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Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Human beings, viewed as behaving systems,...

Human beings, viewed as behaving systems, are quite simple. The apparent complexity of our behavior over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which we find ourselves.

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p. 53.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
There is no need to worry...

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

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"The Expanding Mental Universe", Saturday Evening Post, 7/1/1959
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 3 weeks ago
If you have had your attention...

If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

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Ch. 3: "The Century of Genius", pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 1 week ago
To the Deity must be left...

To the Deity must be left the task of infinite perfection, while to us poor, weak, incapable mortals, there was no rule of conduct so safe as experience.

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Speech in the House of Commons (6 May 1791), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXIX (1817), column 388
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
What does love look like? It...

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

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As quoted in Quote, Unquote (1977) by Lloyd Cory, p. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 2 weeks ago
But the exceedingly foul deed of...

But the exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches, follows. Onan must have been a malicious and incorrigible scoundrel. This is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes a Sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime to produce semen and excite the woman, and to frustrate her at that very moment.

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Luther's works Vol. 7 (1965), Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 38-44
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 1 week ago
I have tried to set forth...

I have tried to set forth a theory that enables us to understand and to assess these feelings about the primacy of justice. Justice as fairness is the outcome: it articulates these opinions and supports their general tendency.

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Chapter IX, Section 87, p. 586
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
Through failures one becomes intelligent; but...

Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 100
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 2 weeks ago
Chronic boredom - compensated or uncompensated...

Chronic boredom - compensated or uncompensated - constitutes one of the major psychopathological phenomena in contemporary technotronic society, although it is only recently that it has found some recognition.

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p. 273
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
The advantage of a bad memory...
The advantage of a bad memory is that one can enjoy the same good things for the first time several times.
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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 6 days ago
We begin again to structure the...

We begin again to structure the primordial feelings...from which 3000 years of literacy divorced us. We begin again to live a myth.

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(p. 17)
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 1 day ago
No realistic, sane person goes around...

No realistic, sane person goes around Chicago without protection.

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Humboldt's Gift (1975), p. 452
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 week ago
Men became scientific because they expected...

Men became scientific because they expected law in Nature; and they expected law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator.

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Ch. 3: "The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism"
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 2 weeks ago
Hurl your calumnies…

Hurl your calumnies boldly; something is sure to stick.

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De Augmentis Scientiarum
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
Social and economic...
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John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 week ago
A pupil from whom nothing is...

A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do never does all he can.

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(p. 32)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 week ago
The conscience of a man of...

The conscience of a man of our circle, if he retains but a scrap of it, cannot rest, and poisons all the comforts and enjoyments of life supplied to us by the labour of our brothers, who suffer and perish at that labour. And not only does every conscientious man feel this himself (he would be glad to forget it, but cannot do so in our age) but all the best part of science and art - that part which has not forgotten the purpose of its vocation - continually reminds us of our cruelty and of our unjustifiable position. The old firm justifications are all destroyed; the new ephemeral justifications of the progress of science for science's sake and art for art's sake do not stand the light of simple common sense. Men's consciences cannot be set at rest by new excuses, but only by a change of life which will make any justification of oneself unnecessary as there will be nothing needing justification.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 1 week ago
I shall need only myself to...

I shall need only myself to be happy.

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As quoted in The prophetic voice, 1758-1778 by Lester G. Crocke, p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 1 week ago
I urge you to please notice...

I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, "If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

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Knowing What's Nice, an essay from In These Times
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 4 days ago
For a woman, the typical danger...

For a woman, the typical danger emanating from the unconscious comes from above, from the "spiritual" sphere personified by the animus, whereas for a man it comes from the chthonic realm of the "world and woman," i.e., the anima projected on to the world.

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"A Study in the Process of Individuation" (1934) In CW 9, Part I: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. P. 559
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 3 days ago
We think of beauty as being...

We think of beauty as being most worthy of reverence. But what is most worthy of reverence lights up only where the magnificent strength to revere is alive. To revere is not a thing for the petty and lowly, the incapacitated and underdeveloped. It is a matter of tremendous passion; only what flows from such passion is in the grand style.

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p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months ago
This language controls by reducing the...

This language controls by reducing the linguistic forms and symbols of reflection, abstraction, development, contradiction; by substituting images for concepts. It denies or absorbs the transcendent vocabulary; it does not search for but establishes and imposes truth and falsehood.

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p. 103
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 1 week ago
1. Find a subject you care...

1. Find a subject you care about.2. Do not ramble, though.3. Keep it simple.4. Have the guts to cut.5. Sound like yourself.6. Say what you mean to say.7. Pity the readers.

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As quoted in Science Fictionisms (1995), compiled by William Rotsler
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 1 week ago
But he, with these burthens on...

But he, with these burthens on him, planned, commenced, and completed, the History of India; and this in the course of about ten years, a shorter time than has been occupied (even by writers who had no other employment) in the production of almost any other historical work of equal bulk, and of anything approaching to the same amount of reading and research. And to this is to be added, that during the whole period, a considerable part of almost every day was employed in the instruction of his children: in the case of one of whom, myself, he exerted an amount of labour, care, and perseverance rarely, if ever, employed for a similar purpose, in endeavouring to give, according to his own conception, the highest order of intellectual education.

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(p. 4)
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
3 months 1 week ago
Music is a hidden….

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

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Letter to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Since it is Reason which shapes...

Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.

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Book I, ch. 17, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
3 days ago
Progressives on the left have shown...

Progressives on the left have shown themselves willing to abandon liberal values in pursuit of social justice objectives. There has been a sustained intellectual attack on liberal principles over the past three decades coming out of academic pursuits like gender studies, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, and queer theory, that deny the universalistic premises underlying modern liberalism. The challenge is not simply one of intolerance of other views or "cancel culture" in the academy or the arts. Rather, the challenge is to basic principles that all human beings were born equal in a fundamental sense, or that a liberal society should strive to be color-blind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 4 days ago
More generally it is completely unrealistic...

More generally it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.

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When Religion Steps on Science's Turf, Free Inquiry
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
There are all kinds of sources...

There are all kinds of sources of our knowledge; but none has authority ... The fundamental mistake made by the philosophical theory of the ultimate sources of our knowledge is that it does not distinguish clearly enough between questions of origin and questions of validity.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
3 months 1 week ago
Art may make a suit of...

Art may make a suit of clothes; but nature must produce a man.

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Part I, Essay 15: The Epicurean
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 days ago
A serious and good philosophical work...

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

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As quoted in "A View from the Asylum" in Philosophical Investigations from the Sanctity of the Press (2004), by Henry Dribble, p. 87
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 1 week ago
Take the happiest man, the one...

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

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Lectures VI and VII, "The Sick Soul"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 weeks 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
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 weeks ago
When I was a child, the...

When I was a child, the institution of war, which, by then, had been in existence for perhaps about five thousand years, was still being taken for granted by most people in the World as a normal and acceptable fact of life. One small religious community, the Society of Friends, was at that time singular in condemning war as immoral and in consequently refusing to have any part or lot in war-making.

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Experiences (New York: Oxford UP, 1969) pt. 2, sect. 4
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 3 weeks ago
In this one man, the whole...

In this one man, the whole Church has been assumed by the Word.

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p.434
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
1 month 3 weeks ago
Berdyaev has been categorized as a...

Berdyaev has been categorized as a Christian existentialist and a mystical philosopher. He never avoided the label of "mystic" since he felt it was the mystics of the world who came closest to understanding the role of spirit. Many of the philosophers he quoted were mystics - Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius and especially Jacob Boehme. The influence of Dostoevsky was central to his thought. Nevertheless, Berdyaev is not a naively irrational thinker; he brings an enormous fund of philosophical knowledge combined with the profundity of his own thought to support his view of existence. There are no dogmas in his writings to offend one's intellectual conscience.

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Richard Schain, in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005), Ch. 7 : Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev - A Champion of the Spirit, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 4 weeks ago
Only after Winter comes do we...

Only after Winter comes do we know that the pine and the cypress are the last to fade.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 6 days ago
Attention spans get very weak at...

Attention spans get very weak at the speed of light, and that goes along with a very weak identity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 week ago
It is obvious that "obscenity" is...

It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks the magistrate."

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Ch. 10: Recrudescence of Puritanism
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 1 week ago
Whoever does not philosophize for the...

Whoever does not philosophize for the sake of philosophy, but rather uses philosophy as a means, is a sophist.

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"Selected Aphorisms from the Athenaeum (1798)", Dialogue on Poetry and Literary Aphorisms, Ernst Behler and Roman Struc, trans. (Pennsylvania University Press:1968) #96
Philosophical Maxims
Dante Alighieri
Dante Alighieri
3 months 3 weeks ago
She is the sum….

She is the sum of nature's universe.To her perfection all of beauty tends.

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Chapter XIV, lines 49-50 (tr. Barbara Reynolds)
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 4 days ago
If the sensation that precedes the...

If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and so on ad infinitum. Now, since there is a time [period], say a year, at the end of which an idea is no longer ipso facto present, it follows that this is true of any finite interval, however short.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 1 week ago
The only fence against the world...

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter'd by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.

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Sec. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
2 months 4 weeks ago
Be cheerful while you are alive....

Be cheerful while you are alive.

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Maxim no. 34.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
2 months 1 week ago
What is all that men have...

What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 4 weeks ago
Self-taught poverty is a help toward...

Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.

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Stobaeus, iv. 32a. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
3 days ago
You may take great comfort from...

You may take great comfort from the fact that suffering inwardly for the sake of truth proves abundantly that one loves it and marks one out as being of the elect.

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Saint Sulpice and the Hidden God.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 1 week ago
I assert(1) There is no method...

I assert(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth [i.e., verification] of a scientific hypothesis...(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', in the sense of the probability calculus.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 1 week ago
If your little savage were left...

If your little savage were left to himself and be allowed to retain all his ignorance, he would in time join the infant's reasoning to the grown man's passion, he would strangle his father and sleep with his mother.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months 2 days ago
Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other...

Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation.

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Habermas (1972) "Sprachspiel, intention und Bedeutung. Zu Motiven bei Sellars und Wittgenstein". In R.W. Wiggerhaus (Ed.) Sprachanalyse and Soziologie. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp). p. 334 This is called the paradoxical achievement of intersubjectivity
Philosophical Maxims
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