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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
What pride to discover that nothing...

What pride to discover that nothing belongs to you - what a revelation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 3 days ago
Without doubt, if we are to...

Without doubt, if we are to go back to that ultimate, integral experience, unwarped by the sophistications of theory, that experience whose elucidation is the final aim of philosophy, the flux of things is one ultimate generalization around which we must weave our philosophical system.

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Pt. II, ch. 10, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 weeks ago
Knowledge more than a Means.
Knowledge more than a Means. Also without this passion I refer to the passion for knowledge, science would be furthered: science has hitherto increased and grown up without it. The good faith in science, the prejudice in its favour, by which States are at present dominated (it was even the Church formerly), rests fundamentally on the fact that the absolute inclination and impulse has so rarely revealed itself in it, and that science is regarded not as a passion, but as a condition and an "ethos." Indeed, amour-plaisir of knowledge (curiosity) often enough suffices, amour-vanity suffices, and habituation to it, with the afterthought of obtaining honour and bread; it even suffices for many that they do not know what to do with a surplus of leisure, except to continue reading, collecting, arranging, observing and narrating; their "scientific impulse" is their ennui.
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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 2 weeks ago
He begins to think for himself...

He begins to think for himself and meets Nineteenth-century Rationalism Which can explain away religion by any number of methods.

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Pilgrim's Regress 19-20
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 5 days ago
The immeasurable beauty of life is...

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said.

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(Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 2 weeks ago
Yet a man may love a...

Yet a man may love a paradox, without losing either his wit or his honesty.

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"Walter Savage Landor", from The Dial, xii, 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 3 days ago
A precise language awaits a completed...

A precise language awaits a completed metaphysics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
Enthusiasm is supernatural serenity. Pearls of...

Enthusiasm is supernatural serenity.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 5 days ago
Imagination, which is the social sense,...

Imagination, which is the social sense, animates the inanimate and anthropomorphizes everything; it humanizes everything and even makes everything identical with man. And the work of man is to supernaturalize Nature - that is to say, to make it divine by making it human, to help it to become conscious of itself, in short. The action of reason, on the other hand, is to mechanize or materialize.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
His power to adore is responsible...

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
The superior man, extensively studying...

The superior man, extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, may thus likewise not overstep what is right.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 3 weeks ago
The state of nature has a...

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. II, sec. 6
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
2 months 3 weeks ago
I think, therefore I am.

I think, therefore I am.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 2 weeks ago
Everything that depends on the action...

Everything that depends on the action of nature is by nature as good as it can be, and similarly everything that depends on art or any rational cause, and especially if it depends on the best of all causes. To entrust to chance what is greatest and most noble would be a very defective arrangement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 2 weeks ago
The abolition of private property has...

The abolition of private property has become not only possible but absolutely necessary. ... The outcome can only be the victory of the proletariat.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 3 weeks ago
Were a stranger to drop on...

Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

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Demea to Philo, Part X
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 6 days ago
Use harms and even….

Use harms and even destroys beauty. The noblest function of an object is to be contemplated.

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Niebla [Mist]
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
3 months 1 day ago
One man will say a thing...

One man will say a thing of himself without comprehending its excellence, in which another will discern a marvelous series of conclusions, which makes us affirm that it is no longer the same expression, and that he is no more indebted for it to the one from whom he has learned it, than a beautiful tree belongs to the one who cast the seed, without thinking of it, or knowing it, into the fruitful soil which caused its growth by its own fertility.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week ago
What an incalculable debt do we...

What an incalculable debt do we owe to that little speck of land, Greece.-The principles of taste, the finest models of composition, the doctrines and the glorious examples to which we owe political freedom, the arts, the sciences, architecture, sculpture, every thing that is great and splendid in literature and politics, must be considered as ultimately derived from that little peninsula.

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Letter to Zachary Macaulay (8 September 1821), quoted in The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, Volume I: 1807-February 1831, ed. Thomas Pinney (1974), p. 163
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 3 days ago
No man is free who is...

No man is free who is not master of himself.

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Fragment 35 (Oldfather translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 2 weeks ago
Mathematics is as little a natural...

Mathematics is as little a natural science as philosophy is one of the humanities. Philosophy in its essence belongs as little in the philosophical faculty as mathematics belongs to natural science. To house philosophy and mathematics in this way today seems to be a blemish or a mistake in the catalog of the universities. Plato put over the entrance to his Academy the words: "Let no one who has not grasped the mathematical enter here!"

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p. 69,75
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
2 months 3 weeks ago
So blind is the curiosity by...

So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes, having no reason to hope for success, but merely being willing to risk the experiment of finding whether the truth they seek lies there.

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Rules for the Direction of the Mind: IV
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
The last peculiarity of consciousness to...

The last peculiarity of consciousness to which attention is to be drawn in this first rough description of its stream is that it is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 weeks 1 day ago
But if you can breed cattle...

But if you can breed cattle for milk yield, horses for running speed, and dogs for herding skill, why on Earth should it be impossible to breed humans for mathematical, musical or athletic ability? Objections such as "these are not one-dimensional abilities" apply equally to cows, horses and dogs and never stopped anybody in practice. I wonder whether, some 60 years after Hitler's death, we might at least venture to ask what the moral difference is between breeding for musical ability and forcing a child to take music lessons. Or why it is acceptable to train fast runners and high jumpers but not to breed them. I can think of some answers, and they are good ones, which would probably end up persuading me. But hasn't the time come when we should stop being frightened even to put the question? From the Afterword, The Herald

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Glasgow, Scotland, 20 November 2006
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
3 months 1 week ago
We can open our hearts to...

We can open our hearts to God, but only with Divine help.

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q. 24, art. 15, ad 2
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
Where there is a lull of...

Where there is a lull of truth, an institution springs up. But the truth blows right on over it, nevertheless, and at length blows it down.

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p. 494
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
2 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
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 days ago
The outsider, Haller says, is a...

The outsider, Haller says, is a self-divided man; being self-divided, his chief desire is to be unified. He is selfish as a man with a lifelong raging toothache.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
Just now
The death of dogma....
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Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 2 days ago
The mother tongue is propaganda. The...

The mother tongue is propaganda.

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The University of Windsor review, Volumes 1-2, 1965, p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 2 weeks ago
Confession should be only in secret...

Confession should be only in secret before God, who knows everything anyway, and thus it could remain hidden in one's innermost being. But at a dinner and a woman! A dinner-it is not some hidden, remote place, nor is the lighting dim, nor is the mood like that among graves, nor are the listeners silent or invisibly present.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
But more correctly: The fact...

But more correctly: The fact that I use the word "hand" and all the other words in my sentence without a second thought, indeed that I should stand before the abyss if I wanted so much as to try doubting their meanings - shows that absence of doubt belongs to the essence of the language-game, that the question "How do I know..." drags out the language-game, or else does away with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
In Oran, as elsewhere, for want...

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 3 days ago
For no fact….

For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight, And there is nothing that exists so great or marvellous That over time mankind does not admire it less and less.

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Book II, lines 1026-1029 (tr. Stallings)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
Let no man..

Let no man be ashamed to speak what he is not ashamed to think.

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Book III, Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 3 weeks ago
In ease of body and peace...

In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for.

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Chap. I.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is no logical impossibility in...

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

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The Analysis of Mind (1921), Lecture IX: Memory, p. 159
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week ago
Perhaps no person can be a...

Perhaps no person can be a poet, or even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
What is marvelous is that each...

What is marvelous is that each day brings us a new reason to disappear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 3 weeks ago
How many things served us…

How many things served us yesterday for articles of faith, which today are fables for us?

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Ch. 27. Of Friendship
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is no author to whom...

There is no author to whom my father thought himself more indebted for his own mental culture, than Plato, or whom he more frequently recommended to young student. I can bear similar testimony in regard to myself. The Socratic method, of which the Platonic dialogues are the chief example, is unsurpassed as a discipline for correcting the errors, and clearing up the confusions incident to the intellectus sibi permissus...

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(pp. 21-22)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 2 weeks ago
Our minds thus grow in spots;...

Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.

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Lecture V, Pragmatism and Common Sense
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 weeks 4 days ago
The error arises from the learned...

The error arises from the learned jurists deceiving themselves and others, by asserting that government is not what it really is, one set of men banded together to oppress another set of men, but, as shown by science, is the representation of the citizens in their collective capacity.

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Chapter VI, Attitude of Men of the Present Day to War Variant translation: Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the...

It is remarkable that, notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 2 weeks ago
Homer has taught all other poets...

Homer has taught all other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 3 weeks ago
Morality is herd instinct in the...
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 1 week ago
Verily I say unto you, I...

Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

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8:10-12 (KJV) Said about the officer.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks ago
As the animus is partial to...

As the animus is partial to argument, he can best be seen at work in disputes where both parties know they are right. Men can argue in a very womanish way, too, when they are anima-possessed and have thus been transformed into the animus of their own anima.

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Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.29
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 2 weeks ago
All that is solid melts into...

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

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Section 1, paragraph 18, lines 12-14.
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 2 weeks ago
For an author to write as...

For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible.

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The Art of Literature
Philosophical Maxims
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