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Plutarch
Plutarch
5 months 4 days ago
Rest gives relish...

Rest gives relish to labour.

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Of the Training of Children, 9 (Tr. Babbitt)
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
5 months 4 days ago
Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether...

Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me!"

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32 Dionysius
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
6 months 4 days ago
The greatness of the human being...

The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe.

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q. 1, art. 2, ad 4
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers,...

Good roads, canals, and navigable rivers, by diminishing the expence of carriage, put the remote parts of the country more nearly upon a level with those of the neighbourhood of the town. They are upon that the greatest of all improvements.

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Chapter XI, Part I, p. 174.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is a boundary to men's...

There is a boundary to men's passions when they act from feeling; none when they are under the influence of imagination.

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p. 460
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 months 1 week ago
To this end they make a...

To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 weeks ago
How much pain have cost us...

How much pain have cost us the evils which have never happened.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 1 week ago
Philosophy may in no way interfere...

Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it.

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§ 124
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 1 week ago
Freed from the sublimated form which...

Freed from the sublimated form which was the very token of its irreconcilable dreams-a form which is the style, the language in which the story is told-sexuality turns into a vehicle for the bestsellers of oppression. ... This society turns everything it touches into a potential source of progress and of exploitation, of drudgery and satisfaction, of freedom and of oppression. Sexuality is no exception.

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pp. 77-78
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
The hand that rounded Peter's dome,...

The hand that rounded Peter's dome, And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, Wrought in a sad sincerity, Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew, The conscious stone to beauty grew.

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The Problem, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
Human beings have....
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William Godwin
William Godwin
4 months 2 weeks ago
The benefit of the governed is...

The benefit of the governed is made to lie on one side and the benefit of the governors on the other.

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Book III, Chapter 9
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
He who remembers the evils he...

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 2 weeks ago
Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic...

Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously over-compensates a secret doubt.

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"The Substitutes for Religion, The Religion of Sex"
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
We love those who hate our...

We love those who hate our enemies, and if we had no enemies there would be very few people whom we should love. All this, however, is only true so long as we are concerned solely with attitudes towards other human beings. You might regard the soil as your enemy because it yields reluctantly a niggardly subsistence. You might regard Mother Nature in general as your enemy, and envisage human life as a struggle to get the better of Mother Nature. If men viewed life in this way, cooperation of the whole human race would become easy. And men could easily be brought to view life in this way if schools, newspapers, and politicians devoted themselves to this end. But schools are out to teach patriotism; newspapers are out to stir up excitement; and politicians are out to get re-elected. None of the three, therefore, can do anything towards saving the human race from reciprocal suicide.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 months 2 days ago
One is not worthy to have...

One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 2 weeks ago
The reservedness and distance that fathers...

The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.

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Sec. 96
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 2 weeks ago
With regard to politics and the...

With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.

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E. C. Mossner, Life of David Hume (Clarendon Press, 2001), p. 311.
Philosophical Maxims
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Fodor
1 month 2 weeks ago
From the point of view of...

From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents: if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be possible for a cow to be called "horse." Putting the two things together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"...

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Fodor (1990). A Theory of Content and Other Essays. The MIT Press.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 1 week ago
Be ye therefore ready also: for...

Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.

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12:40
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
6 months 6 days ago
Those who were best able to...

Those who were best able to provide themselves with the means of security against their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee, passed the most agreeable life in each other's society; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy was such that, if one of them died before his time, the survivors did not mourn his death as if it called for sympathy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 1 day ago
My master…

My master Attalus used to say: "Evil herself drinks the largest portion of her own poison." The poison which serpents carry for the destruction of others, and secrete without harm to themselves, is not like this poison; for this sort is ruinous to the possessor.

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Line 22
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 2 weeks ago
The second is the partiality for...

The second is the partiality for unity proper to the philosophical mind, whence this wide-spread canon has flown forth: principles are not to be multiplied beyond supreme necessity, to which we give in our adhesion, not because we have insight into causal unity in the world either by reason or experience, but as seeking it by an impulse of the intellect which seems to itself to have by thus much advanced in the explication of phenomena, by as much as it is granted to it to descend from the same principle to a greater number of consequences,

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago
This much is certain, the ERA...

This much is certain, the ERA OF REVOLUTION has now FAIRLY OPENED IN EUROPE once more. And the general state of affairs is good.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (13 February 1863), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 41. Letters 1860-64 (2010), p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
4 months 2 weeks ago
"Can any good come out of...

"Can any good come out of Nazareth?" This is always the question of the wiseacres and the knowing ones. But the good, the new, comes from exactly that quarter whence it is not looked for, and is always something different from what is expected. Everything new is received with contempt, for it begins in obscurity. It becomes a power unobserved.

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As quoted in "Voices of the New Time" as translated by C. C. Shackford in The Radical Vol. 7 (1870), p. 329
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 1 week ago
There's nothing nonsensical about saying that...

There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
4 months 2 days 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
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
How many together with whom I...

How many together with whom I came into the world are already gone out of it.

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VI, 56
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
5 months 1 week ago
The most thought provoking…

The most thought provoking thing in our thought provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

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What is Called Thinking? (1951-1952), as translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray
Philosophical Maxims
L.P. Jacks
L.P. Jacks
1 month 1 week ago
Is not every man familiar with...

Is not every man familiar with situations in his own life, when the needs of self-expression cannot be satisfied by saying any thing whatsoever times and occasions when, to make his fellows understand what he means, he must straight way do something, or be something, and perhaps hold his tongue the while? And can we deny that the same holds good of the Universe?

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 2 weeks ago
So far no one had had...
So far no one had had enough courage and intelligence to reveal me to my dear Germans. My problems are new, my psychological horizon frighteningly comprehensive, my language bold and clear; there may well be no books written in German which are richer in ideas and more independent than mine.
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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
A new moral outlook is called...

A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous.

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Attributed to Russell at the end of Isaac Asimov's short story Franchise with no specific source given.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 3 weeks ago
As a rule there are in...

As a rule there are in everyone all sorts of good ideas, ready like tinder. But much of this tinder catches fire, or catches it successfully, only when it meets some flame or spark from outside, i.e. from some other person. Often, too, our own light goes out, and is rekindled by some experience we go through with a fellow-man. Thus we have each of us cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flames within us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
Mind, even more deadly to empires...

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.

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Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
2 months 1 week ago
I do not admire myself as...

I do not admire myself as a person. My successes do not override my shortcomings.

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Journal of Humanistic Psychology (Spring 1991) Vol. 31 No. 2, p. 112
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
6 months 6 days ago
Of all the means which wisdom...

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
And so in City after City,...

And so in City after City, street-barricades are piled, and truculent, more or less murderous insurrection begins; populace after populace rises, King after King capitulates or absconds; and from end to end of Europe Democracy has blazed up explosive, much higher, more irresistible and less resisted than ever before; testifying too sadly on what a bottomless volcano, or universal powder-mine of most inflammable mutinous chaotic elements, separated from us by a thin earth-rind, Society with all its arrangements and acquirements everywhere, in the present epoch, rests! The kind of persons who excite or give signal to such revolutions-students, young men of letters, advocates, editors, hot inexperienced enthusiasts, or fierce and justly bankrupt desperadoes, acting everywhere on the discontent of the millions and blowing it into flame,-might give rise to reflections as to the character of our epoch. Never till now did young men, and almost children, take such a command in human affairs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
The virtues of society are the...

The virtues of society are the vices of the saints.

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Circles
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 4 weeks ago
The natural impulse of the primitive...

The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man, stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State is justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency to do.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 1 week ago
"Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as...

Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth.

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The Second Part, Chapter 27, p. 153
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months 3 weeks ago
To me it seems clear that...

To me it seems clear that the descriptions of human life we find in the novels of Tolstoy or George Eliot are not mere entertainment; they teach us to perceive what goes on in social and individual life. And such descriptions require the many subtle distinctions that ordinary language has made available to us. The question of the relevance or irrelevance of "how we speak" is not just a question for philosophers, although it is that too. It is a question for philosophers because once ordinary language is laughed out of the room, philosophical theories are no longer held responsible at all to the ways we actually speak and actually live; but it is a question for more than just philosophers because, at bottom, contempt for ordinary language is contempt for all the humanities.

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"Science and Philosophy"
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 4 weeks ago
The existential split in man would...

The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.

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p. 262
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness...

The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 2 days ago
Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt:...

Choose to love whomsoever thou wilt: all else will follow. Thou mayest say, "I love only God, God the Father." Wrong! If Thou lovest Him, thou dost not love Him alone; but if thou lovest the Father, thou lovest also the Son. Or thou mayest say, "I love the Father and I love the Son, but these alone; God the Father and God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven and sitteth at the right hand of the Father, the Word by whom all things were made, the Word who was made flesh and dwelt amongst us; only these do I love." Wrong again! If thou lovest the Head, thou lovest also the members; if thou lovest not the members, neither dost thou love the Head.

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p 438
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
Romantic poetry ... recognizes as its...

Romantic poetry ... recognizes as its first commandment that the will of the poet can tolerate no law above itself.

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Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 116
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 1 week ago
To convince someone of the truth,...

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks...

Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain-tricks of Custom: but of all these, perhaps the cleverest is her knack of persuading us that the Miraculous, by simple repetition, ceases to be Miraculous.

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Bk. III, ch. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
If a work of art is...

If a work of art is to explore new environments, it is not to be regarded as a blueprint but rather as a form of action-painting.

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To Wilfred Watson, October 6 1965. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 325
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 3 weeks ago
It is true that may hold...

It is true that may hold in these things, which is the general root of superstition; namely, that men observe when things hit, and not when they miss; and commit to memory the one, and forget and pass over the other.

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Sylva Sylvarum Century X, 1627
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
3 months ago
I have had to suffer the...

I have had to suffer the violence and brutality that comes with rising fundamentalism, and I've asked myself how a society that is the cradle of peace, the land of Gandhi and Buddha, could be reduced to one of the most volatile societies in the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
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