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Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
2 weeks 6 days ago
We have come to see that...

We have come to see that Huxley was right when he said that "a man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes." The evidences of these greater difficulties lie all about us: in the brave and brilliant atheists who have defied the Methodist God, and have become very nervous; in the women who have emancipated themselves from the tyranny of fathers, husbands, and homes, and with the intermittent but expensive help of a psychoanalyst, are now enduring liberty as interior decorators; in the young men and women who are world-weary at twenty-two; in the multitudes who drug themselves with pleasure; in the crowds enfranchised by the blood of heroes who cannot be persuaded to take an interest in their destiny; in the millions, at last free to think without fear of priest or policeman, who have made the moving pictures and the popular newspapers what they are.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
Everything comes in time to him...

Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.

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Bk. X, ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 5 days ago
Perhaps it is not true to...

Perhaps it is not true to speak of God as a judge at all, or of his judgements. There does not seem to be really any evidence that His worlds are places of trial but rather schools, place of training, or that He is a judge but rather a Teacher, a Trainer, not in the imperfect sense in which men are teachers, but in the sense of His contriving and adapting His whole universe for one purpose of training every intelligent being to be perfect. ... I think God would not be the Almighty, the All-Wise, the All-Good, if he were the judge, in the sense that the evangelical and Roman Catholic Christians impute judgement to him. ... Our business is, I think, to understand, not to judge. What He does, as far as we know, to rule by law down to the most infinitesimally small portion of His universe, not to judge.

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As quoted in Florence Nightingale's Theology: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale (2002) by Lynn McDonald, pps. 177-179
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 2 weeks ago
Felicity is a continual progress of...

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter.The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way, which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in diverse men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired.

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The First Part, Chapter 11, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
What is that one crucifixion compared...

What is that one crucifixion compared to the daily kind any insomniac endures?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is error only, and not...

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
3 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy makes progress not by becoming...

Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.

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Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
A word, once dissected, no longer...

A word, once dissected, no longer signifies anything, is nothing. Like a body that, after an autopsy, is less than a corpse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
The child learns to believe...

The child learns to believe a host of things. I.e. it learns to act according to these beliefs. Bit by bit there forms a system of what is believed, and in that system some things stand unshakeably fast and some are more or less liable to shift. What stands fast does so, not because it is intrinsically obvious or convincing; it is rather held fast by what lies around it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 1 day ago
The one is ready even to...

The one is ready even to sacrifice itself for the good of others, the other to plunge into peril provided it drags others with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
The flesh spreads, further and further,...

The flesh spreads, further and further, like a gangrene upon the surface of the globe. It cannot impose limits upon itself, it continues to be rife despite its rebuffs, it takes its defeats for conquests, it has never learned anything. It belongs above all to the realm of the Creator, and it is indeed in the flesh that He has projected His maleficent instincts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 3 weeks ago
The death of dogma is the...

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

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As quoted in Faith Or Fact (1897) by Henry Moorehouse Taber, p. 86
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4 days ago
Violence, less and less embarrassed by...

Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world, unconcerned that its infertility has been demonstrated and proved many times in history. What is more, it is not simply crude power that triumphs abroad, but its exultant justification. The world is being inundated by the brazen conviction that power can do anything, justice nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
2 weeks 5 days ago
The familial union presents as well...

The familial union presents as well a mixture of inconvenient ages and characters that inhibit conversation. Morality engenders a frigid atmosphere, as in all places where it reigns.

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Oeuvres completetes de Charles Fourier
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
The mass of men lead lives...

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no practice of nonviolence...

There is no practice of nonviolence that does not negotiate fundamental ethical and political ambiguities, which means that "nonviolence" is not an absolute principle, but the name of an ongoing struggle.

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p. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Without God, everything is nothingness; and...

Without God, everything is nothingness; and with God? Supreme nothingness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 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
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
They who know the truth...

They who know the truth are not equal to those who love it, and they who love it are not equal to those who delight in it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 2 weeks ago
Everybody needs his memories. They keep...

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.

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Mr. Sammler's Planet (1970) [Penguin Classics, 2004, ISBN 0-142-43783-2], p. 156
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
"They must understand that we can...

"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive. Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutúzov. He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled, the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge.

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Bk XIII, Ch. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months ago
Divinity reveals herself in all things......

Divinity reveals herself in all things... everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
The world neither ever saw, nor...

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

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Chapter X, Part I.
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month ago
Hayek watched the interwar collapse with...

Hayek watched the interwar collapse with horror, as Keynes did, and shared many of Keynes's liberal values. What he failed to understand is that these values cannot be renewed by applying any formula or doctrine, or by trying to construct an ideal liberal regime in which freedom is insulated from the contingencies of politics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is in applied psychology, if...

It is in applied psychology, if anywhere, that today we should be modest and grant validity to a number of apparently contradictory opinions; for we are still far from having anything like a thorough knowledge of the human psyche, that most challenging field of scientific enquiry. For the present we have merely more or less plausible opinions that defy reconciliation.

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p. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 days ago
The law of nature teaches me...

The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence: With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any man born on St. Innocents Day. I never had a bribe or reward in my eye or thought when pronouncing judgment or order. I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the King.

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(17 April 1621) Quoted by Baron John Campbell (1818), J. Murray in "The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England"
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 6 days ago
When I consider the short duration...

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the small space which I fill, or even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know nothing of me, I am terrified, and wonder that I am here rather than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, or now rather than then. Who has set me here? By whose order and design have this place and time been destined for me? It is not well to be too much at liberty. It is not well to have all we want.How many kingdoms know nothing of us! The eternal silence of these infinite spaces alarms me.

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"The Misery of Man Without God": "Man's Disproportion," The Thoughts of Blaise Pascal translated from the Text of M. Auguste Molinier Tr. C. Kegan Paul, 1885
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 weeks 4 days ago
I do not feel obliged to...

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 1 week ago
The ambassador of Russia and the...

The ambassador of Russia and the grandees who accompanied him were so gorgeous that all London crowded to stare at them, and so filthy that nobody dared to touch them. They came to the court balls dropping pearls and vermin.

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Vol. V, ch. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
Suso has even left a diagrammatic...

Suso has even left a diagrammatic picture of the relations subsisting between Godhead, triune God and creatures. In this very curious and interesting drawing a chain of manifestation connects the mysterious symbol of the Divine Ground with the three Persons of the Trinity, and the Trinity in turn is connected in a descending scale with angels and human beings. These last, as the drawing vividly shows, may make one of two choices. They can either live the life of the outer man, the life of the separative selfhood; in which case they are lost (for, in the words of the Theologia Germanica, "nothing burns in hell but the self"). Or else they can identify themselves with the inner man, in which case it becomes possible for them, as Suso shows, to ascend again, through unitive knowledge, to the Trinity and even, beyond the Trinity, to the ultimate Unity of the Divine Ground.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 days ago
I have written a good number...

I have written a good number of drafts and small reflections. They are not waiting for the last touch but for the sunlight to wake them up.

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B 29
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 1 week ago
With the sense of sight, the...

With the sense of sight, the idea communicates the emotion, whereas, with sound, the emotion communicates the idea, which is more direct and therefore more powerful.

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Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
I sit astride life like a...

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

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p. 36e
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Let's go dance under the elms...

Let's go dance under the elms:

Step lively, young lassies.

Let's go dance under the elms:

Gallants, take up your pipes.

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Le devin du village, 1752
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 week ago
Cantare amantis est. Singing is of...

Singing is of a lover.

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Variant translation: To sing is characteristic of the lover. 336
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 1 day ago
To be angry with a man...

To be angry with a man is to hate him; to hate him is to wish him harm; but to wish him well, even if he has done you harm, is the mark of a great mind.

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Seneca, On Anger (De Ira) 2.34.5 (translated by John W. Basore)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 2 weeks ago
How do we account for the...

How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium - in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Taxing is an easy business. Any...

Taxing is an easy business. Any projector can contrive new impositions, any bungler can add to the old.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 1 week ago
Horace and aristotle…

Horace and Aristotle told us of the virtues of their fathers, and the vices of their own time, and authors down through the centuries have told us the same. If they were right, men would now be bears.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 1 day ago
Although, said he…

"Although," said he [Cato], "all the world has fallen under one man's sway, although Caesar's legions guard the land, his fleets the sea, and Caesar's troops beset the city gates, yet Cato has a way of escape; with one single hand he will open a wide path to freedom. This sword, unstained and blameless even in civil war, shall at last do good and noble service: the freedom which it could not give to his country it shall give to Cato!

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De Providentia (On Providence), 2.10; translation by John W. Basore
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 days 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
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
3 weeks 6 days ago
Though the framework is libertarian and...

Though the framework is libertarian and laissez-faire, individual communities within it need not be, and perhaps no community within it will choose to be so. Thus, the characteristics of the framework need not pervade the individual communities. In this laissez-faire system it could turn out that though they are permitted, there are no actually functioning "capitalist" institutions; or that some communities have them and others don't or some communities have some of them, or what you will.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; The Framework as Utopian Common Ground, p. 320
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 1 week ago
All parties seem to be agreed...

All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
The smartphone seems to be a...

The smartphone seems to be a playground, but it is a digital panopticon.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 1 day ago
The English are a dumb people....

The English are a dumb people. They can do great acts, but not describe them.

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Bk. III, ch. 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
4 days ago
The scene of action of reality...

The scene of action of reality is not a three-dimensional Euclidean space but rather a four-dimensional world, in which space and time are linked together indissolubly. However deep the chasm may be that separates the intuitive nature of space from that of time in our experience, nothing of this qualitative difference enters into the objective world which physics endeavors to crystallize out of direct experience. It is a four-dimensional continuum, which is neither "time" nor "space". Only the consciousness that passes on in one portion of this world experiences the detached piece which comes to meet it and passes behind it as history, that is, as a process that is going forward in time and takes place in space.

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Ch. 3 "Relativity of Space and Time"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Philosophy's error....
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Main Content / General
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 day ago
The strangest, most generous, and proudest...

The strangest, most generous, and proudest of all virtues is true courage.

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Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
3 months 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
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 1 day ago
Meanwhile, hold fast to this thought,...

Meanwhile, hold fast to this thought, and grip it close: yield not to adversity; trust not to prosperity; keep before your eyes the full scope of Fortune's power, as if she would surely do whatever is in her power to do.

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Philosophical Maxims
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