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Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 2 weeks ago
L'important, c'est que le sexe n'ait...

L'important, c'est que le sexe n'ait pas été seulement affaire de sensation et de plaisir, de loi ou d'interdiction, mais aussi de vrai et de faux. What is important is that sex was not only a question of sensation and pleasure, of law and interdiction, but also of the true and the false.

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Vol. I, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 3 weeks ago
In a head-on clash between violence...

In a head-on clash between violence and power, the outcome is hardly in doubt. Nowhere is the self-defeating factor in the victory of violence over power more evident than in the use of terror to maintain domination, about whose weird successes and eventual failures we know perhaps more than any generation before us. Violence can destroy power; it is utterly incapable of creating it.

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On Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
If you think that your belief...

If you think that your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument, rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based on faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting and distorting the minds of the young in what is called "education". This last is particularly dastardly, since it takes advantage of the defencelessness of immature minds. Unfortunately it is practiced in greater or less degree in the schools of every civilised country.

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p. 220
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
It seems to me as good...

It seems to me as good as certain that we cannot get the upper hand against England. The English - the best race in the world - cannot lose! We, however, can lose and shall lose, if not this year then next year. The thought that our race is going to be beaten depresses me terribly, because I am completely German.

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Writing about the eventual outcome of World War I, in which he was a volunteer in the Austro-Hungarian army (25 October 1914), as quoted in The First World War (2004) by Martin Gilbert, p. 104
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 week 1 day ago
Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect...

Atheism ... in its philosophic aspect refuses allegiance not merely to a definite concept of God, but it refuses all servitude to the God idea, and opposes the theistic principle as such. Gods in their individual function are not half as pernicious as the principle of theism which represents the belief in a supernatural, or even omnipotent, power to rule the earth and man upon it. It is the absolutism of theism, its pernicious influence upon humanity, its paralyzing effect upon thought and action, which Atheism is fighting with all its power.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 weeks 2 days ago
The first revolt is against the...

The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
1 month 1 week ago
Soul, indeed, is a certain medium...

Soul, indeed, is a certain medium between an impartible essence, and an essence which is divisible about bodies. But intellect is an impartible essence alone. And qualities and material forms are divisible about bodies. Not everything which acts on another, effects that which it does effect by approximation and contact; but those natures which effect any thing by approximation and contact, use approximation accidentally.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 weeks 2 days ago
The endeavor of scientific research to...

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

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p. 150.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
We invite this Congress, and through...

We invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution: "In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them".

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 1 day ago
Stories on digital platforms like Facebook...

Stories on digital platforms like Facebook or Instagram are not genuine stories. They have no narrative duration. Rather, they are just sequences of momentary impressions that do not tell us anything.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 week 2 days ago
To counter the fixation on a...

To counter the fixation on a rhetoric of victimhood, black folks must engage in a discourse of self-determination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
Eternity is absence.

Eternity is absence.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
I now saw, that a science...

I now saw, that a science is either deductive or experimental, according as, in the province it deals with, the effects of causes when conjoined, are or are not the sums of the effects which the same causes produce when separate. It followed that politics must be a deductive science. It thus appeared, that both Macaulay and my father were wrong; the one in assimilating the method of philosophising in politics to the purely experimental method of chemistry; while the other, though right in adopting a deductive method, had made a wrong selection of one, having taken as the type of deduction, not the appropriate process, that of the deductive branches of natural philosophy, but the inappropriate one of pure geometry, which, not being a science of causation at all, does not require or admit of any summing-up of effects.

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(pp. 160-161)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
When I walk along with...

When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have never worked as hard...

I have never worked as hard as now. I go for a brief walk in the morning. Then I come home and sit in my room without interruption until about three o'clock. My eyes can barely see. Then with my walking stick in hand I sneak off to the restaurant, but am so weak that I believe that if somebody were to call out my name, I would keel over and die. Then I go home and begin again. In my indolence during the past months I had pumped up a veritable shower bath, and now I have pulled the string and the ideas are cascading down upon me: healthy, happy, merry, gay, blessed children born with ease and yet all of them with the birthmark of my personality.

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Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
2 months 3 days ago
What I have given in the...

What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children.

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Letter to Marin Mersenne (1637) as quoted by D. E. Smith & M. L. Latham Tr. The Geometry of René Descartes
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
Ideas should be neutral. But man...

Ideas should be neutral. But man animates them with his passions and folly. Impure and turned into beliefs, they take on the appearance of reality. The passage from logic is consummated. Thus are born ideologies, doctrines, and bloody farce.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 week 4 days ago
Il n'est possible d'aimer et d'être...

Only he who has measured the dominion of force, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.

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p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 4 weeks ago
The problem of establishing a perfect...

The problem of establishing a perfect civic constitution is dependent upon the problem of a lawful external relation among states and cannot be solved without a solution of the latter problem.

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Seventh Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 week 3 days ago
No epoch is homogeneous; whatever you...

No epoch is homogeneous; whatever you may have assigned as the dominant note of a considerable period, it will always be possible to produce men, and great men, belonging to the same time, who exhibit themselves as antagonistic to the tone of their age.

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Ch. 4: "The Eighteenth Century", p. 93
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 3 weeks ago
There are, besides, eternal truths, such...

There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.

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Section 2, paragraph 63
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 weeks 4 days ago
A good man with a good...

A good man with a good conscience doesn't walk so fast.

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Scene X.
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is better...

It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 week 3 days ago
The deepest definition of youth is...

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.

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p. 285.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 5 days ago
Your own philosophy condemns you and...

Your own philosophy condemns you and supports us.

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Salbatore Mitxelena (1958): Unamuno eta Abendats, Baiona: Darracq
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month ago
Step back in time; look closely...

Step back in time; look closely at the child in the very arms of his mother; see the external world reflected for the first time in the yet unclear mirror of his understanding; study the first examples which strike his eyes; listen to the first words which arouse within him the slumbering power of thought; watch the first struggles which he has to undergo; only then will you comprehend the source of his prejudices, the habits, and the passions which are to rule his life. The entire man, so to speak, comes fully formed in the wrappings of his cradle.

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Chapter II.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 weeks ago
Abolish competition and replace it with...

Abolish competition and replace it with association.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
2 months 3 days ago
It may be observed, that provinces...

It may be observed, that provinces amid the vicissitudes to which they are subject, pass from order into confusion, and afterward recur to a state of order again; for the nature of mundane affairs not allowing them to continue in an even course, when they have arrived at their greatest perfection, they soon begin to decline. In the same manner, having been reduced by disorder, and sunk to their utmost state of depression, unable to descend lower, they, of necessity, reascend; and thus from good they gradually decline to evil, and from evil again return to good. The reason is, that valor produces peace; peace, repose; repose, disorder; disorder, ruin; so from disorder order springs; from order virtue, and from this, glory and good fortune.

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Book V, Chapter 1
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
To eat is to appropriate by...

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

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Part 3: Being-For-Others
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 days ago
The techniques of the practitioner are...

The techniques of the practitioner are usually called 'synthetic'. He designs by organizing known principles and devices into larger systems.

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Simon (1945, p. 353); As cited in: Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (2009) p. 425.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 weeks 5 days ago
Honour is the mysticism of legality....

Honour is the mysticism of legality.

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Aphorism 77, of Ideas as translated in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 weeks 2 days ago
All religions are cruel, all founded...

All religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally on the idea of sacrifice - that is, on the perpetual immolation of humanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
Fascism is not defined by the...

Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.

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On the Execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Libération
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
If I have exhausted the justifications,...

If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."

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§ 217
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
1 week 2 days ago
Since we live in a society...

Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
1 week 4 days ago
Our argument is not flatly circular,...

Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

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"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 weeks 2 days ago
In the subjectivist view, when 'reason'...

In the subjectivist view, when 'reason' is used to connote a thing or idea rather than an act, it refers exclusively to the relation of such an object or concept to a purpose, not to the object or concept itself. It means that the thing or the idea is good for something else. There is no reasonable aim as such, and to discuss the superiority of one aim over another in terms of reason becomes meaningless. From the subjective approach, such a discussion is possible only if both aims serve a third and higher one, that is, if they are means, not ends.

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p. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 3 weeks ago
The law of progress holds that...

The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don't you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good? The good is no longer even being measured.

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Interview with French writer Roger Errera in New York Review of Books
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 5 days ago
And he arrives at the cogito...

And he arrives at the cogito ergo sum, which St. Augustine had already anticipated... "I think therefore I am," can only mean "I think, therefore I am a thinker"; this being of "I am," which is deduced from "I think," is merely a knowing; this being is a knowledge, but not life. And the primary reality is not that I think, but that I live, for those also live who do not think. Although this living may not be a real living. God! what contradictions when we seek to join in wedlock life and reason!

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 1 week ago
Declining from the public ways, walk...

Declining from the public ways, walk in unfrequented paths.

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Symbol 5
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks ago
For you who no longer possess...

For you who no longer possess it, freedom is everything, for us who do, it is merely an illusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 1 day ago
What is so remarkable about Crowley...

What is so remarkable about Crowley the 'magician' is that he remains Crowley the scientist, and always applies the same probing intellectual curiosity to every field he surveys. This is ultimately the most impressive quality about his mind, and the one that might -- if he had concentrated on developing it to the full -- have brought him the fame that he craved. Crowley's tragedy was that he never concentrated long enough to develop anything to the full.

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p. 150
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 days ago
There is no belief....
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Main Content / General
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 weeks 4 days ago
Revolution is like the daughters of...

Revolution is like the daughters of Pelias: it cuts humanity to pieces in order to rejuvenate it.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
Self-respect will keep a man from...

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.

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Authority and the Individual (1949), p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 4 days ago
No one has yet been found...

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

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Aphorism 97
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 4 days ago
The law of nature teaches me...

The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence: With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any man born on St. Innocents Day. I never had a bribe or reward in my eye or thought when pronouncing judgment or order. I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the King.

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(17 April 1621) Quoted by Baron John Campbell (1818), J. Murray in "The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 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
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 1 day ago
The outsider, Haller says, is a...

The outsider, Haller says, is a self-divided man; being self-divided, his chief desire is to be unified. He is selfish as a man with a lifelong raging toothache.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 days ago
How many valiant men we have...

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
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