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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 2 days ago
Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing?...

Does anything genuinely beautiful need supplementing? No more than justice does-or truth, or kindness, or humility. Are any of those improved by being praised? Or damaged by contempt? Is an emerald suddenly flawed if no one admires it? Or gold, or ivory, or purple? Lyres? Knives? Flowers? Bushes?

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(Hays translation) IV, 20
Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the field of philosophy Kant...

In the field of philosophy Kant was the first to take the next decisive step towards the point of view that not only the qualities revealed by the senses, but also space and spatial characteristics have no objective significance in the absolute sense; in other words, that space, too, is only a form of our perception.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
6 months 1 week ago
The rulers of Great Britain have,...

The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only.

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Chapter III, Part V, p. 1032 (Last Page).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 5 days ago
We never repent of having eaten...

We never repent of having eaten too little.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
6 months 1 day ago
Is it just I who cannot...

Is it just I who cannot found a school, or can a philosopher never do so?

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p. 69e
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
2 months 3 days ago
No human institution can endure unless...

No human institution can endure unless supported by the Hand which supports all; that is to say, if it is not especially consecrated to Him at its origin. The more it is penetrated with the Divine principle, the more durable it will be. How strange is the blindness of men in our age! They boast of their knowledge, and are ignorant of everything, since they are ignorant of themselves. They know not what they are, nor what they can do. An invincible pride bears them on continually to overthrow every thing which they have not made; and in order to work out new creations, they separate themselves from the source of all existence. Jean-Jacques Rousseau has, however, very well said, Little, vain man, show me thy power, and I will show thee thy weakness. It might be said, with as much truth and more profit, Little, vain man, confess to me thy weakness, and I will show thee thy strength.

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XLVI, p. 130
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 1 day ago
Far from diminishing the appetite for...

Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it; hence the mind feels more comfortable in the society of a braggart than in that of a martyr; and nothing is more repugnant to it than the spectacle of dying for an idea.

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Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
6 months 1 week ago
It is truly a marvelous thing...

It is truly a marvelous thing to consider to what greatness Athens arrived in the space of one hundred years after she freed herself from the tyranny of Pisistratus; but, above all, it is even more marvelous to consider the greatness Rome reached when she freed herself from her kings. The reason is easy to understand, for it is the common good and not private gain that makes cities great. Yet, without a doubt, this common good is observed only in republics, for in them everything that promotes it is practised, and however much damage it does to this or that private individual, those who benefit from the said common good are so numerous that they are able to advance in spite of the inclination of the few citizens who are oppressed by it.

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Book 2, Chapter 2
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
6 months 2 weeks ago
But if one should…

But if one should guide his life by true principles, man's greatest riches is to live on a little with contented mind; for a little is never lacking.

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Book V, lines 1117-1119 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 1 day ago
The way in which the vast...

The way in which the vast mass of the poor are treated by modern society is truly scandalous. They are herded into great cities where they breathe a fouler air than in the countryside which they have left.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
7 months 3 days ago
Then the case is the same...

Then the case is the same in all the other arts for the orator and his rhetoric; there is no need to know the truth of the actual matters, but one merely needs to have discovered some device of persuasion which will make one appear to those who do not know to know better than those who know.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 6 days ago
For I now saw, or thought...

For I now saw, or thought I saw, what I had always before received with incredulity-that the habit of analysis has a tendency to wear away the feelings: as indeed it has, when no other mental habit is cultivated, and the analysing spirit remains without its natural complements and correctives.

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(p. 137)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
6 months ago
A great prison structure was planned,...

A great prison structure was planned, whose different levels would correspond exactly to the levels of the centralized administration. The scaffold, where the body of the tortured criminal had been exposed to the ritually manifested force of the sovereign, the punitive theatre in which the representation of punishment was permanently available to the social body, was replaced by a great enclosed, complex and hierarchized structure that was integrated into the very body of the state apparatus.

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Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
5 months 1 day ago
The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly...

The bourgeoisie has gained a monopoly of all means of existence in the broadest sense of the word. What the proletarian needs, he can obtain only from this bourgeoisie, which is protected in its monopoly by the power of the state. The proletarian is, therefore, in law and in fact, the slave of the bourgeoisie, which can decree his life or death.

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p. 112
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 months 5 days ago
I'm not a Baptist in any...

I'm not a Baptist in any formal way. I go to the Baptist church, where my wife plays the piano, on days of bad weather. On days of good weather, I ramble off into the woods somewhere. I am a person who takes the Gospel seriously, but I have had trouble conforming my thoughts to a denomination.

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The Brian Lehrer Show
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
5 months 3 weeks ago
Cato the elder wondered how that...

Cato the elder wondered how that city was preserved wherein a fish was sold for more than an ox.

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Cato the Elder
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
6 months 1 week ago
If I had as clear an...

If I had as clear an idea of ghosts, as I have of a triangle or a circle, I should not in the least hesitate to affirm that they had been created by God; but as the idea I possess of them is just like the ideas, which my imagination forms of harpies, gryphons, hydras, &c., I cannot consider them as anything but dreams, which differ from God as totally as that which is not differs from that which is.

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Letter to Hugo Boxel (October 1674) The Chief Works of Benedict de Spinoza (1891) Tr. R. H. M. Elwes, Vol. 2, Letter 58 (54).
Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
5 months 3 weeks ago
For it is the same thing...

For it is the same thing that can be thought and that can be.

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Frag. B 3, quoted by Plotinus, Enneads V, i.8
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
6 months 1 week ago
And as every…

And as every present state of a simple substance is naturally a consequence of its preceding state, so its present is pregnant with its future.

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La monadologie (22).
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 5 days ago
The career a young man should...

The career a young man should choose should be one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection ... If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer [Dichter], but never a perfected, a truly great man.

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in Karl Marx and World Literature (1976) by S. S. Prawer, p. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The Outsider wants to cease to...

The Outsider wants to cease to be an Outsider. He wants to be 'balanced'. He would like to achieve a vividness of sense-perception (Lawrence, Van Gogh, Hemingway) He would also like to understand the human soul and its working and, be 'possessed' by a Will topower, to more life. (Barbusse and Mitya Karamazov) He would like to escape triviality forever. Above all, he would like to know how to express himself because that is the means by which he can get to know himself and hi unknown possibilities.

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Chapter Seven, The Great Synthesis…
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
2 months 1 week ago
If the rulers sincerely desire the...

If the rulers sincerely desire the empire to be wealthy and dislike to have it poor, desire to have it orderly and dislike to have it chaotic, they should bring about universal love and mutual aid. This is the way of the sage-kings and the way to order for the world, and it should not be neglected.

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Book 4; Universal Love II
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
3 months 2 weeks ago
I've always written at the top...

I've always written at the top of my lungs and from some secret motives within. I have followed the advice of my good friend Federico Fellini who, when asked about his work, said, "Don't tell me what I'm doing, I don't want to know."

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Ray Bradbury, "Author's Introduction" to 2003 Folio Society edition of Fahrenheit 452
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 5 days ago
Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel...

Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. It alone is what keeps us all within the bounds of ordinance, and saves the children of fortune from the envious uprisings of the poor.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 6 days ago
In the external, patience is some...

In the external, patience is some third element that must be added, and, humanly speaking, it would be better if it were not needed; some days it is needed more, some days less, all according to fortune, whose debtor a person becomes, even though he gained ever so little, because only when he wants to gain patience does he become one's debtor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 4 weeks ago
For Prudence, is but Experience; which...

For Prudence, is but Experience; which equal time, equally bestows on all men, in those things they equally apply themselves unto.

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The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
6 months 1 week ago
From the fundamental nature of the...

From the fundamental nature of the Philistine, it follows that, in regard to others, as he has no intellectual but only physical needs, he will seek those who are capable of satisfying the latter not the former. And so of all the demands he makes of others the very smallest will be that of any outstanding intellectual abilities. On the contrary, when he comes across these they will excite his antipathy and even hatred. For here he has a hateful feeling of inferiority and also a dull secret envy which he most carefully attempts to conceal even from himself; but in this way it grows sometimes into a feeling of secret rage and rancour. Therefore it will never occur to him to assess his own esteem and respect in accordance with such qualities, but they will remain exclusively reserved for rank and wealth, power and influence, as being in his eyes the only real advantages to excel in which is also his desire.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, pp. 344-345
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
3 months ago
That liberal world that emerged after...

That liberal world that emerged after 1945 led to one of the most spectacularly successful periods in human history. There was material progress. There was stability. There was human freedom. There was the flourishing of many human activities that can only take place in a liberal, and therefore free society...

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10:06
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
3 months 4 weeks ago
The university, in a society ruled...

The university, in a society ruled by public opinion, was to have been an island of intellectual freedom where all views were investigated without restriction. ... But by consenting to play an active or "positive," a participatory role in society, the university has become inundated and saturated with the backflow of society's "problems." Preoccupied with questions of Health, Sex, Race, War, academics make their reputations and their fortunes. ... Any proposed reforms of liberal education which might bring the university into conflict with the whole of the U.S.A. are unthinkable. Increasingly, the people "inside" are identical in their appetites and motives with the people "outside" the university.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 5 days ago
Language is a city to the...

Language is a city to the building of which every human being brought a stone; yet he is no more to be credited with the grand result than the acaleph which adds a cell to the coral reef which is the basis of the continent.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
7 months 6 days ago
But as more arts were invented,...

But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. ... This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 4 weeks ago
There is no science apart from...

There is no science apart from the general. It may even be said that the very object of the exact sciences is to spare us these direct verifications.

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Ch. I. (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
4 months 3 weeks ago
There is no objective reality. But...

There is no objective reality. But there is only an illusion of consciousness, there is only an objectivication of reality, which was created by the spirit. The origin of life is creativity, freedom; and the personality, subject, and spirit are the representatives of that origin, but not the nature, not the object.

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As translated at Gallery of Russian Thinkers ... selected by Dmitry Olshansky
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 3 weeks ago
There are necessities and impossibilities in...

There are necessities and impossibilities in reality which do not obtain in fiction, any more than the law of gravity to which we are subject controls what is represented in a picture. ... It is the same with pure good; for a necessity as strong as gravity condemns man to evil and forbids him any good, or only within the narrowest limits and laboriously obtained and soiled and adulterated with evil. ... The simplicity which makes the fictional good something insipid and unable to hold the attention becomes, in the real good, an unfathomable marvel.

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"Morality and literature," pp. 160-161
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 3 weeks ago
See a person's means (of...

See a person's means (of getting things). Observe his motives. Examine that in which he rests. How can a person conceal his character? See a person's "being", observe his motive, notice his result. How can a person conceal his character?

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
Everyone who is seriously involved...

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man.

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Letter to Phyllis Wright (January 24, 1936), published in Dear Professor Einstein: Albert Einstein's Letters to and from Children (Prometheus Books, 2002), p. 129
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
6 months 4 days ago
A conception of justice cannot be...

A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitted together into one coherent view.

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Chapter I, Section 4, p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming...

Pragmatism ... reflects with almost disarming candor the spirit of the prevailing business culture, the very same attitude of 'being practical' as counter to which philosophical meditation as such was conceived.

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p. 52.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 3 days ago
There has never been any custom,...

There has never been any custom, however useless it may become with changing conditions, that isn't clung to desperately simply because it is something old and familiar.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 1 week ago
All those who seek to destroy...

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
In reality, the law always....
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Main Content / General
Protagoras
Protagoras
5 months 2 weeks ago
As touching the gods, I do...

As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.

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Opening lines of Concerning the Gods (DK 80 B4).
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 2 weeks ago
Would you not think him an...

Would you not think him an utter fool who wept because he was not alive a thousand years ago? And is he not just as much of a fool who weeps because he will not be alive a thousand years from now? It is all the same; you will not be, and you were not. Neither of these periods of time belongs to you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
If you could be alarmed into...

If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;-"Damn the solar system! bad light - planets too distant - pestered with comets - feeble contriviance; - could make a better with great ease."

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Vol. II, letter to Lord Jeffrey (1806), p. 23 Discussed in David A. Kent, D. R. Ewen, "Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831", The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 44, No. 175, (1993), pp. 430-432
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 3 weeks ago
Becoming a vegetarian is not merely...

Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering upon them.

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Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
5 months 1 week ago
Anything we take in the Universe,...

Anything we take in the Universe, because it has in itself that which is All in All, includes in its own way, the entire soul of the world, which is entirely in any part of it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
5 months 3 days ago
A modest man is steady, an...

A modest man is steady, an humble man timid, and a vain one presumptuous.

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Ch. 7
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 1 week ago
A criminal who, having renounced reason...

A criminal who, having renounced reason ... hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

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Second Treatise of Civil Government, Ch. II, sec. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 1 day ago
Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness:...

Nothing surpasses the pleasures of idleness: even if the end of the world were to come, I would not leave my bed at an ungodly hour.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
5 months 3 weeks ago
Usually, when we are told that...

Usually, when we are told that X is Y we know how it is supposed to be true, but that depends on a conceptual or theoretical background and is not conveyed by the 'is' alone. ... But when the two terms of the identification are very disparate it may not be so clear how it could be true ... and a theoretical framework may have to be supplied to enable us to understand this. Without the framework, an air of mysticism surrounds the identification.This explains the magical flavor of popular presentations of fundamental scientific discoveries, given out as propositions to which one must subscribe without really understanding them. For example, people are now told at an early age that all matter is really energy. But despite the fact that they know what 'is' means, most of them never form a conception of what makes this claim true, because they lack the theoretical background.

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pp. 176-177.
Philosophical Maxims
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