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Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
5 months 3 days ago
It is no longer the moral,...

It is no longer the moral, religious, spiritual condition of the people that is our concern, but their physical, practical, economical condition, as regulated by public laws.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
8 months 1 week ago
How does it become a man...

How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answered that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
8 months 1 week ago
We assert then that nothing has...

We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and - if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it - we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
9 months 1 week ago
Fate is not in man but...

Fate is not in man but around him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
4 months 1 week ago
Retire into thyself. The rational principle...

Retire into thyself. The rational principle which rules has this nature, that it is content with itself when it does what is just, and so secures tranquility.

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VII, 28
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
8 months 2 weeks ago
While loving glory…

While loving glory so much how can you persist in a plan which will cause you to lose it?

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Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), transl. Richard Aldington, letter 130 from Voltaire to Frederick II of Prussia, October 1757.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
9 months 2 days ago
To rank the effort above the...

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
6 months 5 days ago
One's language is a spiritual location....

One's language is a spiritual location. It houses your soul. If you were born in America all essential communication, your deepest conversations with yourself, will be in English. ... Your English is the principal instrument of your humanity.

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Part I, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
8 months 3 days ago
There can be no brotherhood when...

There can be no brotherhood when some nations indulge in previously unheard of luxuries, while others struggle to stave off famine.

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Chapter 4, Reason, p. 119
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
4 months 1 week ago
Thus night with all her snares...

Thus night with all her snares passed through the upper worldand baited all heads sweetly, fed all foolish hopes,for night can bring to men all shrewish day denies,wrapped as a gift in the green leaves of opiate dream.

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Book VII, line 356
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
8 months 2 weeks ago
Europeans are awakening more and more...

Europeans are awakening more and more to a sense that beasts have rights, in proportion as the strange notion is being gradually overcome and outgrown, that the animal kingdom came into existence solely for the benefit and pleasure of man. This view, with the corollary that non-human living creatures are to be regarded merely as things, is at the root of the rough and altogether reckless treatment of them, which obtains in the West.

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Part III, Ch. VIII, 7, p. 225
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
6 months 1 week ago
One of the many effects of...

One of the many effects of television on radio has been to shift radio from an entertainment medium into a kind of nervous information system.

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(p. 298)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
8 months 1 week ago
If there is equality, it is...

If there is equality, it is in His love, not in us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
8 months 1 week ago
Of course, he who has put...

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

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par. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
4 months 3 weeks ago
For a country to have a...

For a country to have a great writer ... is like having another government. That's why no régime has ever loved great writers, only minor ones.

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Innokenty, in Ch. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
8 months 1 week ago
The bourgeois public sphere may be...

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

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p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
5 months 3 days ago
No man who has once heartily...

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

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Bk. I, ch. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
9 months 1 week ago
It is the failing of a...

It is the failing of a certain literature to believe that life is tragic because it is wretched. Life can be magnificent and overwhelming that is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would be almost easy to live. And M. Sartre's hero does not perhaps give us the real meaning of his anguish when he insists on those aspects of man he finds repugnant, instead of basing his reasons for despair on certain of man's signs of greatness. The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
6 months 3 weeks ago
Every human being is the natural...

Every human being is the natural guardian of his own importance.

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Ch. 9: "Science and Philosophy", p. 195
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
6 months 3 weeks ago
The natural impulse of the primitive...

The natural impulse of the primitive man to strike back, to avenge a wrong, is out of date. Instead, the civilized man, stripped of courage and daring, has delegated to an organized machinery the duty of avenging his wrongs, in the foolish belief that the State is justified in doing what he no longer has the manhood or consistency to do.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
4 months 1 week ago
Attractions take place between bodies, affinities...

Attractions take place between bodies, affinities between the particles of a body. The former may be compared to the alliances of states, the latter to the ties of family.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
4 months 1 week ago
All significant concepts of the modern...

All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts not only because of their historical development-in which they were transferred from theology to the theory of the state, whereby, for example, the omnipotent God became the omnipotent lawgiver-but also because of their systematic structure, the recognition of which is necessary for a sociological consideration of these concepts. The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
8 months 1 week ago
It is certain that we cannot...

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 1 week ago
And what can be more....
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Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
6 months 5 days ago
Americans must be the most sententious...

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

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The Jefferson Lectures (1977), p. 139
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
7 months 1 week ago
You have dreamed of setting the...

You have dreamed of setting the world ablaze, and you have not even managed to communicate your fire to words, to light up a single one!

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
8 months 1 week ago
When the husk gets separated from...

When the husk gets separated from the kernel, almost all men run after the husk and pay their respects to that. It is only the husk of Christianity that is so bruited and wide spread in this world; the kernel is still the very least and rarest of all things. There is not a single church founded on it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
5 months 3 days ago
All greatness is unconscious, or it...

All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
9 months 2 days ago
No matter how busy you may...

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
1 year 1 week ago
Objective thought is prayer

Tibetan prayer wheels: you write a prayer on a paper, put the rolled paper on a wheel, and turn it automatically, without thinking. In this way, the wheel itself is praying for me, instead of me - or more precisely, I myself am praying through the medium of the wheel. The beauty of it all is that in my psychological inferiority I can think about whatever I want, I can yield to the most dirty and obscene fantasies, and it does not matter because - to use a good old Stalinist expression - 'whatever I am thinking, objectively I am praying.'

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
8 months 1 week ago
Now in all of us, however...

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us - they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.

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Lecture VIII, "The Divided Self, and the Process of its Unification"
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 months 3 weeks ago
Mucius put his hand into the...

Mucius put his hand into the fire. It is painful to be burned; but how much more painful to inflict such suffering upon oneself!

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Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
5 months 2 weeks ago
Today those who peer into the...

Today those who peer into the future want only relief from anxiety. Unable to face the prospect that the cycles of war will continue, they are desperate to find a pattern of improvement in history. It is only natural that believers in reason, lacking any deeper faith and too feeble to tolerate doubt, should turn to the sorcery of numbers. Happily there are some who are ready to assist them. Just as the Elizabethan magus transcribed tables shown to him by angels, the modern scientific scryer deciphers numerical auguries of angels hidden in ourselves.

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In the Puppet Theatre: Dark mirrors, Hidden Angels and an Algorithmic Prayer-Wheel (p. 99)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
7 months 5 days ago
Understanding being nothing else, but conception...

Understanding being nothing else, but conception caused by Speech.

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The First Part, Chapter 4, p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
5 months 3 days ago
Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we...

Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

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p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
7 months 2 weeks ago
The greatness of America lies not...

The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.

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Chapter XIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
7 months 2 weeks ago
As the past has ceased to...

As the past has ceased to throw its light upon the future, the mind of man wanders in obscurity. Variant translation: When the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness.

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Book Four, Chapter VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
8 months 1 week ago
We are observing ourselves being observed...

We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as though in a mirror, we find that we can in fact apprehend nothing of that mirror but its lusterless back. The other side of a psyche.

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Las Menias
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 months 3 weeks ago
The best ideas…

The best ideas are common property.

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Line 11.
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
8 months 2 days ago
In peace, as a wise man….

In peace, as a wise man, he should make suitable preparation for war.

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Book II, satire ii, line 111
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
4 months 4 weeks ago
Every love to which there clings...

Every love to which there clings but the smallest speck of obligation is an unselfish love, and, so far as this speck reaches, a possessedness. He who believes that he owes the object of his love anything loves romantically or religiously.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 260
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
9 months 1 week ago
He kept the middle way, that's...

He kept the middle way, that's all: he was the type of man for whom one has an affection of the mild but steady order - which is the kind that wears best.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
8 months 3 weeks ago
A constant element of enjoyment must...

A constant element of enjoyment must be mingled with our studies, so that we think of learning as a game rather than a form of drudgery, for no activity can be continued for long if it does not to some extent afford pleasure to the participant.

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Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
6 months 3 weeks ago
Could it be that sexual perversion...

Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?

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p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 months 3 weeks ago
But how much more….

But how much more highly do I think of these men! They can do these things, but decline to do them. To whom that ever tried have these tasks proved false? To what man did they not seem easier in the doing? Our lack of confidence is not the result of difficulty. The difficulty comes from our lack of confidence.

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Also translated as: It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, but because we do not dare, things are difficult. Verse 26
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
8 months 1 week ago
What interest, zest, or excitement can...

What interest, zest, or excitement can there be in achieving the right way, unless we are enabled to feel that the wrong way is also a possible and a natural way, - nay, more, a menacing and an imminent way? And what sense can there be in condemning ourselves for taking the wrong way, unless we need have done nothing of the sort, unless the right way was open to us as well? I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad.

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The Dilemma of Determinism, 1884
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
5 months 6 days ago
As we can not….

As we can not give a general definition of energy, the principle of the conservation of energy signifies simply that there is something which remains constant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
7 months 1 week ago
Wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the...

Wherever big industries displaced manufacture, the bourgeoisie developed in wealth and power to the utmost and made itself the first class of the country. The result was that wherever this happened, the bourgeoisie took political power into its own hands and displaced the hitherto ruling classes, the aristocracy, the guildmasters, and their representative, the absolute monarchy. The bourgeoisie annihilated the power of the aristocracy, the nobility, by abolishing the entailment of estates - in other words, by making landed property subject to purchase and sale, and by doing away with the special privileges of the nobility. It destroyed the power of the guildmasters by abolishing guilds and handicraft privileges. In their place, it put competition - that is, a state of society in which everyone has the right to enter into any branch of industry, the only obstacle being a lack of the necessary capital.

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Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
5 months 3 weeks ago
Everyone knows that time is Death,...

Everyone knows that time is Death, that Death hides in clocks. Imposing another time powered by the Clock of the Imagination, however, can refuse his law. Here, freed of the Grim Reaper's scythe, we learn that pain is knowledge and all knowledge pain.

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"Death"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
7 months 1 week ago
We replace God as best we...

We replace God as best we can; for every god is good, provided he perpetuates in eternity our desire for a crucial solitude. . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
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