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Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
6 months 2 weeks ago
Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot...

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.

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Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other small Seismisms, The States of Theory, ed. David Carroll, New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Mannheim
Karl Mannheim
2 months 3 weeks ago
To-day, there are too many points...

To-day, there are too many points of view of equal value and prestige, each showing the relativity of the other, to permit us to take any one position and to regard it as impregnable and absolute. Only this socially disorganized intellectual situation makes possible the insight, hidden until now by a generally stable social structure and the practicability of certain traditional norms, that every point of view is particular to a social situation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
7 months 3 weeks ago
All that exists that can be...
All that exists that can be denied deserves to be denied; and being truthful means: to believe in an existence that can in no way be denied and which is itself true and without falsehood.
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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 months 2 weeks ago
I am often accused of expressing...

I am often accused of expressing contempt and despising religious people. I don't despise religious people, I despise what they stand for. I like to quote the British journalist Johann Hari who said, "I have so much respect for you, that I cannot respect your ridiculous ideas."

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Reason Rally, National Mall, Washington, DC, 2012-03-24 Richard Dawkins and his Foundation at the Reason Rally, YouTube, 7 April 2012
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
7 months 1 week ago
It is no advantage to be...

It is no advantage to be near the light if the eyes are closed.

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p. 607
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 months 3 weeks ago
All this world, all this rich,...

All this world, all this rich, endless flow of appearances is not a deception, a multicolored phantasmagoria of our mirroring mind. Nor is it absolute reality which lives and evolves freely, independent of our mind's power. It is not the resplendent robe which arrays the mystic body of God. Nor the obscurely translucent partition between man and mystery. All this world that we see, hear, and touch is that accessible to the human senses, a condensation of the two enormous powers of the Universe permeated with all of God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 3 weeks ago
An early morning walk is a...

An early morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

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April 20, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
6 months 4 weeks ago
The slaving Poor are incapable of...

The slaving Poor are incapable of any Principles: Gentlemen may be converted to true Principles, by Time and Experience. The middling Rank of Men have Curiosity and Knowledge enough to form Principles, but not enough to form true ones, or correct any Prejudices that they may have imbib'd: And 'tis among the middling Rank, that Tory Principles do at present prevail most in England.

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Part I, Essay 9: Of The Parties of Great Britain; final lines of this essay in the 1741 and 1742 editions of Essays, Moral and Political, they were not included in later editions.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5 months 3 weeks 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
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
5 months 4 weeks ago
It lays down, as is generally...

It lays down, as is generally known, that our speculations upon all subjects whatsoever, pass necessarily through three successive stages: a Theological stage, in which free play is given to spontaneous fictions admitting of no proof; the Metaphysical stage, characterized by the prevalence of personified abstractions or entities; lastly, the Positive stage, based upon an exact view of the real facts of the case.

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p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
6 months 1 week ago
Once a word….

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

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Book I, epistle xviii, line 71
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 3 weeks ago
People seem not to see that...

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

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Worship
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 2 weeks ago
The highest ensign that men ever...

The highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental extrinsic one.

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Bk. III, ch. 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
7 months 1 week ago
Violence and injury....

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

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Book V, lines 1152-1153 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 3 weeks ago
The Indians, whom we call barbarous,...

The Indians, whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion. And if it be not so in this civiliz'd part of the world, we must impute it to a neglect in education, which has not yet reform'd this antient piece of barbarity amongst us.

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Sec. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 3 weeks ago
The universe is flux, life is...

The universe is flux, life is opinion. The universe is (constant) change, life is (mere) presumption.

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(Analogous translation) The universe is transformation: life is opinion. (Translation by George Long)
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
3 months 2 days ago
Whoever criticizes others must have something...

Whoever criticizes others must have something to replace them. Criticism without suggestion is like trying to stop flood with flood and put out fire with fire. It will surely be without worth.

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Book 4; Universal Love III
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 3 weeks ago
"I don't want to! Why should...

"I don't want to! Why should I?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't." "So what? I don't care about other people." "You should." "But why?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't."

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Dialogue between Russell and his daughter Katharine, as quoted in My Father - Bertrand Russell, 1975
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
7 months 3 days ago
The very elements themselves, though repugnant...

The very elements themselves, though repugnant in their nature, yet, by a happy equilibrium, preserve eternal peace; and amid the discordancy of their constituent principles, cherish, by a friendly intercourse and coalition, an uninterrupted concord.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 3 weeks ago
Aeschylus had a clear eye for...

Aeschylus had a clear eye for the commonest things. His genius was only an enlarged common sense. He adverts with chaste severity to all natural facts. His sublimity is Greek sincerity and simpleness, naked wonder which mythology had not helped to explain... Whatever the common eye sees at all and expresses as best it may, he sees uncommonly and describes with rare completeness. The multitude that thronged the theatre could no doubt go along with him to the end... The social condition of genius is the same in all ages. Aeschylus was undoubtedly alone and without sympathy in his simple reverence for the mystery of the universe.

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January 29, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 4 weeks ago
Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much...

Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

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Chapter IX, p. 117.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months 3 weeks ago
To get to know a truth...

To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.

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Quoted in The Viking Book of Aphorisms by Wystan Hugh Auden (1962) p. 323
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 3 weeks ago
...the prisoner's dreams is the guard's...

...the prisoner's dreams is the guard's spirituality.

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p. 400
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is true...
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Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
5 months 6 days ago
Has not authority from time immemorial...

Has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable?

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 3 weeks ago
The pretended rights of these theorists...

The pretended rights of these theorists are all extremes: and in proportion as they are metaphysically true, they are morally and politically false. The rights of men are in a sort of middle, incapable of definition, but not impossible to be discerned. The rights of men in government are their advantages; and these are often in balances between differences of good; in compromises between good and evil, and sometimes between evil and evil. Political reason is a computing principle: adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, morally and not metaphysically or mathematically, true moral denominations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 3 weeks ago
To tax and to please, no...

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Fodor
2 months 3 weeks ago
From the point of view of...

From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents: if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be possible for a cow to be called "horse." Putting the two things together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"...

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Fodor (1990). A Theory of Content and Other Essays. The MIT Press.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 3 weeks ago
Titles of property, for instance railway...

Titles of property, for instance railway shares, may change hands every day, and their owner may make a profit by their sale even in foreign countries, so that titles to property are exportable, although the railway itself is not.

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Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 215.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
5 months 1 week ago
More and more it is becoming...

More and more it is becoming evident that what the West can most readily give to the East is its science and its scientific outlook. This is transferable from country to country, and from race to race, wherever there is a rational society.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 3 weeks ago
You can do everything with bayonets...

You can do everything with bayonets except sit on them. If you want to preserve your power indefinitely you have to get the consent of the ruled. And this they will do partly by drugs as I foresaw in "Brave new World", and partly by these new techniques of propaganda. They will do it by bypassing the sort of rational side of man and appealing to his subconscious, and his deeper emotions, and his physiology, even, and so making him actually love his slavery. I mean I think this is the danger that actually people may be, in some ways, happy under the new regime. But they will be happy in situations when they oughtn't be happy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 3 weeks ago
There are two types of poor...

There are two types of poor people, those who are poor together and those who are poor alone. The first are the true poor, the others are rich people out of luck.

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Act 4, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
5 months 2 weeks ago
The living have never shown me...

The living have never shown me how to live.

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"On My Friendly Critics"
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 months 2 weeks ago
In places where men are used...

In places where men are used to differences they inevitably become tolerant.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
5 months 4 weeks ago
Superstition is more injurious to God...

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Life is short, but its ills...

Life is short, but its ills make it seem long.

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Maxim 124
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 3 weeks ago
Although the medium is the message,...

Although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the "content," which is always another medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming.

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(p. 267)
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
4 months 6 days ago
Marriage is tough, because it is...

Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. "In love-ness" is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about "happy" and "unhappy" marriages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 3 weeks ago
Fire is the most tolerable third...

Fire is the most tolerable third party.

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January 2, 1853
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
6 months 3 weeks ago
To each according to his threat...

To each according to his threat advantage does not count as a principle of justice.

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Chapter III, Section 24, pg. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
5 months 3 weeks ago
If insistence on them tends to...

If insistence on them tends to unsettle established systems ... self-evident truths are by most people silently passed over; or else there is a tacit refusal to draw from them the most obvious inferences.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 14, pp. 38-39
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 2 weeks ago
This is the ideal world –...

This is the ideal world, a perfect world of equality, fraternity, harmony, welfare, and justice.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 3 weeks ago
Both in England and on the...

Both in England and on the Continent a graduated property tax (l'impôt progressif) has been advocated, on the avowed ground that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent.To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours. It is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation.

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Book V, Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
4 months 3 weeks ago
I can calculate the motions of...

I can calculate the motions of erratic bodies, but not the madness of a multitude.

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As quoted in "Mammon and the Money Market", in The Church of England Quarterly Review (1850), p. 142
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
6 months 5 days ago
Practice justice in word and deed,...

Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 months 2 weeks ago
Consider the great elements of human...

Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
5 months 3 days ago
A good means to discovery is...

A good means to discovery is to take away certain parts of a system to find out how the rest behaves.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) edited by Alan Lindsay Mackay, p. 154
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
7 months 2 weeks ago
To be happy, we must not...

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
3 months 5 days ago
The only originality I claim is...

The only originality I claim is that for me this truth goes hand in hand with the intellectual certainty that the human spirit is capable of creating in our time a new mentality, an ethical mentality. Inspired by this certainty, I too proclaim this truth in the hope that my testimony may help to prevent its rejection as an admirable sentiment but a practical impossibility. Many a truth has lain unnoticed for a long time, ignored simply because no one perceived its potential for becoming reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 3 weeks ago
So long as the product is...

So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.

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Vol. II, Ch. II, p. 78.
Philosophical Maxims
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