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Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 3 weeks ago
God is the...

God is the Immanent Cause of all things, never truly transcendent from them.

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Part I, Prop. XVIII
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 3 weeks ago
Whate'er we leave to God, God...

Whate'er we leave to God, God doesAnd blesses us.

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"Inspiration", in An American Anthology, 1900
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
In television, images are projected at...

In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point.

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The diplomat, Issues 197-208, 1966, p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
Job endured everything

Job endured everything - until his friends came to comfort him, then he grew impatient.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 1 week ago
Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding...

Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding some its assertions, that the forms of knowledge and consequently the relations of man to nature and to other men never change. According to rationalism, too, all subjective and objective potentialities are rooted in insights which the individual already possesses, but rationality uses existing objects as well as the active inner striving and ideas of man to construct standards for the future. In this regard, it is not so closely associated with the present order as is empiricism.

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p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
The importation of gold and silver...

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

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Chapter I, p. 479.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 2 weeks ago
There's nothing nonsensical about saying that...

There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 1 week ago
We make a ladder of our...

We make a ladder of our vices, if we trample those same vices underfoot.

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3
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 1 week ago
In order to be exercised, the...

In order to be exercised, the intelligence requires to be free to express itself without control by any authority. There must therefore be a domain of pure intellectual research, separate but accessible to all, where no authority intervenes. The human soul has need of some solitude and privacy and also of some social life.The human soul has need of both personal property and collective property.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month ago
The three great American vices seem...

The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.

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p. 162
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
1 month 3 weeks ago
Is not the minimal state, the...

Is not the minimal state, the framework for utopia, an inspiring vision? The minimal state treats us as inviolate individuals, who may not be used in certain ways by others as means or tools or instruments or resources; it treats us as persons having individual right with the dignity this constitutes. Treating us with respect by respecting our rights, it allows us, individually or with whom we please, to choose our life and to realize our ends and our conception of ourselves, insofar as we can, aided by the voluntary cooperation of other individuals possessing the same dignity. How dare any state or group of individuals do more. Or less.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopia and the Minimal State, p. 333
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
...the impossible must be supposed in...

...the impossible must be supposed in order to explain the superdetermination of the event

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p. 301
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 1 day ago
The heart unites whatever the mind...

The heart unites whatever the mind separates, pushes on beyond the arena of necessity and transmutes the struggle into love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 day ago
What then remains but that we...

What then remains but that we still should cry Not to be born, or, being born, to die?

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
To convince someone of the truth,...

To convince someone of the truth, it is not enough to state it, but rather one must find the path from error to truth.

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Ch. 7 : Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, p. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
2 weeks 6 days ago
But there is another form of...

But there is another form of monopoly, far more general and far more insidious. The accumulation of large amounts of capital under consolidated control creates a new kind of power-essentially different from the power of increase. Increase is constructive in its nature. Power from accumulation is destructive. It is often exercised with reckless disregard, not only to industry but to the personal rights of individuals. A railroad approaches a small town as a highwayman approaches his victim. "Agree to our terms or we will bypass your town" is as effective a threat as "your money or your life." As robbers unite to plunder and divide the spoils, the trunk lines of railroads unite to raise rates and pool their earnings. The public is then forced to pay the cost of the whole maneuver, as the vanquished are forced to pay the cost of their own enslavement by a conquering army.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 2 weeks ago
The claims of existing social arrangements...

The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.

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Chapter III, Section 23, pg. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
5 months 1 week ago
Temperance is that discreet regulation of...

Temperance is that discreet regulation of the desires and passions, by which we are enabled to enjoy pleasures without suffering any consequent inconvenience. They who maintain such a constant self-command, as never to be enticed by the prospect of present indulgence, to do that which will be productive of evil, obtain the truest pleasure by declining pleasure.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
I am the way and the...

I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

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14:06
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is no penalty attached to...

There is no penalty attached to a lover's oath.

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Maxim 23
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 3 weeks ago
It makes a tremendous emotional and...

It makes a tremendous emotional and practical difference to one whether one accepts the universe in the drab discolored way of stoic resignation to necessity, or with the passionate happiness of Christian saints.

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Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
We took the liberty to make...

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretentions to make war upon nations who had done them no injury, and observed that we considered all mankind as our friends who had done us no wrong, nor had given us any provocation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
The man who barely abstains from...

The man who barely abstains from violating either the person, or the estate, or the reputation of his neighbours, has surely very little positive merit. He fulfils, however, all the rules of what is peculiarly called justice, and does every thing which his equals can with propriety force him to do, or which they can punish him for not doing. We may often fulfil all the rules of justice by sitting still and doing nothing.

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Section II, Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have wanted to give Iraq...

I have wanted to give Iraq a lesson in democracy - because we're experienced with it, you know. And, in democracy, after a hundred years, you have to let your slaves go. And, after a hundred and fifty years, you have to let your women vote. And, at the beginning of democracy, is that quite a bit of genocide and ethnic cleansing is quite okay. And that's what's going on now.

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Interviewed by Jon Stewart on The Daily Show
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
He chooses the most feared, most...

He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.

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p. 165
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 1 week ago
Cantare amantis est. Singing is of...

Singing is of a lover.

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Variant translation: To sing is characteristic of the lover. 336
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 6 days ago
There remains the final reflection, how...

There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.

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Preface, p. 16 (Corrected Edition)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 3 weeks ago
The Few assume to be the...

The Few assume to be the deputies, but they are often only the despoilers of the Many.

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Pt. IV, sec. 3, ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
Truth gains more even by the...

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

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Ch. II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
Freedom of person, securing every one...

Freedom of person, securing every one from imprisonment, or other bodily restraint, but by the laws of the land. This is effected by the well-known law of habeas corpus.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
In the vast all of the...

In the vast all of the Universe, must there be this unique anomaly - a consciousness that knows itself, loves itself and feels itself, joined to an organism which can only live within such and such degrees of heat, a merely transitory phenomenon? No, it is not mere curiosity that inspires the wish to know whether or not the stars are inhabited by living organisms, by consciousness akin to our own, and a profound longing enters into that dream that our souls shall pass from star to star through the vast spaces of the heavens, in an infinite series of transmigrations. The feeling of the divine makes us wish and believe that everything is animated, that consciousness, in a greater or less degree, extends through everything. We wish not only to save ourselves, but to save the world from nothingness. And therefore God. Such is his finality as we feel it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
The ordinary person senses the greatness...

The ordinary person senses the greatness of the odds against him even without thought or analysis, and he adapts his attitudes unconsciously. A huge passivity has settled on industrial society. For people carried about in mechanical vehicles, earning their living by waiting on machines, listening much of the waking day to canned music, watching packaged movie entertainment and capsulated news, for such people it would require an exceptional degree of awareness and an especial heroism of effort to be anything but supine consumers of processed goods.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months ago
The Virgin Mary remains in the...

The Virgin Mary remains in the middle between Christ and humankind. For in the very moment he was conceived and lived, he was full of grace. All other human beings are without grace, both in the first and second conception. But the Virgin Mary, though without grace in the first conception, was full of grace in the second ... whereas other human beings are conceived in sin, in soul as well as in body, and Christ was conceived without sin in soul as well as in body, the Virgin Mary was conceived in body without grace but in soul full of grace.

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As quoted in Anderson, H. George; Stafford, J. Francis; Burgess, Joseph A., eds. (1992). The One Mediator, The Saints, and Mary. Lutherans and Catholics in Dialogue. VIII. Minneapolis: Augsburg. ISBN 0-8066-2579-1., p. 236
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
3 months 1 week ago
But to manipulate men, to propel...

But to manipulate men, to propel them towards goals which you - the social reformer - see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Only the great generalizations survive. The...

Only the great generalizations survive. The sharp words of the Declaration of Independence, lampooned then and since as 'glittering generalities,' have turned out blazing ubiquities that will burn forever and ever.

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From a lecture on Books given in the Fraternity Course in Boston in 1864
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months ago
The fact that goals may be...

The fact that goals may be dependent for their force on other more distant ends leads to the arrangement of these goals in a hierarchy - each level to be considered as an end relative to the levels below it and as a mean to the levels above it.

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p. 62.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 3 weeks ago
They showed me their trees, and...

They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked at all Nature like that - at the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told me something about them which I could not understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
3 months 3 weeks ago
Countless attempts have been made to...

Countless attempts have been made to no avail to construct a continuity from the supreme principle of the intellectual world to the finite world. The oldest and most frequent of these attempts is well known: the principle of emanation, according to which the outflowings from the godhead, in gradual increments and detachment from the ordinary source, losing their divine perfection until, in the end, they pass into the opposite (matter, privation), just as light is finally confined by darkness.

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P. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 3 weeks ago
Being of opinion that the doctrine...

Being of opinion that the doctrine and history of so extraordinary a sect as the Quakers were very well deserving the curiosity of every thinking man, I resolved to make myself acquainted with them, and for that purpose made a visit to one of the most eminent of that sect in England, who, after having been in trade for thirty years, had the wisdom to prescribe limits to his fortune, and to his desires, and withdrew to a small but pleasant retirement in the country, not many miles from London. Here it was that I made him my visit. His house was small, but neatly built, and with no other ornaments but those of decency and convenience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 1 week ago
There are two forms of knowledge,...

There are two forms of knowledge, one genuine, one obscure. To the obscure belong all of the following: sight, hearing, smell, taste, feeling. The other form is the genuine, and is quite distinct from this. [And then distinguishing the genuine from the obscure, he continues:] Whenever the obscure [way of knowing] has reached the minimum sensibile of hearing, smell, taste, and touch, and when the investigation must be carried farther into that which is still finer, then arises the genuine way of knowing, which has a finer organ of thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Go thy way; and as thou...

Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee.

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8:13 (KJV) Said to the officer.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 6 days ago
Know, first, who you are, and...

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

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Book III, ch. 1, 25.
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 weeks 5 days ago
There is no chastisement that does...

There is no chastisement that does not purify; there is no disorder that ETERNAL LOVE does not turn against the principle of evil.

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Chapter III, p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 days ago
Living, loving, being natural or sincere-all...

Living, loving, being natural or sincere-all these are spontaneous forms of behavior: they happen "of themselves" like digesting food or growing hair. As soon as they are forced they acquire that unnatural, contrived, and phony atmosphere which everyone deplores-weak and scentless like forced flowers and tasteless like forced fruit. Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.

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p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
The dead? But the dead have...

The dead? But the dead have no rights. They are nothing; and nothing cannot own something. Where there is no substance, there can be no accident. This corporeal globe, and everything upon it, belong to its present corporeal inhabitants, during their generation. They alone have a right to direct what is the concern of themselves alone, and to declare the law of that direction; and this declaration can only be made by their majority. That majority, then, has a right to depute representatives to a convention, and to make the constitution what they think will be the best for themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 weeks 1 day ago
No freeman shall be debarred the...

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms within his own lands.

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Draft Constitution for Virginia (June 1776)
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever is known to us by...

Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 1 week ago
I have sometimes told myself that...

I have sometimes told myself that if only there were a notice on church doors forbidding entry to anyone with an income above a certain figure, and a low one, I would be converted at once.

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Letter to Georges Bernanos (1938), in Seventy Letters, as translated by Richard Rees (Wipf and Stock: 1965), p. 105
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 days ago
So in the end....
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