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Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
Never aim at more precision than......

Never aim at more precision than... required by the problem...

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 1 week ago
Time, and reflection, and discussion, have...

Time, and reflection, and discussion, have produced their natural effect on minds eminently intelligent and candid. No intermediate shades of opinion are now left. There is no twilight. The light has been divided from the darkness. Two parties are ranged in battle array against each other. There is the standard of monopoly. Here is the standard of free trade; and by the standard of free trade I pledge myself to stand firmly.

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Speech in Edinburgh (2 December 1845), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 423
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 week ago
Marx explains the alienation of labor...

Marx explains the alienation of labor as exemplified in, first, the relation of the worker to the product of his labor and, second, the relation of the worker to his own activity. P. 276

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 day ago
Work at these things, practice them,...

Work at these things, practice them, these are the things you ought to desire; they are what will put you on the path of divine virtue - yes, by the one who entrusted our soul with the tetraktys, source of ever-flowing nature. Pray to the gods for success and get to work.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 1 week ago
The human race, in its intellectual...

The human race, in its intellectual life, is organized like the bees: the masculine soul is a worker, sexually atrophied, and essentially dedicated to impersonal and universal arts; the feminine is a queen, infinitely fertile, omnipresent in its brooding industry, but passive and abounding in intuitions without method and passions without justice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
In the external, patience is some...

In the external, patience is some third element that must be added, and, humanly speaking, it would be better if it were not needed; some days it is needed more, some days less, all according to fortune, whose debtor a person becomes, even though he gained ever so little, because only when he wants to gain patience does he become one's debtor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
People are said to believe in...

People are said to believe in God, or to disbelieve in Adam and Eve. But in such cases what is believed or disbelieved is that there is an entity answering a certain description. This, which can be believed or disbelieved is quite different from the actual entity (if any) which does answer the description. Thus the matter of belief is, in all cases, different in kind from the matter of sensation or presentation, and error is in no way analogous to hallucination. A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

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On the Nature of Acquaintance: Neutral Monism, 1914
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 4 days ago
But there is nothing…

But there is nothing sweeter than to dwell in towers that rise On high, serene and fortified with teachings of the wise, From which you may peer down upon the others as they stray This way and that, seeking the path of life, losing their way: The skirmishing of wits, the scramble for renown, the fight, Each striving harder than the next, and struggling day and night, To climb atop a heap of riches and lay claim to might.

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Book II, lines 7-13 (tr. Stallings)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 3 weeks ago
The need to speak, even if...

The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning.

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(p. 30)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 2 weeks ago
Properly speaking, a man has as...

Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him.

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Ch.10
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 2 weeks ago
Even those who have renounced Christianity...

Even those who have renounced Christianity and attack it, in their inmost being still follow the Christian ideal, for hitherto neither their subtlety nor the ardor of their hearts has been able to create a higher ideal of man and of virtue than the ideal given by Christ.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 2 weeks ago
There were many special laws affecting...

There were many special laws affecting the several kings inscribed about the temples, but the most important was the following: They were not to take up arms against one another, and they were all to come to the rescue if any one in any of their cities attempted to overthrow the royal house; like their ancestors, they were to deliberate in common about war and other matters, giving the supremacy to the descendants of Atlas. And the king was not to have the power of life and death over any of his kinsmen unless he had the assent of the majority of the ten.

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Philosophical Maxims
Protagoras
Protagoras
3 months 3 days ago
Man is the measure of all...

Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.

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As quoted in Theaetetus by Plato section 152a
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 5 days ago
The question of questions for mankind-the...

The question of questions for mankind-the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other-is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.

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Ch.2, p. 71
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 1 week ago
When shall we open our minds...

When shall we open our minds to the conviction that the ultimate reality of the world is neither matter nor spirit, is no definite thing, but a perspective?

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 5 days ago
We are He, since we are...

We are He, since we are His body and since He was made man in order to be our Head.

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p.432
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
2 months 3 weeks ago
We indeed, who are beings of...

We indeed, who are beings of finite powers, are forced to make use of instruments. And the use of an instrument sheweth the agent to be limited by rules of another's prescription, and that he cannot obtain his end but in such a way, and by such conditions. Whence it seems a clear consequence, that the supreme unlimited agent useth no tool or instrument at all. The will of an Omnipotent Spirit is no sooner exerted than executed, without the application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the First Cause, who is Himself above all limitation or prescription whatsoever.

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Philonous to Hylas. The Second Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
I would take to be quite...

I would take to be quite a fool any man who would make a book full of laws and statutes for an apple tree telling it how to bear apples and not thorns, when the tree is able by its own nature to do this better than the man with all his books can describe and demand.

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p. 89
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
The wise will determine from the...

The wise will determine from the gravity of the case; the irritable from sensibility to oppression; the high-minded from disdain and indignation at abusive power in unworthy hands.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
When Fortune is on our side,...

When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.

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Maxim 275
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 2 weeks ago
Agriculture is now a motorized food...

Agriculture is now a motorized food industry, the same thing in its essence as the production of corpses in the gas chambers and the extermination camps, the same thing as blockades and the reduction of countries to famine, the same thing as the manufacture of hydrogen bombs.

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Four Lectures on Technology
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
This body which…

This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

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Essai sur l'histoire générale et sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations, Chapter 70, 1756
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 1 week ago
We know nothing accurately in reality,...

We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it.

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Freeman (1948), p. 142
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 1 week ago
I am not bound….

I am not bound over to swear allegiance to any master; where the storm drives me I turn in for shelter.

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Book I, epistle i, line 14
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
When we have chosen the vocation...

When we have chosen the vocation in which we can contribute most to humanity, burdens cannot bend us because they are only sacrifices for all. Then we experience no meager, limited, egotistic joy, but our happiness belongs to millions, our deeds live on quietly but eternally effective, and glowing tears of noble men will fall on our ashes.

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Writings of the Young Marx on Philosophy and Society, L. Easton, trans. (1967), p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 3 weeks ago
Given that annihilation of nature in...

Given that annihilation of nature in its entirety is impossible, and that death and dissolution are not appropriate to the whole mass of this entire globe or star, from time to time, according to an established order, it is renewed, altered, changed, and transformed in all its parts.

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Fifth Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
2 weeks 1 day ago
No effective blueprint [of a political...

No effective blueprint [of a political alternative to Empire] will ever arise from a theoretical articulation such as ours.

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206
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
1 week 3 days ago
"Normal science" means research firmly based...

"Normal science" means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
Magister Adler was deeply moved by...

Magister Adler was deeply moved by something higher, but now when he wants to express his thoughts in words, wants to communicate, he confuses the subjective with the objective, his altered subjective state with an external event, the dawning of a light upon him with the coming into existence of something new outside him, the falling of the veil from his eyes with his having had a revelation. Subjectively his emotion is carried to the extreme; he wants to select the most powerful expression to describe it and by means of a mental deception grasps the objective qualification: having had a revelation.

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Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 3 weeks ago
Staying as I am…

Staying as I am, one foot in one country and the other in another, I find my condition very happy, in that it is free.

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Letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine, Paris, June/July 1648
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 6 days ago
Just as eunuchs will never know...

Just as eunuchs will never know aesthetics as applied to the selection of beautiful women, so neither will pure rationalists ever know ethics, nor will they ever succeed in defining happiness, for happiness is a thing that is lived and felt, not a thing that is reasoned or defined.

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Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 months 1 week ago
There is no substitute for the...

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

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A Severed Head (1961); 1976, p. 181.
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
3 months 1 week ago
To one who asked what was...

To one who asked what was the proper time for lunch, he said, "If a rich man, when you will; if a poor man, when you can." Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 40

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
A Frenchman is self-assured because he...

A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally, both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth - science - which he himself has invented but which is for him the absolute truth.

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Bk. IX, ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
2 months 1 week ago
All the living hold together, and...

All the living hold together, and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.

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Creative Evolution (1907), Chapter III. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1911, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 3 weeks ago
What I have given in the...

What I have given in the second book on the nature and properties of curved lines, and the method of examining them, is, it seems to me, as far beyond the treatment in the ordinary geometry, as the rhetoric of Cicero is beyond the a, b, c of children.

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Letter to Marin Mersenne (1637) as quoted by D. E. Smith & M. L. Latham Tr. The Geometry of René Descartes
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Political ideals must...
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Main Content / General
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 days ago
I began to practice 'meditation', sitting...

I began to practice 'meditation', sitting cross-legged for hours, staring straight in front of me. The result was a sudden and total transformation of my inner-being. There was a sense of freedom from my personality -- from the being called Colin Wilson who was born in Leicester in 1931. I felt that 'he' was a series of responses and reactions, of ambitions and frustrations. But after half an hour of staring straight in front of me, of concentrating my attention 'at the root of my eyebrows', I felt in control of his responses and frustrations. This control brought such a sense of exhilaration and satisfaction that I often sneaked away from other people to spend just five minutes sitting cross-legged; when I was working as a labourer on a building site, I would find a quiet spot and, while the others were having a smoke, would sit in a position that could quickly be changed to an ordinary sitting posture if someone came by . . .

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p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are at the present time...

There are at the present time two great nations in the world-allude to the Russians and the Americans- All other nations seem to have nearly reached their national limits, and have only to maintain their power; these alone are proceeding-along a path to which no limit can be perceived.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 6 days ago
I have read descriptions of Paradise...

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.

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No. 125. (Usbek writing to Rhedi)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
What defects women have, we must...

What defects women have, we must check them for in private, gently by word of mouth, for woman is a frail vessel.

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Table Talk, quoted in Luther On "Woman"
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 4 weeks ago
Sir Henry Wotton used to say...

Sir Henry Wotton used to say that critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.

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No. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 days ago
A farewell does not dilute the...

A farewell does not dilute the presence of the past; it may make an even deeper presence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 1 week ago
A person may be greedy, envious,...

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental effort of will.

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"Moral Luck" (1976), p. 32.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 1 week ago
To those who hold abstractly to...

To those who hold abstractly to Hegel's political philosophy, Hobhouse replies that the very fact of class society, the patent influence of class interests on the state, renders it impossible to designate the state as expressive of the real will of individuals as a whole. 'Wherever a community is governed by one class or one race, the remaining class or race is permanently in the position of having to take what it can get.'

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P. 396
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 1 week ago
Mediocrity in poets…

Mediocrity in poets has never been tolerated by either men, or gods, or booksellers.

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Lines 372-373
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
Rational and kindly behavior tends to...

Rational and kindly behavior tends to produce good results and these results remain good even when the behavior which produced them was itself produced by a pill.

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"Brave New World Revisited" (1956), in Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1977), p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
The imagination is always restless and...

The imagination is always restless and suggests a variety of thoughts, and the will, reason being laid aside, is ready for every extravagant project; and in this State, he that goes farthest out of the way, is thought fittest to lead, and is sure of most followers: And when Fashion hath once Established, what Folly or craft began, Custom makes it Sacred, and 'twill be thought impudence or madness, to contradict or question it. He that will impartially survey the Nations of the World, will find so much of the Governments, Religion, and Manners brought in and continued amongst them by these means, that they will have but little Reverence for the Practices which are in use and credit amongst Men.

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First Treatise of Government
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 2 days ago
It was Rousseau who was largely...

It was Rousseau who was largely responsible for the problem by giving currency to the idea that freedom can exist without responsibility and discipline.

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Introductory Essay, p. xx
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 5 days ago
In matters that are so obscure...

In matters that are so obscure and far beyond our vision, we find in Holy Scripture passages which can be interpreted in very different ways without prejudice to the faith we have received. In such cases, we should not rush in headlong and so firmly take our stand on one side that, if further progress in the search for truth justly undermines this position, we too fall with it.

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I, xviii, 37. Modern translation by J.H. Taylor
Philosophical Maxims
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