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Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
6 months 1 week ago
How many women does one need...

How many women does one need to sing the scale of love all the way up and down?

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
7 months 2 weeks ago
The value which the workmen add...

The value which the workmen add to the materials, therefore, resolves itself in this case into two parts, of which the one pays their wages, the other the profits of the employer upon the whole stock of materials and wages which he advanced.

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Chapter VI, p. 58.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 months 1 week ago
The world is nothing but change....

The world is nothing but change. Our life is only perception.

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(Hays translation) IV, 4
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
7 months 1 week ago
The church is in its major...

The church is in its major part an opponent still of progress and improvement in all the ways that diminish suffering in the world, because it has chosen to label as morality a certain narrow set of rules of conduct which have nothing to do with human happiness; and when you say that this or that ought to be done because it would make for human happiness, they think that has nothing to do with the matter at all. "What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy."

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"How The Churches Have Retarded Progress"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 months 1 week ago
We live in the false as...

We live in the false as long as we have not suffered. But when we begin to suffer, we enter the truth only to regret the false.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 1 week ago
Music is the poor man's Parnassus....

Music is the poor man's Parnassus.

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Poetry and Imagination
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
7 months 1 week ago
An army of principles will penetrate...

An army of principles will penetrate where an army of soldiers cannot; it will succeed where diplomatic management would fall: it is neither the Rhine, the Channel, nor the ocean that can arrest its progress: it will march on the horizon of the world, and it will conquer.

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Means by Which the Fund Is to Be Created
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 months 1 week ago
Anyone can escape into sleep, we...

Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream, the butcher's the poet's equal there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
5 months 3 weeks ago
Parents will strip themselves of everything,...

Parents will strip themselves of everything, will sacrifice everything for the physical well-being of their child, will wake nights and stand in fear and agony before some physical ailment of their beloved one; but will remain cold and indifferent, without the slightest understanding before the soul cravings and the yearnings of their child, neither hearing nor wishing to hear the loud knocking of the young spirit that demands recognition. On the contrary, they will stifle the beautiful voice of spring, of a new life of beauty and splendor of love; they will put the long lean finger of authority upon the tender throat and not allow vent to the silvery song of the individual growth, of the beauty of character, of the strength of love and human relation, which alone make life worth living.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 months 1 week ago
The Ambassador answered us that it...

The Ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet; that it was written in their Koran; that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners; that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners; and that every Mussulman who was slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once. That it was a law that the first who boarded an Enemy's Vessell should have one slave.

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Concerning an interview in London with the ambassador from Tripoli, Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja.
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
5 months 3 weeks ago
Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence....

Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities. To the enlightenment, that which does not reduce to numbers, and ultimately to the one, becomes illusion.

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John Cumming trans., p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
6 months 3 days ago
Every moment celebrates obsequies over the...

Every moment celebrates obsequies over the virtues of its predecessor.

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Ch. XIV
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
8 months 1 day ago
They who know the truth...

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
7 months 1 week ago
If I negate powdered wigs, I...

If I negate powdered wigs, I am still left with unpowdered wigs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
7 months 4 weeks ago
There is no order between created...

There is no order between created being and non-being, but there is between created and uncreated being.

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q. 7, art. 9, ad 8
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
7 months 1 week ago
The phenomenon of the will in...

The phenomenon of the will in Epictetus, a different mental ability whose chief characteristic is that it speaks an imperative even when it commands nothing but our ability to think. The goal is to annihilate reality insofar it concerns me.

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Hannah Arendt Lecture on Thinking
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
7 months 2 weeks ago
If slavery, barbarism and desolation are...

If slavery, barbarism and desolation are to be called peace, men can have no worse misfortune. No doubt there are usually more and sharper quarrels between parents and children, than between masters and slaves ; yet it advances not the art of household management to change a father's right into a right of property, and count children but as slaves. Slavery, then, and not peace, is furthered by handing the whole authority to one man.

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Ch. 6, On Monarchy
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
7 months 1 week ago
History teaches us that war is...

History teaches us that war is not inevitable. Once again, it is for us to choose whether we use war or some other method of settling the ordinary and unavoidable conflicts between groups of men.

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What Are You Going To Do About It? , The case for constructive peace, 1936
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
4 months 3 weeks ago
Owning our seeds through seed freedom,...

Owning our seeds through seed freedom, our own food through food freedom, our own minds and intelligence through intellectual freedom, our own economies through freedom to produce and consume ecologically and locally, is the 'barbarianism' that the 1% would like to extinguish.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 months 1 week ago
If a man has not, by...

If a man has not, by the time he is 30, yielded to the fascination of every form of extremism, I don't know if he is to be admired or scorned - a saint or a corpse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
3 months 2 weeks ago
By association with nature's enormities, a...

By association with nature's enormities, a man's heart may truly grow big also. There is a way of looking upon a landscape as a moving picture and being satisfied with nothing less big as a moving picture, a way of looking upon tropic clouds over the horizon as the backdrop of a stage and being satisfied with nothing less big as a backdrop, a way of looking upon the mountain forests as a private garden and being satisfied with nothing less as a private garden, a way of listening to the roaring waves as a concert and being satisfied with nothing less as a concert, and a way of looking upon the mountain breeze as an air-cooling system and being satisfied with nothing less as an air-cooling system. So do we become big, even as the earth and firmaments are big.

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Like the "Big Man" described by Yuan Tsi (A.D. 210-263), one of China's first romanticists, we "live in heaven and earth as our house." p. 282
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 3 weeks ago
What profit is there in crossing...

What profit is there in crossing the sea and in going from one city to another? If you would escape your troubles, you need not another place but another personality. Perhaps you have reached Athens, or perhaps Rhodes; choose any state you fancy, how does it matter what its character may be? You will be bringing to it your own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
5 months 1 week ago
Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion...

Human vanity cherishes the absurd notion that our species is the final goal of evolution.

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Chapter 3 "Accumulating Small Change" (p. 50)
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
5 months 3 weeks ago
I believe that man is the...

I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and from the need to find unity and harmony with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
7 months 1 day ago
With an ignorant man thou shouldst...

With an ignorant man thou shouldst not become a confederate and associate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 months 1 week ago
We are all deep in a...

We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle. variant: The fact that living is an extraordinary thing seeing things as they are, That this life is theoretically completely worthless, Seems extraordinary compared to the actual level, This means Live despite all adversities, Every moment becomes a kind of heroism

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
4 months 2 weeks ago
Is not the minimal state, the...

Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision? The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we please, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more. Or less.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopia and the Minimal State, p. 333
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 3 weeks ago
There are necessities and impossibilities in...

There are necessities and impossibilities in reality which do not obtain in fiction, any more than the law of gravity to which we are subject controls what is represented in a picture. ... It is the same with pure good; for a necessity as strong as gravity condemns man to evil and forbids him any good, or only within the narrowest limits and laboriously obtained and soiled and adulterated with evil. ... The simplicity which makes the fictional good something insipid and unable to hold the attention becomes, in the real good, an unfathomable marvel.

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"Morality and literature," pp. 160-161
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
7 months 5 days ago
Recalling all the erroneous things that...

Recalling all the erroneous things that doctors have been able to say about sex or madness does us a fat lot of good. I think that what is currently politically important is to determine the regime of verediction established at a given moment ... on the basis of which you can now recognize, for example, that doctors in the nineteenth century said so many stupid things about sex. ... It is not so much the history of the true or the history of the false as the history of verediction which has a political significance.

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Lecture 2, January 17, 1979, p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 1 week ago
People do not deserve to have...

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

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1841
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
8 months 1 week ago
No multitude is able to acquire...

No multitude is able to acquire any art whatsoever. Then if there is a kingly art, neither the collective body of the wealthy nor the whole people could ever acquire this science of statesmanship.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
5 months 3 weeks ago
There is nothing that comes closer...

There is nothing that comes closer to true humility than the intelligence. It is impossible to feel pride in one's intelligence at the moment when one really and truly exercises it.

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As quoted in the Introduction (by Siân Miles) p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 1 week ago
The man who renounces himself, comes...

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
7 months 1 week ago
Next to the originator of a...

Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
5 months 1 week ago
They say cowardice is infectious; but...

They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener.

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Ch. 4, The Sea Chest.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing lasts forever…

Nothing lasts forever, few things even last for long: all are susceptible of decay in one way or another; moreover all that begins also ends.

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From Ad Polybium De Consolatione (Of Consolation, To Polybius), chap. I; translation based on work of Aubrey Stewart
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
8 months 1 week ago
I think the most likely...

Socrates: I think the most likely view is, that these ideas exist in nature as patterns, and the other things resemble them and are imitations of them; their participation in ideas is assimilation to them, that and nothing else.Parmenides: It is impossible that anything be like the idea, or the idea like anything; for if they are alike, some further idea, in addition to the first, will always appear, and if that is like anything, still another, and a new idea will always be arising, if the idea is like that which partakes of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
7 months 1 week ago
Let him sensibly perceive, that the...

Let him sensibly perceive, that the kindness he shews to others, is no ill husbandry for himself; but that it brings a return in kindness both from those that receive it, and those who look on. Make this a contest among children, who shall out-do one another in this way: and by this means, by a constant practise, children having made it easy to themselves to part with what they have, good nature may be settled in them into a habit, and they may take pleasure, and pique themselves in being kind, liberal and civil, to others.

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Sec. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
I never read a book before...

I never read a book before reviewing it: it prejudices a man so.

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Reported in Bon-Mots of Sydney Smith and R. Brinsley Sheridan, edited by Walter Jerrold with grotesques by Aubrey Beardsley (London: J. M. Dent and Company, 1893), p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Russia was a slave....
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
7 months 1 week ago
I resolved from the beginning of...

I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.

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Fact and Fiction (1961), Part I, Ch. 6: "The Pursuit of Truth", p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
3 months 1 week ago
But here is the "ego" of...

But here is the "ego" of the Russian revolutionary again! Pirouetting on its head, it once more proclaims itself to be the all-powerful director of history - this time with the title of His Excellency the Central Committee of the Social Democratic Party of Russia.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
7 months 2 weeks ago
In ease of body and peace...

In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

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Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
4 months 1 day ago
A man is as old as...

A man is as old as his arteries, and as young as his ideas.

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Ch. 4 : On Old Age
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
6 months 3 days ago
Eternal vigilance is the price of...

Eternal vigilance is the price of knowledge.

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p. 58
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
7 months 1 day ago
Beware an act of avarice...

Beware an act of avarice; it is bad and incurable disease.

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Maxim no. 19.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
6 months 1 week ago
To found a family. I think...

To found a family. I think it would have been easier for me to found an empire.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
7 months 2 weeks ago
I'd rather be ruled by a...

I'd rather be ruled by a competent Turk than an incompetent Christian.

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The earliest published source for such a statement yet located is in Pat Robertson - Where He Stands (1988) by Hubert Morken, p. 42, where such a comment is attributed to Luther without citation.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
The saying that a little knowledge...

The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable possession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

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"On Elementary Instruction in Physiology"
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
7 months 1 day ago
We are but numbers….

We are but numbers, born to consume resources.

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Book I, epistle ii, line 27
Philosophical Maxims
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