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Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
He is a despicable sage whose...

He is a despicable sage whose wisdom does not profit himself.

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Maxim 629
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
2 weeks 6 days ago
A real man is he whose...

A real man is he whose goodness is a part of himself.

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"Discipline and Character", no. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 6 days ago
Drunkenness is nothing….

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

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Line 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 4 weeks ago
I know now that I shall....

I know now that I shall. But all Actual Knowledge brings with it, by its formal nature, its schematised apposition; - although I now know of the Schema of God, yet I am not yet immediately this Schema, but I am only a Schema of the Schema. The required Being is not yet realised. I shall be. Who is this I? Evidently that which is, - the Ego gives in Intuition, the Individual. This shall be. What does its Being signify? It is given as a Principle in the World of Sense. Blind Instinct is indeed annihilated, and in its place there now stands the clearly perceived Shall. But the Power that at first set this Instinct in motion remains, in order that the Shall my now set it (the Power) in motion, and become its higher determining Principle. By means of this Power, I shall therefore, within its sphere, - the World of Sense, - produce and make manifest that which I recognise as my true Being in the Supersensuous World.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
2 months 4 weeks ago
It is easy to see that...

It is easy to see that this problem can be solved neither in theoretical nor in practical philosophy, but only in a higher discipline, which is the link that combines them, and neither theoretical nor practical, but both at once.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 week 2 days ago
The startling truth is that our...

The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and assistance to the starving of the earth-urgent as they are-will destroy rather than help if made in the [current] spirit. For, as things stand, we have nothing to give. If our own riches and our own way of life are not enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else. Certainly they will supply the immediate jolt of energy and hope that methedrine, and similar drugs, give in extreme fatigue. But peace can be made only by those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love. No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

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p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 2 weeks ago
From the same it proceedeth,that men...

From the same it proceedeth,that men gives different names, to one and the same thing, from the difference of their own passions: As they that approve a private opinion, call it Opinion; but they that mislike it, Haeresie: and yet haeresie signifies no more than private opinion; but has only agreater tincture of choler.

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The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 4 weeks ago
So long as the product is...

So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.

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Vol. II, Ch. II, p. 78.
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 weeks ago
If man puts his honor first...

If man puts his honor first in relying upon himself, knowing himself and applying himself, this in self-reliance, self-assertion, and freedom, he then strives to rid himself of the ignorance which makes a strange impenetrable object a barrier and a hindrance to his self-knowledge.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
Nature is no sentimentalist, - does...

Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

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p. 182
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 weeks ago
The world is all that is...

The world is all that is the case.

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(1) Original German: Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
Consciousness (conscientia) is participated knowledge, is...

Consciousness (conscientia) is participated knowledge, is co-feeling, and co-feeling is com-passion. Love personalizes all that it loves. Only by personalizing it can we fall in love with an idea. And when love is so great and so vital, so strong and so overflowing, that it loves everything, then it personalizes everything and discovers that the total All, that the Universe, is also a person possessing a Consciousness, a Consciousness which in its turn suffers, pities, and loves, and therefore is consciousness. And this Consciousness of the Universe, which a love, personalizing all that it loves, discovers, is what we call God.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months ago
Enjoin him to play so many...

Enjoin him to play so many hours every day, and look that he do it; and you shall see he will quickly be sick of it; and willing to leave it. By this means making the recreations you dislike a business to him, he will of himself with delight betake himself to those things you would have him do, especially if they be proposed as rewards for having performed the task in that play which is commanded of him.

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Sec. 129
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Without will, no conflict: no tragedy...

Without will, no conflict: no tragedy among the abulic. Yet the failure of will can be experienced more painfully than a tragic destiny.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 2 weeks ago
The concept of freedom, as the...

The concept of freedom, as the Philosophy of Right has shown, follows the pattern of free ownership. As a result, the history of the world that Hegel looks out upon exalts and enshrines the history of the middle-class, which based itself on this pattern. There is a stark truth in Hegel's strangely certain announcement that history has reached its end. But it announces the funeral of a class, not of history.

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P. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The wise is one only.

The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 months 4 weeks ago
All presentation, all demonstration-and the presentation...

All presentation, all demonstration-and the presentation of thought is demonstration-has, according to its original determination-and this is all that matters to us-the cognitive activity of the other person as its ultimate aim.

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Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 day ago
That immense framework and planking of...
That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.
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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 4 weeks ago
No particular results then, so far,...

No particular results then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation, is what the pragmatic method means. The attitude of looking away from first things, principles, 'categories,' supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.

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Lecture II, What Pragmatism Means
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 days 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
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week ago
Christianity was an epidemic rather than...

Christianity was an epidemic rather than a religion. It appealed to fear, hysteria and ignorance. It spread across the Western world, not because it was true, but because humans are gullible and superstitious.

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p. 212
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 2 weeks ago
He who has begun….

He who has begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin!

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Book I, epistle ii, lines 40-41
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 6 days ago
What can only be taught by...

What can only be taught by the rod and with blows will not lead to much good; they will not remain pious any longer than the rod is behind them.

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The Great Catechism. Second Command
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
A man's character is formed by...

A man's character is formed by the Odes, developed by the Rites and perfected by music.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 1 week ago
When I see someone in anxiety,...

When I see someone in anxiety, I say to myself, What can it be that this fellow wants? For if he did not want something that was outside of his control, how could he still remain in anxiety?

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Book II, ch. 13, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 6 days ago
How many we know who have...

How many we know who have fled the sweetness of a tranquil life in their homes, among their friends, to seek the horror of uninhabitable deserts; who have flung themselves into humiliation, degradation, and the contempt of the world, and have enjoyed these and even sought them out.

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Ch. 14 (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 4 weeks ago
When God chooses to let himself...

When God chooses to let himself be born in lowliness, when he who holds all possibilities in his hand takes upon himself the form of a lowly servant, when he goes about defenseless and lets people do with him what they will, he surely must know well enough what he is doing and why he wills it; but for all that it is he who has people in his power and not they who have power over him-so history ought not play Mr. Malapert by this wanting to make manifest who he was.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 3 weeks ago
The consciousness of a general idea...

The consciousness of a general idea has a certain "unity of the ego" in it, which is identical when it passes from one mind to another. It is, therefore, quite analogous to a person, and indeed, a person is only a particular kind of general idea.

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Man's Glassy Essence in The Monist, Vol. III, No. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Étienne de La Boétie
Étienne de La Boétie
3 weeks 2 days ago
There is in our souls some...

There is in our souls some native seed of reason, which, if nourished by good counsel and training, flowers into virtue, but which, on the other hand, if unable to resist the vices surrounding it, is stifled and blighted.

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Part 2
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 day ago
Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute...

Nature, therefore, is subject with absolute precision to all the precepts of geometry as to all the properties of space there demonstrated, this being the subjective condition, not hypothetically but intuitively given, of every phenomenon in which nature can ever be revealed to the senses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 4 weeks ago
Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern...

Because half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field; that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

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Volume iii, p. 344
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
The saddest aspect of life right...

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 1 week ago
It has been said of old,...

It has been said of old, all roads lead to Rome. In paraphrased application to the tendencies of our day, it may truly be said that all roads lead to the great social reconstruction. The economic awakening of the workingman, and his realization of the necessity for concerted industrial action; the tendencies of modern education, especially in their application to the free development of the child; the spirit of growing unrest expressed through, and cultivated by, art and literature, all pave the way to the Open Road.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 day ago
Personally, people know...
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Main Content / General
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Therefore every scribe which is instructed...

Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.

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13:52 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 4 weeks ago
What do you think of the...

What do you think of the aspect of the money market? ... This time, by the by, the thing has assumed European dimensions such as have never been seen before, and I don't suppose we'll be able to spend much longer here merely as spectators. The very fact that I've at last got round to setting up house again and sending for my books seems to me to prove that the 'mobilisation' of our persons is AT HAND.

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Letter to Friedrich Engels (26 September 1856), quoted in The Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels: Volume 40. Letters 1856-59 (2010), pp. 71-72
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Even when he turns from religion,...

Even when he turns from religion, man remains subject to it; depleting himself to create false gods, he then feverishly adopts them; his need for fiction, for mythology triumphs over evidence and absurdity alike.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 4 weeks ago
So long as man remains free...

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find someone to worship. But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute, so that all men would agree at once to worship it. For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but to find community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time. For the sake of common worship they've slain each other with the sword. They have set up gods and challenged one another, 'Put away your gods and come and worship ours, or we will kill you and your gods!' And so it will be to the end of the world, even when gods disappear from the earth; they will fall down before idols just the same.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months ago
If each us had a different...
If each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound, then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence.
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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
This whole creation is essentially subjective,...

This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.

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General Aspects of Dream Psychology
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
The music that can deepest reach,...

The music that can deepest reach, And cure all ill, is cordial speech.

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Merlin's Song, II
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is ...easy to be certain....

It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

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Vol. IV, par. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 2 weeks ago
And though this may seem to...

And though this may seem to subtile a deduction of the Lawes of Nature, to be taken notice of by all men;whereof the most part are too busie in getting food, and the rest too negligent to understand; yet to leave all men unexcusable, they have been contracted into one easie sum, intelligble, even to the meanest capacity; and that is, Do not that to another, which thou wouldest not have done to thyselfe; which sheweth him, that he has no more to do in learning the Lawes of Nature, but, when weighing the actions of other men with his own, they seem too heavy, to put them into the other part of the balance, and his own into their place, that his own passions, and selfe love, may adde nothing to the weight; and then there is none of these Laws of Nature that will not appear unto him very reasonable.

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The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 3 weeks ago
It has no sense and cannot...

It has no sense and cannot just unless it comes to terms with death. Mine as (well as) that of the other. Between life and death, then, this is indeed the place of a sententious injunction that always feigns to speak the just.

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Exordium
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months ago
A single part of…

A single part of physics occupies the lives of many men, and often leaves them dying in uncertainty.

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"A Madame la Marquise du Châtelet, Avant-Propos," Eléments de Philosophie de Newton, 1738
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 weeks ago
A commercial company enslaved a nation...

A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand men, not athletes but rather weak and ordinary people, have subdued two hundred million vigorous, clever, capable, and freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that it is not the English who have enslaved the Indians, but the Indians who have enslaved themselves?

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V
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 weeks ago
Just as a vagrant accused of...

Just as a vagrant accused of stealing a carrot from a field stands before a comfortably seated judge who keeps up an elegant flow of queries, comments and witticisms while the accused is unable to stammer a word, so truth stands before an intelligence which is concerned with the elegant manipulation of opinions.

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p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 3 weeks ago
True science is distinctively the study...

True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 4 weeks ago
There is room in the world,...

There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it..

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Book IV, Chapter VI, §3, p. 516
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 weeks 4 days ago
...Lucretius talked epicureanism stoically (like Heine's...

...Lucretius talked epicureanism stoically (like Heine's Englishman taking his pleasures sadly), and concluded on his stren gospel of pleasure by committing suicide. His noble epic "on the Nature of Things", follows Epicurus in damning pleasure with faint praise. Almost contemporary with Caesar and Pompey, he lived in the midst of turmoil and alarms; his nervous pen is forever inditing prayers to tranquility and peace. One pictures him as a timid soul whose youth had been darkened with religious fears; for he never tires of telling his readers that there's no hell, except here, and there are no gods except gentlemanly ones who live in a garden of Epicurus in the clouds, and never intrude in the affairs of men.

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Philosophical Maxims
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