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Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months ago
Our habitual experience is a complex...

Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Of all calumnies the worst is...

Of all calumnies the worst is the one which attacks our indolence, which contests its authenticity.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
2 weeks 1 day ago
'Intuitive' is opposed to 'discursive' reason....

'Intuitive' is opposed to 'discursive' reason. In intuition, we obtain our conclusions by dwelling upon 'one' aspect of the fundamental Idea; in discursive reasoning, we combine several aspects of the Idea

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 1 week ago
Quality leadership is neither the product...

Quality leadership is neither the product of one great individual nor the result of odd historical accidents. Rather, it comes from deeply bred traditions and communities that shape and mold talented and gifted persons. Without a vibrant tradition of resistance passed on to new generations, there can be no nurturing of a collective and critical consciousness-only professional conscientiousness survives.

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(p37)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
We suffer not only from the...

We suffer not only from the development of capitalist production, but also from the incompleteness of that development. Alongside the modern evils, we are oppressed by a whole series of inherited evils, arising from the passive survival of archaic and outmoded modes of production, with their accompanying train of anachronistic social and political relations. We suffer not only from the living, but from the dead.

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Preface to the First Edition, Capital Volume 1, Peinguin Classics edition 1976.
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
3 weeks 3 days ago
Must we then speak of this...

Must we then speak of this subject also: and shall we write concerning things that are not to be told, and shall we publish things not to be divulged, and secrets not to be spoken aloud? Who indeed is Attis or Gallos; who the Mother of the Gods; what is the reason of this rule of Chastity; moreover for what cause has such an institution been established among us from remote antiquity; handed down to us indeed from the most ancient of the Phrygians, but accepted in the first place by the Greeks - and those not the vulgar herd, but the Athenians - taught by the event that they had not done well in ridiculing him that was performing the rites of the Great Mother. For they are said to have insulted and driven off the Gallos, as one who was making innovations in religion: because they did not understand the character of the goddess, or how that she was the very "Deo", "Rhea," and " "Demeter" so much honoured amongst them themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 4 weeks ago
"What I believe" is a process...

"What I believe" is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect. While it may be true that Herbert Spencer's formulation of liberty is the most important on the subject, as a political basis of society, yet life is something more than formulas. In the battle for freedom, as Ibsen has so well pointed out, it is the struggle for, not so much the attainment of, liberty, that develops all that is strongest, sturdiest and finest in human character.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
3 weeks 2 days ago
No, no, you are not thinking,...

No, no, you are not thinking, you are just being logical.

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In response to those who made purely formal or mathematical arguments, as quoted in What Little I Remember (1979) by Otto Robert Frisch, p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 5 days ago
The institutions of the Ruler are...

The institutions of the Ruler are rooted in his own character and conduct, and sufficient attestation of them is given by the masses of the people. He examines them by comparison with those of the three kings, and finds them without mistake. He sets them up before Heaven and Earth, and finds nothing in them contrary to their mode of operation. He presents himself with them before spiritual beings, and no doubts about them arise. He is prepared to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, and has no misgivings. His presenting himself with his institutions before spiritual beings, without any doubts arising about them, shows that he knows Heaven. His being prepared, without any misgivings, to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, shows that he knows men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
The great rule: If the little...

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

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E 55
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
To desire you to read my...

To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make...would oblige me greatly: I know how much I shall be benefitted and I shall at the same time preserve the pretious right of private judgement for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infalliable than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.

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Letter to William Strahan (4 April 1760), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Plotinus
Plotinus
5 months 4 days ago
All teems with symbol; the wise...

All teems with symbol; the wise man is the man who in any one thing can read another.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
She is rightly called not only...

She is rightly called not only the mother of the man, but also the Mother of God ... It is certain that Mary is the Mother of the real and true God.

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works, English translation edited by J. Pelikan [Concordia: St. Louis], Vol. 11, Vol. 24, 107
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
For two thousand years, Jesus has...

For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 1 day ago
There is another form of temptation,...

There is another form of temptation, more complex in its peril. It originates in an appetite for knowledge. From this malady of curiosity are all those strange sights exhibited in the theatre. Hence do we proceed to search out the secret powers of nature (which is beside our end), which to know profits not, and wherein men desire nothing but to know.

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X, 35
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
Setting the mind to remember... involves...

Setting the mind to remember... involves a continual minimal irradiation of excitement into paths which lead thereto... the continued presence of the thing in the 'fringe' of our consciousness. Letting the thing go involves withdrawal of the irradiation, unconsciousness of the thing, and... obliteration of the paths.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
3 weeks 2 days ago
In dealing with relationships, not only...

In dealing with relationships, not only man-to-man, but also State-to-State and race-to-race, it is necessary to be able to conceive again of that obedience which does not humiliate but exalts, that command or leadership which commits one to superiority and a precise responsibility.

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p. 117
Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
3 months 1 week ago
The mores I return to myself,...

The mores I return to myself, the more I divest myself, under the traumatic effect of persecution , of my freedom as a constituted, wilful, imperialistic subject, the more I discover myself to be responsible' the more just I am, the more guilty I am. I am 'in myself' through others.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 102
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
If a thousand [citizens] were not...

If a thousand [citizens] were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 week 4 days ago
As the entire middle class, the...

As the entire middle class, the bourgeois and petty bourgeois intelligentsia, boycotted the Soviet government for months after the October Revolution and crippled the railroad, post and telegraph, and educational and administrative apparatus, and, in this fashion, opposed the workers government, naturally all measures of pressure were exerted against it. These included the deprivation of political rights, of economic means of existence, etc., in order to break their resistance with an iron fist. It was precisely in this way that the socialist dictatorship expressed itself, for it cannot shrink from any use of force to secure or prevent certain measures involving the interests of the whole.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Truly, if the preservation of all...

Truly, if the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him lies, were every one's persuasion, as indeed it is every one's duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politicks and morality by, the world would be much quieter, and better natur'd than it is.

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Sec. 116
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
Goodbye, friend Elijiah, and remember that,...

Goodbye, friend Elijiah, and remember that, although people apply the phrase to Aurora, it is, from this point on, Earth itself that is the true World of the Dawn.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
Surplus value is exactly equal to...

Surplus value is exactly equal to surplus labour; the increase of the one [is] exactly measured by the diminution of necessary labour.

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Notebook III, The Chapter on Capital, p. 259.
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
3 months 6 days ago
Hatred is a feeling which leads...

Hatred is a feeling which leads to the extinction of values.

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Cited in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations by Subject, ed. Susan Ratcliffe (2010), p. 223
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 1 week ago
The bow too tensely strung is...

The bow too tensely strung is easily broken.

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Maxim 388
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence...

Schizophrenia may be a necessary consequence of literacy.

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(p. 26)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
We know very well that we...

We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.

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Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 1 week ago
The likelihood is that, in 100,000...

The likelihood is that, in 100,000 years time, we shall either have reverted to wild barbarism, or else civilisation will have advanced beyond all recognition - into colonies in outer space, for instance. In either case, evolutionary extrapolations from present conditions are likely to be highly misleading.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
It seems to be almost an...

It seems to be almost an invariable rule that as real power declines, the symbols of power multiply and intensify in compensation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
You must be afraid, my son....

You must be afraid, my son. That is how one becomes an honest citizen.

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Mother to her young son, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 6 days ago
The English are a dumb people....

The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them.

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Bk. III, ch. 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
3 months 1 week ago
Man is a thinking being. His...

Man is a thinking being. His reason enables him to recognize his own potentialities and those of his world. He is thus not at the mercy of the facts that surround him, but is capable of subjecting them to a higher standard, that of reason.

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P. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nonviolence is not an absolute principle,...

Nonviolence is not an absolute principle, but an open-ended struggle with violence and its countervailing forces.

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p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
The most insistent...
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Main Content / General
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 2 weeks ago
Is there in the whole world...

Is there in the whole world a being who would have the right to forgive and could forgive? I don't want harmony. From love for humanity I don't want it. I would rather be left with the unavenged suffering. I would rather remain with my unavenged suffering and unsatisfied indignation, even if I were wrong. Besides, too high a price is asked for harmony; it's beyond our means to pay so much to enter on it. And so I hasten to give back my entrance ticket, and if I am an honest man I am bound to give it back as soon as possible. And that I am doing. It's not God that I don't accept, Alyosha, only I most respectfully return him the ticket.

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Book II, Chapter 4: Rebellion (trans. Constance Garnett)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
2 weeks ago
The aim of protection, in short,...

The aim of protection, in short, is to prevent the bringing into a country of things in themselves useful and valuable, in order to compel the making of such things. But what all mankind in the individual affairs of every-day life, regard as to be desired is not the making of things, but the possession of things.

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Henry George, page 39,
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
Our aim as scientists is objective...

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

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Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
5 months 4 days ago
The Law teaches that the universe...

The Law teaches that the universe was invented and created by God, and that it did not come into being by chance or by itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
Space is employed as the type...

Space is employed as the type even of the concept of time itself, representing it by a line, and its limits - moments - by points. Time, on the other had, approaches more to a universal and rational concept, comprising under its relations all things whatsoever, to wit, space itself, and besides, those accidents which are not comprehended in the relations of space, such as the thoughts of the soul. Again, time, besides this, though it certainly does not dictate the laws of reason, yet constitutes the principal conditions tinder favor of which the mind compares its notions according to the laws of reason. Thus, I cannot judge what is impossible except by predicating a and not-a of the same subject at the same time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 weeks ago
The auspices for philosophy are bad...

The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 22
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
3 months 1 week ago
Those who have ever valued liberty...

Those who have ever valued liberty for its own sake believed that to be free to choose, and not to be chosen for, is an inalienable ingredient in what makes human beings human.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 4 weeks ago
The Outsider wants to cease to...

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be 'balanced'. He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway) He would also like to understand the human soul and its working and, be 'possessed' by a Will topower, to more life. (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov) He would like to escape triviality forever. Above all, he would like to know how to express himself because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and hi unknown possibilities.

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Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 1 day ago
People is the name of the...

People is the name of the body, State of the spirit, of that ruling person that has hitherto suppressed me.

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Dover 2005, p. 242
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 weeks ago
All... good and useful properties of...

All... good and useful properties of character have a price in exchange for others which have just as much use. Talent has a market price, since the sovereign or estate-owner can use a talented person in all sorts of ways. Temperament has a fancy price,22 since one can converse well with such a person; he is a pleasant companion. But, character has an inner value[,] and it is above all price.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 203
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 1 day ago
Venerate the martyrs...

Venerate the martyrs, praise, love, proclaim, honor them. But worship the God of the martyrs.

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273:9; translation from: The works of Saint Augustine, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, ISBN 1565480600 ISBN 9781565480605 p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
All is riddle, and the key...

All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

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Illusions
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Power is the near neighbour of...

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

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As quoted in Aurea Carmina (8) by Hierocles of Alexandria, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
4 months 6 days ago
Follow your desire as long as...

Follow your desire as long as you live and do not perform more than is ordered; do not lessen the time of following desire, for the wasting of time is an abomination to the spirit... When riches are gained, follow desire, for riches will not profit if one is sluggish.

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Maxim no. 11.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
The goal to be reached is...

The goal to be reached is the mind's insight into what knowing is. Impatience asks for the impossible, wants to reach the goal without the means of getting there. The length of the journey has to be borne with, for every moment is necessary, ... because by nothing less could that all-pervading mind ever manage to become conscious of what itself is - for that reason, the individual mind, in the nature of the case, cannot expect by less toil to grasp what its own substance contains.

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Preface (J. B. Baillie translation), § 29
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
There are all kinds of sources...

There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority ... The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity.

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Philosophical Maxims
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