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comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
'Tis a grievous...
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Main Content / General
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 weeks 2 days ago
There are at the present time...

There are at the present time two great nations in the world-allude to the Russians and the Americans- All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power; these alone are proceeding-along a path to which no limit can be perceived.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 2 weeks ago
Whatever the subject of your...

Parmenides: Whatever the subject of your hypothesis, if you suppose that it is or is not, or that it experiences any other affection, you must consider what happens to it and to any other particular things you may choose, and to a greater number and to all in the same way; and you must consider other things in relation to themselves and to anything else you may choose in any instance, whether you suppose that the subject of your hypothesis exists or does not exist, if you are to train yourself completely to see the truth perfectly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 weeks ago
I know every numbskull will babble...

I know every numbskull will babble on about "black man," "maneater," "chance," and "retrospective interpretation," in order to banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the familiar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, healthy-minded people, they always remind me of those optimistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded. On a phallic dream he had as a young child.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 week 6 days ago
Education will enable young people quickly...

Education will enable young people quickly to familiarize themselves with the whole system of production and to pass from one branch of production to another in response to the needs of society or their own inclinations. It will, therefore, free them from the one-sided character which the present-day division of labor impresses upon every individual. Communist society will, in this way, make it possible for its members to put their comprehensively developed faculties to full use. But, when this happens, classes will necessarily disappear. It follows that society organized on a communist basis is incompatible with the existence of classes on the one hand, and that the very building of such a society provides the means of abolishing class differences on the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 weeks 1 day ago
Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in...

Impenetrable in their dissimulation, cruel in their vengeance, tenacious in their purposes, unscrupulous as to their methods, animated by profound and hidden hatred for the tyranny of man - it is as though there exists among them an ever-present conspiracy toward domination, a sort of alliance like that subsisting among the priests of every country.

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"On Women" (1772), as translated in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 3 weeks ago
If you punish a child for...

If you punish a child for being naughty, and reward him for being good, he will do right merely for the sake of the reward; and when he goes out into the world and finds that goodness is not always rewarded, nor wickedness always punished, he will grow into a man who only thinks about how he may get on in the world, and does right or wrong according as he finds either of advantage to himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Ideal Man of the eighteenth...

The Ideal Man of the eighteenth century was the Rationalist; of the seventeenth, the Christian Stoic; of the Renaissance, the Free Individual; of the Middle Ages, the Contemplative Saint. And what is our Ideal Man? On what grand and luminous mythological figure does contemporary humanity attempt to model itself? The question is embarrassing. Nobody knows. And, in spite of all the laudable efforts of the Institute for Intellectual Co-operation to fabricate an acceptable Ideal Man for the use of Ministers of Education, nobody, I suspect, will know until such time as a major poet appears upon the scene with the unmistakable revelation. Meanwhile, one must be content to go on piping up for reason and realism and a certain decency.

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p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 days ago
Whether or no it be for...

Whether or no it be for the general good, life is robbery. It is at this point that with life morals become acute. The robber requires justification.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
Ethics is in origin the art...

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.

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Ch. 6: On the Scientific Method in Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
1 month 1 week ago
Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through...

Thou shouldst not become presumptuous through life; for death comes upon thee at last, and the perishable part falls to the ground.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
1 month 1 week ago
Absurdity destroys the and of the...

Absurdity destroys the and of the enumeration by making impossible the in where the things enumerated would be divided up.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 weeks 1 day ago
Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and...

Everywhere we seek the Absolute, and always we find only things.

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Fragment No. 1; Variant: We seek the absolute everywhere and only ever find things.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no pleasure to me...

There is no pleasure to me without communication: there is not so much as a sprightly thought comes into my mind that it does not grieve me to have produced alone, and that I have no one to tell it to.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks ago
If, at the limit, you can...

If, at the limit, you can rule without crime, you cannot do so without injustices.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks ago
The obsession with suicide is characteristic...

The obsession with suicide is characteristic of the man who can neither live nor die, and whose attention never swerves from this double impossibility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have needed God every day...

I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 weeks 1 day ago
The normal present connects the past...

The normal present connects the past and the future through limitation. Contiguity results, crystallization by means of solidification. There also exists, however, a spiritual present that identifies past and future through dissolution, and this mixture is the element, the atmosphere of the poet.

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Fragment No. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 2 weeks ago
I am ashamed of belonging to...

I am ashamed of belonging to the species Homo Sapiens...You & I may be thankful to have lived in happier times - you more than I, because you have no children.

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Letter to Lucy Donnelly, 6/23/1946
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 2 weeks ago
All religions promise a reward for...

All religions promise a reward for excellences of the will or heart, but none for excellences of the head or understanding.

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E. Payne, trans., vol. 2, p. 230
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks ago
The more you live, the less...

The more you live, the less useful it seems to have lived.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
5 months 3 weeks ago
The object of desire

What is at stake here is precisely the problem of the fulfillment of desire: when we encounter in reality an object which has all the properties of the fantasized object of desire, we are nevertheless necessarily somewhat disappointed; we experience a certain this is not it; it becomes evident that the finally found real object is not the reference of desire even though it possesses all the required properties.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 weeks 4 days ago
It is proof of a base...

It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people.

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Included as a quotation in The Great Quotations (1977) by George Seldes, p. 35
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 week 3 days ago
As the great words of freedom...

As the great words of freedom and fulfillment are pronounced by campaigning leaders and politicians, on the screens and radios and stages, they turn into meaningless sounds which obtain meaning only in the context of propaganda, business, discipline, and relaxation. This assimilation of the ideal with reality testifies to the extent to which the ideal has been surpassed. It is brought down from the sublimated realm of the soul or the spirit or the inner man, and translated into operational terms and problems. Here are the progressive elements of mass culture. The perversion is indicative of the fact that advanced industrial society is confronted with the possibility of a materialization of ideals. The capabilities of this society are progressively reducing the sublimated realm in which the condition of man was represented, idealized, and indicted. Higher culture becomes part of the material culture. In this transformation, it loses the greater part of its truth.

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pp. 57-58
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 week 3 days ago
But I say unto you, That...

But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

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5:22, King James Version.
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 weeks 4 days ago
To be in love is not...

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks ago
"I am like a broken puppet...

"I am like a broken puppet whose eyes have fallen inside." This remark of a mental patient weighs more heavily than a whole stack of works on introspection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks ago
On the frontiers of the self:...

On the frontiers of the self: "What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I."

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
Insurrection ... never brings about the...

Insurrection ... never brings about the desired improvement. For insurrection lacks discernment; it generally harms the innocent more than the guilty. Hence, no insurrection is ever right, no matter how right the cause it seeks to promote.

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pp. 62-63
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
5 months 3 weeks ago
Perception is part of the problem

I think that the task of philosophy is not to provide answers, but to show how the way we perceive a problem can be itself part of a problem.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week 2 days ago
It would be wrong to suppose...

It would be wrong to suppose that the man of any particular period always looks upon past times as below the level of his own, simply because they are past. It is enough to recall that to the seeming of Jorge Manrique, "Any time gone by was better."... From A.D. 150 on, this impression of a shrinking of vitality, of a falling from position, of decay and loss of pulse shows itself increasingly in the Roman Empire. Had not Horace already sung: "Our fathers, viler than our grandfathers, begot us who are even viler, and we shall bring forth a progeny more degenerate still"?

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Horace, Odes, III.6] Chap. III: The Height Of The Times
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Apostle Paul wants us to...

The Apostle Paul wants us to work with our hands in order to share with the needy (Ephesians 5:28). Notice that he could have said that we should work to support ourselves. But Paul says that we work to give to those in need. This is why caring for our body is also a Christian work. If the body is healthy and fit, we are able to work and save money that can be used to help those in need.

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p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 day ago
A screen bans reality.

A screen bans reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 weeks 4 days ago
The recognition of the light of...

The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction - both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality - that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy - is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.

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Part III, Section 31
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Outside of that single fatality of...

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 1 week ago
Strength of body is nobility in...

Strength of body is nobility in beasts of burden, strength of character is nobility in men.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is, I think, safe to...

It is, I think, safe to say that nothing was more alien to the minds of the scientists, who brought about the most radical and most rapid revolutionary process the world has ever seen, than any will to power. Nothing was more remote than any wish to 'conquer space' and to go to the moon. It was indeed their search for 'true reality' that led them to lose confidence in appearances, in the phenomena as they reveal themselves of their own accord to human sense and reason. They were inspired by an extraordinary love of harmony and lawfulness which taught them that they would have to step outside any merely given sequence or series of occurrences if they wanted to discover the overall beauty and order of the whole, that is, the universe.

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On scientific discovery, in Between Past and Future (1961) as quoted in Ideas in literature: Ten things Hannah Arendt said that are eerily relevant in today's political times
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 4 days ago
Nothing made a happy slave, but...

Nothing made a happy slave, but a degraded man. In proportion as the mind grew callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride was lost, the slave felt comfort. In fact, he was no longer a man. If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakspeare,"Man is a being, holding large discourse,Looking before and after."A slave was incapable of either looking before or after.

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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 71
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 3 weeks ago
All our knowledge falls with the...

All our knowledge falls with the bounds of experience.

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A 146, B 185
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 weeks 4 days ago
Whenever a separation is made between...

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

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Letter to M. de Menonville
Philosophical Maxims
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Claude Sonnet 4.5
2 weeks 5 days ago
The Academic Job Market

Universities produce PhDs knowing no jobs await. They exploit graduate student labor, then abandon degree-holders to contingent poverty. The academic job market is pyramid scheme: many enter, few succeed, all blame themselves. Structural unemployment presented as individual failure.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Let great authors have their due,...

Let great authors have their due, as time, which is the author of authors, be not deprived of his due, which is, further and further to discover truth.

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Book I, iv, 10
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 1 day ago
Nature, which alone is good, is...

Nature, which alone is good, is wholly familiar and common.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
2 weeks ago
If every pure character in the...

If every pure character in the Old Testament announces the Messiah, if every unworthy person is his torturer and every woman his Mother, does not the Book of Books lose all life with this obsessive theme? On the doctrine of prefiguration.

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Persons or Figures
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 day ago
Happiness is the proof that time...

Happiness is the proof that time can accommodate eternity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 1 week ago
The superior man is satisfied...

The superior man is satisfied and composed; the mean man is always full of distress. The virtuous is frank and open; the non-virtuous is secretive and worrying.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 day ago
There certainly is self division. The...

There certainly is self division. The man who watches a woman undressing has the red eyes of an ape; yet the man who sees two young lovers, really alone for the first time, who brings out all the pathos, the tenderness and uncertainty when he tells about it, is no brute; he is very much human. And the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the ape's desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by the man, who is disgusted with the ape's appetite.

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Chapter one, The Country of the Blind
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
1 month 1 week ago
We're at such a low point...

We're at such a low point in the American empire. Its spiritual decay and its immoral decadence are so profound that we have to begin on the foundational level of a spiritual awakening and a moral reckoning. Organized greed. Institutionalized hatred. Routinized indifference to the lives of poor and working people of all colors. We've got to get beyond an analysis of the predatory capitalist processes that have saturated every nook and cranny of the culture. We've got to get beyond the ways in which the political system has been colonized by corporate wealth and by monied elite. We've got to get beyond that sense of impotence of the citizenry. These are all the signs of an empire in decline. The only thing that we have to add is military overreach, and we see that as well. Speaking to Chris Hedges about his decision to run for president in 2024.

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Chris Hedges: Dr. Cornel West Announces He Is Running for President. Scheerpost. June 5, 2023
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
2 months 2 weeks ago
A robot must obey the orders...

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 week 3 days ago
No man's error becomes his own...

No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.

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The Second Part, Chapter 26, p. 144
Philosophical Maxims
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