way Christendom...

This is approximately the way Christendom relates to the essentially Christian, the unconditioned. After seventeen, eighteen detours and running all around someone finally has his finite existence assured, and then we receive a sermon about Seek first the kingdom of God. Is this sobriety or is this intoxication?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
How we hate this solemn Ego...

How we hate this solemn Ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes.

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1839
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 4 days ago
Those who compare the age in...

Those who compare the age in which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only in imagination, may talk of degeneracy and decay; but no man who is correctly informed as to the past, will be disposed to take a morose or desponding view of the present.

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Vol. I, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
I think people who are unhappy...

I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.

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Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
2 months 6 days ago
Montaigne puts not self-satisfied understanding but...

Montaigne puts not self-satisfied understanding but a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.

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Signs, trans. R. McCleary (Evanston: 1964), p. 203
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Materialism ends up denying the existence...

Materialism ends up denying the existence of any irreducible subjective qualitative states of sentience or awareness.

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Consciousness and Language (2002) p. 47.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 weeks ago
Hope is the dream of a...

Hope is the dream of a waking man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 week ago
The woman who fights against her...

The woman who fights against her father still has the possibility of leading an instinctive, feminine existence, because she rejects only what is alien to her. But when she fights against the mother she may, at the risk of injury to her instincts, attain to greater consciousness, because in repudiating the mother she repudiates all that is obscure, instinctive, ambiguous, and unconscious in her own nature.

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"Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype" (1939). In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 186
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 1 week ago
The Interpretation of the Laws of...

The Interpretation of the Laws of Nature in a Common-wealth, dependeth not on the books of Moral Philosophy. The Authority of writers, without the Authority of the Commonwealth, maketh not their opinions Law, be they never so true.

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The Second Part, Chapter 26, p. 143
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 3 weeks ago
If thou shalt aspire after the...

If thou shalt aspire after the glorious acts of men, thy working shall be accompanied with compunction and strife, and thy remembrance followed with distaste and upbraidings; and justly doth it come to pass towards thee, O man, that since thou, which art God's work, doest him no reason in yielding him well-pleasing service, even thine own works also should reward thee with the like fruit of bitterness.

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Of The Works Of God and Man
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
You had that action and counteraction...

You had that action and counteraction which, in the natural and in the political world, from the reciprocal struggle of discordant powers draws out the harmony of the universe.

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Volume iii, p. 277
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
To be acutely conscious…

To be acutely conscious is a disease, a real, honest-to-goodness disease.

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Part 1, Chapter 2 (tr. David Magarshack, 1950) To think too much is a disease, a real, actual disease.
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 2 weeks ago
Gender is a kind of imitation...

Gender is a kind of imitation for which there is no original; in fact, it is a kind of imitation that produces the very notion of the original as an effect and consequence of the imitation itself.

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"Imitation and Gender Insubordination" in Inside/Out (1991) edited by Diana Fuss
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is normal to hate what...

It is normal to hate what we fear, and it happens frequently, though not always, that we fear what we hate. I think it may be taken as the rule among primitive men, that they both fear and hate whatever is unfamiliar. They have their own herd, originally a very small one. And within one herd, all are friends, unless there is some special ground of enmity. Other herds are potential or actual enemies; a single member of one of them who strays by accident will be killed. An alien herd as a whole will be avoided or fought according to circumstances. It is this primitive mechanism which still controls our instinctive reaction to foreign nations. The completely untravelled person will view all foreigners as the savage regards a member of another herd. But the man who has travelled, or who has studied international politics, will have discovered that, if his herd is to prosper, it must, to some degree, become amalgamated with other herds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 1 week ago
Books are good enough in their...

Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life.

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An Apology for Idlers.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 5 days ago
A man living without conflicts, as...

A man living without conflicts, as if he never lives at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Gentlemen, there is a sublime and...

Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by which the human race is guided, - the race never dying, the individual never spared, - to results affecting masses and ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or without their design. Only what is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things. That Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 2 weeks ago
The power of the periodical press...

The power of the periodical press is second only to that of the people.

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Chapter XI.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
I hate tyranny, at least I...

I hate tyranny, at least I think I do; but I hate it most of all where most are concerned in it. The tyranny of a multitude is a multiplied tyranny. If, as society is constituted in these large countries of France and England, full of unequal property, I must make my choice (which God avert!) between the despotism of a single person, or of the many, my election is made. As much injustice and tyranny has been practised in a few months by a French democracy, as in all the arbitrary monarchies in Europe in the forty years of my observation.

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Letter to Captain Thomas Mercer (26 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 96
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 3 days ago
Scilurus on his death-bed, being about...

Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them,-thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak.

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31 Scilurus
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
His power to adore is responsible...

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
In the Church which was founded...

In the Church which was founded at Corinth, St. Paul had special difficulties of the kind I have mentioned. In that flourishing commercial city, which through its shipping and situation, maintained a vital connexion between East and West, numerous crowds of people flocked together from all quarters, different in speech and in culture. As they mingled with the inhabitants, they produced, by contacts and contrasts, new and ever new differences. Even in the Church this differentiation endeavoured to make itself felt in sects and parties; and a kind of pagan wisdom made a special attempt to force itself forward as a teacher of truth. In his first letter to this church, from which the text I read is taken, St. Paul strongly combats this tendency.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 week ago
I don't feel that it is...

I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being.

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Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 2 weeks ago
If nonviolence is to make sense...

If nonviolence is to make sense as an ethical and political position, it cannot simply repress aggression or do away with its reality; rather, nonviolence emerges as a meaningful concept precisely when destruction is most likely or seems most certain.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
A Turk thinks, or used to...

A Turk thinks, or used to think (for even Turks are wiser now-a-days), that society would be on a sandbank if women were suffered to walk about the streets with their faces uncovered. Taught by these and many similar examples, I look upon this expression of loosening the foundations of society, unless a person tells in unambiguous terms what he means by it, as a mere bugbear to frighten imbeciles with.

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Stability of Society (17 August 1850), quoted in Ann P. Robson and John M. Robson (eds.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, XXV - Newspaper Writings December 1847 - July 1873 Part IV, 1986
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 day ago
The eulogies of my intelligence are...

The eulogies of my intelligence are positively intended to evade the question "Is what she says true?"

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Letter to her parents (1943), as quoted in the Introduction by Siân Miles p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
Just now
The art of medicine has its...

The art of medicine has its roots in the heart. If your heart is false, then also the doctor in you is false. If it is fair, then also the doctor is fair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Out from the heart of Nature...

Out from the heart of Nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old.

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The Problem, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 1 week ago
Matters of religion should never be...

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

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Ch. VI
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
People try to do all sorts...

People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.

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p. 210
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
When... in the course of all...

When... in the course of all these thousands of years has man ever acted in accordance with his own interests?

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Part 1, Chapter 7
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months ago
Rationalism is an adventure in the...

Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months ago
Any physical object which by its...

Any physical object which by its influence deteriorates its environment, commits suicide.

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Ch. 6: "The Nineteenth Century", p. 155
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 6 days ago
Absurdity is one of the most...

Absurdity is one of the most human things about us: a manifestation of our most advanced and interesting characteristics. ... It is possible only because we possess a certain kind of insight - the capacity to transcend ourselves in thought.If a sense of the absurd is a way of perceiving our true situation (even though the situation is not absurd until the perception arises), then what reason can we have to resent or escape it? ... It results from the ability to understand our human limitations. It need not be a matter of agony unless we make it so. Nor need it evoke a defiant contempt of fate that allows us to feel brave or proud. Such dramatics even if carried on in private, betray a failure to appreciate the cosmic unimportance of the situation. If sub specie aeternitatis there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.

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"The Absurd" (1971), p. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 4 weeks ago
It was the normal working of...

It was the normal working of the antisuccess mechanism. In our overcrowded modern world a hit record, a best-selling book, a successful film, can reach more people in a week than Shakespeare or Beethoven reached in a whole lifetime. And so fame has become the most romantic, the most desirable of all commodities, the dream for which a modern Faust might sell his soul to the Devil. Once attained, fame is never as easy to hold on to as some people believe. The people who achieve fame by some accident of fashion are usually forgotten within a week; the ones who remain on top have to work to stay there. But few people understand this. The result is that anyone who achieves sudden notoriety arouses envy and hostility. The greater the success, the greater the reaction.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
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