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Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 3 weeks ago
By narcissism is meant ceasing to...

By narcissism is meant ceasing to have an authentic interest in the outside world but instead an intense attachment to oneself, to one's own group, clan, religion, nation, race, etc. - with consequent serious distortions of rational judgment. In general, the need for narcissistic satisfaction derives from the necessity to compensate for material and cultural poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
4 months 1 week ago
They think of the philosopher as...

They think of the philosopher as holding the ideal or subjective in one hand and the real or objective in the other and then have him strike the palms of his hands together so that one abrades the other. The product of this abrasion is the Absolute.

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P. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 1 week ago
This world is but canvas to...

This world is but canvas to our imaginations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 1 week ago
Throughout all organic nature there is...

Throughout all organic nature there is at work a modifying influence of the kind... as the cause, these specific differences: an influence which, though slow in its action, does, in time, if the circumstances demand it, produce marked changes-an influence, which to all appearance, would produce in the millions of years, and under the great varieties of condition which geological records imply, any amount of change.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 4 days ago
The revolution in scientific ideas just...

The revolution in scientific ideas just mentioned is primarily logical. It is due to recognition that the very method of physical science, with its primary standard units of mass, space, and time, is concerned with measurements of relations of change, not with individuals as such.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Once we can see how this...

Once we can see how this question of freedom of the will has been vitiated by post-romantic philosophy, with its inbuilt tendency to laziness and boredom, we can also see how it came about that existentialism found itself in a hole of its own digging, and how the philosophical developments since then have amounted to walking in circles round that hole.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 months 5 days ago
The spirits that I summoned upI...

The spirits that I summoned up, I now can't rid myself of.

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Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 1 week ago
You know what charm is: a...

You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
Fire tries gold….

Fire tries gold, misfortune tries brave men.

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De Providentia (On Providence), 5.9, translated by Aubrey Stewart Alternate translation: Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men. (translator unknown).
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 2 weeks ago
Mathematics would certainly have not come...
Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.
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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
5 months ago
When Demaratus was asked whether he...

When Demaratus was asked whether he held his tongue because he was a fool or for want of words, he replied, "A fool cannot hold his tongue."

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Of Demaratus
Philosophical Maxims
Protagoras
Protagoras
4 months 3 weeks ago
When it comes to consideration of...

When it comes to consideration of how to do well in running the city, which must proceed entirely through justice and soundness of mind.

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As quoted in Protagoras by Plato
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
I think the devil...
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Main Content / General
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 weeks ago
Friends are as companions on a...

Friends are as companions on a journey, who ought to aid each other to persevere in the road to a happier life.

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As quoted in Gems of Thought: Being a Collection of More Than a Thousand Choice Selections
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
I seem to myself, among civilised...

I seem to myself, among civilised men, an intruder, a troglodyte enamored of decrepitude, plunged into subversive prayers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 1 week ago
Nothing is more important than the...

Nothing is more important than the formation of fictional concepts, which teach us at last to understand our own.

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p. 85e
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
5 months 2 days ago
In the weightiest matters we must...

In the weightiest matters we must go to school to the animals, and learn spinning and weaving from the spider, building from the swallow, singing from the birds,-from the swan and the nightingale, imitating their art.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
No man has ever been so...

No man has ever been so far advanced by Fortune that she did not threaten him as greatly as she had previously indulged him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
But simultaneously with the development of...

But simultaneously with the development of capitalist production the credit system also develops. The money-capital which the capitalist cannot as yet employ in his own business is employed by others, who pay him interest for its use.

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Vol. II, Ch. XVII, p. 325.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
In every part of the universe...

In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.

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Section II, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
5 months 3 days ago
Do not repeat slander; you should...

Do not repeat slander; you should not hear it, for it is the result of hot temper.

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Maxim no. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
4 months 3 days ago
The function of objective thinking is...

The function of objective thinking is to reduce all phenomena which bear witness to the union of subject and world, putting in their place the clear idea of the object as in itself and of the subject as pure consciousness. It therefore severs the links which unite the thing and the embodied subject, leaving only sensible qualities to make up our world (to the exclusion of the modes of appearance which we have described), and preferably visual qualities, because these give the impression of being autonomous, and because they are less directly linked to our body and present us with an object rather than introducing us into an atmosphere. But in reality all things are concretions of a setting, and any explicit perception of a thing survives in virtue of a previous communication with a certain atmosphere.

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p. 374
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
Our great democracies still tend to...

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.

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Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 16: Ideas Which Have Become Obsolete, p. 158
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 1 week ago
The Idea of Cause is expressed...

The Idea of Cause is expressed for purposes of science by these three Axioms:-'Every Event must have a Cause':-'Causes are measured by their Effects':-'Reaction is equal and opposite to Action'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
6 months 2 days ago
Those who were best able to...

Those who were best able to provide themselves with the means of security against their neighbors, being thus in possession of the surest guarantee, passed the most agreeable life in each other's society; and their enjoyment of the fullest intimacy was such that, if one of them died before his time, the survivors did not mourn his death as if it called for sympathy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Not to be a proud and...

Not to be a proud and haughty person, you have to follow the old proverb and "know thyself." That is to say, you must regard your special talents, whatever beauty or fame you have, as gifts from God, and not as things you earned for yourself. Whatever is low and mean is not God's doing, however. Here you can only blame yourself. Remember the squalor of your birth and how naked and poor you were when you crawled into the light of day like a little animal.

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p.154
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 weeks ago
In the sphere of thought, absurdity...

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

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"The Art of Controversy" as translated by T. Bailey Saunders
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 months 1 week ago
To recognize this clearly is enough...

To recognize this clearly is enough to drive a man out of his senses or to make him shoot himself. And this is just what does happen, and especially often among military men. A man need only come to himself for an instant to be impelled inevitably to such an end.

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Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
4 months 1 week ago
Nature too remains, so far as...

Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 days ago
To all men it is evident...

To all men it is evident that the social interests of one hundred and fifty Millions of us depend on the mysterious industry there carried on; and likewise that the dissatisfaction with it is great, universal, and continually increasing in intensity,-in fact, mounting, we might say, to the pitch of settled despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 1 week ago
A proud man is always looking...

A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

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Book III, Chapter 8, "The Great Sin"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 1 week ago
If one advances confidently in the...

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours ... In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness.

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p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 5 days ago
Felicity is a continual progress of...

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way, which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in diverse men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired.

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The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
The deadliest enemies of nations are...

The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

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Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
4 months 3 days ago
All the seemingly positive valuations and...

All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.

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L. Coser, trans. (1973), p. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 1 week ago
As a liberal I would hesitate...

As a liberal I would hesitate to propose a blanket ban on any style of dress because of the implications for individual liberty and freedom of choice.

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As quoted in Richard Dawkins causes outcry after likening the burka to a bin liner (10 August 2010), The Telegraph.
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
4 months 1 week ago
The evil of marriage, as is...

The evil of marriage, as is it practiced in the European countries, extends further than we have yet described. The method is for a thoughtless and romantic youth of each sex, to come together, to see each other, for a few times, and under circumstances full of delusion and then to vow eternal attachment. What is the consequence of this? In almost every instance they find themselves deceived. They are reduced to make the best of an irretrievable mistake. They are led to conceive it their wiser policy, to shut their eyes upon realities, happy, if by any perversion of intellect, they can persuade themselves that they were right in their first crude opinion of each other. Thus the institution of marriage is made a system of fraud; and men who carefully mislead their judgement in the daily affair of their life, must be expected to have a crippled judgement in every other concern.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 4 weeks ago
The truth is sum, ergo cogito...

The truth is sum, ergo cogito - I am, therefore I think, although not everything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above all consciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without feeling, without that species of materiality which feelings lends to it? Do we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the act of knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove [Descartes] have said: "I feel, therefore I am"? or "I will, therefore I am"? And to feel oneself, is it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable?

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 1 week ago
Such is the content of the...

Such is the content of the mental life of the Hemingway hero and the good guy in general. Every day he gets beaten into a servile pulp by his own mechanical reflexes, which are constantly busy registering and reacting to the violent stimuli which his big, noisy, kinesthetic environment has provided for his unreflective reception.

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Eye Appeal, p. 79-80
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
To live each day as though...

To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing - here is perfection of character.

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VII, 69
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 1 week ago
If any ask me what a...

If any ask me what a free Government is, I answer, that, for any practical purpose, it is what the people think so, - and that they, and not I, are the natural, lawful, and competent judges of this matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 4 weeks ago
I will not say that the...

I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it is all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work, and above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself - that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny shall have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life - life will be wrested from me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 1 week ago
Tyranny is just what one can...

Tyranny is just what one can develop a taste for, since it so happens that man prefers to wallow in fear rather than to face the anguish of being himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
When I was a boy, I...

When I was a boy, I had a clock with a pendulum that could be lifted off. I found that the clock went very much faster without the pendulum. If the main purpose of a clock is to go, the clock was the better for losing its pendulum. True, it could no longer tell the time, but that did not matter if one could teach oneself to be indifferent to the passage of time. The linguistic philosophy which cares only about language and not about the world, is like the boy who preferred the clock without the pendulum because, although it no longer told the time, it went more easily than before and at a more exhilarating pace.

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Foreword to Ernest Gellner Words and Things, 1959
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
5 months 3 days ago
Philosophy is the childhood of the...

Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.

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p. 12.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 4 weeks ago
What does love look like? It...

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

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As quoted in Quote, Unquote (1977) by Lloyd Cory, p. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 weeks ago
Goods can serve many other purposes...

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

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Chapter I, p. 471.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 1 week ago
Homer has taught all other poets...

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 2 weeks ago
One should hasten to put such...

One should hasten to put such witches to death. Statement of 20 August 1538;

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as quoted in Conversations With Martin Luther (1915), translated and edited by Preserved Smith and Herbert Percival Gallinger, p. 163
Philosophical Maxims
Lin Yutang
Lin Yutang
1 month 2 weeks ago
I distrust all dead and mechanical...

I distrust all dead and mechanical formulas for expressing anything connected with human affairs and human personalities. Putting human affairs in exact formulas shows in itself a lack of the sense of humor and therefore a lack of wisdom.

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Ch. I : The Awakening, p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
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