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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
It's so much easier to pray...

It's so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
4 weeks 1 day ago
Prejudices are so to speak the...

Prejudices are so to speak the mechanical instincts of men: through their prejudices they do without any effort many things they would find too difficult to think through to the point of resolving to do them.

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A 58
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
3 weeks ago
We must fight those who are...

We must fight those who are committed to destruction, without replicating their destructiveness. Understanding how to fight in this way is the task and the bind of a nonviolent ethics and politics.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 3 days ago
The city no longer exists except...

The city no longer exists except as a cultural ghost for tourists. Any highway eatery with its TV set, newspaper and magazine is as cosmopolitan as New York or Paris.

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(p.12)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
Even when the experts all agree,...

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

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A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42 (1996), p. 281
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
I have been merely oppressed by...

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while would be to murder as many people as possible so as to diminish the amount of consciousness in the world. These times have to be lived through: there is nothing to be done with them.

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Letter to Gilbert Murray, March 21, 1903
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 1 week ago
Tell me to what you pay...

Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

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p. 94.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 weeks 3 days ago
Familiarity breeds contempt.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in...

We forfeit three-fourths of ourselves in order to be like other people.

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As attributed in Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern English and Foreign Sources (1899) by James Wood, p. 624
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 days ago
Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent,...

Rituals are symbolic acts. They represent, and pass on, the values and orders on which a community is based. They bring forth a community without communication; today, however, communication without community prevails.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 3 weeks ago
The true Gospel has it that...

The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.

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Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
God said, I am tired of...

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

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Boston Hymn, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 3 weeks ago
I had hoped that out of...

I had hoped that out of so many stories you would at least have produced one or two, which could hardly be questioned, and which would clearly show that ghosts or spectres exist. The case you relate... seems to me laughable. In like manner it would be tedious here to examine all the stories of people, who have written on these trifles. To be brief, I cite the instance of Julius Caesar, who, as Suetonius testifies, laughed at such things and yet was happy. ...And so should all who reflect on the human imagination, and the effects of the emotions, laugh at such notions; whatever Lavater and others, who have gone dreaming with him in the matter, may produce to the contrary.

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Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 2 weeks ago
Who can exhaust a man? Who...

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man's resources?

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
Nonsense. You are a military man...

Nonsense. You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is not altogether true that...

It is not altogether true that persuasion is one thing and force is another. Many forms of persuasion - even many of which everybody approves - are really a kind of force. Consider what we do to our children. We do not say to them: "Some people think the earth is round, and others think it is flat; when you grow up, you can, if you like, examine the evidence and form your own conclusion." Instead of this we say: "The earth is round." By the time our children are old enough to examine the evidence, our propaganda has closed their minds.

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Ch. 17: The Ethics of Power
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
1 month 1 week ago
Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding...

Logical empiricism holds the view, notwithstanding some its assertions, that the forms of knowledge and consequently the relations of man to nature and to other men never change. According to rationalism, too, all subjective and objective potentialities are rooted in insights which the individual already possesses, but rationality uses existing objects as well as the active inner striving and ideas of man to construct standards for the future. In this regard, it is not so closely associated with the present order as is empiricism.

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p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Christ speaks of two debtors, one...

Christ speaks of two debtors, one of whom owed much and the other little, and who both found forgiveness. He asks: Which of these two ought to love more? The answer: The one who has forgiven much. When you love much, you are forgiven much-and when you are forgiven much, you love much. See here the blessed recurrence of salvation in love!

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
For two thousand years, Jesus has...

For two thousand years, Jesus has revenged himself on us for not having died on a sofa.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 2 weeks ago
Talking nonsense is man's only privilege...

Talking nonsense is man's only privilege that distinguishes him from all other organisms.

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1 month 1 week ago
By becoming the pure subject who...

By becoming the pure subject who knows the world objectively, man ultimately realizes that absolute consciousness with respect to which the body and individual existence are no longer anything but objects; death is deprived of meaning. Reduced to the status of object of consciousness, the body could not be conceived as an intermediary between "things" and the consciousness which knows them.

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p. 204
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
2 months 3 weeks ago
The past treatment of Africans must...

The past treatment of Africans must naturally fill them with abhorrence of Christians; lead them to think our religion would make them more inhuman savages, if they embraced it; thus the gain of that trade has been pursued in opposition to the Redeemer's cause, and the happiness of men: Are we not, therefore, bound in duty to him and to them to repair these injuries, as far as possible, by taking some proper measures to instruct, not only the slaves here, but the Africans in their own countries? Primitive Christians laboured always to spread their Divine Religion; and this is equally our duty while there is an Heathen nation: But what singular obligations are we under to these injured people!

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Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
2 days ago
People don't want to be understood...

People don't want to be understood - I mean not completely. It's too destructive. Then they haven't anything left.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
4 weeks 1 day ago
When an acquaintance goes by I...

When an acquaintance goes by I often step back from my window, not so much to spare him the effort of acknowledging me as to spare myself the embarrassment of seeing that he has not done so.

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F 155
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
By bourgeoisie is meant the class...

By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.

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The Communist Manifesto, footnote
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Since therefore, as well those degrees...

Since therefore, as well those degrees of heat that are not painful, as those that are, can exist in a thinking substance; may we not conclude that external bodies are absolutely incapable of any degree of heat whatsoever?

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Philonous to Hylas. Hylas replies with, "So it seems".
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 2 weeks ago
He thought human life a poor...

He thought human life a poor thing at best, after the freshness of youth and of unsatisfied curiosity had gone by. This was a topic on which he did not often speak, especially, it may be supposed, in the presence of young persons: but when he did, it was with an air of settled and profound conviction. He would sometimes say, that if life were made what it might be, by good government and good education, it would be worth having: but he never spoke with anything like enthusiasm even of that possibility.

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(p. 48)
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 5 days ago
If thou shouldst say, 'It is...

If thou shouldst say, 'It is enough, I have reached perfection,' all is lost. For it is the function of perfection to make one know one's imperfection.

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Quoted by Aldous Huxley, in The Perennial Philosophy (1945)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 3 days ago
A moral point of view too...

A moral point of view too often serves as a substitute for understanding in technological matters.

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(p. 245)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
For what comes is Judgment: happy...

For what comes is Judgment: happy are those whom it finds labouring in their vocations, whether they were merely going out to feed the pigs or laying good plans to deliver humanity a hundred years hence from some great evil. The curtain has indeed now fallen. Those pigs will never in fact be fed, the great campaign against White Slavery or Governmental Tyranny will never in fact proceed to victory. No matter; you were at your post when the Inspection came.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 2 weeks ago
Understand me well. My appeal is...

Understand me well. My appeal is to observation - observation that each of you must make for himself.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, § 2 : Struggle, CP 5.53
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
Liberty, as we all know, cannot...

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

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Chapter 1 (p. 14)
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 1 week ago
Well both original seizure and subsequent...

Well both original seizure and subsequent critical discrimination have equal claims, each to its own complete development and must not be forgotten that direct and unreasoned impression comes first. There is such occasions something of the quality of the wind that bloweth where it listeth. Sometimes it comes and sometimes it does not, even in the presence of the same object. It cannot be forced and when it does not arrive it is not wise to seek to recover by direct action the first fine rapture.

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p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 weeks ago
He who lives as children live
He who lives as children live who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance remains childlike.
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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 3 weeks ago
The possibility of divorce renders both...

The possibility of divorce renders both marriage partners stricter in their observance of the duties they owe to each other. Divorces help to improve morals and to increase the population.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 2 weeks ago
Boldness formerly was not the character...

Boldness formerly was not the character of Atheists as such. ... But of late they are grown active, designing, turbulent, and seditious.

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"Thoughts on French Affairs" (December 1791), in Three Memorials on French Affairs (1797), p. 53
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
We must frankly confess, then, using...

We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 4 weeks ago
The human understanding when it has...

The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.

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Aphorism 46
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 days ago
Though I certainly....
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Main Content / General
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
What the Greeks sought, and what...

What the Greeks sought, and what they obtained, was Equal Rights for all Citizens. In a certain sense, we might even say Equal Privileges, for there was no race favoured by the constitution more than another;-but there existed a great inequality of power, which indeed arose only by accident and not by the constitution of the State, but which nevertheless the State could not remedy;-and in so far there did not exist Equal Privileges.

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p. 186
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have gathered…

I have gathered a posy of other men's flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is mine own.

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Ch. 12: Of Physiognomy
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 5 days ago
We live in a nightmare of...

We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder.

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p. 80
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
At the age of five years...

At the age of five years to enter a spinning-cotton or other factory, and from that time forth to sit there daily, first ten, then twelve, and ultimately fourteen hours, performing the same mechanical labour, is to purchase dearly the satisfaction of drawing breath. But this is the fate of millions, and that of millions more is analogous to it.

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Vol II: "On the Vanity and Suffering of Life", as translated by R. B. Haldane, and J. Kemp in The World as Will and Idea (1886), p. 389
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 2 weeks ago
Put in a nut-shell, my thesis...

Put in a nut-shell, my thesis amounts to this. The repeated attempts made by Rudolf Carnap to show that the demarcation between science and metaphysics coincides with that between sense and nonsense have failed. The reason is that the positivistic concept of 'meaning' or 'sense' (or of verifiability, or of inductive confirmability, etc.) is inappropriate for achieving this demarcation - simply because metaphysics need not be meaningless even though it is not science. In all its variations demarcation by meaninglessness has tended to be at the same time too narrow and too wide: as against all intentions and all claims, it has tended to exclude scientific theories as meaningless, while failing to exclude even that part of metaphysics which is known as 'rational theology'.

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Ch 11. "The Demarcation between Science and Metaphysics." (Summary, p. 253)
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 3 weeks ago
A man's body and the needs...

A man's body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the thinking mind then, to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or protection, to say nothing of respect?

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"On Noise"
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
A great stock, though with small...

A great stock, though with small profits, generally increases faster than a small stock with great profits. Money, says the proverb, makes money. When you have a little, it is often easier to get more. The great difficulty is to get that little.

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Chapter IX, p. 111.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
If death had only negative aspects,...

If death had only negative aspects, dying would be an unmanageable action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Poetry teaches the enormous force of...

Poetry teaches the enormous force of a few words, and, in proportion to the inspiration, checks loquacity.

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Parnassus (1874) Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Teutons believed that the only...

The Teutons believed that the only possible way to get rid of barbarism was to become Romans. The immigrants to what was formerly Roman soil became as Roman as they possibly could. But in their imagination the term "barbarous" soon acquired the secondary meaning of " common, plebeian, and loutish," and in this way "Roman," on the contrary, became synonymous with " distinguished."

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Consequences of the Difference p. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 4 days ago
Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as...

Intelligence is quickness to apprehend as distinct from ability, which is capacity to act wisely on the thing apprehended.

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p. 135; Ch. 17, December 15, 1939.
Philosophical Maxims
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