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José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 2 weeks ago
The specialist serves as a striking...

The specialist serves as a striking concrete example of the species, making clear to us the radical nature of the novelty. For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned , for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is "a scientist," and "knows" very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with an the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.

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Chapter XII: The Barbarism Of "Specialisation"
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
Any artist should be grateful for...

Any artist should be grateful for a naïve grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

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Foreword to The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Essentially, this war...is a great race-conflict,...

Essentially, this war...is a great race-conflict, a conflict of Teuton and Slav, in which certain other nations, England, France and Belgium, have been led into cooperation with the Slav. ... The conflict of Germany and Russia has been produced not by this or that diplomatic incident, but by primitive passions expressing themselves in the temper of the two races.

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War: The Offspring of Fear (1914), quoted in Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 (1996), p. 373
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 3 days ago
We are not to expect to...

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

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Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 3 days ago
The behaviour of individuals is the...

The behaviour of individuals is the tool with which the organisation achieves its targets.

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p. 108.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
Who is there that can recognize...

Who is there that can recognize real intellect, and do reverence to it; and discriminate it well from sham intellect, which is so much more abundant, and deserves the reverse of reverence? He that himself has it!-One really human Intellect, invested with command, and charged to reform Downing Street for us, would continually attract real intellect to those regions, and with a divine magnetism search it out from the modest corners where it lies hid. And every new accession of intellect to Downing Street would bring to it benefit only, and would increase such divine attraction in it, the parent of all benefit there and elsewhere!

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Philosophical Maxims
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
5 months 1 week ago
In his arms, my lady lay asleep…

In his arms, my lady lay asleep, wrapped in a veil. He woke her then and trembling and obedient. She ate that burning heart out of his hand; Weeping I saw him then depart from me.

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Chapter I, First Sonnet (tr. Mark Musa)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 2 days ago
I do not speak…

I do not speak the minds of others except to speak my own mind better.

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Ch. 26. On the Education of Children
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 4 weeks ago
It is a great mortification to...

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.

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Part I, Essay 15: The Epicurean
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
To think is to submit to...

To think is to submit to the whims and commands of an uncertain health.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 2 weeks ago
What we call objective reality is,...

What we call objective reality is, in the last analysis, what is common to many thinking beings, and could be common to all; this common part, we shall see, can only be the harmony expressed by mathematical laws. It is this harmony... which is the sole objective reality, the only truth we can attain; and when I add that the universal harmony of the world is the source of all beauty, it will be understood what price we should attach to the slow and difficult progress which little by little enables us to know it better.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
For anyone who is alone, without...

For anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful. Hence one must choose a master, God being out of style.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 3 weeks ago
Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a...

Unlike the masses, intellectuals have a taste for rationality and an interest in facts.

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Chapter 5 (p. 43)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 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
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Isn't history ultimately the result of...

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 3 days ago
Rationality requires a choice among all...

Rationality requires a choice among all possible alternative behaviors. In actual behavior, only a very few of all these possible alternatives come to mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 4 weeks ago
Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted,...

Avarice and injustice are always shortsighted, and they did not foresee how much this regulation must obstruct improvement, and thereby hurt in the long-run the real interest of the landlord.

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Chapter II, p. 426-427.
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 1 week ago
When he was wounded with an...

When he was wounded with an arrow in the ankle, and many ran to him that were wont to call him a god, he said smiling, "That is blood, as you see, and not, as Homer saith, 'such humour as distils from blessed gods.'"

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43 Alexander
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Only those are happy who never...

Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood - all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 3 weeks ago
Equity knows no difference of sex....

Equity knows no difference of sex. In its vocabulary the word man must be understood in a generic, and not in a specific sense.

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Pt. II, Ch. 16 : The Rights of Women
Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
4 months 1 week ago
Not much younger than these...

Not much younger than these (sc. Hermotimus of Colophon and Philippus of Mende) is Euclid, who put together the Elements, collecting many of Eudoxus' theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus', and also bringing to irrefragable demonstration the things which were only somewhat loosely proved by his predecessors. This man lived in the time of the first Ptolemy. For Archimedes, who came immediately after the first (Ptolemy), makes mention of Euclid: and, further, they say that Ptolemy once asked him if there was in geometry any shorter way than that of the elements, and he answered that there was no royal road to geometry. He is then younger than pupils of Plato but older than Eratosthenes and Archimedes; for the latter were contemporary with one another, as Eratosthenes somewhere says.

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As quoted by Sir Thomas Little Heath, The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements (1908) Vol.1 Introduction and Books I, II p.1, citing Proclus ed. Friedlein, p. 68, 6-20.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
If I used to ask myself,...

If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, "what good did it do the occupant to be born?" I now put the same question about anyone alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 3 weeks ago
For it all depends on how...

For it all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are in themselves. The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

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p. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 6 days ago
At present we live to impede...

At present we live to impede each other's satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this? We go somewhere where we are not wanted and where we don't want to go. What else is conventional life? Passivity when we want to be active. So many hours spent every day in passively doing what conventional life tells us, when we would so gladly be at work. And is it a wonder that all individual life is extinguished?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 3 days ago
Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized...

Our legislators are not sufficiently apprized of the rightful limits of their power; that their true office is to declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties, and to take none of them from us. No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another; and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him; every man is under the natural duty of contributing to the necessities of the society; and this is all the laws should enforce on him; and, no man having a natural right to be the judge between himself and another, it is his natural duty to submit to the umpirage of an impartial third. When the laws have declared and enforced all this, they have fulfilled their functions, and the idea is quite unfounded, that on entering into society we give up any natural right.

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Letter to Francis W. Gilmer (27 June 1816); The Writings of Thomas Jefferson edited by Ford, vol. 10, p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Protagoras
Protagoras
4 months 1 week ago
The Athenians are right to accept...

The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all.

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As quoted in Protagoras by Plato
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 3 weeks ago
No longer able to believe in...

No longer able to believe in the Church religion, whose falsehood they had detected, and incapable of accepting true Christian teaching, which denounced their whole manner of life, these rich and powerful people, stranded without any religious conception of life, involuntarily returned to that pagan view of things which places life's meaning in personal enjoyment. And then among the upper classes what is called the "Renaissance of science and art" took place, which was really not only a denial of every religion, but also an assertion that religion was unnecessary.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Man is a substantial...
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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whether or not there exists a...

Whether or not there exists a solution to problems troubles only a minority; that the emotions have no outcome, lead to nothing, vanish into themselves - that is the great unconscious drama, the affective insolubility everyone suffers without even thinking about it.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
If we are going to be...

If we are going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things - praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts - not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They might break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is forbidden to kill….

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

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"Rights", 1771
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 2 weeks ago
When Socrates and his two great...

When Socrates and his two great disciples composed a system of rational ethics they were hardly proposing practical legislation for mankind...They were merely writing an eloquent epitaph for their country.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
4 months 3 weeks ago
Real power begins where secrecy begins....

Real power begins where secrecy begins.

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Part 3, Ch. 12, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks ago
Always take the short cut; and...

Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.

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IV, 51
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 2 weeks ago
Labor is a commodity, like any...

Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition - as we shall see, the two come to the same thing - the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is no accident that all...

It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

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"The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy," Manual Training and Vocational Education17 (1916); also Middle Works 10: 137-143.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
The soul contains few secrets and...

The soul contains few secrets and longings which cannot be sensibly discussed, analyzed, and polled. Solitude, the very condition which sustained the individual against and beyond his society, has become technically impossible. Logical and linguistic analysis demonstrate that the old metaphysical problems are illusory problems; the quest for the "meaning" of things can be reformulated as the quest for the meaning of words, and the established universe of discourse and behavior can provide perfectly adequate criteria for the answer.

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p. 71
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
The pursuit of knowledge is, I...

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. In politics, also, a reformer may have just as strong a love of power as a despot. It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is the principle of antipathy...

It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.

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MSS 29, 32, University College Collection
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 2 weeks ago
A host is like….

A host is like a general: calamities often reveal his genius.

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Book II, satire viii, lines 73-74
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
4 months 2 weeks ago
I think of the course of...

I think of the course of human history as a long, swelling, increasingly polyphonic poem - a poem that leads up to nothing save itself. When the species is extinct, "human nature's total message" will not be a set of propositions, but a set of vocabularies - the more, and the more various, the better.

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Response to Hartshorne in 'Rorty and Pragmatism, The Philosopher Responds to his Critics', p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 3 weeks ago
Unfortunately, instead of working out that...

Unfortunately, instead of working out that they have probably misunderstood evolution, creationists conclude, instead, that evolution must be false.

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Heat the Hornet, a review of Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution is True
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
The content or time-clothing of any...

The content or time-clothing of any medium or culture is the preceding medium or culture.

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(p. 168)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
In order to deceive melancholy, you...

In order to deceive melancholy, you must keep moving. Once you stop, it wakens, if in fact it has ever dozed off.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Noble in the high place,...

The Noble in the high place, the Ignoble in the low; that is, in all times and in all countries, the Almighty Maker's Law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
The truth is always in the...

The truth is always in the minority, and the minority is always stronger than the majority, because as a rule the minority is made up of those who actually have an opinion, while the strength of the majority is illusory, formed of that crowd which has no opinion - and which therefore the next moment (when it becomes clear that the minority is the stronger) adopts the latter's opinion, which now is in the majority, i.e. becomes rubbish by having the whole retinue and numerousness on its side, while the truth is again in a new minority.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
Always to have lived with the...

Always to have lived with the nostalgia to coincide with something, but not really knowing with what - it is easy to shift from unbelief to belief, or conversely. But what is there to convert to, and what is there to abjure, in a state of chronic lucidity?

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
All human accomplishment has the same...

All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!

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Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1], ch. XVIII, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 2 weeks ago
It has never been in my...

It has never been in my power to study anything, - mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, gravitation, thermodynamics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, psychology, phonetics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, metrology, except as a study of semeiotic.

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Letter to Victoria
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 weeks ago
While Poe and the Symbolists were...

While Poe and the Symbolists were exploring the irrational in literature, Freud had begun to explore the resonant figure/ground double-plot of the conscious and unconscious.

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p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
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