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Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Outsider may be an artist,...

The Outsider may be an artist, but the artist is not necessarily an Outsider.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
The inventive genius of great England...

The inventive genius of great England will not forever sit patient with mere wheels and pinions, bobbins, straps and billy-rollers whirring in the head of it. The inventive genius of England is not a Beaver's, or a Spinner's or Spider's genius: it is a Man's genius, I hope, with a God over him!

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 2 days ago
When all capital, all production, all...

When all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 6 days ago
Let those flatter who fear; it...

Let those flatter who fear; it is not an American art. To give praise which is not due might be well from the venal, but would ill beseem those who are asserting the rights of human nature. They know, and will therefore say, that kings are the servants, not the proprietors of the people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Not the external and physical alone...

Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods. Everything has its cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus; it is not done by hand, but by machinery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 week ago
That unwise body, the United Irishmen,...

That unwise body, the United Irishmen, have had the folly to represent those Evils as owing to this Country, when in truth its chief guilt is in its total neglect, its utter oblivion, its shameful indifference and its entire ignorance, of Ireland and of every thing that relates to it, and not in any oppressive disposition towards that unknown region.

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Letter to Thomas Hussey (9 December 1796), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
4 months 1 week ago
I do not define time, space,...

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

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Definitions - Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 week ago
The first and the simplest emotion...

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is Curiosity.

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Part I Section I
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 1 week ago
The necessaries of life occasion the...

The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article I, p. 911.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 2 weeks ago
A penny saved is of more...

A penny saved is of more value than a penny paid out.

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What Luther Says, Section on "Life, Human," No. 2438. Rules for a Thrifty Life. 2, p. 784
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 months ago
When an astronomer tells me that...

When an astronomer tells me that some stellar phenomenon, which his telescope reveals to him at this moment, happened... fifty years ago... I... ask... how he has measured the velocity of light.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 months 1 week ago
A thinker sees his own actions...
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 2 weeks ago
Concerning the female sorcerer. Roman law...

Concerning the female sorcerer. Roman law also prescribes this. Why does the law name women more than men here, even though men are also guilty of this? Because women are more susceptible to those superstitions of Satan; take Eve, for example. They are commonly called "wise women." Let them be killed.

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Sermon on Exodus, 1526, WA XVI, p. 551 as quoted in Luther on Women: A Sourcebook, edited by Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, (2003), p. 231
Philosophical Maxims
Xunzi
Xunzi
3 months 3 days ago
If an action ... involves little...

If an action ... involves little profit but much righteousness, do it.

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Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
5 months 1 week ago
Nature is none other than God...

Nature is none other than God in things... Animals and plants are living effects of Nature; Whence all of God is in all things... Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion.

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As quoted in Elements of Pantheism (2004) by Paul A. Harrison
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 2 weeks ago
'T is one and the same...

T is one and the same Nature that rolls on her course, and whoever has sufficiently considered the present state of things might certainly conclude as to both the future and the past.

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 1 week ago
"The will of the nation" is...

"The will of the nation" is one of those expressions which have been most profusely abused by the wily and the despotic of every age.

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Chapter IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
4 months 6 days ago
Condemn me if you choose -...

Condemn me if you choose - I do that myself, - but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is.

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"Letter to N.N.," quoted by Havelock Ellis in "The New Spirit" (1892) p. 226
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 months 2 weeks ago
As human beings, we are endowed...

As human beings, we are endowed with this freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.

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Ch. 3: Does History Repeat Itself?
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 months 3 weeks ago
It must be emphasized that the...

It must be emphasized that the warrior spirit is one thing and the military spirit quite another. Militarism was unknown in the Middle Ages. The soldier signifies the degeneration of the warrior, corrupted by the industrialist. The soldier is an armed industrialist, a bourgeois who has invented gunpowder. He was organized by the state to make war on the castles. With his coming, long-distance warfare appeared, the abstract war waged by cannon and machine gun.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 days ago
To suffer is to produce knowledge.

To suffer is to produce knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 3 weeks ago
A man is a man...
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Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 1 week ago
China has been long one of...

China has been long one of the richest, that is, one of the most fertile, best cultivated, most industrious, and most populous countries in the world. It seems, however, to have been long stationary. Marco Polo, who visited it more than five hundred years ago, describes its cultivation, industry, and populousness, almost in the same terms in which they are described by travellers in the present times.

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Chapter VIII, p. 86.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 1 week ago
Good and evil, reward and punishment,...

Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature: these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind are set on work, and guided.

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Sec. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
4 months 3 weeks ago
Of all kind of authors there...

Of all kind of authors there are none I despise more than compilers, who search every where for shreds of other men's works, which they join to their own, like so many pieces of green turf in a garden: they are not at all superior to compositors in a printing house, who range the types, which, collected together, make a book, towards which they contribute nothing but the labours of the hand. I would have original writers respected, and it seems to me a kind of profanation to take those pieces from the sanctuary in which they reside, and to expose them to a contempt they do not deserve. When a man hath nothing new to say, why does not he hold his tongue? What business have we with this double employment?"

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No. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 6 days ago
To take from one, because it...

To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 months 3 weeks ago
State and government are the social...

State and government are the social apparatus of violent coercion and repression. Such an apparatus, the police power, is indispensable in order to prevent anti-social individuals and bands from destroying social co-operation. Violent prevention and suppression of anti-social activities benefit the whole of society and each of its members. But violence and oppression are none the less evils and corrupt those in charge of their application. It is necessary to restrict the power of those in office lest they become absolute despots. Society cannot exist without an apparatus of violent coercion. But neither can it exist if the office holders are irresponsible tyrants free to inflict harm upon those they dislike.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
4 months 2 weeks ago
In the end, I am moved...

In the end, I am moved by causes and ideas that I can actually choose to support because they conform to values and principles that I believe in.

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p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 6 days ago
It is not only when it...

It is not only when it takes the form of physical addiction that sex is evil. It is also evil when it manifests itself as a way of satisfying the lust for power or the climber's craving for position and social distinction.

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Ch. 14, p. 358 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 2 weeks ago
It is not possible to run...

It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

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Aphorism 81
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 6 days ago
Heroism feels and never reasons and...

Heroism feels and never reasons and therefore is always right.

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Heroism
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
Becky Sharp's acute remark that it...

Becky Sharp's acute remark that it is not difficult to be virtuous on ten thousand a year, has its application to nations; and it is futile to expect a hungry and squalid population to be anything but violent and gross.

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"Joseph Priestley"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Soldier is perhaps one of...

The Soldier is perhaps one of the most difficult things to realise; but Governments, had they not realised him, could not have existed: accordingly he is here.

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 months 4 days ago
No human institution can endure unless...

No human institution can endure unless supported by the Hand which supports all; that is to say, if it is not especially consecrated to Him at its origin. The more it is penetrated with the Divine principle, the more durable it will be. How strange is the blindness of men in our age! They boast of their knowledge, and are ignorant of everything, since they are ignorant of themselves. They know not what they are, nor what they can do. An invincible pride bears them on continually to overthrow every thing which they have not made; and in order to work out new creations, they separate themselves from the source of all existence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau has, however, very well said, Little, vain man, show me thy power, and I will show thee thy weakness. It might be said, with as much truth and more profit, Little, vain man, confess to me thy weakness, and I will show thee thy strength.

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XLVI, p. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 2 days ago
Philosophers are often like little children,...

Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult "What is that?"

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Ch. 9 : Philosophy, p. 193
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 months 3 days ago
Where all think alike, no one...

Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", p. 51
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
6 months 5 days ago
At best the principles that economists...

At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.

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Chapter IX, Section 84, p. 558
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 3 weeks ago
Maurras, with perfect logic, is an...

Maurras, with perfect logic, is an atheist. The Cardinal [Richelieu], in postulating something whose whole reality is confined to this world as an absolute value, committed the sin of idolatry. ... The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.

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p. 199
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 4 weeks ago
Did ye never read in the...

Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

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21:27-42 and 44 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
I here, on the very threshold,...

I here, on the very threshold, protest against it in reference to Paganism, and to all other isms by which man has ever for a length of time striven to walk in this world. They have all had a truth in them, or men would not have taken them up. Quackery and dupery do abound; in religions, above all in the more advanced decaying stages of religions, they have fearfully abounded: but quackery was never the originating influence in such things; it was not the health and life of such things, but their disease, the sure precursor of their being about to die! Let us never forget this.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 4 days ago
What began as a "Romantic reaction"...

What began as a "Romantic reaction" towards organic wholeness may or may not have hastened the discovery of electro-magnetic waves. But certainly the electro-magnetic discoveries have recreated the simultaneous "field" in all human affairs so that the human family now exists under conditions of a "global village." We live in a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums. So that concern with the "primitive" today is as banal as nineteenth-century concern with "progress," and as irrelevant to our problems. The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.

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(p. 36)
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months 2 weeks ago
Time is the soul of this...

Time is the soul of this world.

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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 5 days ago
Love is something more stern and...

Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 months 3 weeks ago
Human or general needs can be...

Human or general needs can be satisfied through society; for satisfaction of unique needs you must do some seeking. A friend and a friendly service, or even an individual's service, society cannot procure you. And yet you will every moment be in need of such a service, and on the slightest occasions require somebody who is helpful to you. Therefore do not rely on society, but see to it that you have the wherewithal to - purchase the fulfilment of your wishes.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 243
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 4 days ago
It is always the psychic and...

It is always the psychic and social grounds, brought into play by each medium or technology, that readjust the balance of the hemispheres and of human sensibilities into equilibrium with those grounds.

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p. 82
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 1 week ago
Though they may think the proof...

Though they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is a work of design, and though they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an Author and Governor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in goodness, they have that which constitutes the principal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal conception of a Perfect Being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of their conscience; and this ideal of Good is usually far nearer to perfection than the objective Deity of those, who think themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in the author of a world so crowded with suffering and so deformed by injustice as ours.

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(p. 46)
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
6 months 5 days ago
Men resign themselves to their position...

Men resign themselves to their position should it ever occur to them to question it; and since all may view themselves as assigned their vocation, everyone is held to be equally fated and equally noble in the eyes of providence.

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Chapter IX, Section 82, p. 547
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
6 months 1 day ago
The criticism of the reformers was...

The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.

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Chapter Two, pp.. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 3 weeks ago
And love, above all when it...

And love, above all when it struggles against destiny, overwhelms us with the feeling of the vanity of this world of appearances and gives us a glimpse of another world, in which destiny is overcome and liberty is law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months 4 days ago
Nature too remains, so far as...

Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer.

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Philosophical Maxims
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