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Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 3 weeks ago
Science is a systematic method for...

Science is a systematic method for studying and working out those generalizations that seem to describe the behavior of the universe. It could exist as a purely intellectual game that would never affect the practical life of human beings either for good or evil, and that was very nearly the case in ancient Greece, for instance. Technology is the application of scientific findings to the tools of everyday life, and that application can be wise or unwise, useful or harmful. Very often, those who govern technological decisions are not scientists and know little about science.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 2 days ago
Taken as a whole, the Cross...

Taken as a whole, the Cross Correspondences and the Willet scripts are among the most convincing evidence that at present exists for life after death. For anyone who is prepared to devote weeks to studying them, they prove beyond all reasonable doubt that Myers, Gurney, and Sidgwick went on communicating after death.

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p. 136
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
If just once....
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Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 5 days ago
Do not judge according to appearance,...

Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.

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(John 7:24) (NASB) Variant translation: Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment. (NIV)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 1 day ago
I am obliged to confess that...

I am obliged to confess that I do not regard the abolition of slavery as a means of warding off the struggle of the two races in the Southern states. The Negroes may long remain slaves without complaining; but if they are once raised to the level of freemen, they will soon revolt at being deprived of almost all their civil rights; and as they cannot become the equals of the whites, they will speedily show themselves as enemies.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
Most men would feel insulted, if...

Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

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p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
6 days ago
Instead of gambling on the eternal...

Instead of gambling on the eternal impossibility of the revolution and on the fascist return of a war-machine in general, why not think that a new type of revolution is in the course of becoming possible, and that all kinds of mutating, living machines conduct wars, are combined and trace out a plane of consistence which undermines the plane of organization of the World and the States?

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from Dialogues with Claire Parnet, p. 147 [emphasis in original].
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
Eating and reading are two pleasures...

Eating and reading are two pleasures that combine admirably.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
As a rule we disbelieve all...

As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

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"The Will to Believe" p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 week 2 days ago
Capitalism dislikes silence.

Capitalism dislikes silence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 5 days ago
If any man will come after...

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works. Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom.

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16:24-28 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is a political axiom that...

It is a political axiom that power follows property.

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Chapter 12 (p. 113)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
I do not think that the...

I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds. One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.

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"The Emotional Factor"
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 weeks 2 days ago
The growth of the mind is...

The growth of the mind is the widening of the range of consciousness, and ... each step forward has been a most painful and laborious achievement.

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p. 340
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
6 days ago
Of all the inventions of man...

Of all the inventions of man I doubt whether any was more easily accomplished than that of a Heaven.

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L 34
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
If literature isn't everything, it's not...

If literature isn't everything, it's not worth a single hour of someone's trouble.

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Interview (1960), Quoted in Susan Sontag's introduction to Barthes: Selected Writings, "Writing Itself: On Roland Barthes,"
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months ago
The whole is a riddle, an...

The whole is a riddle, an aenigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspence of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld; did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape, into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.

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Part XV - General corollary
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 3 weeks ago
An intolerant sect has no right...

An intolerant sect has no right to complain when it is denied an equal liberty. ... A person's right to complain is limited to principles he acknowledges himself.

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p. 217
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
A gun gives you the body,...

A gun gives you the body, not the bird.

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Quoted by Ralph Waldo Emerson, in C. J. Woodbury (ed.) Talks with Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1890
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 weeks 4 days ago
To look at a work of...

To look at a work of art in order to see how well certain rules are observed and canons conformed to impoverished perception. But to strive to note the ways in which certain conditions are fulfilled, such as the organic means by which the media is made to express and carry definite parts, or how the problem of adequate individualization is solved, sharpens esthetic perception and enriches its content.

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p. 213
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 6 days ago
The immeasurable beauty of life is...

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said.

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(Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.)
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 3 weeks ago
The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue,...

The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine,...

No congress, nor mob, nor guillotine, nor fire, nor all together, can avail, to cut out, burn, or destroy the offense of superiority in persons. The superiority in him is inferiority in me.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
1 month 2 weeks ago
Our own experience provides the basic...

Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has webbing on one's arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn catching insects in one's mouth; that one has very poor vision, and perceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one's feet in an attic. Insofar as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat. Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task.

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p. 169.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
Honesty and trust are promoted, and...

Honesty and trust are promoted, and good neighborliness cultivated.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 weeks 5 days ago
I posit myself as rational, that...

I posit myself as rational, that is, as free. In doing so I have the representation of freedom. In the same undivided act I posit other free beings. Hence, I describe through my power of imagination a sphere of freedom, which these many separate beings divide amongst themselves. I do not ascribe to myself all the freedom which I have posited, because I must also posit other free beings, and must ascribe part of it to them. Thus, in appropriating freedom to myself, I at the same time restrict myself, by leaving freedom to others.

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P. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 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
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
1 month 2 weeks ago
Anything can be made to look...

Anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed.

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Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (1989), p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
As art sinks into paralysis, artists...

As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Greeks follow a wrong usage...

The Greeks follow a wrong usage in speaking of coming into being and passing away; for nothing comes into being or passes away, but there is mingling and separation of things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being mixture, and passing away separation.

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Frag. B 17, quoted in John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy, (1920), Chapter 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 1 day ago
Tolerance - the function of an...

Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 days ago
Plato says, "'Tis to no purpose...

Plato says, "'Tis to no purpose for a sober man to knock at the door of the Muses;" and Aristotle says "that no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of folly."

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Book II, Ch. 2. Of Drunkenness
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
6 days ago
There's no need to fear or...

There's no need to fear or hope, but only to look for new weapons.

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from Postscript on the Societies of Control
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Too busy with the crowded hour...

Too busy with the crowded hour to fear to live or die.

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Quatrains, Nature
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
1 month 3 weeks ago
In Mohammedanism the narrow principle of...

In Mohammedanism the narrow principle of the Jews is expanded into universality and thereby overcome. Here, God is no longer, as in the Far East, regarded as existent in an immediately sensory way but is conceived as the one infinite power elevated above all the multiplicity of the world. Mohammedanism is, therefore, in the strictest sense of the word, the religion of sublimity.

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Hegel, Philosophy of Mind (quoted by W. Wallace & A. V. Miller in Philosophy of Mind, Oxford 2010; also quoted in other words by Slavoj Žižek in A Glance into the Archives of Islam, Lacan dot com, 1997).
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 5 days ago
Now precisely because Galilean science is...

Now precisely because Galilean science is, in the formation of its concepts, the technic of a specific Lebenswelt, it does not and cannot transcend this Lebenswelt. It remains essentially within the basic experiential framework and within the universe of ends set by this reality.

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p. 164
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 3 weeks ago
The circle of day and night...

The circle of day and night is the law of the classical world: the most restricted but most demanding of the necessities of the world, the most inevitable but the simplest of the legislations of nature.This was a law that excluded all dialectics and all reconciliation, consequently laying the foundations for the smooth unity of knowledge as well as the uncompromising division of tragic existence. It reigns on a world without darkness, which knows neither effusiveness nor the gentle charms of lyricism. All is waking or dreams, truth or error, the light of being or the nothingness of shadow.

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Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 weeks 5 days ago
The revolution must end and the...

The revolution must end and the republic must begin. In our constitution, right must take the place of duty, welfare that of virtue, and self-defense that of punishment. Everyone must be able to prevail and to live according to one's own nature.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 weeks 3 days ago
Friends, the soil is poor, we...

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

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Motto
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
The superior man loves his soul;...

The superior man loves his soul; the inferior man loves his property.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 2 days ago
Who knows whether the best of...

Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man. Twenty seven names make up the first story before the flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the Æquinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetick, which scarce stands one moment.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 weeks 2 days ago
If now I...say "Stealing money is...

If now I...say "Stealing money is wrong," I produce a sentence which has no factual meaning - that is, expresses no proposition which can be either true or false. It is as if I had written "Stealing money!!" - where the shape and thickness of the exclamation marks show, by a suitable convention, that a special sort of moral disapproval is the feeling which is being expressed.

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p. 107.
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 weeks 3 days ago
[I]s this not an advantage? Is...

Is this not an advantage? Is it not a sign of immense progress that the masses should have "ideas," that is to say, should be cultured? By no means. The "ideas" of the average man are not genuine ideas, nor is their possession culture. An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion. These standards are the principles on which culture rests.

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Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 4 days ago
I know God only as he...

I know God only as he became human, so shall I have him in no other way.

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Das Marburger religionsgesprach 1529: Versuch einer Rekonstruction (Leipzig, 1929), p. 27; also LW 38, 3-90
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
For the Supernatural, entering a human...

For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul. If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God.

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Reflections on the Psalms (1958), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 4 weeks ago
There cannot any one moral Rule...

There cannot any one moral Rule be propos'd, whereof a Man may not justly demand a Reason.

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Book I, Ch. 3, sec. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
2 months 3 weeks ago
The bodies of which the world...

The bodies of which the world is composed are solids, and therefore have three dimensions. Now, three is the most perfect number, it is the first of numbers, for of one we do not speak as a number, of two we say both, but three is the first number of which we say all. Moreover, it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 3 weeks ago
A real subjection is born mechanically...

A real subjection is born mechanically from a fictitious relation. So it is not necessary to use force to constrain the convict to good behavior, the madman to calm, the worker to work, the schoolboy to application, the patient to the observation of the regulations.

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Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
1 month 3 weeks ago
I have changed my mind about...

I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 5 days ago
Man, being the servant and interpreter...

Man, being the servant and interpreter of Nature, can do and understand so much and so much only as he has observed in fact or in thought of the course of nature. Beyond this he neither knows anything nor can do anything.

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Aphorism 1
Philosophical Maxims
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