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Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
4 days ago
Men gather the clouds, and then...

Men gather the clouds, and then they complain of the tempests that follow.

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Chapter III, p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 5 days ago
Science must begin with myths, and...

Science must begin with myths, and with the criticism of myths.

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Ch. 1 "Science : Conjectures and Refutations", Section VII
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 6 days ago
I thought: "I am perishing of...

I thought: "I am perishing of cold and hunger, and here is a man thinking only of how to clothe himself and his wife, and how to get bread for themselves. He cannot help me. When the man saw me he frowned and became still more terrible, and passed me by on the other side. I despaired, but suddenly I heard him coming back. I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face; but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Even purely intellectual progress brings about...

Even purely intellectual progress brings about its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out. Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, hallowed by tradition and professing to hold good for all time, are put to the question. Cultured reflection asks for their credentials; judges them by its own standards; finally, gathers those of which it approves into ethical systems, in which the reasoning is rarely much more than a decent pretext for the adoption of foregone conclusions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
The original Golden Dawn was not...

The original Golden Dawn was not always as serious as it should have been. Mathers was a clown, and Yeats was just a romantic trying to deceive himself. Most of them were interested in personal power, and it ended up by destroying them. The aim of our group is the scientific exploration of the hidden powers of the human mind.

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p. 113
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
Every man, as the Stoics used...

Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and principally recommended to his own care; and every man is certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other people. The former are the original sensations; the latter the reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former may be said to be the substance; the latter the shadow.

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Section II, Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 6 days ago
One can only live while one...

One can only live while one is intoxicated with life; as soon as one is sober it is impossible not to see that it is all a mere fraud and a stupid fraud! Ch. 4 Variant: It is possible to live only as long as life intoxicates us; once we are sober we cannot help seeing that it is all a delusion, a stupid delusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is a plague on Man,...

There is a plague on Man, the opinion that he knows something.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
We took the liberty to make...

We took the liberty to make some enquiries concerning the ground of their pretensions 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. The Ambassador [of Tripoli] answered us that it was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman who should be slain in battle was sure to go to Paradise.

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Letter from the commissioners (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson) to John Jay, 28 March 1786, in Thomas Jefferson Travels: Selected Writings, 1784-1789, by Anthony Brandt, pp. 104-105
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
I feel effective...
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Main Content / General
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 2 days ago
There is no foreign land; it...

There is no foreign land; it is the traveller only that is foreign, and now and again, by a flash of recollection, lights up the contrasts of the ear.

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Pt. II, ch. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
I believe that none can "save"...

I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death."

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Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Greater fates gain greater rewards.

Greater fates gain greater rewards.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 1 day 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
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 day ago
Homosexuality appears as one of the...

Homosexuality appears as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of interior androgyny, a hermaphroditism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.

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Vol I: La volonté de savoir
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 2 weeks ago
I cannot think of any circumstances...

I cannot think of any circumstances in which advertising would not be an evil.

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In David Ogilvy, Confessions of an Advertising Man (New York: Atheneum, 1963) ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 6 days ago
I should say sincerity, a deep,...

I should say sincerity, a deep, great, genuine sincerity, is the first characteristic of all men in any way heroic.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
2 days ago
The modern proletarian class doesn't carry...

The modern proletarian class doesn't carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers' struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight... That's exactly what is laudable about it, that's exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers' movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation.

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The Politics of Mass Strikes and Unions; Collected Works 2
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample...

Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging.

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53
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
2 days ago
And therefore I think you have...

And therefore I think you have done very wisely to make it your business to consider the Phœnomena relating to the present question, which have been afforded by experiments, especially since it might seem injurious to our senses, by whose mediation we acquire so much of the knowledge we have of things corporal, to have recourse to far-fetched and abstracted Ratiocination, to know what are the sensible ingredients of those sensible things that we daily see and handle, and are supposed to have the liberty to untwist (if I may so speak) into the primitive bodies they consist of.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 4 weeks ago
Of course, there are those -...

Of course, there are those - Sandel, Walzer and Dworkin, for example - who propose "communitarian" ways of thinking, as a further move in the direction which a sophisticated liberalism requires. But none of them is prepared to accept the real price of community: which is sanctity, intolerance, exclusion, and a sense that life's meaning depends upon obedience, and also on vigilance against the enemy.

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'In Defence of the Nation', The Philosopher on Dover Beach (1990), p. 310
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 6 days ago
Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on...

Facts are ventriloquists' dummies. Sitting on a wise man's knee they may be made to utter words of wisdom; elsewhere, they say nothing, or talk nonsense, or indulge in sheer diabolism.

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"Bruno Rontini"
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 4 days ago
Building worlds is not enough for...

Building worlds is not enough for the deeper urging mind; but a loving heart sates the striving spirit.

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Fragment No. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks ago
You must lay aside the burdens...

You must lay aside the burdens of the mind; until you do this, no place will satisfy you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 days ago
Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration,...

Courage, not cleverness; not even inspiration, is the grain of mustard that grows up to be a great tree.

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p. 44e
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 1 week ago
The History of the world is...

The History of the world is none other than the progress of the consciousness of Freedom; a progress whose development according to the necessity of its nature, it is our business to investigate. 

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Part III. Philosophic History; § 21, as translated by John Sibree; p. 19, (1900 edition) Variant translated by Robert S. Hartman, in Reason In History, A General Introduction to the Philosophy of History (1953) , 3/1/2007
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 6 days ago
Friend!-Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest...

Friend!-Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any sane man deliberately believe such a thing?

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 3 weeks ago
In a word, neither death, nor...

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

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Book I, ch. 11,33.
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 2 weeks ago
The problem with all this--the problem...

The problem with all this--the problem I discussed in the first lecture--is that if the causes/background conditions distinction is fundamentally subjective, not descriptive of the world in itself, then current philosophical explanations of the metaphysical nature of reference are bankrupt.

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Lecture II: Realism and Reasonableness
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 6 days ago
The force that had been lent...

The force that had been lent my father he honorably expended in manful well-doing. A portion of this planet bears beneficent traces of his strong hand and strong head. Nothing that he undertook to do but he did it faithfully and like a true man. I shall look on the houses he built with a certain proud interest. They stand firm and sound to the heart all over his little district.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 5 days ago
Existentialism is nothing else but an...

Existentialism is nothing else but an attempt to draw the full conclusions from a consistently atheistic position. Its intention is not in the least that of plunging men into despair. And if by despair one means as the Christians do - any attitude of unbelief, the despair of the existentialists is something different. Existentialism is not atheist in the sense that it would exhaust itself in demonstrations of the non-existence of God. It declares, rather, that even if God existed that would make no difference from its point of view. Not that we believe God does exist, but we think that the real problem is not that of His existence; what man needs is to find himself again and to understand that nothing can save him from himself, not even a valid proof of the existence of God. In this sense existentialism is optimistic. It is a doctrine of action, and it is only by self-deception, by confining their own despair with ours that Christians can describe us as without hope.

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p. 56
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
Free trade, one of the greatest...

Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular.

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p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
When people begin to philosophize they...

When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.

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Theory of Knowledge, 1913
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 2 weeks ago
The fierce willingness to repudiate domination...

The fierce willingness to repudiate domination in a holistic manner is the starting point for progressive cultural revolution.

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Women, Art, and Society: Fourth Edition (2007) by Whitney Chadwick ISBN 0-500-20393-8
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
Science may set limits to knowledge,...

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months ago
Truly to escape Hegel involves an...

Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.

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Discourse on Language, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France, 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 week ago
There are truths….

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

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Letter to François-Joachim de Pierre, cardinal de Bernis, 23 April 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
In man (as the only rational...

In man (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed only in the race, not in the individual.

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Second Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
Genius, in truth, means little more...

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

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Ch. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
We are sleeping on a volcano......

We are sleeping on a volcano... A wind of revolution blows, the storm is on the horizon.

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Speaking in the Chamber of Deputies just prior to to outbreak of revolution in Europe (1848).
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
How many valiant men we have...

How many valiant men we have seen to survive their own reputation!

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
Poetry - No definition of poetry...

Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

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January 26, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
By the rude bridge that arched...

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.

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Hymn sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
And why should man, added he,...

And why should man, added he, pretend to an exemption from the lot of all other animals? The whole earth, believe me, PHILO, is cursed and polluted. A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous: Fear, anxiety, terror, agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the new-born infant and to its wretched parent: Weakness, impotence, distress, attend each stage of that life: and it is at last finished in agony and horror.

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Demea to Philo, Part X
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
At the present day, civilized opinion...

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 3 weeks ago
La force, c'est ce qui fait...

Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse.

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in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 153
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
In the fact of being born...

In the fact of being born there is such an absence of necessity that when you think about it a little more than usual, you are left-ignorant how to react-with a foolish grin

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
A world full of happiness is...

A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.

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Ch. VI: International relations, p. 106
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
All for ourselves, and nothing for...

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

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Chapter IV, p. 448.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Sex also concentrates the mind wonderfully,...

Sex also concentrates the mind wonderfully, and that is why civilised man is so obsessed by it. It enables him to "savour every fraction of an inch," not merely of the act of sexual intercourse, but of living itself. But that, of course, only underlines the basic problem: after coitus, "man becomes sad," because he quickly returns to his unconcentrated and defocused state. In sexual excitement, it is the spirit itself that becomes erect, and becomes capable of penetrating the meaning of life. Normal consciousness is limp and flaccid; its attitude towards reality is defensive. This is what Sartre called contingency, that feeling of being at the mercy of chance.

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pp. 45-46
Philosophical Maxims
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