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John Locke
John Locke
8 months 1 week ago
Covetousness, and the desire of having...

Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.

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Sec. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
6 months 4 weeks ago
The remembrance of forbidden fruit is...

The remembrance of forbidden fruit is the earliest thing in the memory of each of us, as it is in that of mankind.

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Chapter I: Moral Obligation
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
7 months 2 weeks ago
Number is the ruler of forms...

Number is the ruler of forms and ideas, and the cause of gods and daemons.

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As quoted in Life of Pythagoras (c. 300) by Iamblichus of Chalcis, as translated by Thomas Taylor (1818)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 months 3 weeks ago
Is it for this purpose that...

Is it for this purpose that we are strong-that we may have light burdens to bear?

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
6 months 5 days ago
For me any of the little...

For me any of the little gestures I make are all tentative probes. That's why I feel free to make them sound as outrageous or extreme as possible. Until you make it extreme, the probe is not very efficient.

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Marshall McLuhan: the man and his message, edited by George Sanderson and Frank MacDonald, Fulcrum, 1989, p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
8 months 6 days ago
What can you ever really know...

What can you ever really know of other people's souls - of their temptations, their opportunities, their struggles? One soul in the whole creation you do know: and it is the only one whose fate is placed in your hands. If there is a God, you are, in a sense, alone with Him. You cannot put Him off with speculations about your next door neighbours or memories of what you have read in books.

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Book IV, Chapter 10, "Nice People or New Men"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
7 months 1 week ago
I should not be surprized at...

I should not be surprized at seeing a French Army conveyed by a British Navy to an attack upon this Kingdom.

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Letter to French Laurence (12 May 1797) after hearing of the mutinies in the Royal Navy, quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
9 months 4 days ago
I accept nothing on authority. A...

I accept nothing on authority. A hypothesis must be backed by reason, or else it is worthless.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 months 4 days ago
Of my grandfather Verus I have...

Of my grandfather Verus I have learned to be gentle and meek, and to refrain from all anger and passion... I have learned both shamefastness and manlike behaviour. Of my mother I have learned to be religious, and bountiful; and to forbear, not only to do, but to intend any evil; to content myself with a spare diet, and to fly all such excess as is incidental to great wealth.

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I, 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
6 months 1 week ago
Whatever is referred to must exist....

Whatever is referred to must exist. Let us call this the axiom of existence.

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P. 77.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
5 months 3 weeks ago
To have been a Sovereign, yet...

To have been a Sovereign, yet the champion of liberty,-a revolutionary leader, yet the supporter of social order, is the peculiar glory of William. Till his accession the British Constitution was in its Chaos. It had contained, from a very remote period, the simple elements of an harmonious government. But they were in a state not of amalgamation, but of conflict,-not of equilibrium but of alternate elevation and depression. The tyranny of Charles the first produced civil war and anarchy. Tyranny had now again produced resistance and revolution. And, but for the wisdom of the new King, it seems probable that the same cycle of misery would have been again described.

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'Essay on the Life and Character of King William III' (1822), written for the Greaves Historical Prize at Cambridge, quoted in The Times Literary Supplement (1 May 1969), p. 469
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
5 months 2 weeks ago
Nature shrinks as capital grows. The...

Nature shrinks as capital grows. The growth of the market cannot solve the very crisis it creates.

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Soil Not Oil: Environmental Justice in an Age of Climate Crisis
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
7 months 1 week ago
Dreams, as we all know, are...

Dreams, as we all know, are very queer things: some parts are presented with appalling vividness, with details worked up with the elaborate finish of jewellery, while others one gallops through, as it were, without noticing them at all, as, for instance, through space and time. Dreams seem to be spurred on not by reason but by desire, not by the head but by the heart, and yet what complicated tricks my reason has played sometimes in dreams, what utterly incomprehensible things happen to it!

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
8 months 2 weeks ago
If the public thought elevates you...

If the public thought elevates you above the generality of men, let the other humble you, and hold you in a perfect equality with all mankind, for this is your natural condition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
8 months 2 weeks ago
If it is pleasing to observe...

If it is pleasing to observe in nature her desire to paint God in all his works, in which we see some traces of him because they are his images, how much more just is it to consider in the productions of minds the efforts which they make to imitate the essential truth, even in shunning it, and to remark wherein they attain it and wherein they wander from it, as I have endeavored to do in this study.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
8 months 1 week ago
The owl of Minerva first begins...

The owl of Minerva first begins her flight with the onset of dusk.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
4 months 1 week ago
Comrades, I've voyaged long and far...

Comrades, I've voyaged long and far on sea and soul,my eyes have seen disease, gods, ghosts, and men, and yetin no land have I seen a more false, murderous sirenthan that wind-headed, babbling, blind bitch-hound called Hope!

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Odysseus, Book X, line 892
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
8 months 1 day ago
But what then is this confrontation...

But what then is this confrontation below the language of reason? Where might this interrogation lead, following not reason in its horizontal becoming, but seeking to retrace in time this constant verticality, which, the length of Western culture, confronts it with what it is not, measuring it with its own extravagance?

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Preface to 1961 edition
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
8 months 1 week ago
I doubt not, but from self-evident...

I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.

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Book IV, Ch. 3, sec. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
6 months 4 weeks ago
Are not five sparrows sold for...

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

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12:6-7
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
7 months 1 week ago
The surface of American society is...

The surface of American society is covered with a layer of democratic paint, but from time to time one can see the old aristocratic colours breaking through.

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Chapter II.
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
4 months 3 days ago
But what has been the experience...

But what has been the experience of the Russian socialist movement up to now? The most important and fruitful changes in its tactical policy during the last ten years have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
8 months 2 weeks ago
How many worthy men have we...

How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!

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Book II, Ch. 16. Of Glory
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
6 months 5 days ago
Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with...

Electric circuitry profoundly involves men with one another. Information pours upon us, instantaneously and continuously.

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Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
4 months 4 days ago
A mere nothing, a tiny fibre,...

A mere nothing, a tiny fibre, something that could never be found by the most delicate anatomy, would have made of Erasmus and Fontenelle two idiots, and Fontenelle himself speaks of this very fact in one of his best dialogues.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
8 months 1 week ago
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is...

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.

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Culture
Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
6 months 2 weeks ago
Until the seventeenth century there was...

Until the seventeenth century there was no concept of evidence with which to pose the problem of induction!

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Chapter 4, Evidence, p. 31.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
6 months 2 weeks ago
'You', the ego, live in your...

You', the ego, live in your left brain. When we say that man is the only creature who spends 99 per cent of his time inside his own head, we mean, in fact, inside his left cerebral hemisphere. And in the basement of the left hemisphere is the library full of filing cabinets -- the stuffy room that we mistake for reality.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
6 months 2 weeks ago
All men are stuck in a...

All men are stuck in a kind of fog. They're surrounded by a wall of fog. They think this is perfectly normal, but it's not. It means that since they can't see much beyond their own little situation, they tend to vegetate. They need some immediate stimulus to keep them alert.

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p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
4 months 2 weeks ago
To be free from convention is...

To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it. It is to be able to use it as an instrument instead of being used by it.

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p. 11
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
6 months 3 weeks ago
I have wanted them to have...

I have wanted them to have this simple definition to read again and again so they know: Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.

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Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2014), p.XII
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
6 months 1 week ago
The ascription of an unconscious intentional...

The ascription of an unconscious intentional phenomenon to a system implies that the phenomenon is in principle accessible to consciousness. A statement of the author's "connection principle."

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"Consciousness, Explanatory Inversion, and Cognitive Science," The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 13, 4 (December 1990): 585-696.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
7 months 3 days ago
Existing is plagiarism.

Existing is plagiarism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
8 months 1 day ago
We are observing ourselves being observed...

We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as though in a mirror, we find that we can in fact apprehend nothing of that mirror but its lusterless back. The other side of a psyche.

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Las Menias
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
8 months 2 weeks ago
Death is a friend of ours;...

Death is a friend of ours; and he that is not ready to entertain him is not at home.

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An Essay on Death, published in The Remaines of the Right Honourable Francis Lord Verulam (1648), which may not have been written by Bacon
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 months 4 weeks ago
But oppression by your Mock-Superiors well...

But oppression by your Mock-Superiors well shaken off, the grand problem yet remains to solve: That of finding government by your Real-Superiors! Alas, how shall we ever learn the solution of that, benighted, bewildered, sniffing, sneering, godforgetting unfortunates as we are? It is a work for centuries; to be taught us by tribulations, confusions, insurrections, obstructions; who knows if not by conflagration and despair! It is a lesson inclusive of all other lessons; the hardest of all lessons to learn.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
8 months 1 week 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
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
7 months 3 days ago
"Education to personality" has become a...

"Education to personality" has become a pedagogical ideal that turns its back upon the standardized-the collective and normal-human being. It thus fittingly recognizes the historical fact that the great, liberating deeds of world history have come from leading personalities and never from the inert mass that is secondary at all times and needs a demagogue if it is to move at all. The paean of the Italian nation is addressed to the personality of the Duce, and dirges of other nations lament the absence of great leaders.

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Lecture, The Inner Voice, Kulturbund, Vienna (1932); quoted in The Integration of Personality, Farrar & Rinehart, NY
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 6 days ago
The one is ready....
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Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
7 months 1 week ago
Justice is the first virtue of...

Justice is the first virtue of those who command, and stops the complaints of those who obey.

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As quoted in The Golden Treasury of Thought : A Gathering of Quotations from the Best Ancient and Modern Authors (1873) by Theodore Taylor, p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
5 months 2 weeks ago
We shall have to share out...

We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.

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Surviving the Future (1971; Oxford UP, 1972) p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
8 months 1 week ago
So monstrous is the making and...

So monstrous is the making and keeping them slaves at all, abstracted from the barbarous usage they suffer, and the many evils attending the practice; as selling husbands away from wives, children from parents, and from each other, in violation of sacred and natural ties; and opening the way for adulteries, incests, and many shocking consequences, for all of which the guilty Masters must answer to the final Judge.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
8 months 1 week ago
While we are reading these sentences,...

While we are reading these sentences, this fair modern world seems only a reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. Tried by a New England eye, or the mere practical wisdom of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
6 months 3 days ago
It really comes down to parsimony,...

It really comes down to parsimony, economy of explanation. It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks like a petrol engine, smells like a petrol engine and performs exactly as well as a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
7 months 3 weeks ago
With an ill-famed man form no...

With an ill-famed man form no connection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
6 months 4 weeks ago
The Spirit of the Lord is...

The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

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Luke 4:18-19 NIV
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
7 months 3 weeks ago
The kind of equality utilitarianism supports...

The kind of equality utilitarianism supports is given by Bentham's formula...: 'everybody to count for one, and nobody for more than one'...Utilitarianism seeks to maximize happiness, and in deciding how to calculate whether happiness is being maximized, no one's pleasures or pains should count for less because they are peasants rather than aristocrats, slaves rather than slave-owners, Africans rather than Europeans, poor rather than rich, illiterates rather than doctors of philosophy, children rather than adults, females rather than males, or even, as we have seen, non-human animals rather than human beings.

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p. 349
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
7 months 2 weeks ago
The soul of man…

The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.

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As reported by Alexander Polyhistor, and Diogenes Laërtius in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 30, in the translation of C. D. Yonge
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
5 months 2 weeks ago
Cinema is an old whore, like...

Cinema is an old whore, like circus and variety, who knows how to give many kinds of pleasure. Besides, you can't teach old fleas new dogs.

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As quoted in in The Atlantic
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
5 months 1 day ago
But these labels can only be...

But these labels can only be finite in number. On that score, psychologic time should be discontinuous.

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Philosophical Maxims
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