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Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 week ago
The fact that goals may be...

The fact that goals may be dependent for their force on other more distant ends leads to the arrangement of these goals in a hierarchy - each level to be considered as an end relative to the levels below it and as a mean to the levels above it.

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p. 62.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 days ago
Every hero becomes a bore at...

Every hero becomes a bore at last.

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Uses of Great Men
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 day ago
Yes, I am so free...

Yes, I am so free. And what a superb absence is my soul.

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Orestes, Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 5 days ago
In the natural state no concept...

In the natural state no concept of God can arise, and the false one which one makes for himself is harmful. Hence the theory of natural religion can be true only where there is no science; therefore it cannot bind all men together.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 60
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 days ago
The great majority of men and...

The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large. They find themselves born into a certain place in society, and they accept what each day brings forth, without any effort of thought beyond what the immediate present requires. Almost as instinctively as the beasts of the field, they seek the satisfaction of the needs of the moment, without much forethought, and without considering that by sufficient effort the whole conditions of their lives could be changed.

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Introduction, p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 days ago
I am grateful for what I...

I am grateful for what I am & have. My thanksgiving is perpetual. It is surprising how contented one can be with nothing definite - only a sense of existence. Well, anything for variety. I am ready to try this for the next 1000 years, & exhaust it. How sweet to think of! My extremities well charred, and my intellectual part too, so that there is no danger of worm or rot for a long while. My breath is sweet to me. O how I laugh when I think of my vague indefinite riches. No run on my bank can drain it - for my wealth is not possession but enjoyment.

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Letter to Harrison Gray Otis Blake (6-7 December 1856), as published in The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau (1958)
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
2 months 3 weeks ago
The Democratic Party is beyond redemption...

The Democratic Party is beyond redemption at this point when it comes to seriously speaking to the needs of poor and working people... The neofascism that's escalating is predicated on the rottenness of a system in which the Democratic Party facilitates that frustration and desperation because it can't present an alternative... If America is unable to present an alternative to the Democratic Party, then we're going fascist.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
2 months 2 days ago
The revolutionary government is the despotism...

The revolutionary government is the despotism of liberty against tyranny.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
No reason can be given for...

No reason can be given for the nature of God, because that nature is the ground of all rationality.

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Ch. 11: "God", p. 250
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 day ago
The hardness of God is kinder...

The hardness of God is kinder than the softness of men, and His compulsion is our liberation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 months 3 weeks ago
To flee vice….

To flee vice is the beginning of virtue, and to have got rid of folly is the beginning of wisdom.

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Book I, epistle i, line 41
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 days ago
All war propaganda consists, in the...

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

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"Pacifism and Philosophy", 1936
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 weeks 1 day ago
America is like a large, friendly...

America is like a large, friendly dog in a very small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair!

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In Quote: The Weekly Digest, vol. 23, no. 19 (4 May 1952) p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nobody should ever doubt that in...

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

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229E:2
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 1 day ago
No punishment has ever possessed enough...

No punishment has ever possessed enough power of deterrence to prevent the commission of crimes. On the contrary, whatever the punishment, once a specific crime has appeared for the first time, its reappearance is more likely than its initial emergence could ever have been.

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Epilogue
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 weeks ago
No doubt some of your cousins...

No doubt some of your cousins and great-uncles died in childhood, but not a single one of your ancestors did. Ancestors just don't die young!

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Ch. 3. Immortal Coils
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
The feeling of being ten thousand...

The feeling of being ten thousand years behind, or ahead, of the others, of belonging to the beginnings or to the end of humanity...

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 days ago
There is no one at the...

There is no one at the Communion table who retains against you even the least of your sins, no one, unless you yourself do it. So cast them away from yourself, and the recollection of them, lest in it your retain them; and cast the recollection of your having cast your sins away, lest in it you retain them.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 4 days ago
Covetousness, and the desire of having...

Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.

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Sec. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 3 weeks ago
The noblest people are those despising...

The noblest people are those despising wealth, learning, pleasure and life; esteeming above them poverty, ignorance, hardship and death.

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Stobaeus, iv. 29a. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
2 months 1 week ago
There is the world for you....

There is the world for you. Beauty, true beauty, is intangible. It is in the eye of the beholder. Something that we can lose at any moment, and the more you examine it, the more illusive it becomes. True happiness is virtue, and virtue is predicated on knowledge and righteous conduct.

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The Alchemy of Happiness
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 6 days ago
The violence and injustice of the...

The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.

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Chapter III, Part II, p. 531.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 weeks 1 day ago
The poor man is ruined as...

The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.

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Maxim 941
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
We can know only one thing...

We can know only one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.

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p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 2 weeks ago
The source of the errors of...

The source of the errors of these two sects, is in not having known that the state of man at the present time differs from that of his creation; so that the one, remarking some traces of his first greatness and being ignorant of his corruption, has treated nature as sound and without need of redemption, which leads him to the height of pride; whilst the other, feeling the present wretchedness and being ignorant of the original dignity, treats nature as necessarily infirm and irreparable, which precipitates it into despair of arriving at real good, and thence into extreme laxity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 day ago
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to...

I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.

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Act 11, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 days ago
In former times the chief method...

In former times the chief method of justifying the use of violence and thereby infringing the law of love was by claiming a divine right for the rulers: the Tsars, Sultans, Rajahs, Shahs, and other heads of states. But the longer humanity lived the weaker grew the belief in this peculiar, God-given right of the ruler. That belief withered in the same way and almost simultaneously in the Christian and the Brahman world, as well as in Buddhist and Confucian spheres, and in recent times it has so faded away as to prevail no longer against man's reasonable understanding and the true religious feeling. People saw more and more clearly, and now the majority see quite clearly, the senselessness and immorality of subordinating their wills to those of other people just like themselves, when they are bidden to do what is contrary not only to their interests but also to their moral sense.

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III
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
People don't stop...
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Main Content / General
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
The superior man, when resting...

The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 4 days ago
Preference of vice to virtue, a...

Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.

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Book II, Ch. 21, sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
A general definition of civilization: a...

A general definition of civilization: a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of truth, beauty, adventure, art, peace.

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p. 353.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
What if he has borrowed the...

What if he has borrowed the matter and spoiled the form, as it oft falls out?

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Book III, Ch. 8. Of the Art of Conversation
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
What excited me was the recognition...

What excited me was the recognition that this was simply another version of the problem that had obsessed me all of my life -- the problem of those moments when life seems entirely delightful, when we experience a sensation of what G.K. Chesterton called "absurd good news." Life normally strikes most of us as hard, dull and unsatisfying; but in these moments, consciousness seems to glow and expand, and all the contradictions seem to be resolved. Which of the two visions is true? My own reflections had led me to conclude that the vision of "absurd good news" is somehow broader and more comprehensive than the feeling that life is dull, boring and meaningless. Boredom is basically a feeling of narrowness, and surely a narrow vision is bound to be less true than a broad one?

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p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
When the whole is at stake,...

When the whole is at stake, there is no crime except that of rejecting the whole, or not defending it. ... Those who identify themselves with the whole, who are installed as the leaders and defenders of the whole can make mistakes, but they cannot do wrong-they are not guilty. They may become guilty again when this identification no longer holds, when they are gone.

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pp. 82-83
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 day ago
Look for yourself, and you will...

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

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Book IV, Chapter 10, "The New Men"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 1 day ago
If the Jew did not exist,...

If the Jew did not exist, the anti-Semite would invent him.

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p. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks ago
No doubt a tumult caused by...

No doubt a tumult caused by local and temporary irritation ought to be suppressed with promptitude and vigour. Such disturbances, for example, as those which Lord George Gordon raised in 1780, should be instantly put down with the strong hand. But woe to the Government which cannot distinguish between a nation and a mob! Woe to the Government which thinks that a great, a steady, a long continued movement of the public mind is to be stopped like a street riot! This error has been twice fatal to the great House of Bourbon. God be praised, our rulers have been wiser. The golden opportunity which, if once suffered to escape, might never have been retrieved, has been seized. Nothing, I firmly believe, can now prevent the passing of this noble law, this second Bill of Rights.

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Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (5 July 1831), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), pp. 34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
Government exists but to maintain special...

Government exists but to maintain special privilege and property rights; it coerces man into submission and therefore robs him of dignity, self-respect, and life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 days ago
Every man I meet is in...

Every man I meet is in some way my superior, and in that, I can learn of him.

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As quoted in Think, Vol. 4-5 (1938), p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 week 4 days ago
There is no end. There is...

There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life.

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Fellini on Fellini (1976) edited by Anna Keel and Christian Strich; translated by Isabel Quigly.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 weeks ago
They [the wise spirits of antiquity...

They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life.

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Obiter Scripta
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 2 weeks ago
Fate and freedom alike play a...

Fate and freedom alike play a part in history; and there are times, as in wars and revolutions, when fate is the stronger of the two. Freedom - the freedom of man and of nations - could never have been the origin of two world wars. These latter were brought about by fate, which exercises its power owing to the weakness and decline of freedom and of the creative spirit of man. Almost all contemporary political ideologies, with their characteristic tendency to state-idolatry, are likewise largely a product of two world wars, begotten as they are of the inexorability's of fate.

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p. 32
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
Refinement is a sign of a...

Refinement is a sign of a deficient vitality, in art, in love, and in everything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
We must not attach knowledge to...

We must not attach knowledge to the mind, we have to incorporate it there.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 2 days ago
All evil results from the non-adaptation...

All evil results from the non-adaptation of constitution to conditions. This is true of everything that lives. Does a shrub dwindle in poor soil, or become sickly when deprived of light, or die outright if removed to a cold climate? it is because the harmony between its organization and its circumstances has been destroyed.

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Part I, Ch. 2 : The Evanescence of Evil, § 1
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is no more evident that...

It is no more evident that democratic institutions are to be measured by the sort of person they create than that they are to be measured against divine commands. ... Even if the typical character types of liberal democracies are bland, calculating, petty, and unheroic, the prevalence of such people may be a reasonable price to pay for political freedom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 3 weeks ago
In the darkest region of the...

In the darkest region of the political field the condemned man represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 2 weeks ago
In the dominant Western religious system,...

In the dominant Western religious system, the love of God is essentially the same as the belief in God, in God's existence, God's justice, God's love. The love of God is essentially a thought experience. In the Eastern religions and in mysticism, the love of God is an intense feeling experience of oneness, inseparably linked with the expression of this love in every act of living.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Chrysippus
Chrysippus
2 months 3 weeks ago
The universe itself is God and...

The universe itself is God and the universal outpouring of its soul.

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As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, i. 15.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 day ago
The miracles in fact are a...

The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words, some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and others prophecies.

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"Miracles" (1942), p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
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