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Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 1 week ago
Against the diseases of the mind,...

Against the diseases of the mind, philosophy provides sufficient antidotes. The instruments which it employs for this purpose are the virtues; the root of which, whence all the rest proceed, is prudence. This virtue comprehends the whole art of living discreetly, justly, and honorably, and is, in fact, the same thing with wisdom. It instructs men to free their understandings from the clouds of prejudice; to exercise temperance and fortitude in the government of themselves: and to practice justice towards others. Although pleasure, or happiness, which is the end of living, be superior to virtue, which is only the means, it is every one's interest to practice all the virtues; for in a happy life, pleasure can never be separated from virtue.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Yet with every allowance, one feels...

Yet with every allowance, one feels it difficult to see how any mortal ever could consider this Koran as a Book written in Heaven, too good for the Earth; as a well-written book, or indeed as a book at all; and not a bewildered rhapsody; written, so far as writing goes, as badly as almost any book ever was!

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 3 weeks ago
I veil my face before thee,...

I veil my face before thee, and lay my finger on my lips. What thou art in thyself, or how thou appearest to thyself, I can never know. After living through a thousand lives, I shall comprehend Thee as little as I do now in this mansion of clay. What I can comprehend, becomes finite by my mere comprehension, and this can never, by perpetual ascent, be transformed into the infinite, for it does not differ from it in degree merely, but in kind. By that ascent we may find a greater and greater man, but never a God, who is capable of no measurement.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.115
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 3 weeks ago
Of course a war is entertaining....

Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers. But what permanent good does it do us unless we make use of it for bringing souls to Our Father Below? When I see the temporal suffering of humans who finally escape us, I feel as if I had been allowed to taste the first course of a rich banquet and then denied all the rest. It is worse than not to have tasted it at all. The Enemy, true to His barbarous methods of warfare, allows us to see the short misery of His favourites only to tantalize and torment us - to mock the incessant hunger, which, during this present phase of great conflict, His blockade is admittedly imposing.

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Letter V
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 2 weeks ago
In the tragedies of the early...

In the tragedies of the early seventeenth century, madness too provided the dénouement, but it did so in liberating the truth. It still opened onto language, to a renewed form of speech, that of explanation and of the real regained. The most it could ever be was the penultimate moment of tragedy. Not the closing moment, as in Andromaque, where no truth appears, other than, in Delirium, the truth of a passion that finds its fullest, most perfect expression in madness.

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Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
Everything predicted by the enemies of...

Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.

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Letter to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:61
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
3 weeks 1 day ago
The idea of living beings as...

The idea of living beings as subject to 'disease' includes a recognition of a Final Cause in organization; for disease is a state in which the vital forces do not attain their 'proper ends'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 5 days ago
The principles of pleasure are not...

The principles of pleasure are not firm and stable. They are different in all mankind, and variable in every particular with such a diversity that there is no man more different from another than from himself at different times.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 2 weeks ago
Is the position tenable, that certain...

Is the position tenable, that certain phenomena, possible in Euclidean space, would be impossible in non-Euclidean space, so that experience, in establishing these phenomena, would directly contradict the non-Euclidean hypothesis? For my part I think no such question can be put. To my mind it is precisely equivalent to the following, whose absurdity is patent to all eyes: are there lengths expressible in meters and centimeters, but which can not be measured in fathoms, feet, and inches, so that experience, in ascertaining the existence of these lengths, would directly contradict the hypothesis that there are fathoms divided into six feet?

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Ch. V: Experiment and Geometry (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months ago
My life has been full of...

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 2 weeks ago
Big industry, and the limitless expansion...

Big industry, and the limitless expansion of production which it makes possible, bring within the range of feasibility a social order in which so much is produced that every member of society will be in a position to exercise and develop all his powers and faculties in complete freedom. It thus appears that the very qualities of big industry which, in our present-day society, produce misery and crises are those which, in a different form of society, will abolish this misery and these catastrophic depressions.We see with the greatest clarity: (i) That all these evils are from now on to be ascribed solely to a social order which no longer corresponds to the requirements of the real situation; and (ii) That it is possible, through a new social order, to do away with these evils altogether.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 2 days ago
The most dangerous untruths are truths...

The most dangerous untruths are truths moderately distorted.

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H 7 Variant translation: The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 2 weeks ago
Economics is on the side of...

Economics is on the side of humanity now.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Opinion is like a pendulum and...

Opinion is like a pendulum and obeys the same law. If it goes past the centre of gravity on one side, it must go a like distance on the other; and it is only after a certain time that it finds the true point at which it can remain at rest.

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Vol. 2 "Further Psychological Observations" as translated in Essays and Aphorisms (1970), as translated by R. J. Hollingdale
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 2 weeks ago
And in these foure things, Opinion...

And in these foure things, Opinion of Ghosts, Ignorance of second causes, Devotion towards what men fear, and Taking of things Casuall for Prognostics, consisteth the Natural seed of Religion; which by reason of the different Fancies, Judgements, and Passions of severall men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.

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The First Part, Chapter 12, p. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
Dogmatics must be designed in this...

Dogmatics must be designed in this way. Above all, every science must vigorously lay hold of its own beginning and not live in complicated relations with other sciences. If dogmatics begins by wanting to explain sinfulness or by wanting to prove its actuality, no dogmatics will come out of it, but the entire existence of dogmatics will become problematic and vague.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
4 months 3 weeks ago
Lawyers are the only persons in...

Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.

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Attributed to Bentham in The Dictionary of Humorous Quotations‎ (1949) by Evan Esar, p. 29; no earlier sources for this have been located.
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
I am myself deeply convinced that...

I am myself deeply convinced that imagination is the basis of a sound reason. It is by dint of feeling, and of putting ourselves in fancy into the place of other men, that we can learn how we ought to treat them, and be moved to treat them as we ought. Man, to express the thing in familiar language, is a complex being, made up of a head and a heart. So far as we are employed in heaping up facts and in reasoning upon them merely, we are a species of machine; it is our impulses and our sentiments, that are the glory of our nature.

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Of Religion (1818), quoted in Political and Philosophical Writings of William Godwin, Volume 7: Religious Writings, ed. Mark Philp
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
By virtue of depression, we recall...

By virtue of depression, we recall those misdeeds we buried in the depths of our memory. Depression exhumes our shames.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 1 week ago
Yet God hath not only granted...

Yet God hath not only granted these faculties, by which we may bear every event without being depressed or broken by it, but like a good prince and a true father, hath placed their exercise above restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and wholly within our own control.

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Book I, ch. 6, 40.
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
3 weeks 1 day ago
It has been proved by the...

It has been proved by the biological speculations of past time, that organic Life cannot rightly be resolved into mechanical or chemical forces, or the operation of a vital fluid, or of a soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 months 2 weeks ago
Freedom of thought and of expression...

Freedom of thought and of expression are not mere rights to be claimed. They have their roots deep in the existence of individuals as developing careers in time. Their denial and abrogation is an abdication of individuality and a virtual rejection of time as opportunity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 5 days ago
It is crazy to want what...

It is crazy to want what is impossible. And impossible for the wicked not to do so. (Hays translation) To seek what is impossible is madness: and it is impossible that the bad should not do something of this kind.

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V, 17
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
The conscious side of woman corresponds...

The conscious side of woman corresponds to the emotional side of man, not to his "mind." Mind makes up the soul, or better, the "animus" of woman, and just as the anima of a man consists of inferior relatedness, full of affect, so the animus of woman consists of inferior judgments, or better, opinions.

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The Secret of the Golden Flower (1931) Commentary by C.G.Jung in CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 day ago
The human understanding is moved by...

The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.

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Aphorism 47
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Martyrs must choose between being forgotten,...

Martyrs must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood, never!

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
Surplus value is exactly equal to...

Surplus value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one [is] exactly measured by the diminution of necessary labour.

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Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 259.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 1 week ago
It is unlikely that the good...

It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

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Book I, ch. 20, 17.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
1 month 2 weeks ago
If you look at the sociology...

If you look at the sociology of populism in the United States, it is tied most closely to population density, which... is correlated... to these types of cultural differences... to belief... in traditional cultural values, in family, in religion and the like, and conversely to... belief in immigration and diversity as strengths... This is the fundamental division that's taken hold of the United States. It has been augmented by technology because the internet has succeeded in... destroying every other source of authority that used to filter news and facts and information that... formed the basis of a democratic ability to have political discourse.

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25:32
Philosophical Maxims
Iamblichus
Iamblichus
2 weeks 6 days ago
Furthermore, the monad produces itself and...

Furthermore, the monad produces itself and is produced from itself, since it is self-sufficient and has no power set over it and is everlasting; and it is evidently the cause of permanence, just as God is thought to be in the case of actual physical things, and to be the preserver and maintainer of natures.

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On the Monad
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is written, Man shall not...

It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.

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4:4 (KJV) Said to Satan. The reference is to Deuteronomy 8:3, "... that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live." (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
If someone incessantly drops the word...

If someone incessantly drops the word "life," you know he's a sick man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
'Resignation' is a keynote in Comte's...

Resignation' is a keynote in Comte's writings, deriving directly from assent to invariable social laws. 'True resignation, that is, a disposition to endure necessary evils steadfastly and without any hope of compensation therefore, can result only from a profound feeling for the invariable laws that govern the variety of natural phenomena.

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P. 345
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
Just now
Nothing is so fatal...
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Main Content / General
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 2 weeks ago
From our human experience and history,...

From our human experience and history, at least as far as I am informed, I know that everything essential and great has only emerged when human beings had a home and were rooted in a tradition. Today's literature is, for instance, largely destructive.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 2 weeks ago
Professional philosophers are usually only apologists:...

Professional philosophers are usually only apologists: that is, they are absorbed in defending some vested illusion or some eloquent idea. Like lawyers or detectives, they study the case for which they are retained.

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pp. 48-49
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
The World and Life are one....

The World and Life are one. Physiological life is of course not "Life". And neither is psychological life. Life is the world. Ethics does not treat of the world. Ethics must be a condition of the world, like logic. Ethics and Aesthetics are one.

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Journal entry (24 July 1916), p. 77e
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
3 months 5 days ago
Direct action, having proven effective along...

Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
When we get piled upon one...

When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become corrupt as in Europe.

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Letter to James Madison (20 December 1787), The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (19 Vols., 1905) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. VI, p. 392.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 2 weeks ago
The present stage redefines the possibilities...

The present stage redefines the possibilities of man and nature in accordance with the new means available for their realization.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
They might need a preparatory discourse...

They might need a preparatory discourse on the text of 'prove all things, hold fast that which is good,' in order to unlearn the lesson that reason is an unlawful guide in religion. They might startle on being first awaked from the dreams of the night, but they would rub their eyes at once, and look the spectres boldly in the face.

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Letter to Benjamin Waterhouse (19 July 1822), published in The Works of Thomas Jefferson in Twelve Volumes, Federal Edition, Paul Leicester Ford, ed., New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1904, Vol. 12, p. 244
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
2 weeks 4 days ago
Freedom only for the supporters of...

Freedom only for the supporters of the government, only for the members of one party - however numerous they may be - is no freedom at all. Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Not because of any fanatical concept of "justice" but because all that is instructive, wholesome and purifying in political freedom depends on this essential characteristic, and its effectiveness vanishes when "freedom" becomes a special privilege.

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Chapter Six, "The Problem of Dictatorship"
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 1 week ago
I have never said that human...

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

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Chap.II: The Rise Of The Historic Level
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 1 week ago
If religion has put forward the...

If religion has put forward the proposition that we are all of us sinners, I set another against it: we are all of us perfect! Because, in each moment, we are all we can be, and never need to be more.

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Landstreicher, p. 226
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 5 days ago
Not to feel exasperated or defeated...

Not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human-however imperfectly-and fully embrace the pursuit you've embarked on.

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V. 9, trans. Gregory Hays
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 3 weeks ago
Happiest are the people who give...

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

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As quoted in Happyology by Harald W. Tietze, p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
An individual may perceive a way...

An individual may perceive a way of life, or a method of social organisation, by which more of the desires of mankind could be satisfied than under the existing method. If he perceives truly, and can persuade men to adopt his reform, he is justified. Without rebellion, mankind would stagnate, and injustice would be irremediable.

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Ch. 15: Power and moral codes
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
2 months 1 day ago
God may not play dice but...

God may not play dice but he enjoys a good round of Trivial Pursuit every now and again.

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"God"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 3 weeks ago
Although usury is itself a form...

Although usury is itself a form of credit in its bourgeoisified form, the form adapted to capital, in its pre-bourgeois form it is rather the expression of the lack of credit.

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Notebook V, The Chapter on Capital, p. 455.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Mark at present so much; what...

Mark at present so much; what the essence of Scandinavian and indeed of all Paganism is: a recognition of the forces of Nature as godlike, stupendous, personal Agencies,-as Gods and Demons. Not inconceivable to us. It is the infant Thought of man opening itself, with awe and wonder, on this ever-stupendous Universe. To me there is in the Norse system something very genuine, very great and manlike. A broad simplicity, rusticity, so very different from the light gracefulness of the old Greek Paganism, distinguishes this Scandinavian System. It is Thought; the genuine Thought of deep, rude, earnest minds, fairly opened to the things about them; a face-to-face and heart-to-heart inspection of the things,-the first characteristic of all good Thought in all times. Not graceful lightness, half-sport, as in the Greek Paganism; a certain homely truthfulness and rustic strength, a great rude sincerity, discloses itself here.

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Philosophical Maxims
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