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Antisthenes
Antisthenes
4 months 1 week ago
Ill repute is a good thing….

Ill repute is a good thing and much the same as pain.

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§ 5
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 weeks ago
One of the most difficult tasks...

One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.

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Jung and the Story of Our Time, Laurens van der Post
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 1 week ago
The end of government is to...

The end of government is to make the governed and the governors happy. That government then is thebest, which in practice produces the greatest happiness to the greatest number; including those who govern, and those who obey.

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Essay Fourth, The Principles of the Former Essays Applied to Government
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 3 weeks ago
One has attained to mastery when...
One has attained to mastery when one neither goes wrong nor hesitates in the performance.
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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 2 weeks ago
But if the labourers could live...

But if the labourers could live on air they could not be bought at any price.

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Vol. I, Ch. 24, Section 4, pg. 657.
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 1 week ago
This "knowing what to do"... is...

This "knowing what to do"... is a matter of having the right purpose, the purpose appropriate to the situation in hand... The one who "knows what to do" is the one on whom you can rely to make the best shot at success, whenever success is possible.

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"Knowledge and Feeling" (p. 35)
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy's position with regard to science,...

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
In the same year in which...

In the same year in which I began Latin, I made my first commencement in the Greek poet with the Iliad. After I had made some progress in this, my father put Pope's translation into my hands. It was the first English verse I had cared to read, and it became one of the books in which for many years I most delighted: I think I must have read it from twenty to thirty times through. I should not have thought it worth while to mention a taste apparently so natural to boyhood, if I had not, as I think, observed that the keen enjoyment of this brilliant specimen of narrative and versification is not so universal with boys, as I should have expected both à priori and from my individual experience.

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(p. 10)
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks ago
Like the body...
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Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 4 weeks ago
Like the body the soul can...

Like the body the soul can be healthy, youthful, and so on. It can undergo pain, thirst, and hunger. In this physical life, that is, in the visible world, we avoid whatever would defile or deform the body; how much more, then, ought we to avoid that which would tarnish the soul?

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
2 weeks 1 day ago
I consider, that as generally as...

I consider, that as generally as Chymists are wont to appeal to Experience, and as confidently as they use to instance the several substances separated by the Fire from a Mixt Body, as a sufficient proof of their being its component Elements: Yet those differing Substances are many of them farr enough from Elementary simplicity, and may be yet look'd upon as mixt Bodies, most of them also retaining, somewhat... of the Nature of those Concretes whence they were forc'd.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
Every one who has a heart...

Every one who has a heart and eyes sees that you, working men, are obliged to pass your lives in want and in hard labor, which is useless to you, while other men, who do not work, enjoy the fruits of your labor-that you are the slaves of these men, and that this ought not to exist.

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To the Working People, Complete Works, trans. Leo Wiener, Vol 24, p. 129
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 2 weeks ago
What do you say to the...

What do you say to the elections in the factory districts? Once again the proletariat has discredited itself terribly... [I]t cannot be denied that the increase of working-class voters has brought the Tories more than their mere additional percentage and has improved their relative position.

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Letter to Karl Marx (18 November 1868), quoted in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels: Selected Correspondence, 1846-1895 (1942), pp. 253-254
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 months 6 days ago
I have always….

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
All media work us over completely....

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical.

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(p. 26)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
Reason is a harmonising, controlling force...

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 2 weeks ago
The mask, like the side-show freak,...

The mask, like the side-show freak, is mainly participatory rather than pictorial in its sensory appeal.

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(p. 352)
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 3 days ago
The significance of feminist movement (when...

The significance of feminist movement (when it is not co-opted by opportunistic, reactionary forces) is that it offers a new ideological meeting ground for the sexes, a space for criticism, struggle, and transformation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
4 months 1 week ago
Being asked what learning is…..

Being asked what learning is the most necessary, he replied, "How to get rid of having anything to unlearn.

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" § 7
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
If we owe to it [civil...

If we owe to it [civil society] any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now though civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was) its continuance is under a permanent standing covenant, coexisting with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind.

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p. 442
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 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
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 weeks 6 days ago
It is not you talking. Nor...

It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black. Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
As long as you live…

As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 3 weeks ago
"...the church of England, when she...

"...the church of England, when she baptizes any one, makes him not a Christian [...] the church of England is mistaken, and makes none but socinians Christians"

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279
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 1 week ago
We know of no great revolution...

We know of no great revolution which might not have been prevented by compromise early and graciously made... [I]n all movements of the human mind which tend to great revolutions there is a crisis at which moderate concession may amend, conciliate, and preserve.

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'Hallam', The Edinburgh Review (September 1828), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. I (1843), p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
My dear Wormwood, I note what...

My dear Wormwood, I note what you say about guiding your patient's reading and taking care that he sees a good deal of his materialist friend. But are you not being a trifle naive? It sounds as if you suppose that argument was the way to keep him out of the enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier.

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Letter I
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 1 week ago
It's hard for writers to get...

It's hard for writers to get on with their work if they are convinced that they owe a concrete debt to experience and cannot allow themselves the privilege of ranging freely through social classes and professional specialties. A certain pride in their own experience, perhaps a sense of the property rights of others in their experience, holds them back.

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Facts That Put Fancy to Flight (1962), p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 weeks ago
Justice, however, never was in reality...

Justice, however, never was in reality administered gratis in any country. Lawyers and attornies, at least, must always be paid by the parties; and, if they were not, they would perform their duty still worse than they actually perform it.

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Chapter I, Part II, p. 778.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 2 weeks ago
Truth lives, in fact, for the...

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

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Lecture VI, Pragmatism's Conception of Truth
Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
1 month 4 days ago
Nothing is hidden so much that...

Nothing is hidden so much that it wouldn't be revealed through its fruit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is only one enduring happiness...

There is only one enduring happiness in life-to live for others.

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Part 1, chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
No man lives without jostling and...

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
When I happen to be satisfied...

When I happen to be satisfied with everything, even God and myself, I immediately react like the man who, on a brilliant day, torments himself because the sun is bound to explode in a few billion years.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 months 1 week ago
In one point I fully agree...

In one point I fully agree with the gentlemen to whose general views I am opposed. I feel with them, that it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people. We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 months 2 days ago
It was the normal working of...

It was the normal working of the antisuccess mechanism. In our overcrowded modern world a hit record, a best-selling book, a successful film, can reach more people in a week than Shakespeare or Beethoven reached in a whole lifetime. And so fame has become the most romantic, the most desirable of all commodities, the dream for which a modern Faust might sell his soul to the Devil. Once attained, fame is never as easy to hold on to as some people believe. The people who achieve fame by some accident of fashion are usually forgotten within a week; the ones who remain on top have to work to stay there. But few people understand this. The result is that anyone who achieves sudden notoriety arouses envy and hostility. The greater the success, the greater the reaction.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
I used to ask myself, over...

I used to ask myself, over a coffin: "What good did it do the occupant to be born?," I now put the same question about anyone alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
4 months 1 day ago
Love is a God, who cooperates...

Love is a God, who cooperates in securing the safety of the city.

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As quoted in Deipnosophists by Athenaeus, xiii. 561c.
Philosophical Maxims
John Herschel
John Herschel
4 weeks 1 day ago
To ascend to the origin of...

To ascend to the origin of things and speculate on the creation, is not the business of the natural philosopher. An humbler field is sufficient for him in the endeavor to discover, as far as our faculties will permit; what are these primary qualities impressed on matter, and to discover the spirit of the laws of nature

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
3 months 2 weeks ago
He who has thought…

He who has thought most deeply loves what is most alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 week 2 days ago
The really good music, whether...

The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
5 months 2 days ago
It is necessary to show that...

It is necessary to show that there is nothing so little known [as the above rules], nothing more difficult to practice, or nothing more useful and universal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
So that is what hell is….

So that is what hell is. I would never have believed it. You remember: the fire and brimstone, the torture. Ah! the farce. There is no need for torture: Hell is other people.

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Garcin, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
4 months 1 week ago
If things emerged from a spaceship...

If things emerged from a spaceship which we could not be sure were machines or conscious beings, what we were wondering about would have an answer even if the things were so different from anything we were familiar with that we could never discover it. It would depend on whether there was something it was like to be them, not on whether behavioral similarities warranted our saying so. ... [W]e need ... to ask whether experience is present in [the] alien thing[s], ... whether there is something it is like to be them, and ... the answer to that question is what determines whether they are conscious.

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"Panpsychism" (1979), pp. 191-193.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 5 days ago
If a well were sunk at...

If a well were sunk at our feet in the midst of the city of Norwich, the diggers would very soon find themselves at work in that white substance almost too soft to be called rock, with which we are all familiar as "chalk".

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 2 days ago
It is not given to a...

It is not given to a cylinder to move everywhere by its own motion, nor yet to water nor to fire nor to anything else which is governed by nature or an irrational soul, for the things which check them and stand in the way are many. But intelligence and reason are able to go through everything that opposes them, and in such manner as they are formed by nature and as they choose. Place before thy eyes this facility with which the reason will be carried through all things, as fire upwards, as a stone downwards, as a cylinder down an inclined surface, and seek for nothing further. For all other obstacles either affect the body only, which is a dead thing; or, except for opinion and the yielding of reason itself, they do not crush nor do any harm of any kind; for if they did, he who felt it would immediately become bad.

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X, 33
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
A man of Intellect, of real...

A man of Intellect, of real and not sham Intellect, is by the nature of him likewise inevitably a man of nobleness, a man of courage, rectitude, pious strength; who, even because he is and has been loyal to the Laws of this Universe, is initiated into discernment of the same; to this hour a Missioned of Heaven; whom if men follow, it will be well with them; whom if men do not follow, it will not be well. Human Intellect, if you consider it well, is the exact summary of Human Worth; and the essence of all worth-ships and worships is reverence for that same.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
But how foolish it is to...

But how foolish it is to set out one's life, when one is not even owner of the morrow!

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
I do not know but it...

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

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p. 491
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
I went to Salt Lake City...

I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.

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Letter to C. P. Sanger, 23 December, 1929
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 4 weeks ago
Libraries are as the shrine where...

Libraries are as the shrine where all the relics of the ancient saints, full of true virtue, and that without delusion or imposture, are preserved and reposed.

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Philosophical Maxims
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