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Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
...man first of all exists, encounters...

...man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world - and defines himself afterwards.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
5 days ago
Leibniz's theory on the subject as...

Leibniz's theory on the subject as substantia ideans in the sense of a causative agent of decision and acts stands much closer to a materialist interpretation of history than does a philosophy which reduces the thinking subject to the role of subsuming protocol sentences under general propositions and deducing other sentences from them.

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p. 149.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
The idea that the poor should...

The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 1 week ago
Lenin saying things that seem true....
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John Dewey
John Dewey
6 days ago
... classic philosophy maintained that change,...

... classic philosophy maintained that change, and consequently time, are marks of inferior reality, holding that true and ultimate reality is immutable and eternal. Human reasons, all too human, have given birth to the idea that over and beyond the lower realm of things that shift like the sands on the seashore there is the kingdom of the unchanging, of the complete, the perfect. The grounds for the belief are couched in the technical language of philosophy, but the grounds for the cause is the heart's desire for surcease from change, struggle, and uncertainty. The eternal and immutable is the consummation of mortal man's quest for certainty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
It occurs to me that artists...

It occurs to me that artists go forward by going backward, something which I have nothing against intrinsically when it is a reproduced retreat - as is the case with the better artists. But it does not seem right that they stop with the historical themes already given and, so to speak, think that only these are suitable for poetic treatment, because these particular themes, which intrinsically are no more poetic than others, are now again animated and inspirited by a great poetic nature. In this case the artists advance by marching on the spot. - Why are modern heroes and the like not just as poetic? Is it because there is so much emphasis on clothing the content in order that the formal aspect can be all the more finished?

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 week 3 days ago
When all capital, all production, all...

When all capital, all production, all exchange have been brought together in the hands of the nation, private property will disappear of its own accord, money will become superfluous, and production will so expand and man so change that society will be able to slough off whatever of its old economic habits may remain.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
1 month 3 weeks ago
The most disadvantageous peace is better...

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

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Adagia, 1508
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 1 day ago
The Africans had that claim on...

The Africans had that claim on our humanity which could not be resisted, whatever might have been advanced by an hon. gentleman in defence of the property of the planters.

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Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 98
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
It was the addition of status...

It was the addition of status that brought the little things: a more comfortable seat here, a better cut of meat there, a shorter wait in line at the other place. To the philosophical mind, these items might seem scarcely worth any great trouble to acquire.Yet no one, however philosophical, could give up those privileges, once acquired, without a pang. That was the point.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It...

Hypocrisy is a universal phenomenon. It ends with death, but not before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 weeks ago
The blindness of those who think...

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
Generals are usually a conservative force...

Generals are usually a conservative force who can be relied on to oppose social change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
1 month 5 days ago
Let us consider first the view...

Let us consider first the view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. We may call this the "sanctity of life" view. People who take this view oppose abortion and euthanasia. They do not usually, however, oppose the killing of nonhuman animals-so perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this view as the "sanctity of human life" view. The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism.

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Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
I take it for granted, when...

I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere, - for I have had a little experience in that business, - that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, - and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

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p. 484
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 weeks 5 days ago
Nothing seems at first sight less...

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

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Book Three, Chapter XIV.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 4 days ago
In a single second we do...

In a single second we do away with all seconds; God himself could not do as much.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 1 week ago
Understand me: I wish to be...

Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

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Orestes to Electra, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
6 days ago
The only satisfied rationalists today are...

The only satisfied rationalists today are blinkered scientists or Marxists.

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Ch. 7, p. 113
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
5 days ago
Man is a substantial emigrant on...

Man is a substantial emigrant on a pilgrimage of being, and it is accordingly meaningless to set limits to what he is capable of being.

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"Man has no nature"
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
He believes in that mummery a...

He believes in that mummery a good deal less than I do, and I don't believe in it at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
For my part, while I am...

For my part, while I am as convinced a Socialist as the most ardent Marxian, I do not regard Socialism as a gospel of proletarian revenge, nor even, primarily, as a means of securing economic justice. I regard it primarily as an adjustment to machine production demanded by considerations of common sense, and calculated to increase the happiness, not only of proletarians, but of all except a tiny minority of the human race.

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Ch. 7: The Case for Socialism
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am against bigness and greatness...

I am against bigness and greatness in all their forms, and with the invisible molecular moral forces that work from individual to individual, stealing in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, and yet rending the hardest monuments of man's pride, if you give them time. The bigger the unit you deal with, the hollower, the more brutal, the more mendacious is the life displayed. So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top. - You need take no notice of these ebullitions of spleen, which are probably quite unintelligible to anyone but myself.

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Letter to Mrs. Henry Whitman (7 June 1899), in The Letters of William James, ed. Henry James, vol. 2, p. 90, 1926
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
A man of intellect is like...

A man of intellect is like an artist who gives a concert without any help from anyone else, playing on a single instrument - a piano, say, which is a little orchestra in itself. Such a man is a little world in himself; and the effect produced by various instruments together, he produces single-handed, in the unity of his own consciousness. Like the piano, he has no place in a symphony; he is a soloist and performs by himself - in solitude, it may be; or if in the company with other instruments, only as principal; or for setting the tone, as in singing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
Is Christ only to be adored?...

Is Christ only to be adored? Or is the holy Mother of God rather not to be honoured? This is the woman who crushed the Serpent's head. Hear us. For your Son denies you nothing.

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 51, 128-129
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 week 3 days ago
The bourgeoisie ... lets him have...

The bourgeoisie ... lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!

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p. 112
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
To discover the various use of...

To discover the various use of things is the work of history.

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Vol. I, Ch. 1, Section 1, pg. 42.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 1 day ago
...my extreme anxiety about the Object...

...my extreme anxiety about the Object of our common sollicitude and my clear and decided conviction, that there is one part of the War, which instead of being postponed and considered in a secondary light, ought to have priority over every other, and requires our most early and our most careful attention; I mean La Vendée. ... This is a War directly against Jacobinism and its principles. It strikes at the Enemy in his weakest and most vulnerable part. At La Vendée with infinitely less Charge, we may make an impression likely to be decisive. This goes to the heart of the Business.

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Letter to the Home Secretary Henry Dundas (8 October 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.)
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
How shall we define a god?...

How shall we define a god? Expressed in psychological terms (which are primary-there is no getting behind them) a god is something that gives us the peculiar kind of feeling which Professor Otto has called "numinous". Numinous feelings are the original god-stuff from which the theory-making mind extracts the individualised gods of the pantheon.

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"Meditation on the Moon"
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 1 week ago
You don't have a soul. You...

You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.

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Commonly attributed to Mere Christianity, where it is not found. Earliest reference seems to be an unsourced attribution to George MacDonald in an 1892 issue of the Quaker periodical The British Friend.
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
1 month 2 weeks ago
Music is a hidden….

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

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Letter to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 week 4 days ago
It is a woman's outstanding characteristic...

It is a woman's outstanding characteristic that she can do anything for the love of a man. But those women who can achieve something important for the love of a thing are most exceptional, because this does not really agree with their nature. Love for a thing is a man's prerogative. But since masculine and feminine elements are united in our human nature, a man can live in the feminine part of himself, I and a woman in her masculine part. None the less the feminine element in man is only something in the background, as is the masculine element in woman. If one lives out the opposite sex in oneself one is living in one's own background, and one's real individuality suffers. A man should live as a man and a woman as a woman.

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P. 243
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 4 days ago
Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning...

Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
1 month 2 weeks ago
'Tis evident, that sympathy, or the...

Tis evident, that sympathy, or the communication of passions, takes place among animals, no less than among men. Fear, anger, courage and other affections are frequently communicated from one animal to another [...] And 'tis remarkable, that tho' almost all animals use in play the same member, and nearly the same action as in fighting; a lion, a tyger, a cat their paws; an ox his homs; a dog his teeth; a horse his heels: Yet they most carefully avoid harming their companion, even tho' they have nothing to fear from his resentment; which is an evident proof of the sense brutes have of each other's pain and pleasure.

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Part 2, Section 12
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 2 weeks ago
The only thing we are naturally...

The only thing we are naturally afraid of is pain, or loss of pleasure. And because these are not annexed to any shape, colour, or size of visible objects, we are frighted of none of them, till either we have felt pain from them, or have notions put into us that they will do us harm.

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Sec. 115
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in...

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 4 days ago
The deepest and most organic death...

The deepest and most organic death is death in solitude, when even light becomes a principle of death. In such moments you will be severed from life, from love, smiles, friends and even from death. And you will ask yourself if there is anything besides the nothingness of the world and your own nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 2 weeks ago
There are other letters for the...

There are other letters for the child to learn than those which Cadmus invented.

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Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
4 weeks ago
This, therefore, is mathematics: she reminds...

This, therefore, is mathematics: she reminds you of the invisible form of the soul; she gives life to her own discoveries; she awakens the mind and purifies the intellect; she brings light to our intrinsic ideas; she abolishes oblivion and ignorance which are ours by birth.

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As quoted by Morris Kline, Mathematical Thought from Ancient to Modern Times
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
1 month 3 weeks ago
Rules for Demonstrations. I. Not to...

Rules for Demonstrations. I. Not to undertake to demonstrate any thing that is so evident of itself that nothing can be given that is clearer to prove it. II. To prove all propositions at all obscure, and to employ in their proof only very evident maxims or propositions already admitted or demonstrated. III. To always mentally substitute definitions in the place of things defined, in order not to be misled by the ambiguity of terms which have been restricted by definitions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 weeks 5 days ago
Hope is the only good that...

Hope is the only good that is common to all men; those who have nothing else possess hope still.

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A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 234
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
Just now
La force qui tue est une...

The might which kills outright is an elementary and coarse form of might. How much more varied in its devices; how much more astonishing in its effects is that other which does not kill; or which delays killing.

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in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 155
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 week 4 days ago
The aphorism is cultivated only by...

The aphorism is cultivated only by those who have known fear in the midst of words, that fear of collapsing with all the words.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
1 month 2 weeks ago
For a very small expence the...

For a very small expence the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article II, p. 847.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
1 month 2 weeks ago
Revolutions are the locomotives of history....

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

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Chapter 3, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850, 1850
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 2 weeks ago
The application of algebra to geometry......

The application of algebra to geometry... far more than any of his metaphysical speculations, has immortalized the name of Descartes, and constitutes the greatest single step ever made in the progress of the exact sciences.

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An Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy (1865) as quoted in 5th ed. (1878) p. 617.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
To see ourselves as others see...

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 2 weeks ago
"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I...

"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I made you so little happy as that?"

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Orual
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
Just now
Traditional philosophy's claim to totality, culminating...

Traditional philosophy's claim to totality, culminating in the thesis that the real is rational, is indistinguishable from apologetics.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 1 week ago
How then to enforce peace? Not...

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?

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Philosophical Maxims
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