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Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 1 week ago
The intellectual world is divided into...

The intellectual world is divided into two classes - dilettantes, on the one hand, and pedants, on the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
4 months 1 week ago
Socrates thought that if all our...

Socrates thought that if all our misfortunes were laid in one common heap, whence every one must take an equal portion, most persons would be contented to take their own and depart.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 weeks ago
I have come across men of...

I have come across men of letters who have written history without taking part in public affairs, and politicians who have concerned themselves with producing events without thinking about them. I have observed that the first are always inclined to find general causes whereas the second, living in the midst of disconnected daily facts, are prone to imagine that everything is attributable to particular incidents, and that the wires they pull are the same as those that move the world. It is to be presumed that both are equally deceived.

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Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville, p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
3 months 5 days ago
Rituals are processes of embodiment and...

Rituals are processes of embodiment and bodily performances. In them, the valid order and values of a community are physically experienced and solidified.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 weeks ago
Our age is retrospective. It builds...

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generation beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe. Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs?

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
2 weeks 5 days ago
Man has been trained in the...

Man has been trained in the same way as animals. He has become an author, as they became beasts of burden.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 3 weeks ago
No protracted war can fail to...

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 month ago
However far the phenomena transcend the...

However far the phenomena transcend the scope of classical physical explanation, the account of all evidence must be expressed in classical terms. The argument is that simply by the word "experiment" we refer to a situation where we can tell others what we have done and what we have learned and that, therefore, the account of the experimental arrangement and of the results of the observations must be expressed in unambiguous language with suitable application of the terminology of classical physics.

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Niels Bohr, "Discussions with Einstein on Epistemological Problems in Atomic Physics," in Paul Arthur Schilpp, Albert Einstein: Philosopher Scientist (1949) pp. 199-241.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
To fear is to die every...

To fear is to die every minute.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 4 days ago
I believe that the man choosing...

I believe that the man choosing progress can find a new unity through the full development of all his human forces, which are produced in three orientations. These can be presented separately or together: biophilia, love for humanity and nature, and independence and freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 4 days ago
The "dreams of youth" have become...

The "dreams of youth" have become a proverb. That organisations, early rich, fall far short of their promise has been repeated to satiety. But is it extraordinary that it should be so? For do we ever utilise this heroism? Look how it lives upon itself and perishes for lack of food. We do not know what to do with it. We had rather that it should not be there. Often we laugh at it. Always we find it troublesome. Look at the poverty of our life! Can we expect anything else but poor creatures to come out of it?

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 days ago
Stars and blossoming...
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Main Content / General
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 6 days ago
It is difficulties that show what...

It is difficulties that show what men are.

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Book I, ch. 24, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 6 days ago
In its solitariness the spirit asks,...

In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe.

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Religion is world-loyalty. Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
3 weeks 1 day ago
Whether we and our politicians know...

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

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Part of an endorsement statement for The Dying of the Trees (1997) by Charles E. Little
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 days ago
He is not rich, that enjoyeth...

He is not rich, that enjoyeth not his own goods.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 3 weeks ago
Justice does not require that men...

Justice does not require that men must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.

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Chapter IV, Section 35, p. 218
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months ago
It is more of a job...

It is more of a job to interpret the interpretations than to interpret the things, and there are more books about books than about any other subject: we do nothing but write glosses about each other.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
The essence of the Liberal outlook...

The essence of the Liberal outlook lies not in what opinions are held, but in how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, they are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 3 weeks ago
Beneficence is a duty. He who...

Beneficence is a duty. He who often practices this, and sees his beneficent purpose succeed, comes at last really to love him whom he has benefited. When, therefore, it is said, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," this does not mean, "Thou shalt first of all love, and by means of love (in the next place) do him good"; but: "Do good to thy neighbour, and this beneficence will produce in thee the love of men (as a settled habit of inclination to beneficence)."

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Metaphysical Elements of Ethics (1780). Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott, translation available at Philosophy.eserver.org. From section "Preliminary Notions of the Susceptibility of the Mind for Notions of Duty Generally", Part C ("Of love to men")
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 2 weeks ago
Even the most wretched individual of...

Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations. Thus the individual, his freedom and reason, are the products of society, and not vice versa: society is not the product of individuals comprising it; and the higher, the more fully the individual is developed, the greater his freedom - and the more he is the product of society, the more does he receive from society and the greater his debt to it.

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As quoted in The Philosophy of Bakunin (1953) edited by G. P. Maximoff, p. 158
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
The annual labour of every nation...

The annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplies it with all the necessaries and conveniences of life which it annually consumes.

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Introduction and Plan of the Work, p. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 months 2 weeks ago
Plants are Children of the Earth;...

Plants are Children of the Earth; we are Children of the Æther. Our Lungs are properly our Root; we live, when we breathe; we begin our life with breathing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months ago
He who does not give himself...

He who does not give himself leisure to be thirsty cannot take pleasure in drinking.

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Ch. 42
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 week ago
Virtue (or the man of...

Virtue (or the man of virtue) is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Suppose Odin to have been the...

Suppose Odin to have been the inventor of Letters, as well as "magic," among that people! It is the greatest invention man has ever made! this of marking down the unseen thought that is in him by written characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as miraculous as the first.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Old and young, we are all...

Old and young, we are all on our last cruise.

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Crabbed Age and Youth.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 1 week ago
The Path is not far from...

The Path is not far from man. When men try to pursue a course, which is far from the common indications of consciousness, this course cannot be considered The Path.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever we know without inference is...

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

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Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (1948), p. 224
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 3 weeks ago
He was extremely important to his...

He was extremely important to his contemporaries, who wanted nothing more than to see in him the Expected One; they wanted almost to press it upon him and and to force him into the role - but that he then refuses to be that!

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
The reservedness and distance that fathers...

The reservedness and distance that fathers keep, often deprive their sons of that refuge which would be of more advantage to them than an hundred rebukes or chidings.

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Sec. 96
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nature ... is inexorable and immutable;...

Nature ... is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called in question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages which may have some different meaning beneath their words. For the Bible is not chained in every expression to conditions as strict as those which govern all physical effects; nor is God any less excellently revealed in Nature's actions than in the sacred statements of the Bible.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 3 weeks ago
There are only Epicureans, either crude...

There are only Epicureans, either crude or refined; Christ was the most refined.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
4 months 1 week ago
Now as of old the gods...

Now as of old the gods give men all good things, excepting only those that are baneful and injurious and useless. These, now as of old, are not gifts of the gods: men stumble into them themselves because of their own blindness and folly.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
Children should not be suffer'd to...

Children should not be suffer'd to lose the consideration of human nature in the shufflings of outward conditions. The more they have, the better humor'd they should be taught to be, and the more compassionate and gentle to those of their brethren who are placed lower, and have scantier portions. If they are suffer'd from their cradles to treat men ill and rudely, because, by their father's title, they think they have a little power over them, at best it is ill-bred; and if care be not taken, will by degrees nurse up their natural pride into an habitual contempt of those beneath them. And where will that probably end but in oppression and cruelty?

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Sec. 117
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 2 weeks ago
There is nothing impossible in the...

There is nothing impossible in the existence of the supernatural: its existence seems to me decidedly probable.

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The Genteel Tradition at Bay
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the greatest confusion there is...

In the greatest confusion there is still an open channel to the soul. It may be difficult to find because by midlife it is overgrown, and some of the wildest thickets that surround it grow out of what we describe as our education. But the channel is always there, and it is our business to keep it open, to have access to the deepest part of ourselves-to that part of us which is conscious. ... The independence of this consciousness, which has the strength to be immune to the noise of history and the distractions of our immediate surroundings, is what the life struggle is all about. The soul has to find and hold its ground against hostile forces, sometimes embodied in ideas which frequently deny its very existence, and which indeed often seem to be trying to annul it altogether.

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pp. 16-17
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
4 months 1 week ago
It is now generally accepted that...

It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about these responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.

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Preface To The 2011 edition, p. xi
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
3 months 2 weeks ago
Desire, to know why, and how,...

Desire, to know why, and how, CURIOSITY; such as is in no living creature but Man; so that Man is distinguished, not only by his Reason; but also by this singular Passion from other Animals; in whom the appetite of food, and other pleasures of Sense, by predominance, take away the care of knowing causes; which is a Lust of the mind, that by a perseverance of delight in the continual and indefatigable generation of Knowledge, exceedeth the short vehemence of any carnal Pleasure.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
3 weeks 1 day ago
Death's dry bones glowed with light...

Death's dry bones glowed with light in the erotic darkbut he woke not nor felt the two warm bodies merge;the male worm then took heart and in his wife's ear whispered:"With one sweet kiss, dear wife, we've conquered conquering Death!"

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Orpheus' song, Book III, line 178
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 3 weeks ago
No man is liberated from fear...

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

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Dreams and Facts, 1919
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 3 weeks ago
The infinite... happens to subsist in...

The infinite... happens to subsist in a way contrary to what is asserted by others: for the infinite is not that beyond which there is nothing, but it is that of which there is always something beyond. ...But that pertaining to which there is nothing beyond is perfect and whole. ...that of which nothing is absent pertaining to the parts ...the whole is that pertaining to which there is nothing beyond. But that pertaining to which something external is absent, that is not all ...But nothing is perfect which has not an end; and the end is a bound. On this account... Parmenides spoke better than Melissus: for the latter says that the infinite is a whole; but the former, that the whole is finite, and equally balanced from the middle: for to conjoin the infinite with the universe and the whole, is not to connect line with line.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 month 2 weeks ago
If you let people follow their...

If you let people follow their feelings, they will be able to do good. This is what is meant by saying that human nature is good.

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Book 6, pt. 1, v. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
4 months 3 days ago
The soul of man…

The soul of man is divided into three parts, intelligence, reason, and passion. Intelligence and passion are possessed by other animals, but reason by man alone.

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As reported by Alexander Polyhistor, and Diogenes Laërtius in Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, "Pythagoras", Sect. 30, in the translation of C. D. Yonge
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 3 weeks ago
"No human laws are of any...

"No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time; and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.

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Pt. III, Ch. 19 : The Right to Ignore the State, § 2
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 1 day ago
Food probably has a very great...

Food probably has a very great influence on the condition of men. Wine exercises a more visible influence, food does it more slowly but perhaps just as surely. Who knows if a well-prepared soup was not responsible for the pneumatic pump or a poor one for a war?

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A 14
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 6 days ago
What should a philosopher say, then,...

What should a philosopher say, then, in the face of each of the hardships of life? "It was for this that I've been training myself, it was for this that I was practising."

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Book III, ch. 10,7.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months 6 days ago
The essence of the good is...

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

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Book I, ch. 29, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
3 months 5 days ago
The Orient that appears in Orientalism,...

The Orient that appears in Orientalism, then, is a system of representations framed by a whole set of forces that brought the Orient into Western learning, Western consciousness, and later, Western empire. ... The Orient is the stage on which the whole East is confined. On this stage will appear the figures whose role it is to represent the larger whole from which they emanate. The Orient then seems to be, not an unlimited extension beyond the familiar European world, but rather a closed field, a theatrical stage affixed to Europe.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
There is an irrepressible tendency in...

There is an irrepressible tendency in every man to develop himself according to the magnitude which Nature has made him of; to speak out, to act out, what nature has laid in him. This is proper, fit, inevitable; nay it is a duty, and even the summary of duties for a man. The meaning of life here on earth might be defined as consisting in this: To unfold your self, to work what thing you have the faculty for.

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Philosophical Maxims
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