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Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 6 days ago
The TV generation is postliterate and...

The TV generation is postliterate and retribalized. It seeks by violence to scrub the old private image and to merge in a new tribal identity, like any corporate executive.

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(p. 201)
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
5 months 2 weeks ago
It is truly a marvelous thing...

It is truly a marvelous thing to consider to what greatness Athens arrived in the space of one hundred years after she freed herself from the tyranny of Pisistratus; but, above all, it is even more marvelous to consider the greatness Rome reached when she freed herself from her kings. The reason is easy to understand, for it is the common good and not private gain that makes cities great. Yet, without a doubt, this common good is observed only in republics, for in them everything that promotes it is practised, and however much damage it does to this or that private individual, those who benefit from the said common good are so numerous that they are able to advance in spite of the inclination of the few citizens who are oppressed by it.

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Book 2, Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months 1 week ago
Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative...

Bold ideas, unjustified anticipations, and speculative thought, are our only means for interpreting nature: our only organon, our only instrument, for grasping her. And we must hazard them to win our prize. Those among us who are unwilling to expose their ideas to the hazard of refutation do not take part in the scientific game.

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Ch. 10 "Corroboration, or How a Theory Stands up to Tests", section 85: The Path of Science, p. 280.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
4 months 6 days ago
Someone arrived there - who lifted...

Someone arrived there - who lifted the veil of the goddess, at Sais. - But what did he see? He saw - wonder of wonders - himself. Novalis here alludes to Plutarch's account of the shrine of the goddess Minerva, identified with Isis, at Sais, which he reports had the inscription "I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal has hitherto raised."

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Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
2 months 2 weeks ago
Treat your kid like a darling...

Treat your kid like a darling for the first five years. For the next five years, scold them. By the time they turn sixteen, treat them like a friend. Your grown up children are your best friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 2 weeks ago
Is it not absurd when a...

Is it not absurd when a human being tries to find happiness somewhere outside himself, and thinks that wealth and birth and the influence of friends...is of the utmost importance?

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Oration to the Uneducated Cynics
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
First of all: what is work?...

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 1 week ago
Superstition is more injurious to God...

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
5 months 3 days ago
As medium for reaching understanding, speech...

As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.

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p. 308
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 1 week ago
Sophistry is only fit to make...

Sophistry is only fit to make men more conceited in their ignorance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 6 days ago
What a human being believes, however,...

What a human being believes, however, no matter with what ardor, is not necessarily objective truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 1 week ago
For passionate emotions of all sorts,...

For passionate emotions of all sorts, and for everything which has been said or written in exaltation of them, he professed the greatest contempt. He regarded them as a form of madness. "The intense" was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation. He regarded as an aberration of the moral standard of modern times, compared with that of the ancients, the great stress laid upon feeling.

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(p. 49)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
4 weeks ago
But what can be the...

But what can be the attraction of getting to know such a tiny section of nature thoroughly, while one leaves everything subtler and more complex shyly and timidly alone? Does the product of such a modest effort deserve to be called by the proud name of a theory of the universe? In my belief the name is justified; for the general laws on which the structure of theoretical physics is based claim to be valid for any natural phenomenon whatsoever. With them, it ought to be possible to arrive at the description, that is to say, the theory, of every natural process, including life, by means of pure deduction, if that process of deduction were not far beyond the capacity of the human intellect. The physicist's renunciation of completeness for his cosmos is therefore not a matter of fundamental principle.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our life is a hope which...

Our life is a hope which is continually converting itself into memory and memory in its turn begets hope. Give us leave to live! The eternity that is like an eternal present, without memory and without hope, is death. Thus do ideas exist in the God-Idea, but not thus do men live in the living God, in the God-Man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 1 day ago
...whoever is not against us is...

...whoever is not against us is for us.

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9:40
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months ago
Democracy means the belief that humanistic...

Democracy means the belief that humanistic culture should prevail.

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Democracy and Human Nature, Freedom and Culture
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 1 week ago
I heartily accept the motto...

I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe - "That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 1 day ago
But this priviledge, is allayed by...

But this priviledge, is allayed by another; and that is, by the priviledge of Absurdity; to which no living creature is subject, but man only.

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The First Part, Chapter 5, p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
Here then we may learn the...

Here then we may learn the fallacy of the remark... that any particular state is weak, though fertile, populous, and well cultivated, merely because it wants money. It appears that the want of money can never injure any state within itself: For men and commodities are the real strength of any community. It is the simple manner of living which here hurts the public, by confining the gold and silver to few hands, and preventing its universal diffusion and circulation. On the contrary, industry and refinements of all kinds incorporate it with the whole state, however small its quantity may be: They digest it into every vein, so to speak; and make it enter into every transaction and contract.

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Of Money (1752) as quoted in David Hume: Writings on Economics (1955, 1970) ed., Eugene Rotwein, p. 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
So the wise man will develop...

So the wise man will develop virtue, if he may, in the midst of wealth, or, if not, in poverty; if possible, in his own country-if not, in exile; if possible, as a commander-if not, as a common soldier; if possible, in sound health-if not, enfeebled. Whatever fortune he finds, he will accomplish therefrom something noteworthy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 3 weeks ago
I finished the Iliad to-day... I...

I finished the Iliad to-day... I never admired the old fellow so much, or was so strongly moved by him. What a privilege genius like his enjoys! I could not tear myself away. I read the last five books at a stretch during my walk to-day, and was at last forced to turn into a bypath, lest the parties of walkers should see me blubbering for imaginary beings, the creations of a ballad-maker who has been dead two thousand seven hundred years. What is the power and glory of Caesar and Alexander to that? Think what it would be to be assured that the inhabitants of Monomotapa would weep over one's writings.

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Anno Domini 4551! Letter to his niece Margaret (August 1851), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), pp. 186-187
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 1 week ago
In skating over thin ice our...

In skating over thin ice our safety is our speed.

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Prudence
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
3 months 3 weeks ago
The history of other cultures is...

The history of other cultures is non-existent until it erupts in confrontation with the United States.

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Chap 4, Sect 2
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 month 3 weeks ago
Human or general needs can be...

Human or general needs can be satisfied through society; for satisfaction of unique needs you must do some seeking. A friend and a friendly service, or even an individual's service, society cannot procure you. And yet you will every moment be in need of such a service, and on the slightest occasions require somebody who is helpful to you. Therefore do not rely on society, but see to it that you have the wherewithal to - purchase the fulfilment of your wishes.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 243
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
As to the Approbation or Esteem...

As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it.

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Letter 138, To Gilbert Elliot of Minto; August 9, 1757
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
I wished, by treating Psychology like...

I wished, by treating Psychology like a natural science, to help her to become one.

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A Plea for Psychology as a Natural Science, 1892
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 4 days ago
Tears do not burn except in...

Tears do not burn except in solitude.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 months 3 weeks ago
No tyranny is more...

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.

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See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
4 weeks ago
In the temple of science...

In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him. I am quite aware that we have just now lightheartedly expelled in imagination many excellent men who are largely, perhaps chiefly, responsible for the buildings of the temple of science; and in many cases, our angel would find it a pretty ticklish job to decide. But of one thing I feel sure: if the types we have just expelled were the only types there were, the temple would never have come to be, any more than a forest can grow which consists of nothing but creepers. For these people any sphere of human activity will do if it comes to a point; whether they become engineers, officers, tradesmen, or scientists depends on circumstances.Now let us have another look at those who have found favor with the angel. Most of them are somewhat odd, uncommunicative, solitary fellows, really less like each other, in spite of these common characteristics, than the hosts of the rejected. What has brought them to the temple? That is a difficult question and no single answer will cover it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 1 week ago
Distance is a great promoter of...

Distance is a great promoter of admiration!

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As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 1 week ago
There are two motives for reading...

There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 1 week ago
How you produce volume after volume...

How you produce volume after volume the way you do is more than I can conceive. ...But you haven't to forge every sentence in the teeth of irreducible and stubborn facts as I do. It is like walking through the densest brush wood.

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Letter to Henry James (ca. 1890) as quoted by Robert D. Richardson, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (2007) p. 297.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 3 weeks ago
We have classical associations and great...

We have classical associations and great names of our own which we can confidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We respect the Great Charter more than the laws of Solon. The Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own Westminster Hall and Westminster Abbey... The list of warriors and statesmen by whom our constitution was founded or preserved, from De Montfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of Sydney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the bitterness of death was past.

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'History', The Edinburgh Review (May 1828), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), p. 252
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 3 days ago
To be an intellectual really means...

To be an intellectual really means to speak a truth that allows suffering to speak. That is, it creates a vision of the world that puts into the limelight the social misery that is usually hidden or concealed by the dominant viewpoints of a society. "Intellectual" in that sense simply means those who are willing to reflect critically upon themselves as well as upon the larger society and to ascertain whether there is some possibility of amelioration and betterment.

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"Chekhov, Coltrane, and Democracy: Interview by David Lionel Smith." in The Cornel West Reader. Basic Books. 2000. p. 551. ISBN 978-0-465-09110-2.
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 4 days ago
I suppose I must be out...

I suppose I must be out of sorts to feel everything so deeply. Sometimes, however, it seems to me that i am not really a human being at all, but like a bird or a beast in human form. I feel so much more at home even in a scrap of garden like the one here, and still more in the meadows when the grass is humming with bees than - at one of the our party congresses.

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Prison Letter, (May 12, 1917), Rosa Luxemburg Speaks
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 1 week ago
... no testimony is sufficient to...

... no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 1 week ago
The example of the Jews, in...

The example of the Jews, in many things, may not be imitated by us; they had not only orders to cut off several nations altogether, but if they were obliged to war with others, and conquered them, to cut off every male; they were suffered to use polygamy and divorces, and other things utterly unlawful to us under clearer light.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 1 week ago
The rich in all societies may...

The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are no signposts in the...

There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas.

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North to the Orient (1935) Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
Science has taught... me to be...

Science has taught... me to be careful how I adopt a view which jumps with my preconceptions, and to require stronger evidence for such belief than for one to which I was previously hostile. My business is to teach my aspirations to conform themselves to fact, not to try and make facts harmonise with my aspirations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 1 week ago
The real nature of the present...

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 1 week ago
For I now saw, or thought...

For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity-that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives.

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(p. 137)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 6 days ago
It is important to remember that...

It is important to remember that the viciousness and wrongs of life stick out very plainly but that even at the worst times there is a great deal of goodness, kindness, and day-to-day decency that goes unnoticed and makes no headlines.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
War is sweet....
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Main Content / General
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 1 week ago
The Philology of Christianity.
The Philology of Christianity. How little Christianity cultivates the sense of honesty can be inferred from the character of the writings of its learned men. They set out their conjectures as audaciously as if they were dogmas, and are but seldom at a disadvantage in regard to the interpretation of Scripture. Their continual cry is: am right, for it is written and then follows an explanation so shameless and capricious that a philologist, when he hears it, must stand stock-still between anger and laughter, asking himself again and again: Is it possible? Is it honest? Is it even decent?It is only those who never or always attend church that underestimate the dishonesty with which this subject is still dealt in Protestant pulpits; in what a clumsy fashion the preacher takes advantage of his security from interruption; how the Bible is pinched and squeezed; and how the people are made acquainted with every form of the art of false reading.
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Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 5 days ago
If one's organism is... the preeminent...

If one's organism is... the preeminent advantage, and the source of all others, education is the second. The best made brain would be a total loss without it...

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 6 days ago
Pardon one offence…

Pardon one offence and you encourage the commission of many.

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Maxim 750
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 4 days ago
Consciousness is much more than the...

Consciousness is much more than the thorn, it is the dagger in the flesh.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 1 week ago
It is high time that Communists...

It is high time that Communists should openly, in the face of the whole world, publish their views, their aims, their tendencies, and meet this nursery tale of the spectre of Communism with a Manifesto of the party itself.

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Preamble, paragraph 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 4 days ago
Three in the morning. I realize...

Three in the morning. I realize this second, then this one, then the next: I draw up the balance sheet for each minute. And why all this? Because I was born. It is a special type of sleeplessness that produces the indictment of birth.

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Philosophical Maxims
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