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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
Where any work can be done...

Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected.

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VII, 53
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
I once received a letter from...

I once received a letter from an eminent logician, Mrs. Christine Ladd Franklin, saying that she was a solipsist, and was surprised that there were no others. Coming from a logician, this surprise surprised me.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), Part III, chapter II, "Solipsism", p. 196
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
Not to feel exasperated, or defeated,...

Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human--however imperfectly--and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on. (Hays translation) Flinch not, neither give up nor despair, if the achieving of every act in accordance with right principle is not always continuous with thee.

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V, 9
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 6 days ago
The same, without such opinion, DESPAIRE....

The same, without such opinion, DESPAIRE.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 6 days ago
When it is evening, ye say,...

When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day: for the sky is red and lowring. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times? A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas.

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16:2-4 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
Constantly and, if it be possible,...

Constantly and, if it be possible, on the occasion of every impression on the soul, apply to it the principles of Physic, of Ethic, and of Dialectic.

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VIII, 13
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 days ago
It is the way of the...

It is the way of the superior man to prefer the concealment of his virtue, while it daily becomes more illustrious, and it is the way of the mean man to seek notoriety, while he daily goes more and more to ruin. It is characteristic of the superior man, appearing insipid, yet never to produce satiety; while showing a simple negligence, yet to have his accomplishments recognized; while seemingly plain, yet to be discriminating. He knows how what is distant lies in what is near. He knows where the wind proceeds from. He knows how what is minute becomes manifested. Such a one, we may be sure, will enter into virtue.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
I have never taken myself for...

I have never taken myself for a being. A non-citizen, a marginal type, a nothing who exists only by the excess, by the superabundance of his nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 months 4 days ago
Whenever you say anything good about...

Whenever you say anything good about East Germany, immediately somebody jumps up and says, "My God, you're a Stalinist..." I'm not defending everything about it, of course. But I laboured on the chapter that talks about the east. I fact-checked it; I had somebody else fact-check it. I knew that I was going to get a lot of flak for that. But in the beginning, East Germany did a better job. They just did.

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From an interview with Alex Clark, as cited in "Nazism, slavery, empire: can countries learn from national evil?", The Guardian
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
3 weeks 2 days ago
It is my opinion that the...

It is my opinion that the present subject interests all: "Whatever breathes, and moves upon the earth," all that are endowed with existence, with a rational soul, and with a mind: but that above all others it interests myself, inasmuch as I am a votary of the Sun.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
I am very fond of truth….

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

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Letter to Jean le Rond d'Alembert, 8 February 1776
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is a general popular error...

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
I am convinced that everything has...

I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc.

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M. de Voltaire par M. Bailly et précédées de quelques lettres de M. de Voltaire a l'auteur, Paris 1777, quoted in E. F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture (2001), Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
There is no spiritual sustenance in...

There is no spiritual sustenance in flat equality. It is a dim recognition of this fact which makes much of our political propaganda sound so thin. We are trying to be enraptured by something which is merely the negative condition of the good life. That is why the imagination of people is so easily captured by appeals to the craving for inequality, whether in a romantic form of films about loyal courtiers or in the brutal form of Nazi ideology. The tempter always works on some real weakness in our own system of values - offers food to some need which we have starved.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 1 week ago
We see that experience plays an...

We see that experience plays an indispensable role in the genesis of geometry; but it would be an error thence to conclude that geometry is, even in part, an experimental science. If it were experimental it would be only approximative and provisional. And what rough approximation!...The object of geometry is the study of a particular 'group'; but the general group concept pre-exists... in our minds. It is imposed on us, not as form of our sense, but as form of our understanding. Only, from among all the possible groups, that must be chosen... will be... the standard to which we shall refer natural phenomena.Experience guides us in this choice without forcing it upon us; it tells us not which is the truest geometry, but which is the most convenient.Notice that I have been able to describe the fantastic worlds... imagined without ceasing to employ the language of ordinary geometry.

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Ch. IV: Space and Geometry, Conclusions (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 4 weeks ago
The bourgeoisie hides the fact that...

The bourgeoisie hides the fact that it is the bourgeoisie and thereby produces myth; revolution announces itself openly as revolution and thereby abolishes myth.

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p. 146
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
4 months 2 weeks ago
In principle and in practice, in...

In principle and in practice, in a right track and in a wrong one, the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.

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Ch. 1: Of the Principle of Utility
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
4 months 2 weeks ago
My philosophical views approach somewhat closely...

My philosophical views approach somewhat closely those of the late Countess of Conway, and hold a middle position between Plato and Democritus, because I hold that all things take place mechanically as Democritus and Descartes contend against the views of Henry More and his followers, and hold too, nevertheless, that everything takes place according to a living principle and according to final causes - all things are full of life and consciousness, contrary to the views of the Atomists.

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Letter to Thomas Burnet (1697), as quoted in Platonism, Aristotelianism and Cabalism in the Philosophy of Leibniz (1938) by Joseph Politella, p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 2 weeks ago
We swallow greedily any lie that...

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 days ago
Innumerable men had passed by, across...

Innumerable men had passed by, across this Universe, with a dumb vague wonder, such as the very animals may feel; or with a painful, fruitlessly inquiring wonder, such as men only feel;-till the great Thinker came, the original man, the Seer; whose shaped spoken Thought awakes the slumbering capability of all into Thought. It is ever the way with the Thinker, the spiritual Hero. What he says, all men were not far from saying, were longing to say. The Thoughts of all start up, as from painful enchanted sleep, round his Thought; answering to it, Yes, even so! Joyful to men as the dawning of day from night;-is it not, indeed, the awakening for them from no-being into being, from death into life? We still honor such a man; call him Poet, Genius, and so forth: but to these wild men he was a very magician, a worker of miraculous unexpected blessing for them; a Prophet, a God!

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 days ago
Confusing what a thing is....
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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
...undefiled by pleasures, invulnerable to any...

...undefiled by pleasures, invulnerable to any pain, untouched by arrogance, unaffected by meanness, an athlete in the greatest of all contests-the struggle not to be overwhelmed by anything that happens.

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(Hays translation) III, 4
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 1 week ago
A text is not a text...

A text is not a text unless it hides from the first comer, from the first glance, the law of its composition and the rules of its game. A text remains, moreover, forever imperceptible. Its law and its rules are not, however, harbored in the inaccessibility of a secret; it is simply that they can never be booked, in the present, into anything that could rigorously be called a perception.

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Plato's Pharmacy, intro
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 3 days ago
To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness....

To entire sincerity there belongs ceaselessness. Not ceasing, it continues long. Continuing long, it evidences itself. Evidencing itself, it reaches far. Reaching far, it becomes large and substantial. Large and substantial, it becomes high and brilliant. Large and substantial; this is how it contains all things. High and brilliant; this is how it overspreads all things. Reaching far and continuing long; this is how it perfects all things. So large and substantial, the individual possessing it is the co-equal of Earth. So high and brilliant, it makes him the co-equal of Heaven. So far-reaching and long-continuing, it makes him infinite. Such being its nature, without any display, it becomes manifested; without any movement, it produces changes; and without any effort, it accomplishes its ends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Steiner goes further than this --...

Steiner goes further than this -- and this is his own central contribution to modern thought. He states that once we have made a habit of remembering Mozart and the stars, we shall find ourselves developing powers of 'spiritual vision.' We shall never again feel ourselves to be helpless victims of the external world.

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p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 1 week ago
I am particularly grateful to Nozick...

I am particularly grateful to Nozick for his unfailing help and encouragement during the last stages.

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Preface, pg. xii
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
It is hard to have patience...

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
Speech structures the abyss of mental...

Speech structures the abyss of mental and acoustic space...it is a cosmic, invisible architecture of the human dark.

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(p. 13)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is no art which one...

There is no art which one government sooner learns of another than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.

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Chapter II, Part II, Appendix to Articles I and II.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
When any work seems to have...

When any work seems to have required immense force and labor to affect it, the idea is grand. Stonehenge, neither for disposition nor ornament, has anything admirable; but those huge rude masses of stone, set on end, and piled each on other, turn the mind on the immense force necessary for such a work. Nay, the rudeness of the work increases this cause of grandeur, as it excludes the idea of art and contrivance; for dexterity produces another sort of effect, which is different enough from this.

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Part II Section XII
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
3 months 4 days ago
Subjective reason ... is inclined to...

Subjective reason ... is inclined to abandon the fight with religion by setting up two different brackets, one for science and philosophy, and one for institutionalized mythology, thus recognizing both of them. For the philosophy of objective reason there is no such way out. Since it hold to the concept of objective truth, it must take a positive or a negative stand with regard to the content of established religion.

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p. 12.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
Wit is cultured insolence.

Wit is cultured insolence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
You must read Plato. But you...

You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'

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Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 week ago
There can be no revolution without...

There can be no revolution without widespread and passionate destruction, a destruction salutary and fruitful precisely because out of it, and by means of it alone, new worlds are born and arise.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
Literature is the effort of man...

Literature is the effort of man to indemnify himself for the wrongs of his condition.

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"Walter Savage Landor", from The Dial, xii, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
The Indian teaching, through its clouds...

The Indian teaching, through its clouds of legends, has yet a simple and grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. It teaches to speak truth, love others, and to dispose trifles. The East is grand - and makes Europe appear the land of trifles .... all is soul and the soul is Vishnu ... cheerful and noble is the genius of this cosmogony. Hari is always gentle and serene - he translates to heaven the hunter who has accidentally shot him in his human form, he pursues his sport with boors and milkmaids at the cow pens; all his games are benevolent and he enters into flesh to relieve the burdens of the world.

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Quoted in S. Londhe, A Tribute to Hinduism, New Delhi: Pragun Publication, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
If thou art pained by any...

If thou art pained by any external thing, it is not this that disturbs thee, but thy own judgment about it. And it is in thy power to wipe out this judgment now.

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VIII. 47, trans. George Long
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
All sources of energy upon which...

All sources of energy upon which industry depends are wasted when they are employed; and industry is expending them at a continually increasing rate. Already coal has been largely replaced by oil, and oil is being used up so fast that East and West alike conceive it necessary to their own prosperity to destroy the industry of the other. And what is true of oil is equally true of other natural resources. Every day, many square miles of forest are turned into newspaper, but there is no known process by which newspaper can be turned into forest. You will say that this need not worry us, since newspapers will be replaced by radio, but radio requires electricity, electricity requires power, and power depends upon raw materials.

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Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 4: The Limits of Human Power, p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 6 days ago
Verily I say unto you, I...

Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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8:10-12 (KJV) Said about the officer.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
No art can be judged by...

No art can be judged by purely aesthetic standards, although a painting or a piece of music may appear to give a purely aesthetic pleasure. Aesthetic enjoyment is an intensification of the vital response, and this response forms the basis of all value judgements. The existentialist contends that all values are connected with the problems of human existence, the stature of man, the purpose of life. These values are inherent in all works of art, in addition to their aesthetic values, and are closely connected with them.

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The Chicago Review, Volume 13, no. 2, 1959, p. 152-181
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 days ago
But oppression by your Mock-Superiors well...

But oppression by your Mock-Superiors well shaken off, the grand problem yet remains to solve: That of finding government by your Real-Superiors! Alas, how shall we ever learn the solution of that, benighted, bewildered, sniffing, sneering, godforgetting unfortunates as we are? It is a work for centuries; to be taught us by tribulations, confusions, insurrections, obstructions; who knows if not by conflagration and despair! It is a lesson inclusive of all other lessons; the hardest of all lessons to learn.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 weeks ago
Childish and altogether ludicrous is what...

Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!

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Thrasymachus, in On the Indestructibility of our Essential Being by Death, in Essays and Aphorisms (1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 week ago
Youth is wholly experimental. Letter to...

Youth is wholly experimental.

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Letter to a Young Gentleman Scribner's Magazine (September 1888).
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 2 weeks ago
Plato is my friend…

Plato is my friend - Aristotle is my friend - but my greatest friend is truth.

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These are notes in Latin that Newton wrote to himself that he titled: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions] (c. 1664)
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 1 week ago
When two do the same thing,...

When two do the same thing, it is not the same thing after all.

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Maxim 338
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
The capacity to give one's attention...

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks ago
No man can have….

No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.

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Line 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
The preceding merely defines a way...

The preceding merely defines a way of thinking. But the point is to live.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months ago
May we not say, perhaps, that...

May we not say, perhaps, that the evil man is annihilated because he wished to be annihilated, or that he did not wish strongly enough to eternalize himself because he was evil? May we say that it is not believing in the other life which causes a man to be good, but rather that being good causes him believe in it? And what is being good and being evil? These states belong to the sphere of ethics, not of religion; or rather, does not the doing good though being evil pertain to ethics, and the being good [forgivable] though doing evil, to religion?

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to...

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient. ... To grow wiser means to learn to know better and better the faults to which this instrument with which we feel and judge can be subject.

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A 38
Philosophical Maxims
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