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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 weeks 4 days ago
When a man is in a...

When a man is in a fair way and sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself to make a very important figure in the world. His horse whinnies to him; the trumpets blow and the girls look out of window as he rides into town before his company; he receives many assurances of trust and regard--sometimes by express in a letter--sometimes face to face, with persons of great consequence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful if his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, were he as brave as Hercules or as wise as Solomon, he is soon forgotten.

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The Sire de Maletroit's Door.
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 2 weeks ago
Of these not right forms of...

Of these not right forms of government, monarchy, when bound by good written rules, which we call laws, is the best of all the six; but without law it is hard and most oppressive to live with. The government of the few must be considered intermediate, both in good and in evil. The government of the multitude is weak in all respects and able to do nothing great, either good or bad, when compared with the other forms of government, therefore of all these governments when they are lawful, this is the worst, and when they are all lawless it is the best.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
I owed a magnificent day to...

I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.

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October 1, 1848
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 1 week ago
Tell me to what you pay...

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

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p. 94.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
The new overkill is simply an...

The new overkill is simply an extension of our nervous system into a total ecological service environment. Such a service environment can liquidate or terminate its beneficiaries as naturally as it sustains them.

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(p. 152)
Philosophical Maxims
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
2 months 4 days ago
If melodiously piping flutes sprang from...

If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?

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As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 2 weeks ago
Desire, to know why, and how,...

Desire, to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man; so that Man is distinguished, not only by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
In a republic, that paradise of...

In a republic, that paradise of debility, the politician is a petty tyrant who obeys the laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
The effect of liberty to individuals...

The effect of liberty to individuals is, that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
1 month 2 weeks ago
In reality, the law always contains...

In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted.

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"The Economical Nature of Physical Inquiry," in Popular Scientific Lectures (1898), p. 192
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 1 week ago
Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either...

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

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Stobaeus, iv. 31c. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
1 month 3 weeks ago
The romantic poetry…

The romantic poetry is a progressive universal poetry.

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Progressive Universalpoesie (1798)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 day ago
...it is the peculiar and perpetual...

...it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives...

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Aphorism 46
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is the mark of an...

It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Every philosophical problem, when it is...

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months ago
Virtue refuses facility for her companion...

Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

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Ch. 11. Of Cruelty (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 1 week ago
The process of aging can only...

The process of aging can only be fruitful and satisfactory if the important transitions are accompanied by free resignation, by the renunciation of the values proper to the preceding stage of life. Those spiritual and intellectual values which remain untouched by the process of aging, together with the values of the next stage of life, must compensate for what has been lost. Only if this happens can we cheerfully relive the values of our past in memory, without envy for the young to whom they are still accessible. If we cannot compensate, we avoid and flee the "tormenting" recollection of youth, thus blocking our possibilities of understanding younger people. At the same time we tend to negate the specific values of earlier stages. No wonder that youth always has a hard fight to sustain against the ressentiment of the older generation.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), pp. 62-63
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 3 weeks ago
The right of voting for representatives...

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery, for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another, and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
This avidity alone, of acquiring goods...

This avidity alone, of acquiring goods and possessions for ourselves and our nearest friends, is insatiable, perpetual, universal, and directly destructive of society.

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Part 2, Section 2
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 1 day ago
The slaves of our times are...

The slaves of our times are not all those factory and workshop hands only who must sell themselves completely into the power of the factory and foundry-owners in order to exist, but nearly all the agricultural laborers are slaves, working, as they do, unceasingly to grow another's corn on another's field, and gathering it into another's barn; or tilling their own fields only in order to pay to bankers the interest on debts they cannot get rid of. And slaves also are all the innumerable footmen, cooks, porters, housemaids, coachmen, bathmen, waiters, etc., who all their life long perform duties most unnatural to a human being, and which they themselves dislike.

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Chapter 8: Slavery Exists Among Us
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nothing proves that we are more...

Nothing proves that we are more than nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
If we want a love which...

If we want a love which will protect the soul from wounds we must love something other than God.

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p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 4 days ago
You ask me why I do...

You ask me why I do not write something... I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

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Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
We see then, commodities are in...

We see then, commodities are in love with money, but "the course of true love never did run smooth".

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Vol. I, Ch. 3, Section 2, pg. 121.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
The indispensible is not necessarily the...

The indispensible is not necessarily the desirable.

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Chapter 6 (p. 48)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months ago
A man of understanding…

A man of understanding has lost nothing, if he has himself.

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Ch. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 6 days ago
Rather, power is most powerful, most...

Rather, power is most powerful, most stable, where it creates a feeling of freedom and where it does not need to resort to violence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 3 weeks ago
If there is one realm in...

If there is one realm in which it is essential to be sublime, it is in wickedness. You spit on a petty thief, but you can't deny a kind of respect for the great criminal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
3 months 1 week ago
On the whole, a man who...

On the whole, a man who denies the existence of the effects arranged according to the causes in the question of arts, or whose wisdom cannot understand it, then he has no knowledge of the art of its Maker.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
1 month 1 week ago
The bourgeoisie hides the fact that...

The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth.

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p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The thirst after happiness is never...

The thirst after happiness is never extinguished in the heart of man.

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IX
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
The more powerful and original a...

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks ago
Even there, in the mines, underground,...

Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The heavens are as deep as...

The heavens are as deep as our aspirations are high.

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Quoted in Maturin M. Ballou (ed.) Pearls of Thought (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1881) p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 3 weeks ago
The blindness of those who think...

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
Mr. Galton ...in his English Men...

Mr. Galton ...in his English Men of Science, has given ...cases showing individual variations in the type of memory... Some have it verbal. Others... for facts and figures, others for form. Most say... [it] must first be rationally conceived and assimilated.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
The annual labour of every nation...

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes.

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Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 1 week ago
I now come to the second...

I now come to the second reason for the modern fading of interest in religion. Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", pp. 266-267
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 2 weeks ago
The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem...

The political, ethical, social, philosophical problem of our day is not to try to liberate the individual from the state and from the state's institutions but to liberate us both from the state and from the type of individualization which is linked to the state. We have to promote new forms of subjectivity through the refusal of this kind of individuality which has been imposed on us for several centuries.

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p. 785
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months ago
I am entirely of the opinion...

I am entirely of the opinion that the papacy is the Antichrist. But if anyone wants to add the Turk, then the Pope is the spirit of the Antichrist, and the Turk is the flesh of the Antichrist. They help each other in their murderous work. The latter slaughters bodily and by the sword, the former spiritually and by doctrine.

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330
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
While it is true that science...

While it is true that science cannot decide questions of value, that is because they cannot be intellectually decided at all, and lie outside the realm of truth and falsehood. Whatever knowledge is attainable, must be attained by scientific methods; and what science cannot discover, mankind cannot know.

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Religion and Science (1935), Ch. IX: Science of Ethics.
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 1 day ago
Can we find nothing good to...

Can we find nothing good to say about TV? Well, yes, it brings scattered solitaries into a sort of communion. TV allows your isolated American to think that he participates in the life of the entire country. It does not actually place him in a community, but his heart is warmed with the suggestion (on the whole false) that there is a community somewhere in the vicinity and that his atomized consciousness will be drawn back toward the whole.

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The Distracted Public (1990), p. 159
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
There has been a general trend...

There has been a general trend in recent times toward a Unitarian mythology and the worship of one God. This is the tendency which it is customary to regard as spiritual progress. On what grounds? Chiefly, so far as one can see, because we in the Twentieth Century West are officially the worshippers of a single divinity. A movement whose consummation is Us must be progressive. Quod erat demonstrandum.

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"One and Many," p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 week ago
The philosophers who wished us to...

The philosophers who wished us to have the gods for our friends rank the friendship of the holy angels in the fourth circle of society, advancing now from the three circles of society on earth to the universe, and embracing heaven itself. And in this friendship we have indeed no fear that the angels will grieve us by their death or deterioration. But as we cannot mingle with them as familiarly as with men (which itself is one of the grievances of this life), and as Satan, as we read, sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light, to tempt those whom it is necessary to discipline, or just to deceive, there is great need of God's mercy to preserve us from making friends of demons in disguise, while we fancy we have good angels for our friends; for the astuteness and deceitfulness of these wicked spirits is equalled by their hurtfulness.

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XIX, 9
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
Love is not consolation, it is...

Love is not consolation, it is light.

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As quoted in Simone Weil (1954) by Eric Walter Frederick Tomlin, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
A man is more a man...

A man is more a man through the things he keeps to himself than through those he says.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes...

Nothing is lost, nothing wholly passes away, for in some way or another everything is perpetuated; and everything, after passing through time, returns to eternity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
A regret understood by no one:...

A regret understood by no one: the regret to be a pessimist. It's not easy to be on the wrong foot with life

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
Once introduced discontinuity, once challenge any...

Once introduced discontinuity, once challenge any of the properties of visual space, and as they flow from each other, the whole conceptual framework collapses.

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p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
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