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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month ago
In every part and corner of...

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be a gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.

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Old Mortality (1884).
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Outsider is always unhappy, but...

The Outsider is always unhappy, but he is an agent that ensures the happiness for millions of 'Insiders'.

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Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
2 months 3 weeks ago
Suffer no anxiety, for he who...

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months ago
Philosophy is like trying to open...

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

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Philosophical Occasions 1912-1951 (1993) edited by James Carl Klagge and Alfred Nordmann
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 6 days ago
The move from a structuralist account...

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

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"Further Reflections on the Conversations of Our Time" (1997), which received first place in the Philosophy and Literature Bad Writing Contest
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
The process of being brought up,...

The process of being brought up, however well it is done, cannot fail to offend.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 3 weeks ago
As also the great number of...

As also the great number of Corporations; which are as it were many lesser Common-wealths in the bowels of a greater, like wormes in the entrayles of a natural man.

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The Second Part, Chapter 29, p. 174
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 3 weeks ago
The highest manifestation...

The highest manifestation of life consists in this: that a being governs its own actions. A being that is always subject to the direction of another is somewhat of a dead thing. Variant translation: Now slavery has a certain likeness to death, hence it is also called civil death. For life is most evident in a thing's moving itself, while what can only be moved by another, seems to be as if dead. But it is manifest that a slave is not moved by himself, but only at his master's command.

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Chapter 14
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 2 days ago
I would rather be a poor...

I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love reading.

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Letter to his Niece, 15 September 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 days ago
Art is anything you can get...

Art is anything you can get away with.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 days ago
Someone once asked me, "If you...

Someone once asked me, "If you had your choice, Dr. Asimov, would it be women or writing?" My answer was, "Well, I can write for twelve hours at a time without getting tired."

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Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
1 month 2 weeks ago
As an empiricist I continue to...

As an empiricist I continue to think of the conceptual scheme of science as a tool, ultimately, for predicting future experience in the light of past experience. Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries-not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer. For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conception only as cultural posits. The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.

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"Two Dogmas of Empiricism"
Philosophical Maxims
Xunzi
Xunzi
1 day ago
The gentleman knows that whatever is...

The gentleman knows that whatever is imperfect and unrefined does not deserve praise. ... He makes his eyes not want to see what is not right, makes his ears not want to hear what is not right, makes his mouth not want to speak what is not right, and makes his heart not want to deliberate over what is not right. ... For this reason, power and profit cannot sway him, the masses cannot shift him, and nothing in the world can shake him.

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Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy (2001), p. 260
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 days ago
"What's this? Am I falling? My...

"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way under me," he thought, and fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle of the French soldiers with the artilleryman was ending, and eager to know whether the red-haired gunner artilleryman was killed or not, whether the cannons had been taken or saved. But he saw nothing of all that. Above him there was nothing but the sky - the lofty sky, not clear, but still immeasurably lofty, with gray clouds creeping quietly over it.

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Bk. III, Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 5 days ago
All that is solid melts into...

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

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Section 1, paragraph 18, lines 12-14.
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
Where men are the most sure...

Where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken, and have there given reins to passion, without that proper deliberation and suspense, which can alone secure them from the grossest absurdities.

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§ 9.13 : Conclusion, Pt. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 5 days ago
To save the world requires faith...

To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
If we cut up beasts simply...

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

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"Vivisection" (1947), p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 1 day ago
We know as little of a...

We know as little of a supreme being as of Matter. But there is as little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality, and experiential fact. We only don't understand it.

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Letter to Morton Kelsey (1958) as quoted by Morton Kelsey, Myth, History & Faith: The Mysteries of Christian Myth & Imagination (1974) Ch.VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 day ago
To two men living the same...

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 days ago
To say that the activity of...

To say that the activity of science and art helps humanity's progress, if by that activity we mean the activity which now calls itself by those names, is as though one said that the clumsy, obstructive splashing of oars in a boat moving down stream assists the boat's progress. It only hinders it... The proof of this is seen in the confession made by men of science that the achievements of the arts and sciences are inaccessible to the labouring masses on account of the unequal distribution of wealth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 5 days ago
The finest workers in stone are...

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 5 days ago
Though they may think the proof...

Though they may think the proof incomplete that the universe is a work of design, and though they assuredly disbelieve that it can have an Author and Governor who is absolute in power as well as perfect in goodness, they have that which constitutes the principal worth of all religions whatever, an ideal conception of a Perfect Being, to which they habitually refer as the guide of their conscience; and this ideal of Good is usually far nearer to perfection than the objective Deity of those, who think themselves obliged to find absolute goodness in the author of a world so crowded with suffering and so deformed by injustice as ours.

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(p. 46)
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month ago
I confess I have no great...

I confess I have no great notion of the use of books, except to amuse a railway journey; although, I believe, there are some very exact treatises on astronomy, the use of the globes, agriculture, and the art of making paper flowers. Upon the less apparent provinces of life I fear you will find nothing truthful.

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The Rajah's Diamond, Story of the Young Man in Holy Orders.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Like Fichte, Brentano had one simple...

Like Fichte, Brentano had one simple and powerful insight. He declared: there is a basic difference between a mental and physical act. if I slip on the snow and fall flat on my back, that is an unintentional physical act. But there is no such thing as an unintentional mental act. When I think, I have to think about something; I have to focus my mind on it. You could compare all mental acts (thinking, willing, loving, trying to remember something) to a searchlight beam stabbing into the darkness. There is an element of will, of 'intentionality,' in all mental activity. So it is quite inaccurate to compare mental activity to chemistry, or to a kind of drifting, like leaves on a stream. It flows purposefully or not at all.

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p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 2 weeks ago
Do not even think of doing...

Do not even think of doing what ought not to be done.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 5 days ago
Everybody knows that the same sum...

Everybody knows that the same sum of money is of much greater value to a poor man that to a rich one. Give £10 a year to the man who has but £10 a year, you double his income, and you nearly double his enjoyments. Add £10 more, you do not add to his enjoyments so much as you did by the first £10. The third £10 is less valuable than the second, and the fourth less valuable than the third. To the possessor of £1,000 a year the addition of £10 would be scarcely perceptible; to the possessor of £10,000 it would not be worth slooping for.The richer a man is the less he is benefited by any further addition to his income. The man of £4,000 a year has four times the income of the man who has but £1,000; but does anybody suppose that he has four times the happiness?

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John Stuart Mill, Primogeniture, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 26, p. 336
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months ago
In the case of colors, there...

In the case of colors, there is a tridimensional spread of feelings. Originally all feelings may have been connected in the same way, and the presumption is that the number of dimensions was endless. For development essentially involves a limitation of possibilities. But given a number of dimensions of feeling, all possible varieties are obtainable by varying the intensities of the different elements.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 4 weeks ago
Bernie Sanders is...an anti-racist in his...

Bernie Sanders is...an anti-racist in his heart. Two, he's old-school. He's like me. He doesn't know the buzzwords. He doesn't endorse reparations, one moment in the last 30 years, silent on it. He has the consistency over the years decade after decade and therefore it's true in his language, in his rhetoric. There are times in which he doesn't... use the same kind of buzzwords. But when it comes to his fight against racism, going to jail in Chicago as a younger brother and he would go to jail again. He and I would go to jail together again in terms of fighting against police brutality. So in that sense, I would just tell my brothers and sisters, but especially my chocolate ones that they shouldn't be blinded by certain kinds of words they're looking for, that in the end, he is a long distance runner in the struggle against white supremacy.

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Quoted in: Cornel West on Bernie, Trump, and Racism, The Intercept, Mehdi Hasan
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 4 weeks ago
Most of the texts... preserved from...

Most of the texts... preserved from this period come from writers... either... affiliated with the aristocratic party, or... distrustful of democratic or radically democratic institutions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 3 weeks ago
As in the presence of the...

As in the presence of the Master, the Servants are equall, and without any honour at all; So are the Subjects, in the presence of the Soveraign. And though they shine some more, some lesse, when they are out of his sight; yet in his presence, they shine no more than the Starres in presence of the Sun.

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The Second Part, Chapter 18, p. 93
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 2 days ago
Not official revolutionary commissars in any...

Not official revolutionary commissars in any sort of sashes, but rather revolutionary propagandists are to be dispatched into all the provinces and communes and particularly among the peasants who cannot be revolutionised by principles, nor by the decrees of any dictatorship, but only by the act of revolution itself, that is to say, by the consequences that will inevitably ensure in every commune from complete cessation of the legal and official existence of the state.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 4 days ago
Inferiority is always with us, and...

Inferiority is always with us, and merciless scorn of it is the keynote of the military temper.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
An eternal purgatory, then, rather than...

An eternal purgatory, then, rather than a heaven of glory; an eternal ascent. If there is an end to all suffering, however pure and spiritualized we may suppose it to be, if there is an end to all desire, what is it that makes the blessed in paradise go on living? If in paradise they do not suffer for want of God, how shall they love Him? And if there, in the heaven of glory, while they behold God little by little and closer and closer, yet without ever wholly attaining Him, there does not always remain something more for them to know and desire, if there does not always remain a substratum of doubt, how shall they not fall asleep?

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
...all of the philosophers put together...

...all of the philosophers put together are not worth a single saint.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
Anyone who speaks in the name...

Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an impostor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
Get hold of yourself, be confident...

Get hold of yourself, be confident once more, don't forget that it is not given to just anyone to have idolized discouragement without succumbing to it.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
When we run over libraries, persuaded...

When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.

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Section 12 : Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy Pt. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months ago
A person who wakes up after...

A person who wakes up after a night of unbroken sleep has the illusion of beginning something new. When one instead remains awake the whole night long, nothing new begins.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 6 days ago
Indeed, history is nothing more…

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

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L'Ingénu, ch.10 (1767) Quoted in The End, part 13 of A Series of Unfortunate Events
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 4 days ago
The free being with absolute freedom...

The free being with absolute freedom proposes to itself certain ends. It wills because it wills, and the willing of an object is itself the last ground of such willing. Thus we have previously determined a free being, and any other determination would destroy the conception of an Ego, or of a free being. Now, if it could be so arranged that the willing of an unlawful end would necessarily - in virtue of an always effective law - result in the very reverse of that end, then the unlawful will would always ANNIHILATE ITSELF. A person could not will that end for the very reason because he did will it; his unlawful will would become the ground of its own annihilation, as the will is indeed always its own last ground.

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p. 193
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 week ago
By public administration is meant, in...

By public administration is meant, in common usage, the activities of the executive branches of national, state, and local governments; independent boards and commissions set up by the congress and state legislatures; government corporations, and certain agencies of a specialized character. Specifically excluded are judicial and legislative agencies within the government and nongovernmental administration.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
3 months 1 week ago
Everything that is possible…

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

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1686
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 weeks ago
Every intellectual effort sets us apart...

Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
Let us give Nature a chance;...

Let us give Nature a chance; she knows her business better than we do.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
Just now
Plato and his....
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Main Content / General
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 1 week ago
There is no moral precept that...

There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.

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As quoted in Dictionary of Foreign Quotations (1980) by Mary Collison, Robert L. Collison, p. 235
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 5 days ago
The world would be astonished if...

The world would be astonished if it knew how great a proportion of its brightest ornaments-of those most distinguished even in popular estimation for wisdom and virtue-are complete sceptics in religion...

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(p. 45)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 5 days ago
I think people who are unhappy...

I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.

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Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 4 days ago
One unscrupulous distortion of the truth...

One unscrupulous distortion of the truth tends to beget other and opposite distortions.

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Ch. 14, p. 316 [2012 reprint]
Philosophical Maxims
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