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Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 weeks 5 days ago
We are organization watchers in our...

We are organization watchers in our role as citizens. Increasing attention has been fixed in recent years upon the functioning of society's organizations: its large corporations and its governments. Hence this could also be described as a book for Everyman-for it proposes a way of thinking about organizational issues that concern us all.

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Simon (1975, p. ix); As cited in Stefano Franchi(2006) "Herbert simon, anti-philosopher." Computing and Philosophy. p. 34.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 weeks 6 days ago
I wish we could derive the...

I wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for I am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but I hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to that or some truer method of philosophy.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 1 week ago
No one deserves to live who...

No one deserves to live who has not at least one good-man-and-true for a friend.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 days ago
Shut out the evil love of...

Shut out the evil love of the world, that you may be filled with the love of God. You are a vessel that was already full: you must pour away what you have, that you may take in what you have not.

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Second Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 274
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 3 days ago
The truth is that the State...

The truth is that the State is a conspiracy designed not only to exploit, but above all to corrupt its citizens ... Henceforth, I shall never serve any government anywhere.

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As quoted in Tolstoy (1988) by A. N. Wilson, p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
It built itself up endlessly, like...

It built itself up endlessly, like a chess game, and the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 2 weeks ago
The best is the enemy of the good.

The best is the enemy of the good.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
All the thoughts of a turtle...

All the thoughts of a turtle are turtle.

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1855
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month ago
The custom of procuring abortions has...

The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.

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Mother Earth
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month ago
One cannot ignore half of life...

One cannot ignore half of life for the purposes of science, and then claim that the results of science give a full and adequate picture of the meaning of life. All discussions of 'life' which begin with a description of man's place on a speck of matter in space, in an endless evolutionary scale, are bound to be half-measures, because they leave out most of the experiences which are important to use as human beings.

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p. 309
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 1 week ago
Whatever the poverty of our knowledge...

Whatever the poverty of our knowledge in this respect, it is certain that the question of the sign is itself more or less, or in any event something other, than a sign of the times. To dream of reducing it to a sign of the times is to dream of violence.

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Force and Signification
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 4 days ago
I do not understand these men...

I do not understand these men who tell me that the prospect of the yonder side of death has never tormented them, that the thought of their own annihilation never disquiets them. For my part I do not wish to make peace between my heart and my head, between my faith and my reason - I wish rather that there should be war between them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is no need for you...

There is no need for you to develop an armed insurrection. Christ himself has already begun an insurrection with his mouth.

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pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 1 week ago
The animating purpose of James was,...

The animating purpose of James was, on the other hand, primarily moral and artistic. It is expressed in his phrase, "block universe," employed as a term of adverse criticism. Mechanism and idealism were abhorrent to him because they both hold to a closed universe in which there is no room for novelty and adventure. Both sacrifice individuality and all the values, moral and aesthetic, which hang upon individuality; for according to absolute idealism, as to mechanistic materialism, the individual is simply a part determined by the whole of which he is a part. Only a philosophy of pluralism, of genuine indetermination, and of change which is real and intrinsic gives significance to individuality. It alone justifies struggle in creative activity and gives opportunity for the emergence of the genuinely new.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 weeks ago
The game of science is, in...

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

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Ch. 2 "On the Problem of a Theory of Scientific Method", Section 11: Methodological Rules as Conventions, p. 32.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
How great is the path proper...

How great is the path proper to the Sage! Like overflowing water, it sends forth and nourishes all things, and rises up to the height of heaven. All-complete is its greatness! It embraces the three hundred rules of ceremony, and the three thousand rules of demeanor. It waits for the proper man, and then it is trodden. Hence it is said, "Only by perfect virtue can the perfect path, in all its courses, be made a fact."

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 3 weeks ago
The people reign over the American...

The people reign over the American political world as God rules over the universe. It is the cause and the end of all things; everything rises out of it and is absorbed back into it.

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Chapter IV, Part I.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
I'm afraid of losing my obscurity....

I'm afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery.

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Those Barren Leaves, 1925
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Boundless compassion for all living beings...

Boundless compassion for all living beings is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man's rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness. ... In former times the English plays used to finish with a petition for the King. The old Indian dramas close with these words: "May all living beings be delivered from pain." Tastes differ; but in my opinion there is no more beautiful prayer than this.

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Part III, Ch. VIII, 4, pp. 213-214 First line often paraphrased as: Compassion is the basis of all morality.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 1 day ago
For it is not death or...

For it is not death or pain that is to be feared, but the fear of pain or death.

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(Book II, ch. 1) Book II, ch. 1, 13.
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month ago
The task of power is to...

The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
Ye have heard that it hath...

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

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Matthew 5:43-45 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 2 weeks ago
For once touched by love, everyone...

For once touched by love, everyone becomes a poet.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
The superior man has neither anxiety...

The superior man has neither anxiety nor fear. When internal examination discovers nothing wrong, what is there to be anxious about, what is there to fear?

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 3 weeks ago
The end of life is much easier to imagine

Think about the strangeness of today's situation. Thirty, forty years ago, we were still debating about what the future will be: communist, fascist, capitalist, whatever. Today, nobody even debates these issues. We all silently accept global capitalism is here to stay. On the other hand, we are obsessed with cosmic catastrophes: the whole life on earth disintegrating, because of some virus, because of an asteroid hitting the earth, and so on. So the paradox is, that it's much easier to imagine the end of all life on earth than a much more modest radical change in capitalism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 1 day ago
Applied knowledge in the Renaissance had...

Applied knowledge in the Renaissance had to take the form of translation of the auditory into visual terms, of the plastic into retinal form.

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(p. 180)
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 3 weeks ago
The territorial aristocracy of former ages...

The territorial aristocracy of former ages was either bound by law, or thought itself bound by usage, to come to the relief of its serving-men and to relieve their distresses. But the manufacturing aristocracy of our age first impoverishes and debases the men who serve it and then abandons them to be supported by the charity of the public.

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Book Two, Chapter XX.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 3 weeks ago
This type of man who is...

This type of man who is devoted to the study of wisdom is always most unlucky in everything, and particularly when it comes to procreating children; I imagine this is because Nature wants to ensure that the evils of wisdom shall not spread further throughout mankind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 1 week ago
I see the situation of man...

I see the situation of man in the world of planetary technicity not as an inexitricable and inescapable destiny, but I see the task of thought precisely in this, that within its own limits it helps man as such achieve a satisfactory relationship to the essence of technicity. National Socialism did indeed go in this direction. Those people, however, were far too poorly equipped for thought to arrive at a really explicit relationship to what is happening today and has been underway for the past 300 years.

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As translated by William Richardson in Risk and Meaning, Nicolas Bouleau (translated by Dené Oglesby and Martin Crossley), ed. Springer, 2011
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
A thing, moderately good....
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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have been merely oppressed by...

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

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Letter to Gilbert Murray, March 21, 1903
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
Several actual worlds without one another...

Several actual worlds without one another are not, therefore, impossible by the very concept, as Wolf hastily concluded from the notion of a complex or multiplicity which he deemed sufficient to a whole, as such, but only on condition that there exist but one necessary cause of all things. If several are admitted, several worlds without one another will be possible in the strictest metaphysical sense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
I hardly know an intellectual man,...

I hardly know an intellectual man, even, who is so broad and truly liberal that you can think aloud in his society. Most with whom you endeavor to talk soon come to a stand against some institution in which they appear to hold stock, - that is, some particular, not universal, way of viewing things.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
A marvel that has nothing to...

A marvel that has nothing to offer, democracy is at once a nation's paradise and its tomb.

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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 weeks 5 days ago
Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from...

Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from a pacific or calm part of the soul. Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and aggression.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 1 week ago
If it recedes one day, leaving...

If it recedes one day, leaving behind its works and signs on the shores of our civilization, the structuralist invasion might become a question or the historian of ideas, or perhaps even an object. But the historian would be deceived if he came to this pass: by the very act of considering the structuralist invasion as an object he would forget its meaning and would forget that what is at stake, first of all, is an adventure of vision, a conversion of the way of putting questions to any object posed before us, to historical objects-his own- in particular. And, unexpectedly among these, the literary objects.

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Force and Signification
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
1 month ago
In the end, I am moved...

In the end, I am moved by causes and ideas that I can actually choose to support because they conform to values and principles that I believe in.

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p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
But there is a devil of...

But there is a devil of a difference between barbarians who are fit by nature to be used for anything, and civilized people who apply them selves to everything.

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Introduction, p. 25.
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 1 day ago
Therefore death is nothing…

Therefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal.

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Book III, lines 830-831 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 3 weeks ago
Art is the perfection of nature....

Art is the perfection of nature.

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Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong,...

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
1 month 3 days ago
Philosophy ... must not bargain away...

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 3 days ago
If a poor person envies a...

If a poor person envies a rich person, he is no better than the rich person.

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p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month ago
In reading Jung's account of his...

In reading Jung's account of his cases, it is impossible not to be aware that his success was due partly to an element of ruthlessness; he was dominated by curiosity rather than compassion.

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p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 6 days ago
He who is not satisfied with...

He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month ago
With Puritanism as the constant check...

With Puritanism as the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 week ago
Philosophers often behave like little children...

Philosophers often behave like little children who scribble some marks on a piece of paper at random and then ask the grown-up "What's that?" - It happened like this: the grown-up had drawn pictures for the child several times and said "this is a man," "this is a house," etc. And then the child makes some marks too and asks: what's this then?

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p. 17e
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 2 weeks ago
If all mankind minus one, were...

If all mankind minus one, were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

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Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
I feel effective, competent, likely to...

I feel effective, competent, likely to do something positive only when I lie down and abandon myself to an interrogation without object or end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Blessed are the hearts that can...

Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.

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Philosophical Maxims
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