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Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 month 6 days ago
When we see a great man...

When we see a great man desiring power instead of his real goal we soon recognize that he is sick, or more precisely that his attitude to his work is sick. He overreaches himself, the work denies itself to him, the incarnation of the spirit no longer takes place, and to avoid the threat of senselessness he snatches after empty power. This sickness casts the genius on to the same level as those hysterical figures who, being by nature without power, slave for power, in order that they may enjoy the illusion that they are inwardly powerful, and who in this striving for power cannot let a pause intervene, since a pause would bring with it the possibility of self-reflection and self-reflection would bring collapse.

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p. 180
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
For my part for one, though...

For my part for one, though I make no doubt of preferring the antient Course, or almost any other to this vile chimera, and sick mans dream of Government yet I could not actively, or with a good heart, and clear conscience, go to the establishment of a monarchical despotism in the place of this system of Anarchy.

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Letter to Richard Burke (26 September 1791), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 414
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 weeks 4 days ago
Descartes may have made a lot...

Descartes may have made a lot of mistakes, but he was right about this: you cannot doubt the existence of your own consciousness. That's the first feature of consciousness, it's real and irreducible. You cannot get rid of it by showing that it's an illusion in a way that you can with other standard illusions.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
The very port and gait of...

The very port and gait of a swan, or turkey, or peacock show the high idea he has entertain'd of himself; and his contempt of all others. This is the more remarkable, that in the two last species of animals, the pride always attends the beauty, and is discover'd in the male only. The vanity and emulation of nightingales in singing have been commonly remark'd [...] All these are evident proofs, that pride and humility are not merely human passions, but extend themselves over the whole animal creation.

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Part 1, Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
Since property here exists in the...

Since property here exists in the form of stock, its movement and transfer become purely a result of gambling on the stock exchange, where the little fish are swallowed by the sharks and the lambs by the stock exchange wolves.

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Vol. III, Ch. XXVII, The Role of Credit, p. 440.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
The thing done avails, and not...

The thing done avails, and not what is said about it. An original sentence, a step forward, is worth more than all the censures.

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First Visit to England
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
4 days ago
A single breaker may recede; but...

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

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pp. 266-267
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 1 week ago
Poets and priests were one in...

Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet.

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Fragment No. 71
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
"I wish I had never been...

"I wish I had never been born," she said. "What are we born for?" "For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. "You can step out into it at any moment..."

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Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
In regard to man's final end,...

In regard to man's final end, all the higher religions are in complete agreement. The purpose of human life is the discovery of Truth, the unitive knowledge of the Godhead. The degree to which this unitive knowledge is achieved here on earth determines the degree to which it will be enjoyed in the posthumous state. Contemplation of truth is the end, action the means.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
Don't discuss yourself, for you are...

Don't discuss yourself, for you are bound to lose; if you belittle yourself, you are believed; if you praise yourself, you are disbelieved.

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Book III, Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
1 month 3 weeks ago
Do not know the truth by...

Do not know the truth by the men, but know the truth, and then you will know who are truthful.

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III. The Classes of Seekers, p. 29.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor...

Every revolutionary ends as an oppressor or a heretic.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
The heights of popularity and patriotism...

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny ; flattery to treachery ; standing armies to arbitrary government ; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

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Part I, Essay 8: Of Public Credit (This appears as a footnote in editions H to P. Other editions include it in the body of the text, and some number it Essay 9.)
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 5 days ago
Nor word for word…

Nor word for word too faithfully translate.

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Line 133 (tr. John Dryden)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
In fact the opposition of instinct...

In fact the opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 week 6 days ago
The only cool PR is provided...

The only cool PR is provided by one's enemies. They toil incessantly and for free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
I think they do it to...

I think they do it to pass the time, nothing more. But time is too large, it can't be filled up. Everything you plunge into it is stretched and disintegrates.

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Diary entry of Friday (2 February), concerning a card game
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 1 week ago
Unless man have a natural bent...

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.

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IV
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 month 6 days ago
Dialogue and monologue are silenced. Bundled...

Dialogue and monologue are silenced. Bundled together, men march without Thou and without I, those of the left who want to abolish memory, and those of the right who want to regulate it: hostile and separated hosts, they march into the common abyss.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 day ago
Within the last fifty years, the...

Within the last fifty years, the extraordinary growth of every department of physical science has spread among us mental food of so nutritious and stimulating a character that a new ecdysis seems imminent.

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Ch.2, p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 weeks 1 day ago
The aim of science is to...

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. We are apt to fall into the error of thinking that the facts are simple because simplicity is the goal of our quest. The guiding motto in the life of every natural philosopher should be, "Seek simplicity and distrust it."

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The Concept of Nature (1919), Chapter VII, p.143.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
I joke sometimes to the effect...

I joke sometimes to the effect that when I approach a part of a book where I must explain something I don't understand, I just type faster and faster and faster. Then, when I get to the part I don't understand, sheer inertia pushes me through. That's not literally true, of course, but there's something to it psychologically.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
If we remembered everything, we should...

If we remembered everything, we should on most occasions be as ill off as if we remembered nothing. It would take as long for us to recall a space of time as it took the original time to elapse, and we should never get ahead with our thinking. All recollected times undergo, accordingly, what M. Ribot calls foreshortening; and this foreshortening is due to the omission of an enormous number of the facts which filled them.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 weeks ago
The motto should not be: Forgive...

The motto should not be: Forgive one another; rather, Understand one another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
Those who read and rightly understand...

Those who read and rightly understand my teaching will not start an insurrection; they have not learned that from me.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 weeks 4 days ago
Man is to be found in...

Man is to be found in reason, God in the passions.

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K 21
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 week 1 day ago
Burke emphasized that the new forms...

Burke emphasized that the new forms of politics, which hope to organize society around the rational pursuit of liberty, equality, fraternity, or their modernist equivalents, are actually forms of militant irrationality.

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Why I became a conservative, The New Criterion
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
Political Economy regards the proletarian ......

Political Economy regards the proletarian ... like a horse, he must receive enough to enable him to work. It does not consider him, during the time when he is not working, as a human being. It leaves this to criminal law, doctors, religion, statistical tables, politics, and the beadle. ... (1) What is the meaning, in the development of mankind, of this reduction of the greater part of mankind to abstract labor? (2) What mistakes are made by the piecemeal reformers, who either want to raise wages and thereby improve the situation of the working class, or - like Proudhon - see equality of wages as the goal of social revolution?.

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First Manuscript - Wages of Labour, p. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 3 weeks ago
A fool is known by his...

A fool is known by his Speech; and a wise man by Silence.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 weeks 4 days ago
One can imagine a computer simulation...

One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition.

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"Is the Brain's Mind a Computer Program?", Scientific American (January 1990).
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
He believes in that mummery a...

He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don't believe in it at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
Certainly it is true that Christians,...

Certainly it is true that Christians, so far as they themselves are concerned, are subject neither to law nor sword, and have need of neither. But take heed and first fill the world with real Christians before you attempt to rule it in a Christian and evangelical manner. This you will never accomplish; for the world and the masses are and always will be un-Christian, even if they are all baptized and Christian in name.

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p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 days ago
It is not that...
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
What is there in 'Paradise Lost'...

What is there in 'Paradise Lost' to elevate and astonish like Herschel or Somerville?

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Quoted in Robert D. Richardson, Jr., Emerson, the Mind On Fire (Univ. of Calif Press 1995), p. 124
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Modern physics... reduces matter to a...

Modern physics... reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics.

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
I say a murder is abstract....

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

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Act 5, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 5 days ago
The wise find pleasure in...

The wise find pleasure in water; the virtuous find pleasure in hills. The wise are active; the virtuous are tranquil. The wise are joyful; the virtuous are long-lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
So long as men worship the...

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable.

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Ch. 8, p. 99 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 2 weeks ago
If there is some end of...

If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 1 week ago
Beauty as we feel it is...

Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said.

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Pt. IV, Expression; § 67: "Conclusion.", p. 267
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 5 days ago
The man of virtue makes the...

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
4 weeks ago
The 'intense life' advertised by the...

The 'intense life' advertised by the neoliberal regime is in truth simply a life of intense consumption.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 5 days ago
The blessing that the market does...

The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.

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E. Jephcott, trans., p. 9.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
Friends are not primarily absorbed in...

Friends are not primarily absorbed in each other. It is when we are doing things together that friendship springs up - painting, sailing ships, praying, philosophizing, fighting shoulder to shoulder. Friends look in the same direction. Lovers look at each other - that is, in opposite directions. To transfer bodily all that belongs to one relationship into the other is blundering.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
I am well aware of how...

I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is absurd to hold that...

It is absurd to hold that a man ought to be ashamed of being unable to defend himself with his limbs but not of being unable to defend himself with reason when the use of reason is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 1 week ago
Exercise is the technique by which...

Exercise is the technique by which one imposes on the body tasks that are both repetitive and different, but always graduated. By bending behavior towards a terminal state, exercise makes possible a perpetual characterization of the individual...It thus assures, in the form of continuity and constraint, a growth, an observation, a qualification.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
Her face seems ravaged by both...

Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
There always comes a time in...

There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.

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Philosophical Maxims
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