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Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
2 months 4 weeks ago
Figure to yourself the mixture of...

Figure to yourself the mixture of surprise and delight which has this instant been poured into my mind by the sound of my name, as uttered by you, in the speech just read to me out of the Morning Herald... By one and the same man, not only Parliamentary Reform, but Law Reform advocated. Advocated? and by what man? By one who, in the vulgar sense of profit and loss, has nothing to gain by it... Yes, only from Ireland could such self-sacrifice come; nowhere else: least of all in England, cold, selfish, priest-ridden, lawyer-ridden, lord-ridden, squire-ridden, soldier-ridden England, could any approach to it be found.

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Letter to Daniel O'Connell (15 July 1828) , quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. X (1843), pp. 594-595
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 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
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 4 weeks ago
But there is only one thing...

But there is only one thing which gathers people into seditious commotion, and that is oppression.

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A Letter Concerning Toleration
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 1 day ago
It is the common wonder of...

It is the common wonder of all men, how among so many million of faces there should be none alike.

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Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 2 weeks ago
A happy and eternal being has...

A happy and eternal being has no trouble himself and brings no trouble upon any other being; hence he is exempt from movements of anger and partiality, for every such movement implies weakness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
4 weeks ago
Dying is nothing. You have to...

Dying is nothing. You have to know how to disappear. Dying comes down to a biological chance and that is of no consequence. Disappearing is of a far higher order of necessity. You must not leave it to biology to decide when you will disappear. To disappear is to pass into an enigmatic state which is neither life nor death. Some animals know how to do this, as do savages, who withdraw while still alive, from the sight of their own people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have enough to eat till...

I have enough to eat till my hunger is stayed, to drink till my thirst is sated; to clothe myself withal; and out of doors not Callias there, with all his riches, is more safe than I from shivering; and when I find myself indoors, what warmer shirting do I need than my bare walls? what ampler greatcoat than the tiles above my head?

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iv. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
I will destroy this house, and...

I will destroy this house, and no one will be able to build it....

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
But then again of course I...

But then again of course I know perfectly well that He can't be used as a road. If you're approaching Him not as the goal but as a road, not as the end but as a means, you're not really approaching Him at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 5 days ago
Nothing can contribute more to peace...

Nothing can contribute more to peace of soul than the lack of any opinion whatever.

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E 11
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
'The Spirit of the Age wishes...

The Spirit of the Age wishes to allow argument and not to allow argument. ... If anyone argues with them they say that he is rationalizing his own desires, and therefore need not be answered. But if anyone listens to them they will then argue themselves to show that their own doctrines are true. ... You must ask them whether any reasoning is valid or not. If they say no, then their own doctrines, being reached by reasoning, fall to the ground. If they say yes, then they will have to examine your arguments and refute them on their merits: for if some reasoning is valid, for all they know, your bit of reasoning may be one of the valid bits.'

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Pilgrim's Regress 63
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
If I knew for a certainty...

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

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p. 85
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 1 week ago
Whilst in speaking of human things,...

Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them...the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 3 weeks ago
God, I have said, is the...

God, I have said, is the fulfiller, or the reality, of the human desires for happiness, perfection, and immortality. From this it may be inferred that to deprive man of God is to tear the heart out of his breast. But I contest the premises from which religion and theology deduce the necessity and existence of God, or of immortality, which is the same thing. I maintain that desires which are fulfilled only in the imagination, or from which the existence of an imaginary being is deduced, are imaginary desires, and not the real desires of the human heart; I maintain that the limitations which the religious imagination annuls in the idea of God or immortality, are necessary determinations of the human essence, which cannot be dissociated from it, and therefore no limitations at all, except precisely in man's imagination.

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Lecture XXX, Atheism alone a Positive View
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
The plan we are advocating amounts...

The plan we are advocating amounts essentially to this: that a certain small income, sufficient for necessaries, should be secured to all, whether they work or not, and that a larger income, as much larger as might be warranted by the total amount of commodities produced, should be given to those who are willing to engage in some work which the community recognizes as useful.

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Ch. IV: Work and Pay, discussing Universal Basic Income (UBI)
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 weeks 5 days ago
What ideas individuals may attach to...

What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
Reviewing what you have learned...

Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.

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Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
1 month 1 week ago
How are we to adjudicate among...

How are we to adjudicate among rival ontologies? Certainly the answer is not provided by the semantical formula "To be is to be the value of a variable"; this formula serves rather, conversely, in testing the conformity of a given remark or doctrine to a prior ontological standard.

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"On What There Is"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 5 days ago
Among the celestial...
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Main Content / General
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
Any man more right than his...

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
The needs of a human being...

The needs of a human being are sacred. Their satisfaction cannot be subordinated either to reasons of state, or to any consideration of money, nationality, race, or colour, or to the moral or other value attributed to the human being in question, or to any consideration whatsoever. There is no legitimate limit to the satisfaction of the needs of a human being except as imposed by necessity and by the needs of other human beings. The limit is only legitimate if the needs of all human beings receive an equal degree of attention.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
Every parting gives a foretaste of...

Every parting gives a foretaste of death; every coming together again a foretaste of the resurrection.

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"Psychological Observations"
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
The writers by whom, more than...

The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of political thinking was brought home to me, were those of the St. Simonian school in France. In 1829 and 1830 I became acquainted with some of their writings. They were then only in the earlier stages of their speculations. They had not yet dressed out their philosophy as a religion, nor had they organized their scheme of Socialism. They were just beginning to question the principle of hereditary property. I was by no means prepared to go with them even this length; but I was greatly struck with the connected view which they for the first time presented to me, of the natural order of human progress; and especially with their division of all history into organic periods and critical periods.

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(p. 163)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
In my individual heart I fully...

In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours. The trouble with your robust and full bodied faiths, however, is, that they begin to cut each others throats too soon, and for getting on in the world and establishing a modus vivendi these pestilential refinements and reasonablenesses and moderations have to creep in.

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Letter to John Jay Chapman, 5 April 1897
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 2 days ago
The young today cannot follow narrative...

The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.

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Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 days ago
Christ ought to be preached with...

Christ ought to be preached with this goal in mind - that we might be moved to faith in him so that he is not just a distant historical figure but actually Christ for you and me.

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p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
There's nothing like deduction. We've determined...

There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 4 days ago
Just then another visitor entered the...

Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew Bolkónski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pávlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.

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Bk. I, Ch. IV
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 4 days ago
In order to correctly define art,...

In order to correctly define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and consider it as one of the conditions of human life. ...Reflecting on it in this way, we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of affective communication between people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Age of Empty Freedom ......

The Age of Empty Freedom ... does not know that man must first through labour, industry, and art, learn how to know; but it has a certain fixed standard for all conceptions, and an established Common Sense of Mankind always ready and at hand, innate within itself and there present without trouble on its part;-and those conceptions and this Common Sense are to it the measure of the efficient and the real. It has this great advantage over the Age of Science, that it knows all things without having learned anything; and can pass judgment upon whatever comes before it at once and without hesitation,-without needing any preliminary evidence:-'That which I do not immediately comprehend by the conceptions which dwell within me, is nothing,'-says Empty Freedom.

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p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 2 weeks ago
One must always maintain one's connection...

One must always maintain one's connection to the past and yet ceaselessly pull away from it. To remain in touch with the past requires a love of memory. To remain in touch with the past requires a constant imaginative effort.

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A Retrospective Glance at the Lifework of a Master of Books
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
I need Christ, not something that...

I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
The destiny of the spiritual World,...

The destiny of the spiritual World, and, - since this is the substantial World, while the physical remains subordinate to it, or, in the language of speculation, has no truth as against the spiritual, - the final cause of the World at large, we allege to be the consciousness of its own freedom on the part of Spirit, and ipso facto, the reality of that freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
4 weeks ago
I have only one real message...

I have only one real message in this lecture, and that is: consciousness is a biological phenomenon, like photosynthesis, digestion, mitosis-you know all the biological phenomena-and once you accept that, most, if not all about the hard problems of consciousness simply evaporate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong,...

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
A thing is important if anyone...

A thing is important if anyone think it important.

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Ch. 28, Note 35
Philosophical Maxims
Cato the Younger
Cato the Younger
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nay, men, if any of you...

Nay, men, if any of you had heeded what I was ever foretelling and advising, ye would now neither be fearing a single man nor putting your hopes in a single man.

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Quoted by Plutarch, Life of Cato the Younger, 52 Bernadotte Perrin, ed. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. 8, LCL 100 (1919), pp. 247, 361
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
The ancients, even though they believed...

The ancients, even though they believed in destiny, believed primarily in nature, in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 4 days ago
The oppression of a majority by...

The oppression of a majority by a minority, and the demoralization inevitably resulting from it, is a phenomenon that has always occupied me and has done so most particularly of late.

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I
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 4 weeks ago
Monopoly of one kind or another,...

Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.

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Chapter VII, Part Third, p. 684.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
New truth is often uncomfortable, especially...

New truth is often uncomfortable, especially to the holders of power; nevertheless, amid the long record of cruelty and bigotry, it is the most important achievement of our intelligent but wayward species.

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Religion and Science (1935), Ch. X: Conclusion
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Were we to undertake an exhaustive...

Were we to undertake an exhaustive self-scrutiny, disgust would paralyze us, we would be doomed to a thankless existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
Homosexuality appears as one of the...

Homosexuality appears as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.

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Vol I: La volonté de savoir
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
He tried to recall what he...

He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one actually sees him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 weeks 2 days ago
However long Jewish, Christian and Muslim...

However long Jewish, Christian and Muslim theologians struggle to find multiple meanings in this text, the dominant seems to be this: Abraham's unquestioning willingness to heed gods command to sacrifice the thing he loved most is what qualified him to become the father of what are called still the Abrahamic faiths.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week 4 days ago
I now propose briefly to... set...

I now propose briefly to... set forth, in a form intelligible to those who possess no special acquaintance with anatomical science, the chief facts upon which all conclusions respecting the nature and the extent of the bonds which connect man with the brute world must be based: I shall then indicate the one immediate conclusion which, in my judgment, is justified by those facts, and I shall finally discuss the bearing of that conclusion upon the hypotheses which have been entertained respecting the Origin of Man.

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Ch.2, p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
The best authorities are unanimous in...

The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration. Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 1 week ago
Modern science has imposed on humanity...

Modern science has imposed on humanity the necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure.

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Ch. 13: "Requisites for Social Progress", p. 291
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 1 week ago
What one needs to do at...

What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 1 week ago
There is no objective reality. But...

There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object.

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As translated at Gallery of Russian Thinkers ... selected by Dmitry Olshansky
Philosophical Maxims
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