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Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
5 months 1 week ago
In the case of colors, there...

In the case of colors, there is a tridimensional spread of feelings. Originally all feelings may have been connected in the same way, and the presumption is that the number of dimensions was endless. For development essentially involves a limitation of possibilities. But given a number of dimensions of feeling, all possible varieties are obtainable by varying the intensities of the different elements.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
5 months 2 days ago
The inversion of external compulsion into...

The inversion of external compulsion into the compulsion of conscience ... produces the machine-like assiduity and pliable allegiance required by the new rationality.

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p. 34.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
5 months 2 days ago
You do not attain to knowledge...

You do not attain to knowledge by remaining on the shore and watching the foaming waves, you must make the venture and cast yourself in, you must swim, alert and with all your force, even if a moment comes when you think you are losing consciousness; in this way, and in no other, do you reach anthropological insight.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 1 week ago
To the existence of banks of...

To the existence of banks of discount for cash... there can be no objection, because there can be no danger of abuse, and they are a convenience both to merchants and individuals. I think they should even be encouraged, by allowing them a larger than legal interest on short discounts, and tapering thence, in proportion as the term of discount is lengthened, down to legal interest on those of a year or more. Even banks of deposit, where cash should be lodged, and a paper acknowledgment taken out as its representative, entitled to a return of the cash on demand, would be convenient for remittances, travelling persons, etc. But, liable as its cash would be to be pilfered and robbed, and its paper to be fraudulently re-issued, or issued without deposit, it would require skilful and strict regulation.

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ME 13:431
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 1 week ago
If there is anything in the...

If there is anything in the world that can really be called a man's property, it is surely that which is the result of his mental activity.

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Unverified attribution noted in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1993), ed. Suzy Platt, Library of Congress, p. 227
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
5 months 1 week ago
We should not pretend to understand...

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy. Variant translation: We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

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Conclusion, p. 628
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 1 week ago
Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they...

Freud's fanciful pseudo-explanations (precisely because they are brilliant) perform a disservice. (Now any ass has these pictures available to use in "explaining" symptoms of an illness).

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p. 55e
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 months 1 week ago
Alas! in the clothes of the...

Alas! in the clothes of the greatest potentate, what is there but a man?

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The Suicide Club, Story of the Young Man with the Cream Tarts.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
5 months 4 days ago
And whereas many men, by accident...

And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to the Charity of private persons; but to be provided for, (as far-forth as the necessities of Nature require,) by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. For as it is Unchariablenesse in any man, to neglect the impotent; so it is in the Soveraign of a Common-wealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain Charity.

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The Second Part, Chapter 30, p. 181
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 1 week ago
The meaning of a question is...

The meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word "white"?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.

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Philosophical Remarks (1991), Part III (27), pp.66-67
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
7 months 1 day ago
The superior man thinks of...

The superior man thinks of virtue; the small man thinks of comfort. The superior man thinks of the sanctions of law; the small man thinks of favors which he may receive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 1 week ago
I know, indeed, that some honest...

I know, indeed, that some honest men fear that a republican government can not be strong, that this Government is not strong enough; but would the honest patriot, in the full tide of successful experiment, abandon a government which has so far kept us free and firm on the theoretic and visionary fear that this Government, the world's best hope, may by possibility want energy to preserve itself? I trust not.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 1 week ago
It takes two to speak the...

It takes two to speak the truth, - one to speak, and another to hear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
2 months 3 weeks ago
When one says, for example, that...

When one says, for example, that superiority and inferiority is a formation to be found in every human association, though the proposition certainly involves very profound insight into the essence of human nature and human relationship, yet the assertion is so general that it affords little knowledge of particular societary formations. In order to reach such particular knowledge we must study separate types of superiority and inferiority, and we must master the special features of their formation, which in proportion to their definiteness of course lose generality of application.

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p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
6 months 3 weeks 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
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months 2 weeks 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
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 months 5 days ago
Among all the great men who...

Among all the great men who have philosophized about this remarkable effect, I am more astonished at Kepler than at any other. Despite his open and acute mind, and though he has at his fingertips the motions attributed to the earth, he nevertheless lent his ear and his assent to the moon's dominion over the waters, to occult properties, and to such puerilities.

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In regard to Kepler's belief of the moon affecting the tides of the Earth, p. 328
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
4 months 5 days ago
The working classes may be injuriously...

The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways: 1st - When they are neglected in infancy 2nd - When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them. 3rd - When they are paid low wages for their labour.

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Two Memorials on Behalf of the Working Classes
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 2 weeks ago
The most profound joy has more...

The most profound joy has more of gravity than of gaiety in it.

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Book II, Ch. 20
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 3 weeks ago
Show me that the good in...

Show me that the good in life does not depend upon life's length, but upon the use we make of it; also, that it is possible, or rather usual, for a man who has lived long to have lived too little. Say to me when I lie down to sleep: "You may not wake again!" And when I have waked: "You may not go to sleep again!" Say to me when I go forth from my house: "You may not return!" And when I return: "You may never go forth again!"

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 1 week ago
Life is not, and death is...

Life is not, and death is a dream. Suffering has invented them both as self-justification. Man alone is torn between an unreality and an illusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
5 months 1 week ago
The division of Philosopher and Poet...

The division of Philosopher and Poet is only apparent, and to the disadvantage of both. It is a sign of disease, and of a sickly constitution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
5 months 1 week ago
The mores I return to myself,...

The mores I return to myself, the more I divest myself, under the traumatic effect of persecution , of my freedom as a constituted, wilful, imperialistic subject, the more I discover myself to be responsible' the more just I am, the more guilty I am. I am 'in myself' through others.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 102
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 4 weeks ago
But as far as our own...

But as far as our own world is concerned, its gradual leveling-down - or, we might say, its death - appears to be proved. And how will this process affect the fate of our spirit? Will it wane with the degradation of the energy of our world and return to unconsciousness, or will it grow according as the utilizable energy diminishes and by virtue of the very efforts that it makes to retard this degradation and to dominate Nature? - for this it is that constitutes the life of the spirit. May it be that consciousness and its extended support are two powers in contraposition, the one growing at the expense of the other?

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 week ago
There is but one law for...

There is but one law for all, namely, that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity - the law of nature, and of nations.

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28 May 1794
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 1 day ago
Lucidity is not.....
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Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
5 months 1 week ago
Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, James,...

Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Fichte, Hegel, James, Bergson all are united in one earnest attempt, the attempt to reinstate man with his high spiritual claims in a place of importance in the cosmic scheme.

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Edwin Arthur Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1925).
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 week ago
The person who is going to...

The person who is going to preach ought to live in the Christian thoughts and ideas: they ought to be his daily life. If so, this is the view of Christianity, then you, too, will have eloquence enough and precisely that which is needed when you speak extemporaneously without specific preparation. However, it is fallacious eloquence if someone, without otherwise occupying himself with, without living in these thoughts, once in a while sits down and laboriously collects such thoughts, perhaps in the field of literature, and then works them into a well-composed discourse, which is then committed to memory and delivered superbly, with respect both to voice and diction and gestures.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 week ago
Our patience will achieve more than...

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 months 5 days ago
We should like to represent... the......

We should like to represent... the... universe, and... feel... we understood it. We... never can attain this representation: our weakness is too great. But... we desire... to conceive an infinite intelligence... which should see all, and... classify all in its time, as we classify, in our time, the little we see. ...This supreme intelligence would be only a demigod; infinite in one sense... limited in another, since it would have... imperfect recollection of the past... otherwise all recollections would be equally present... and for it there would be no time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 1 week ago
The adjective…

The adjective is the enemy of the substantive.

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Variants: The adjective is the enemy of the noun. Quote attributed in Arthur Schopenhauer (translated by Mrs Rudolf Dircks), Essays of Schopenhauer (2004), Kessinger Publishing, p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 months 1 week ago
In a word, the mass of...

In a word, the mass of the people counts for nothing in every political creation. A people even respects a government only because it is not its own creation. This feeling is engraved on its heart in profound characters. It submits to sovereignty because it senses that it is something sacred it can neither create nor destroy. If, as a consequence of corruption and perfidious suggestions, this preventive sentiment is somehow effaced, if it has the misfortune of believing itself called as a body to reform the State, all is lost. This is why, even in free States, it is extremely important that the men who govern be separated from the mass of the people by that personal respect stemming from birth and wealth.

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p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 1 week ago
What potent blood hath modest May!...

What potent blood hath modest May!

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May-Day
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
6 months 3 weeks ago
And yet it is hard…

And yet it is hard to believe that anything in nature could stand revealed as solid matter.The lightning of heaven goes through the walls of houses,like shouts and speech; iron glows white in fire; red-hot rocks are shattered by savage steam; hard gold is softened and melted down by heat; chilly brass, defeated by heat, turns liquid; heat seeps through silver, so does piercing cold;by custom raising the cup, we feel them bothas water is poured in, drop by drop, above.

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Book I, lines 487-496 (Frank O. Copley)
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
5 months 4 days ago
Yea; have ye never read, Out...

Yea; have ye never read, Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise?

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21:16 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 1 week ago
In general, the art of government…

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.

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"Money", 1770
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
6 months 1 week ago
The defiance of established authority, religious...

The defiance of established authority, religious and secular, social and political, as a world-wide phenomenon may well one day be accounted the outstanding event of the last decade.

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"Civil Disobedience"
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 months 1 week ago
It is a bad plan…

It is a bad plan that admits of no modification.

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Maxim 469
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
3 months 2 weeks ago
The whole world is in some...

The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair. I don't know how many times I've been told "If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning" and "If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning." I said, "Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up."

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Quoted in John Gray at the Writers' Festival, part 1," The Philosopher's Zone, a discussion with Alan Saunders on ABC Radio National
Philosophical Maxims
Sir Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne
5 months 2 weeks ago
Thus is man that great and...

Thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverse elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds.

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Section 34
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 3 weeks ago
The safest general characterization of the...

The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

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Pt. II, ch. 1, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
4 months 3 weeks ago
When one learns something one first...

When one learns something one first performs an act of will, because only by willing to learn can one learn.

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"Vico: Autodidact and Humanist," The Centennial Review, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Summer 1967), p. 340
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 months 5 days ago
Whence do you have it that...

Whence do you have it that the terrestrial globe is so heavy? For my part, either I do not know what heaviness is, or the terrestrial globe is neither heavy nor light, as likewise all other globes of the universe. Heaviness to me (and I believe to Nature) is that innate tendency by which a body resists being moved from its natural place and by which, when forcibly removed therefrom, it spontaneously returns there. Thus a bucketful of water raised on high and set free, returns to the sea; but who will say that the same water remains heavy in the sea, when being set free there, does not move?

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
4 months 2 weeks ago
These papers are all written from...

These papers are all written from what is called a realist perspective. The statements of science are in my view either true or false (although it is often the case that we don't know which) and their truth or falsity does not consist in their being highly derived ways of describing regularities in human experience. Reality is not a part of the human mind; rather the human mind is a part - and a small part at that - of reality.

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"Introduction: Science as approximation to truth"
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
6 months 1 day ago
The man who is tenacious….

The man who is tenacious of purpose in a rightful cause is not shaken from his firm resolve by the frenzy of his fellow citizens clamoring for what is wrong, or by the tyrant's threatening countenance.

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Book III, ode iii, line 1
Philosophical Maxims
Sir Thomas Browne
Sir Thomas Browne
5 months 2 weeks ago
The noblest Digladiation is in the...

The noblest Digladiation is in the Theatre of ourselves.

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Part I, Section XXIV
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
5 months 4 days ago
Religions are not true or false,...

Religions are not true or false, but better or worse.

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This statement is presented in quotes in The Philosophy of Religion and Advaita Vedanta (2008) by Arvind Sharma, p. 216
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
5 months 1 week ago
Thus far, gentlemen, I have been...

Thus far, gentlemen, I have been insisting very strenuously upon what the most vulgar common sense has every disposition to assent to and only ingenious philosophers have been able to deceive themselves about. But now I come to a category which only a more refined form of common sense is prepared willingly to allow, the category which of the three is the chief burden of Hegel's song, a category toward which the studies of the new logico-mathematicians, Georg Cantor and the like, are steadily pointing, but to which no modern writer of any stripe, unless it be some obscure student like myself, has ever done anything approaching to justice.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.59
Philosophical Maxims
Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy
2 months 1 week ago
I envy no quality of the...

I envy no quality of the mind or intellect in others; not genius, power, wit, nor fancy; but, if I could choose what would be most delightful, and, I believe, most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing.

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In Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 241
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 week ago
How absurd men are! They never...

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. They have freedom of thought, they demand freedom of speech.

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Either/Or Part I, Swenson Translation p. 19 Variations include: People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought, which they avoid. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.
Philosophical Maxims
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