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Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
1 month 4 weeks ago
And as every…

And as every present state of a simple substance is naturally a consequence of its preceding state, so its present is pregnant with its future.

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La monadologie (22).
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
In every man sleeps a prophet,...

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 days ago
A dog cannot...
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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
When you write a short story...

When you write a short story ... you had better know the ending first. The end of a story is only the end to the reader. To the writer, it's the beginning. If you don't know exactly where you're going every minute you're writing, you'll never get there or anywhere.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
Romeo wants Juliet as the filings...

Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely.

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Ch. 1 : The Scope of Psychology
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
Progress is the injustice each generation...

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 2 weeks ago
To sum up all these steps,...

To sum up all these steps, each of which is very lengthy and complex, we will have put the game of truth back in the network of constraints and dominations. Truth, I should say rather, the system of truth and falsity, will have revealed the face it turned away from us for so long and which is that of its violence.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
If literature isn't everything, it's not...

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

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Interview (1960), Quoted in Susan Sontag's introduction to Barthes: Selected Writings, "Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,"
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 1 day ago
Capitalism lacks narrativity.

Capitalism lacks narrativity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the...

Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and one sister, should they let the human race die out? I do not know the answer, but I do not think it can be in the affirmative merely on the ground that incest is wicked.

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p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 3 weeks ago
The external embodiment of an act...

The external embodiment of an act is composed of many parts, and may be regarded as capable of being divided into an infinite number of particulars. An act may be looked on as in the first instance coming into contact with only one of these particulars. But the truth of the particular is the universal. A definite act is not confined in its content to one isolated point of the varied external world, but is universal, including these varied relations within itself. The purpose, which is the product of thought and embraces not the particular only but also the universal side, is intention.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Right translated by SW Dyde Queen's University Canada 1896 p. 114-115
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
Why you fool, it's the educated...

Why you fool, it's the educated reader who can be gulled. All our difficulty comes with the others. When did you meet a workman who believes the papers? He takes it for granted that they're all propaganda and skips the leading articles. He buys his paper for the football results and the little paragraphs about girls falling out of windows and corpses found in Mayfair flats. He is our problem. We have to recondition him. But the educated public, the people who read the highbrow weeklies, don't need reconditioning. They're all right already. They'll believe anything.

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Ch. 5: Elasticity, section 1 Miss Hardcastle speaking to Mark Studdock
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 3 weeks ago
No one has the right….

No one has the right to obey.

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in a radio interview with Joachim Fest (9 November 1964)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Revolutions never go backwards.

Revolutions never go backwards.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 weeks 5 days ago
If they drive God from the...

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 weeks 5 days ago
All persons possessing any portion of...

All persons possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly and awfully impressed with an idea that they act in trust and that they are to account for their conduct in that trust to the one great Master, Author, and Founder of society.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 1 day ago
(Gardner) writes about various kinds of...

(Gardner) writes about various kinds of cranks with the conscious superiority of the scientist, and in most cases one can share his sense of the victory of reason. But after half a dozen chapters this non-stop superiority begins to irritate; you begin to wonder about the standards that make him so certain he is always right. He asserts that the scientist, unlike the crank, does his best to remain open-minded. So how can he be so sure that no sane person has ever seen a flying saucer, or used a dowsing rod to locate water? And that all the people he disagrees with are unbalanced fanatics? A colleague of the positivist philosopher A. J. Ayer once remarked wryly "I wish I was as certain of anything as he seems to be about everything." Martin Gardner produces the same feeling.

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pp. 2-3
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 4 days ago
Technical progress and more comfortable living...

Technical progress and more comfortable living permit the systematic inclusion of libidinal components into the realm of commodity production and exchange. But no matter how controlled the mobilization of instinctual energy may be (it sometimes amounts to a scientific management of libido), no matter how much it may serve as a prop for the status quo-it is also gratifying to the managed individuals, just as racing the outboard motor, pushing the power lawn mower, and speeding the automobile are fun.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
Just you think first, and don't...

Just you think first, and don't bother to speak afterward, either.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
The heroic cannot be the common,...

The heroic cannot be the common, nor can the common be heroic.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
A man does not kill himself,...

A man does not kill himself, as is commonly supposed, in a fit of madness but rather in a fit of unendurable lucidity, in a paroxysm which may, if so desired, be identified with madness; for an excessive perspicacity, carried to the limit and of which one longs to be rid at all costs, exceeds the context of reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 days ago
He who fears he shall suffer,...

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears.

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Book III, Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 week 3 days ago
Nothing is more impressive than the...

Nothing is more impressive than the fact that as mathematics withdrew increasingly into the upper regions of ever greater extremes of abstract thought, it returned back to earth with a corresponding growth of importance for the analysis of concrete fact. ...The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

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Ch. 2: "Mathematics as an Element in the History of Thought", p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 3 weeks ago
What, then, is that incalculable feeling...

What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 1 day ago
Needless to say, I am not...

Needless to say, I am not opposed to woman suffrage on the conventional ground that she is not equal to it. I see neither physical, psychological, nor mental reasons why woman should not have the equal right to vote with man. But that can not possibly blind me to the absurd notion that woman will accomplish that wherein man has failed. If she would not make things worse, she certainly could not make them better. To assume, therefore, that she would succeed in purifying something which is not susceptible of purification, is to credit her with supernatural powers. Since woman's greatest misfortune has been that she was looked upon as either angel or devil, her true salvation lies in being placed on earth; namely, in being considered human, and therefore subject to all human follies and mistakes. Are we, then, to believe that two errors will make a right? Are we to assume that the poison already inherent in politics will be decreased, if women were to enter the political arena?

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 3 weeks ago
If self-knowledge does not lead to...

If self-knowledge does not lead to knowing oneself before God - well, then there is something to what purely human self-observation says, namely, this self-knowledge leads to a certain emptiness that produces dizziness. Only by being before God can one totally come to oneself in the transparency of soberness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 days ago
To turn one's eyes away from...

To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.

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Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 weeks 5 days ago
Is it really not possible to...

Is it really not possible to touch the gaming table without being instantly infected by superstition?

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 week 3 days ago
Nature is a structure of evolving...

Nature is a structure of evolving processes. The reality is the process.

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Ch. 4: "The Eighteenth Century", p. 102
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
There has never been any custom,...

There has never been any custom, however useless it may become with changing conditions, that isn't clung to desperately simply because it is something old and familiar.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month ago
Muhammad brought down from heaven and...

Muhammad brought down from heaven and put into the Koran not religious doctrines only, but political maxims, criminal and civil laws, and scientific theories. The Gospels, on the other hand, deal only with the general relations between man and God and between man and man. Beyond that, they teach nothing and do not oblige people to believe anything. That alone, among a thousand reasons, is enough to show that Islam will not be able to hold its power long in ages of enlightenment and democracy, while Christianity is destined to reign in such ages, as in all others.

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Book One, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
So much of our time is...

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

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Quoted in Simon Brown (ed.) The New England Farmer, vol. 9 (January 1857) p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is only by risking our...

It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
Some men are born committed to...

Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
So long as the product is...

So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.

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Vol. II, Ch. II, p. 78.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
1 month 3 weeks ago
How just, how suitable to our...

How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicly; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land?

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
1 month 4 weeks ago
There are two famous…

There are two famous labyrinths where our reason very often goes astray. One concerns the great question of the free and the necessary, above all in the production and the origin of Evil. The other consists in the discussion of continuity, and of the indivisibles which appear to be the elements thereof, and where the consideration of the infinite must enter in.

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Théodicée (1710)ː Préface
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 weeks 5 days ago
Do a man dirt, yourself you...

Do a man dirt, yourself you hurt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 3 weeks ago
A person might fairly doubt also...

A person might fairly doubt also what in the world they mean by the absolute - this that or the other, since, as they would themselves allow, the account of the humanity is one and the same in the absolute man, and in any individual man: for so far as the individual and the absolute man are both man, they will not differ at all: and if so, then the essential good and any particular good will not differ, in so far as both are good. Nor will it do to say that the eternity of the absolute good makes it to be more good; for a white thing which has lasted white ever so long, is no whiter than that which only lasts for a day.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
2 weeks 4 days ago
The present contains nothing more than...

The present contains nothing more than the past, and what is found in the effect was already in the cause.

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Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter I, as translated by Arthur Mitchell (1911), p. 14.; italicized in the original.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
The stronghold of the determinist argument...

The stronghold of the determinist argument is the antipathy to the idea of chance...This notion of alternative possibility, this admission that any one of several things may come to pass is, after all, only a roundabout name for chance.

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The Dilemma of Determinism (1884) p.153
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 5 days ago
There are, in fact, people who...

There are, in fact, people who appear to think only with the brain, or with whatever may be the specific thinking organ; while others think with all the body and all the soul, with the blood, with the marrow of the bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with the life. And the people who think only with the brain develop into definition-mongers; they become the professionals of thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
1 month 4 weeks ago
I shall need only myself to...

I shall need only myself to be happy.

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As quoted in The prophetic voice, 1758-1778 by Lester G. Crocke, p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 4 days ago
There is a great difference between...

There is a great difference between the Idols of the human mind and the Ideas of the divine. That is to say, between certain empty dogmas, and the true signatures and marks set upon the works of creation as they are found in nature.

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Aphorism 23
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have never definitely broken with...

I have never definitely broken with Christianity nor renounced it. To attack it has never been my thought. No, from the time when there could be any question of the employment of my powers, I was firmly determined to employ them all to defend Christianity, or in any case to present it in its true form.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 5 days ago
Physiology does not teach us how...

Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to discourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics how to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be hypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be pedantry of logic, or of esthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 weeks 1 day ago
The great problems of life -...

The great problems of life - sexuality, of course, among others - are always related to the primordial images of the collective unconscious. These images are really balancing or compensating factors which correspond with the problems life presents in actuality. This is not to be marvelled at, since these images are deposits representing the accumulated experience of thousands of years of struggle for adaptation and existence.

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Ch. 5, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 4 weeks ago
Nature does nothing in vain, and...

Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man reason and the freedom of the will which depends upon it is clear indication of her purpose. Man accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge; rather, he should bring forth everything out of his own resources.

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Third Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Chance seldom interferes with the wise...

Chance seldom interferes with the wise man; his greatest and highest interests have been, are, and will be, directed by reason throughout his whole life.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
It would seem that common sense...

It would seem that common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests. I myself think it our bounden duty to believe in such international rationality as possible. But, as things stand, I see how desperately hard it is to bring the peace-party and the war-party together, and I believe that the difficulty is due to certain deficiencies in the program of pacifism which set the military imagination strongly, and to a certain extent justifiably, against it. In the whole discussion both sides are on imaginative and sentimental ground. It is but one utopia against another, and everything one says must be abstract and hypothetical.

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Philosophical Maxims
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