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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 1 week ago
Money is coined liberty, and so...

Money is coined liberty, and so it is ten times dearer to the man who is deprived of freedom. If money is jingling in his pocket, he is half consoled, even though he cannot spend it. But money can always and everywhere be spent, and, moreover, forbidden fruit is sweetest of all.

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The House of the Dead (1862) ch. 1; as translated by Constance Garnett (1915), p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
We make choices, decisions, as long...

We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide, we can do nothing but regret the surface...

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Just now
I say that where the public...

I say that where the public morality is concerned it may be the duty of the State to interfere with the contracts of individuals... It must then, I think, be admitted that, where health is concerned, and where morality is concerned, the State is justified in interfering with the contracts of individuals.

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Speech in the House of Commons (22 May 1846), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), p. 442
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 1 week ago
We may become the makers of...

We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
Truth that is naked is the...

Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes; this is partly because it gets unobstructed hold of the hearer's mind without his being distracted by secondary thoughts, and partly because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or deceived by the arts of rhetoric, but that the whole effect is got from the thing itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 4 days ago
In the state of nature…

In the state of nature, Profit is the measure of Right.

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De Cive
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
As far as physicians go, chance...

As far as physicians go, chance is more valuable than knowledge.

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Ch. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 1 week ago
It is the mark of an...

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 2 weeks ago
The worst readers are those who...
The worst readers are those who behave like plundering troops: they take away a few things they can use, dirty and confound the remainder, and revile the whole.
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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 3 weeks ago
Envy has been, is, and shall...

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bernard Williams
Bernard Williams
3 weeks 4 days ago
Positivism ... implies the double falsehood...

Positivism ... implies the double falsehood that no interpretation is needed, and that it is not needed because the story which the positivist writer tells, such as it is, is obvious. The story he or she tells is usually a bad one, and its being obvious only means that it is familiar.

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p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
Man needs difficulties; they are necessary...

Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health.

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The Transcendent Function ("Die Transzendente Funktion") (1916) Volume 8: Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 1 week ago
Should it be proved that woman...

Should it be proved that woman is naturally weaker than man, from whence does it follow that it is natural for her to labour to become still weaker than nature intended her to be? Arguments of this cast are an insult to common sense, and savour of passion. The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is to be hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger, and though conviction may not silence many boisterous disputants, yet, when any prevailing prejudice is attacked, the wise will consider, and leave the narrow-minded to rail with thoughtless vehemence at innovation.

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
Hatred comes from the heart; contempt...

Hatred comes from the heart; contempt from the head; and neither feeling is quite within our control.

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"Psychological Observations"
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
Reason is the greatest enemy that...

Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but--more frequently than not--struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.

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353
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
The only non-Christians who seemed to...

The only non-Christians who seemed to me really to know anything were the Romantics; and a good many of them were dangerously tinged with something like religion, even at times with Christianity. The upshot of it all could nearly be expressed in a perversion of Roland's great line in the Chanson: 'Christians are wrong, but all the rest are bores.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 2 weeks ago
I could never divide myself from...

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgement for not agreeing with me in that, from which perhaps within a few days I should dissent myself.

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Section 6
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 1 week ago
At my age one's got to...

At my age one's got to be sincere. Lying's too much effort.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 1 week ago
No psychic value can disappear without...

No psychic value can disappear without being replaced by another of equivalent intensity.

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p. 209
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 days ago
Wherefore think ye evil in your...

Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts? For whether is easier, to say, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (then saith he to the sick of the palsy,) Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house.

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9:4-6 (KJV) Said to some scribes.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 weeks 6 days ago
The function of knowledge in the...

The function of knowledge in the decision-making process is to determine which consequences follow upon which of the alternative strategies. It is the task of knowledge to select from the whole class of possible consequences a more limited subclass, or even (ideally) a single set of consequences correlated with each strategy.

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p. 78.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks 3 days ago
Religion, mysticism and magic all spring...

Religion, mysticism and magic all spring from the same basic 'feeling' about the universe: a sudden feeling of meaning, which human beings sometimes 'pick up' accidentally, as your radio might pick up some unknown station. Poets feel that we are cut off from meaning by a thick, lead wall, and that sometimes for no reason we can understand the wall seems to vanish and we are suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of the infinite interestingness of things.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 weeks ago
Thus the sum…

Thus the sum of things is ever being renewed, and mortal creatures live dependent one upon another. Some species increase, others diminish, and in a short space the generations of living creatures are changed and, like runners, pass on the torch of life.

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Book II, line 75 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 1 week ago
There is a contrast of primary...

There is a contrast of primary significance between Augustine and Pelagius. The former crushes everything in order to rebuild it again. The other addresses himself to man as he is. The first system, therefore, in respect to Christianity, falls into three stages: creation – the fall and a consequent condition of death and impotence; a new creation - whereby man is placed in a position where he can choose; and then, if he chooses - Christianity. The other system addresses itself to man as he is (Christianity fits into the world). From this is seen the significance of the theory of inspiration for the first system; from this also is seen the relationship between the synergistic and the semipelagian conflict. It is the same question, only that the syngeristic struggle has its presupposition in the new creation of the Augustinian system.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
The first characteristic of the human...

The first characteristic of the human species is man's ability, as a rational being, to establish character for himself, as well as for the society into which nature has placed him. This ability, however, presupposes an already favorable natural predisposition and an inclination to the good in man, because the evil is really without character (since it is at odds with itself, and since it does not tolerate any lasting principle within itself)

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 246
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 2 weeks ago
It might be wiser for me...

It might be wiser for me to avoid Camarina and say nothing of theologians. They are a proud, susceptible race. They will smother me under six hundred dogmas. They will call me heretic and bring thunderbolts out of their arsenals, where they keep whole magazines of them for their enemies. Still they are Folly's servants, though they disown their mistress. They live in the third heaven, adoring their own persons and disdaining the poor crawlers upon earth. They are surrounded with a bodyguard of definitions, conclusions, corollaries, propositions explicit, and propositions implicit. ...They will tell you how the world was created. They will show you the crack where Sin crept in and corrupted mankind.

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as quoted by James Anthony Froude, Life and Letters of Erasmus: Lectures Delivered at Oxford 1893-4
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Anyone who actually admires money as...

Anyone who actually admires money as the most precious thing in life, and rests his security on it to the extent of believing that as long as he possesses it he will be happy, has fashioned too many false gods for himself. Too many people put money in the place of Christ, as if it alone has the key to their happiness or unhappiness.

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p. 100
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
I simply don't think it is...

I simply don't think it is reasonable to use IQ tests to produce results of questionable value, which may then serve to justify racists in their own minds and to help bring about the kinds of tragedies we have already witnessed earlier in this century.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 4 days ago
The young man who has not...

The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

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Ch. 3, P. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 week 6 days ago
To say that a life is...

To say that a life is grievable is to claim that a life, even before it is lost, is, or will be, worthy of being grieved on the occasion of its loss; the life has value in relation to mortality. One treats a person differently if one brings the sense of the grievability of the other to one's ethical bearing toward the other. If an other's loss would register as a loss, would be marked and mourned, and if the prospect of loss is feared, and precautions are thus taken to safeguard that life from harm or destruction, then our very ability to value and safeguard a life depends upon an ongoing sense of its grievability-the conjectured future of a life as an indefinite potential that would be mourned were it cut short or lost.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 1 week ago
Scientists have pushed back the horizon...

Scientists have pushed back the horizon of time from the biblical 6,000 years to 4,600,000,000 years for the age of Earth a 760,000-fold increase.

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 1 day ago
He used to reason as follows:...

He used to reason as follows: 'Everything belongs to the gods; the wise are friends of the gods; friends hold all things in common; ergo, everything belongs to the wise.'

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 37, as reported in Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes as translated by Robin Hard (Oxford: 2012), p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
5 days ago
My friends, I tell you that...

My friends, I tell you that hitherto you have been prevented from even knowing what happiness really is, solely in consequence of the errors - gross errors - that have been combined with the fundamental notions of every religion that has hitherto been taught to men. And, in consequence, they have made man the most inconsistent, and the most miserable being in existence. By the errors of these systems he has been made a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic or a miserable hypocrite; and should these qualities be carried, not only into the projected villages, but into Paradise itself, a Paradise would no longer be found!

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Statement (21 August 1817), as quoted by Jim Herrick, in "Bradlaugh and Secularism: 'The Province of the Real'"
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 weeks ago
All of this that is happening...

All of this that is happening to me, and happening to others about me, is it reality or is it fiction? May not all of it perhaps be a dream of God, or of whomever it may be, which will vanish as soon as He wakes? And therefore when we pray to Him, and cause canticles and hymns to rise to Him, is it not that we may lull Him to sleep, rocking the cradle of His dreams? Is not the whole liturgy, of all religions, only a way perhaps of soothing God in His dreams, so that He shall not wake and cease to dream us?

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Niebla [Mist]
Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
1 month 2 weeks ago
Doth the reality of sensible things...

Doth the reality of sensible things consist in being perceived? or, is it something distinct from their being perceived, and that bears no relation to the mind?

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Philonous to Hylas
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
Outside the academic establishment, the "far-reaching...

Outside the academic establishment, the "far-reaching change in all our habits of thought" is more serious. It serves to coordinate ideas and goals with those exacted by the prevailing system, to enclose them in the system, and to repel those which are irreconcilable with the system. The reign of such a one-dimensional reality does not mean that materialism rules, and that the spiritual, metaphysical, and bohemian occupations are petering out. On the contrary, there is a great deal of "Worship together this week," "Why not try God," Zen, existentialism, and beat ways of life, etc. But such modes of protest and transcendence are no longer contradictory to the status quo and no longer negative. They are rather the ceremonial part of practical behaviorism, its harmless negation, and are quickly digested by the status quo as part of its healthy diet.

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pp. 13-14
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 1 week ago
Something that is merely negative creates...

Something that is merely negative creates nothing.

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Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 532.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 4 days ago
If you have money, don't lend...

If you have money, don't lend it at interest. Rather, give it to someone from whom you won't get it back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 day ago
A young man should serve...

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 days ago
It is now generally accepted that...

It is now generally accepted that the roots of our ethics lie in patterns of behavior that evolved among our pre-human ancestors, the social mammals and that we retain within our biological nature elements of these evolved responses. We have learned considerably more about these responses, and we are beginning to to understand how they interact with our capacity to reason.

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Preface To The 2011 edition, p. xi
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
1 month 2 days ago
We are sorely deficient in talking...

We are sorely deficient in talking with each other and listening to each other. We lack mobility, criticism and self-criticism. We incline to doctrinism. What makes it worse is that so many people do not really want to think. They want only slogans and obedience. They ask no questions and they give no answers, except by repeating drilled-in phrases. They can only assert and obey, neither probe nor apprehend. Thus they cannot be convinced, either. How shall we talk with people who will not go where others probe and think, where men seek independence in insight and conviction?

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
I have described religion…

I have described religion as the metaphysics of the people.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 week ago
For the first half of geological...

For the first half of geological time our ancestors were bacteria. Most creatures still are bacteria, and each one of our trillions of cells is a colony of bacteria.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 2 weeks ago
Canned laughter

Canned laughter: After some supposedly funny or witty remark you can hear the laughter and applause included in the soundtrack of the show itself - here we have the exact counterpart of the Chorus in classical tragedy; it is here that we have to look for 'living Antiquity.' That is to say, why this laughter? The first possible answer - that it serves to remind us when to laugh - is interesting enough, because it implies the paradox that laughter is a matter of duty and not of some spontaneous feeling; but this answer is not sufficient because we do not usually laugh. The only correct answer would be that the Other - embodied in the television set - is relieving us even of our duty to laugh - is instead laughing for us. So even if, tired from a hard days stupid work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the television screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the medium of the other, we had a really good time.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 1 week ago
"How then shall they have the...

"How then shall they have the play-games you allow them, if none must be bought for them?" I answer, they should make them themselves, or at least endeavour it, and set themselves about it. ...And if you help them where they are at a stand, it will more endear you to them than any chargeable toys that you shall buy for them.

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Sec. 130
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
Once he saw...
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Main Content / General
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
1 month 2 days ago
When language is used without true...

When language is used without true significance, it loses its purpose as a means of communication and becomes an end in itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 1 week ago
We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft...

We are, like Nebuchadnezzar, dethroned, bereft of reason, and eating grass like an ox.

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Prospects
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
Regarding the plan to collect my...

Regarding the plan to collect my writings in volumes, I am quite cool and not at all eager about it because, roused by a Saturnian hunger, I would rather see them all devoured. For I acknowledge none of them to be really a book of mine, except perhaps the one On the Bound Will and the Catechism.

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Letter to Wolfgang Capito
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
He was as great as a...

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

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Said of Napoleon (1842)
Philosophical Maxims
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