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Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
2 days ago
Either everything is illusion, nature as...

Either everything is illusion, nature as well as revelation, or experience alone can explain faith.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
3 weeks ago
Egoism, as Stirner uses it, is...

Egoism, as Stirner uses it, is not opposed to love nor to thought; it is no enemy of the sweet life of love, nor of devotion and sacrifice; it is no enemy of intimate warmth, but it is also no enemy of critique, nor of socialism, nor, in short, of any actual interest. It doesn't exclude any interest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 6 days ago
It seems clear to me that...

It seems clear to me that marriage ought to be constituted by children, and relations not involving children ought to be ignored by the law and treated as indifferent by public opinion. It is only through children that relations cease to be a purely private matter.

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Letter to Ottoline Morrell, January 30, 1916
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 week ago
Morality is herd instinct in the...
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 1 week ago
For it is with the same...

For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all of the real, coincide with their simulation models.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," pp. 1-2
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 6 days ago
The happiness which forms the utilitarian...

The happiness which forms the utilitarian standard of what is right in conduct, is not the agent's own happiness, but that of all concerned. As between his own happiness and that of others, utilitarianism requires him to be as strictly impartial as a disinterested and benevolent spectator. In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility. To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The propositions which are true and...

The propositions which are true and evident must of necessity be employed even by those who contradict them.

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Book II, ch. 20, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
4 months 1 day ago
The Geschick of being: a child...

The Geschick of being: a child that plays... Why does it play, the great child of the world-play Heraclitus brought into view in the aiôn? It plays, because it plays. The "because" withers away in the play. The play is without "why." It plays since it plays. It simply remains a play: the most elevated and the most profound. But this "simply" is everything, the one, the only... The question remains whether and how we, hearing the movements of this play, play along and accommodate ourselves to the play.

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The Principle of Reason (1955-1956) as translated by Reginald Lilly
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is no tyranny in the...

There is no tyranny in the world more hateful than that of ideas. Ideas bring ideophobia, and the consequence is that people begin to persecute their neighbors in the name of ideas. I loathe and detest all labels, and the only label that I could now tolerate would be that of ideoclast or idea breaker.

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Recalled by Walter Starkie from a conversation he had with Unamuno, as related in the Epilogue of Unamuno.
Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 day ago
The Bolsheviks themselves will not want,...

The Bolsheviks themselves will not want, with hand on heart, to deny that, step by step, they have to feel out the ground, try out, experiment, test now one way now another, and that a good many of their measures do not represent priceless pearls of wisdom. Thus it must and will be with all of us when we get to the same point-even if the same difficult circumstances may not prevail everywhere.

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Chapter Six, "The Problem of Dictatorship"
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
It would be better to have...

It would be better to have no laws at all than to have them in such profusion as we do.

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Ch. 13
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
If things are...
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Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
Observe, observe perpetually.

Observe, observe perpetually.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 1 day ago
A pupil and a teacher....

A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all."

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 4 days ago
Justice does not require that men...

Justice does not require that men must stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence.

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Chapter IV, Section 35, p. 218
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 6 days ago
The Hindoos are most serenely and...

The Hindoos are most serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable. In 1853.

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A Tribute to Hinduism, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 5 days ago
In the spiritual realm nothing is...

In the spiritual realm nothing is indifferent: what is not useful is harmful.

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VII
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 6 days ago
The world would be a happier...

The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals. Hence the present level of taxation. Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying "Look at me." "Look at me" is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. It can take innumerable forms, from buffoonery to the pursuit of posthumous fame.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 4 days ago
And we feel that the hero...

And we feel that the hero has lived all the details of this night like annunciations, promises, or even that he lived only those that were promises, blind and deaf to all that did not herald adventure. We forget that the future was not yet there; the man was walking in the night without forethought, a night which offered him a choice of dull rich prizes, and he did not make his choice.

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Diary entry of Saturday noon (10 February?)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 5 days ago
The inherent contradiction of human life...

The inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of the beneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order of life which has for centuries occasioned an empty, anxious, restless, and troubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love and built on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, and the solution will evidently not be favourable to the outlived law of violence, but to the truth which has dwelt in the hearts of men from remote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with the nature of man. But men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered for centuries.

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VI
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 3 weeks ago
What appears as the positive is...

What appears as the positive is essentially the negative, i.e. the thing that is to be criticized.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
Furthermore, how will you endure the...

Furthermore, how will you endure the Romanists' terrible idolatries? It was not enough that they venerated the saints and praised God in them, but they actually made them into gods. They put that noble child, the mother Mary, right into the place of Christ. They fashioned Christ into a judge and thus devised a tyrant for anguished consciences, so that all comfort and confidence was transferred from Christ to Mary, and then everyone turned from Christ to his particular saint. Can anyone deny this? Is it not true?

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Luther's Works, 47:45; cf. also Anderson, Stafford & Burgess (1992), p. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month 2 days ago
Many a time I have wanted...

Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.

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Introduction, p. x
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 1 week ago
To be nameless in worthy deeds...

To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history.But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity the founder of the Pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
By extensively studying all learning, and...

By extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, one may thus likewise not err from what is right.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 week ago
Religion has two principal enemies, fanaticism...

Religion has two principal enemies, fanaticism and infidelity, or that which is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy.

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A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 1 day ago
The wine is bottled poetry. Pt....

The wine is bottled poetry.

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Pt. I, ch. II
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 3 weeks ago
It must be recognized that man...

It must be recognized that man in his limited and relative earthly life is capable of bringing about the beautiful and the valuable only when he believes in another life, unlimited, absolute, eternal. That is a law of his being. A contact with this mortal life exclusive of any other ends in the wearing-away of effective energy and a self-satisfaction that makes one useless and superficial. Only the spiritual man, striking his roots deep in infinite and eternal life, can be a true creator. But Humanism denied the spiritual man, handed over the eternal to the temporal, and took its stand by the natural man within the limited confines of the earth.

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p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 6 days ago
There are people with whom everything...

There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.

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Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 428
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 2 weeks ago
The ideology of development has implied...

The ideology of development has implied the globalization of the priorities, patterns, and prejudices of the West. Instead of self-generated, development is imposed. Instead of coming from within, it is externally guided. Instead of contributing to the maintenance of diversity, development has created homogeneity...

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Monocultures of the Mind: Perspectives on Biodiversity and Biotechnology
Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
3 weeks 6 days ago
The sense of mercy is found...

The sense of mercy is found in all men; the sense of shame is found in all men; the sense of respect is found in all men; the sense of right and wrong is found in all men.

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6A:6
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 3 weeks ago
The disparagement of empirical evidence in...

The disparagement of empirical evidence in favor of a metaphysical world of illusion has its origin in the conflict between the emancipated individual of bourgeois society and his fate within that society.

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p. 138.
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 days ago
If you don't have a consistent...

If you don't have a consistent goal in life, you can't live it in a consistent way."

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(Hays translation) XI, 21
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 2 days ago
I know every numbskull will babble...

I know every numbskull will babble on about "black man," "maneater," "chance," and "retrospective interpretation," in order to banish something terribly inconvenient that might sully the familiar picture of childhood innocence. Ah, these good, efficient, healthy-minded people, they always remind me of those optimistic tadpoles who bask in a puddle in the sun, in the shallowest of waters, crowding together and amiably wriggling their tails, totally unaware that the next morning the puddle will have dried up and left them stranded. On a phallic dream he had as a young child.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 5 days ago
There can be little question that...

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

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Pt. I, sec. 1, "The Principle of Economy"
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
An American cannot converse, but he...

An American cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation. He speaks to you as if he was addressing a meeting; and if he should chance to become warm in the discussion, he will say "Gentlemen" to the person with whom he is conversing.

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Chapter XIV.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 4 weeks ago
To understand this for sense it...

To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad. On the proposition that the volume generated by revolving the region under 1/x from 1 to infinity has finite volume.

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Quoted in Mathematical Maxims and Minims by N. Rose
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 3 days ago
The young today cannot follow narrative...

The young today cannot follow narrative but they are alert to drama. They cannot bear description but they love landscape and action.

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Letter to Harold Adam Innis (14 March 1951), published in Essential McLuhan (1995), edited by Eric McLuhan and Frank Zingrone, p. 74
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 3 weeks ago
Nobody should ever doubt that in...

Nobody should ever doubt that in the washing of rebirth (Titus 3:5) absolutely all sins, from the least to the greatest, are altogether forgiven.

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229E:2
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 1 week ago
If the immutable character of sex...

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

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Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
Practice justice in word and deed,...

Practice justice in word and deed, and do not get in the habit of acting thoughtlessly about anything.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 1 week ago
Man was born to live with...

Man was born to live with his fellow human beings. Separate him, isolate him, his character will go bad, a thousand ridiculous affects will invade his heart, extravagant thoughts will germinate in his brain, like thorns in an uncultivated land.

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The character Suzanne Simon, in La Religieuse [The Nun]
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
4 months 1 week ago
As regards the objection that possibles...

As regards the objection that possibles are independent of the decrees of God I grant it of actual decrees (although the Cartesians do not at all agree to this), but I maintain that the possible individual concepts involve certain possible free decrees; for example, if this world was only possible, the individual concept of a particular body in this world would involve certain movements as possible, it would also involve the laws of motion, which are the free decrees of God; but these, also, only as possibilities. Because, as there are an infinity of possible worlds, there are also an infinity of laws, certain ones appropriate to one; others, to another, and each possible individual of any world involves in its concept the laws of its world.

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(May, 1686) as quoted in George R. Montgomery, Tr., "Correspondence between Leibniz and Arnauld," Leibniz: Discourse on metaphysics; correspondence with Arnauld, and Monadology (1916) VIII, p. 108
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 1 week ago
Whatever it may be, animals have...

Whatever it may be, animals have always had, until our era, a divine or sacrificial nobility that all mythologies recount. Even murder by hunting is still a symbolic relation, as opposed to an experimental dissection. Even domestication is still a symbolic relation, as opposed to industrial breeding. One only has to look at the status of animals in peasant society. And the status of domestication, which presupposes land, a clan, a system of parentage of which the animals are a part, must not be confused with the status of the domestic pet-the only type of animals that are left to us outside reserves and breeding stations-dogs, cats, birds, hamsters, all packed together in the affection of their master. The trajectory animals have followed, from divine sacrifice to dog cemeteries with atmospheric music, from sacred defiance to ecological sentimentality, speaks loudly enough of the vulgarization of the status of man himself.

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"The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses," p. 134
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 4 weeks ago
Hereby it is manifest, that during...

Hereby it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called Warre; and such a warre, as is of every man, against every man.

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The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 5 days ago
There is no knowledge that is...

There is no knowledge that is not power.

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Old Age
Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
3 months 3 weeks ago
Never will this prevail, that the...

Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are - bar your thought from this road of inquiry.

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Frag. B 7.1-2, quoted by Plato, Sophist, 237a
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
1 week 6 days ago
Suppose we try to locate the...

Suppose we try to locate the cause of disorder, we shall find it lies in the want of mutual love.

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Book 4; Universal Love I
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
Americans combine to give fêtes, found...

Americans combine to give fêtes, found seminaries, build churches, distribute books, and send missionaries to the antipodes. Hospitals, prisons, and schools take shape in that way. Finally, if they want to proclaim a truth or propagate some feeling by the encouragement of a great example, they form an association. In every case, at the head of any new undertaking, where in France you would find the government or in England some territorial magnate, in the United States you are sure to find an association. I have come across several types of association in America of which, I confess, I had not previously the slightest conception, and I have often admired the extreme skill they show in proposing a common object for the exertions of very many and in inducing them voluntarily to pursue it.

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Book Two, Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 month 1 day ago
Ignorant as regards the unity of...

Ignorant as regards the unity of man with himself, the world is still more ignorant in respect to the two other unities - unity of man with God and the universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
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