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Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 week ago
...it is the peculiar and perpetual...

...it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives...

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Aphorism 46
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 4 days ago
That which distinguishes the Christian narrow...

That which distinguishes the Christian narrow way from the common human narrow way is the voluntary. Christ was not someone who coveted earthly things but had to be satisfied with poverty, no, he chose poverty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 3 weeks ago
Man is an imagining being. Ch....

Man is an imagining being.

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Ch. 2, sect. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
Tell them I've had a wonderful...

Tell them I've had a wonderful life.

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Last words, to his doctor's wife (28 April 1951)-as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 100
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 weeks ago
A man, Mr. Scrymgeour, may fall...

A man, Mr. Scrymgeour, may fall into a thousand perplexities, but if his heart be upright and his intelligence unclouded, he will issue from them all without dishonour.

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The Rajah's Diamond, Story of the House with the Green Blinds.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
Though we may prefer ourselves to...

Though we may prefer ourselves to the universe, we nonetheless loathe ourselves much more than we suspect. If the wise man is so rare a phenomenon, it is because he seems unshaken by the aversion which, like all beings, he must feel for himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
1 month 3 weeks ago
While there may exist no more...

While there may exist no more than the normal extent of disagreement about the meaning of particular terms or theses contained in these works, there is a startling degree of divergence about the central view, the basic political attitude of Machiavelli.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month ago
There is but a step between...

There is but a step between a proud man's glory and his disgrace.

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Maxim 138
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
And neither ought we to be...

And neither ought we to be surprised by the affirmation that the consciousness of the Universe is composed and integrated by the consciousnesses of the beings which form the Universe, by the consciousnesses of all the beings that exist, and that nevertheless it remains a personal consciousness distinct from those which compose it. Only thus is it possible to understand how in God we live, move, and have our being.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
3 weeks 5 days ago
As there are a very great...

As there are a very great variety of religious sects in the world (and which are probably adapted to different constitutions under different circumstances, seeing there are many good and conscientious characters in each), it is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting the inhabitants of the village into one family, that while each faithfully adheres to the principles which he most approves, at the same time all shall think charitably of their neighbours respecting their religious opinions, and not presumptuously suppose that theirs alone are right.

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"Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitants of New Lanark"
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
1 month 2 weeks ago
Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously...

Ideas, cultures, and histories cannot seriously be understood or studied without their force, or more precisely their configurations of power, also being studied.

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
3 months 1 week ago
I pass, at length, to the...

I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.

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Ch. 11, Of Democracy
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 days ago
Of course I base my characters...

Of course I base my characters partly on the people I know-one can't escape it-but fictional characters are oversimplified; they're much less complex than the people one knows.

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Interview, The Paris Review, 1960
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 1 day ago
The method of the twentieth century...

The method of the twentieth century is to use not single but multiple models for experimental exploration - the technique of the suspended judgement.

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(p. 81)
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 days ago
If I had been by nature...

If I had been by nature extremely quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.

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(pp. 30-31)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 days ago
He was not merely a chip...

He was not merely a chip of the old Block, but the old Block itself.

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On Pitt's First Speech (26 February 1781), from Wraxall's Memoirs, First Series, vol. i. p. 342
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months ago
A jealous lover...

A jealous lover of human liberty, deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of Voltaire, and say that, if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him. Ch. II; Variants or variant translations of this statement have also been attributed to Bakunin: The first revolt is against the supreme tyranny of theology, of the phantom of God. As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth. A boss in Heaven is the best excuse for a boss on earth, therefore If God did exist, he would have to be abolished.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 days ago
Men must be governed by those...

Men must be governed by those laws which they love. Where thirty millions are to be governed by a few thousand men, the government must be established by consent, and must be congenial to the feelings and to the habits of the people. That which creates tyranny is the imposition of a form of government contrary to the will of the governed: and even a free and equal plan of government, would be considered as despotic by those who desired to have their old laws and their ancient system.

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Speech in the House of Commons on India (27 June 1781), quoted in The Parliamentary Register: Or, History of the Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, Volume III (1782), pp. 666-667
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
3 weeks 5 days ago
All human accomplishment has the same...

All human accomplishment has the same origin, identically. Imagination is a force of nature. Is this not enough to make a person full of ecstasy? Imagination, imagination, imagination. It converts to actual. It sustains, it alters, it redeems!

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Henderson the Rain King (1959) [Viking/Penguin, 1984, ISBN 0-140-07269-1], ch. XVIII, p. 271
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 days ago
What strikes one here above all...

What strikes one here above all is the crudely empirical conception of profit derived from the outlook of the ordinary capitalist, which wholly contradicts the better esoteric understanding of Adam Smith.

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Vol. II, Ch. X, p. 202.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 days ago
I: My consciousness of the object...

I: My consciousness of the object is only a yet unrecognised consciousness of my production of the representation of an object. Of this production I know no more than that it is I who produce, and thus is all consciousness no more than a consciousness of myself, and so far perfectly comprehensible. Am I in the right? Spirit. Perfectly so ; but whence then is derived the necessity and universality thou hast ascribed to these propositions, to that of causality for instance?

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 days ago
A trade begun with savage war,...

A trade begun with savage war, prosecuted with unheard of cruelty, continued during the mid passage with the most loathsome imprisonment, and ending in perpetual exile and unremitting slavery, was a trade so horrid in all its circumstances, that it was impossible a single argument could be adduced in its favour. On the score of prudence nothing could be said in defence of it, nor could it be justified by necessity, and no case of inhumanity could be justified, but upon necessity; but no such necessity could be made out strong enough to bear out such a traffick. It was the duty of that House, therefore, to put an end to it. If it were said, that the interest of individuals required that it should continue, that argument ought not to be listened to.

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Speech in the House of Commons against the slave trade (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), columns 68-69
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 days ago
The single harmony produced by all...

The single harmony produced by all the heavenly bodies singing and dancing together springs from one source and ends by achieving one purpose, and has rightly bestowed the name not of "disordered" but of "ordered universe" upon the whole.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
In cities men cannot be prevented...

In cities men cannot be prevented from concerting together, and from awakening a mutual excitement which prompts sudden and passionate resolutions. Cities may be looked upon as large assemblies, of which all the inhabitants are members; their populace exercises a prodigious influence upon the magistrates, and frequently executes its own wishes without their intervention. Variant translation: In towns it is impossible to prevent men from assembling, getting excited together and forming sudden passionate resolves. Towns are like great meeting houses with all the inhabitants as members. In them the people wield immense influence over their magistrates and often carry their desires into execution without intermediaries.

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Chapter XVII.
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 weeks 1 day ago
We shall have to share out...

We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.

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Surviving the Future (1971; Oxford UP, 1972) p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 3 weeks ago
In speaking of the fear of...

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don't mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper-namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.

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The Last Word, Oxford University Press, 1997, pp. 130-131.
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 4 days ago
A son is a mirror in...

A son is a mirror in which the father sees himself reflected, and the father is a mirror in which the son sees himself as he will be in the future.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 1 day ago
The professional tends to classify and...

The professional tends to classify and to specialize, to accept uncritically the ground rules of the environment. The ground rules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serves as a pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware.

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(p. 93)
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 3 weeks ago
The demagogues, impresarios of alteracion, who...

The demagogues, impresarios of alteracion, who have already caused the death of several civilizations, harass men so that they shall not reflect, see to it that they are kept herded together in crowds so that they cannot reconstruct their individuality in the one place where it can be reconstructed, which is in solitude.

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p. 33
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 days ago
O tenderly the haughty day Fills...

O tenderly the haughty day Fills his blue urn with fire; One morn is in the mighty heaven, And one in our desire.

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Ode, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Corpses are...

Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 days ago
Kant [...] stated that he had...

Kant [...] stated that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge [...] to make room for faith," but all he had "denied" was knowledge of things that are unknowable, and he had not made room for faith but for thought.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
Our responsibility is...
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Main Content / General
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months 1 week ago
It is not titles that make...

It is not titles that make men illustrious, but men who make titles illustrious.

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Book 3, Ch. 38
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
The genius of democracies is seen...

The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.

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Book One, Chapter XVI.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
The key to a Christian conception...

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realization that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God. The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

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"Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God"
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
3 months 2 weeks ago
For as children….

For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.

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Book II, lines 55-61 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 5 days ago
It goes without saying that apartheid...

It goes without saying that apartheid is offensive. It was adopted, however, as the lesser of two evils. The Afrikaners believe that black majority rule has, in almost every case, led to the collapse of the constitutional government which they brought to South Africa, and upon which their freedoms and privileges - and perhaps even their lives - depend. And it did not seem so very bad to deny to blacks a vote which they would, when in power, promptly deny to themselves.

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'A lift at last for the other Afrikaners', The Times (17 May 1983), p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
To repeat to yourself a thousand...

To repeat to yourself a thousand times a day: 'Nothing on Earth has any worth,' to keep finding yourself at the same point, to circle stupidly as a top, eternally...

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 1 week ago
Coulson Turnbull in Life and Teachings...

Coulson Turnbull in Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno : Philosopher, Martyr, Mystic 1548 - 1600 (1913), p. 41

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 6 days ago
A plant, an animal, the regular...

A plant, an animal, the regular order of nature - probably also the disposition of the whole universe - give manifest evidence that they are possible only by means of and according to ideas; that, indeed, no one creature, under the individual conditions of its existence, perfectly harmonizes with the idea of the most perfect of its kind - just as little as man with the idea of humanity, which nevertheless he bears in his soul as the archetypal standard of his actions; that, notwithstanding, these ideas are in the highest sense individually, unchangeably, and completely determined, and are the original causes of things; and that the totality of connected objects in the universe is alone fully adequate to that idea.

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B 374
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 1 week ago
Everyone is forced to be a philosopher

The age of philosophy in the sense again that we are confronted more and more often with philosophical problems at an everyday level. It is not that you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation. On the contrary, you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophical questions. It is a unique time when everyone is, in a way, forced to be some kind of philosopher.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
These left me in no doubt...

These left me in no doubt that something was trying to communicate with us, but that direct communication would be counterproductive. It seemed to be an important part of the scheme to create a sense of mystery.

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p. 352
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months ago
The pleasures of self-approbation, together with...

The pleasures of self-approbation, together with the right cultivation of all our pleasures, require individual independence. Without independence men cannot become either wise, or useful, or happy.

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"Summary of Principles" 1.3
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
Familiar things happen, and mankind does...

Familiar things happen, and mankind does not bother about them. It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.

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Ch. 1: "The Origins of Modern Science", p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 4 weeks ago
O light! This is the cry...

O light! This is the cry of all the characters of ancient drama brought face to face with their fate. This last resort was ours, too, and I knew it now. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer. Return to Tipasa (1954) Variant translation: In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Crowley wanted to be a magician...

Crowley wanted to be a magician because he wanted power -- power over other people.

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p. 157
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 days ago
This is the terrible fix we...

This is the terrible fix we are in. If the universe is not governed by an absolute goodness, then all our efforts are in the long run hopeless. But if it is, then we are making ourselves enemies to that goodness every day, and are not in the least likely to do any better tomorrow, and so our case is hopeless again....God is the only comfort, He is also the supreme terror: the thing we most need and the thing we most want to hide from.

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Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
For it is easier for a...

For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

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18:25 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
6 days ago
One persistent strand in utopian thinking,...

One persistent strand in utopian thinking, as we have often mentioned, is the feeling that there is some set of principles obvious enough to be accepted by all men of good will, precise enough to give unambiguous guidance in particular situations, clear enough so that all will realize its dictates, and complete enough to cover all problems which actually arise. Since I do not assume that there are such principles, I do not presume that the political realm will whither away. The messiness of the details of a political apparatus and the details of how it is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple utopian scheme.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopian Means and Ends, p. 330
Philosophical Maxims
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