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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing made a happy slave, but...

Nothing made a happy slave, but a degraded man. In proportion as the mind grew callous to its degradation, and all sense of manly pride was lost, the slave felt comfort. In fact, he was no longer a man. If he were to define a man, he would say with Shakspeare,"Man is a being, holding large discourse,Looking before and after."A slave was incapable of either looking before or after.

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Speech in the House of Commons (12 May 1789), quoted in The Parliamentary History of England, From the Earliest Period to the Year 1803, Vol. XXVIII (1816), column 71
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month ago
When Bernard Marx tells the Savage...

When Bernard Marx tells the Savage he will try to secure permission for him and his mother to visit the Other Place, John is initially pleased and excited. Echoing Miranda in The Tempest, he exclaims: "O brave new world that has such people in it." Heavy irony. Like innocent Miranda, he is eager to embrace a way of life he neither knows nor understands. And of course he comes unstuck. Yet if we swallow such fancy literary conceits, then ultimately the joke is on us. It is only funny in the sense there are "jokes" about Auschwitz. For it is Huxley who neither knows nor understands the glory of what lies ahead. A utopian society in which we are sublimely happy will be far better than we can presently imagine, not worse. And it is we, trapped in the emotional squalor of late-Darwinian antiquity, who neither know nor understand the lives of the god-like super-beings we are destined to become. "Brave New World? A Defence of Paradise-Engineering", BLTC Research, 1998

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
Men do reverence men. Men do...

Men do reverence men. Men do worship in that 'one temple of the world,' as Novalis calls it, the Presence of a Man! Hero-worship, true and blessed, or else mistaken, false and accursed, goes on everywhere and everywhen. In this world there is one godlike thing, the essence of all that was or ever will be of godlike in this world: the veneration done to Human Worth by the hearts of men. Hero-worship, in the souls of the heroic, of the clear and wise,-it is the perpetual presence of Heaven in our poor Earth: when it is not there, Heaven is veiled from us; and all is under Heaven's ban and interdict, and there is no worship, or worthship, or worth or blessedness in the Earth any more!-

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 week ago
The men of the future will...

The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 114
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
Ivan Ilych saw that he was...

Ivan Ilych saw that he was dying, and he was in continual despair. In the depth of his heart he knew he was dying, but not only was he not accustomed to the thought, he simply did not and could not grasp it. The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter's Logic: "Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal," had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius - man in the abstract - was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite, quite separate from all others.

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Ch. VI
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 2 weeks ago
The future of mankind, for the...

The future of mankind, for the socialist, is simple: pull down the existing order and allow the future to emerge.

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"Eliot and Conservatism" (p. 208)
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
2 days ago
Only when the true ends of...

Only when the true ends of society have nothing to do with the sublime does "culture" become necessary as a veneer to cover over the void. Culture can at best appreciate the monuments of earlier faith; it cannot produce them.

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"Commerce and Culture," p. 280.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
When the intensity of emotional conviction...

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favour of the belief which he finds in himself.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
TV is not good at covering...

TV is not good at covering single events. It needs a ritual, a rhythm, and a pattern...[TV] tends to fosters patterns rather than events.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Gentlemen, there is a sublime and...

Gentlemen, there is a sublime and friendly Destiny by which the human race is guided, - the race never dying, the individual never spared, - to results affecting masses and ages. Men are narrow and selfish, but the Genius or Destiny is not narrow, but beneficent. It is not discovered in their calculated and voluntary activity, but in what befalls, with or without their design. Only what is inevitable interests us, and it turns out that love and good are inevitable, and in the course of things. That Genius has infused itself into nature. It indicates itself by a small excess of good, a small balance in brute facts always favorable to the side of reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
3 months 1 week ago
There is one story left, one...

There is one story left, one road: that it is. And on this road there are very many signs that, being, is uncreated and imperishable, whole, unique, unwavering, and complete.

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Frag. B 8.1-4, quoted by Simplicius, Commentary on the Physics, 144
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Follow me, and I will make...

Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.

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4:19 (KJV) Said to Peter and Andrew
Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
3 months 5 days ago
So people should abstain from other...

So people should abstain from other animals just as they should from the human.

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4, 9, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 week ago
The republic is nothing whatever but...

The republic is nothing whatever but - absolute monarchy; for it makes no difference whether the monarch is called prince or people, both being a 'majesty'.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 202, 203
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
6 days ago
Correspondences are like small clothes before...

Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.

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Vol. II, letter to Catherine Crowe (31 January 1841), pp. 441-442
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 5 days ago
It is the mark....
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Main Content / General
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 3 weeks ago
On our earth we can only...

On our earth we can only love with suffering and through suffering. We cannot love otherwise, and we know of no other sort of love. I want suffering in order to love. I long, I thirst, this very instant, to kiss with tears the earth that I have left, and I don't want, I won't accept life on any other!"

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
The society adopts neither rites nor...

The society adopts neither rites nor priesthood, and it will never lose sight of the resolution not to advance any thing as a society inconvenient to any sect or sects, in any time or country, and under any government. It will be seen that it is so much the more easy for the society to keep within this circle, because, that the dogmas of the Theophilanthropists are those upon which all the sects have agreed, that their moral is.that upon which there has never been the least dissent; and that the name they have taken expresses the double end of all the sects, that of leading to the adoration of God and love of man.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
Just then another visitor entered the...

Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew Bolkónski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features. Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet, measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife. He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome face, kissed Anna Pávlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned the whole company.

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Bk. I, Ch. IV
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 2 weeks ago
I bow before the authority of...

I bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon me by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all its details and positive developments, any very large portion of human knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a comprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for industry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I receive and I give - such is human life. Each directs and is directed in his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but a continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary authority and subordination.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 3 days ago
Avoid doing what you….

Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing.

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As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 36 Cf. Golden Rule
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Merely to come into the world...

Merely to come into the world the heir of a fortune is not to be born, but to be still-born, rather. To be supported by the charity of friends, or a government-pension, - provided you continue to breathe, - by whatever fine synonymes you describe these relations, is to go into the almshouse.

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p. 487
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
He that is not with me...

He that is not with me is against me: and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.

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Luke 11:23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months ago
First, most producers are employees of...

First, most producers are employees of firms, not owners. Viewed from the vantage point of classical economic theory, they have no reason to maximize the profits of firms, except to the extent that they can be controlled by owners. Moreover, profit-making firms, nonprofit organizations, and bureaucratic organizations all have exactly the same problem of inducing their employees to work toward organizational goals. There is no reason, a priori, why it should be easier (or harder) to produce this motivation in organizations aimed at maximizing profits than in organizations with different goals. If it is true in an organizational economy that organizations motivated by profits will be more efficient than other organizations, additional postulates will have to be introduced to account for it.

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Simon (1991) "Organizations and Markets:" in: Journal of Economic Perspectives. 5 (2 Spring 1991): p. 28.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
4 months 1 week ago
There is no order between created...

There is no order between created being and non-being, but there is between created and uncreated being.

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q. 7, art. 9, ad 8
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 4 days ago
I feel sure that the police...

I feel sure that the police are helping us more than I could do in ten years. They are making more anarchists than the most prominent people connected with the anarchist cause could make in ten years. If they will only continue I shall be very grateful; they will save me lots of work.

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As quoted in "Arrest in Chicago of Emma Goldman, Preacher of Anarchy", The San Francisco Call
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
The most important subject, and the...

The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to science.Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood, and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 1 week ago
We are but dust….

We are but dust and shadow.

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Book IV, ode vii, line 16
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Environments are not just containers, but...

Environments are not just containers, but are processes that change the content totally.

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American scholar, Volume 35, 1965, p. 200
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 3 weeks ago
You have not that power you...

You have not that power you ought to have over him, till he comes to be more afraid of offending so good a friend than of losing some part of his future expectation.

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Sec. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 5 days ago
My father's education was altogether of...

My father's education was altogether of the worst and most limited. I believe he was never more than three months at any school. What he learned there showed what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting - these, with other limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive for more.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
There are, indeed, things that cannot...

There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.

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(6.522) Original German: Es gibt allerdings Unaussprechliches. Dies zeigt sich, es ist das Mystische.
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 2 weeks ago
In order to touch the heart...

In order to touch the heart and gain the confidence, the assent, the adhesion, and the co-operation of the illiterate legions of the proletariat - and the vast majority of proletarians unfortunately still belong in this category - it is necessary to begin to speak to those workers not of the general sufferings of the international proletariat as a whole but of their particular, daily, altogether private misfortunes. It is necessary to speak to them of their own trade and the conditions of their work in the specific locality where they live; of the harsh conditions and long hours of their daily work, of the small pay, the meanness of their employer, the high cost of living, and how impossible it is for them properly to support and bring up a family.

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Founding of the Workers' International
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
The majority of mankind and people...

The majority of mankind and people who lack refinement conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they approve a life of sensual enjoyment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 2 weeks ago
The whole business of the kingly...

The whole business of the kingly weaving is comprised in this and this alone: in never allowing the self-restrained characters to be separated from the courageous, but in weaving them together by common beliefs and honors and dishonors and opinions and interchanges of pledges, thus making of them a smooth and, as we say, well-woven fabric, and then entrusting to them in common forever the offices of the state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 6 days ago
Little is needed to ruin and...

Little is needed to ruin and upset everything, only a slight aberration from reason.

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Book IV, ch. 3, 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
The opinions that are held with...

The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction.

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Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. Introduction to 1961 edition of Sceptical Essays, 1961
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
4 weeks ago
The core of the belief in...

The core of the belief in progress is that human values and goals converge in parallel with our increasing knowledge. The twentieth century shows the contrary. Human beings use the power of scientific knowledge to assert and defend the values and goals they already have. New technologies can be used to alleviate suffering and enhance freedom. They can, and will, also be used to wage war and strengthen tyranny. Science made possible the technologies that powered the industrial revolution. In the twentieth century, these technologies were used to implement state terror and genocide on an unprecedented scale. Ethics and politics do not advance in line with the growth of knowledge - not even in the long run.

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"Joseph Conrad, Our Contemporary," from Heresies: Against Progress and Other Illusions
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
If production be capitalistic in form,...

If production be capitalistic in form, so, too, will be reproduction.

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Vol. I, Ch. 23, pg. 620.
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 3 days ago
All things are full…

All things are full of gods.

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As quoted in Aristotle, De Anima, 411a
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 week ago
The State's behavior is violence, and...

The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime." The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.

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As quoted in The Great Quotations (1960) by George Seldes, p. 664
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
Speed, it seems to me, provides...

Speed, it seems to me, provides the one genuinely modern pleasure.

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Wanted, A New Pleasure
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 6 days ago
It is a profoundly erroneous truism,...

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle - they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.

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ch. 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
War is not a courtesy but...

War is not a courtesy but the most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that, and not play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favourite pastime of the idle and frivolous.

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Bk. X, ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
The need of a constantly expanding...

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

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Section 1, paragraph 19
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Keep on, then, seeking first the...

Keep on, then, seeking first the Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you. So never be anxious about the next day, for the next day will have its own anxieties. Each day has enough of its own troubles.

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Matthew 6:33-34, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 2 weeks ago
Prosperity, both for individuals and for...

Prosperity, both for individuals and for states, means possessions; and possessions mean burdens and harness and slavery; and slavery for the mind, too, because it is not only the rich man's time that is pre-empted, but his affections, his judgement, and the range of his thoughts.

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"The Irony of Liberalism"
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Fortune is like glass…

Fortune is like glass-the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.

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Maxim 280
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month ago
[L]ike nonhuman animals in human factory...

[L]ike nonhuman animals in human factory farms, free-living nonhumans who are starving - or being disembowelled, asphyxiated or eaten alive - cannot console themselves by chanting the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The moral case for helping other sentient beings, regardless or race or species, does not rest on the distress their plight does (or doesn't) cause spectators.

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Reply to Meet the people who want to turn predators into herbivores, TreeHugger, 2 Apr. 2015
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
It's my belief that the Universe...

It's my belief that the Universe possesses, in its essence, fractal properties of a very complex sort and that the pursuit of science shares those properties. It follows that any part of the Universe that remains un-understood, and any part of scientific investigation that remains unresolved, however small that might be in comparison to what is understood and resolved, contains within it all the complexity of the original. Therefore, we'll never finish. No matter how far we go, the road ahead will be as long as it was at the start, and that's the secret of the Universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
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