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Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Learn to see in another's calamity...

Learn to see in another's calamity the ills which you should avoid.

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Maxim 120
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes...

The yogi, absorbed in contemplation, contributes in his degree to creation: he breathes a divine perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms traverse him without tearing him, and, united to the nature which is proper to him, he goes, he acts as animating original matter. To some extent, and at rare intervals even I am a yogi .

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Quoted in R. Malhotra and V. Viswanathan, Snakes in the Ganga: Breaking India 2.0., 2022
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Fame and wealth without wisdom are...

Fame and wealth without wisdom are unsafe possessions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
My main theme is the extension...

My main theme is the extension of the nervous system in the electric age, and thus, the complete break with five thousand years of mechanical technology. This I state over and over again. I do not say whether it is a good or bad thing. To do so would be meaningless and arrogant.

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Letter to Robert Fulford, 1964. Letters of Marshall McLuhan (1987), p. 300
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is said that "being" is...

It is said that "being" is the most universal and the emptiest concept. As such it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and thus indefinable concept need any definition. Everybody uses it constantly and also already understands what is meant by it.

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Introduction: The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being (Stambaugh translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 3 days ago
We are organization watchers in our...

We are organization watchers in our role as citizens. Increasing attention has been fixed in recent years upon the functioning of society's organizations: its large corporations and its governments. Hence this could also be described as a book for Everyman-for it proposes a way of thinking about organizational issues that concern us all.

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Simon (1975, p. ix); As cited in Stefano Franchi(2006) "Herbert simon, anti-philosopher." Computing and Philosophy. p. 34.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Nothing makes the earth seem so...

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

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Pearls of Thought (1881) p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
1 week 3 days ago
The capitalist system of production is...

The capitalist system of production is an economic democracy in which every penny gives a right to vote. The consumers are the sovereign people. The capitalists, the entrepreneurs, and the farmers are the people's mandatories. If they do not obey, if they fail to produce, at the lowest possible cost, what the consumers are asking for, they lose their office. Their task is service to the consumer. Profit and loss are the instruments by means of which the consumers keep a tight rein on all business activities.

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Chapter I: Profit Management, § 1: The Operation of The Market Mechanism
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
When you have faults, do not...

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Wood
David Wood
1 month 3 days ago
Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished...

Like literature, philosophy is not distinguished from other subjects by a specific approach to a subject-matter independent of it. Chemistry deals with chemicals, biology with life and astronomy with very large, very distant objects. Philosophy can boast no such definite subject-matter.

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Chapter 4, Philosophy As Writing: The Case Of Hegel, p. 69
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Money appears as measure (in Homer,...

Money appears as measure (in Homer, e.g. oxen) earlier than as medium of exchange,because in barter each commodity is still its own medium of exchange. But it cannot be its own or its own standard of comparison.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 93.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 2 weeks ago
The discovery that mass changes with...

The discovery that mass changes with velocity, a discovery made when minute bodies came under consideration, finally forced surrender of the notion that mass is a fixed and inalienable possession of ultimate elements or individuals, so that time is now considered to be their fourth dimension.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
In the past, there was a...

In the past, there was a small leisure class and a larger working class. The leisure class enjoyed advantages for which there was no basis in social justice; this necessarily made it oppressive, limited its sympathies, and caused it to invent theories by which to justify its privileges.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness, p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 1 week ago
A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't...

A philosopher of imposing stature doesn't think in a vacuum. Even his most abstract ideas are, to some extent, conditioned by what is or is not known in the time when he lives.

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Ch. 29, June 10, 1943.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 2 weeks ago
Navigation brought man face to face...

Navigation brought man face to face with the uncertainty of destiny, where each is left to himself and every departure might always be the last. The madman on his crazy boat sets sail for the other world, and it is from the other world that he comes when he disembarks. This enforced navigation is both rigorous division and absolute Passage, serving to underline in real and imaginary terms the liminal situation of the mad in medieval society. It was a highly symbolic role, made clear by the mental geography involved, where the madman was confined at the gates of the cities. His exclusion was his confinement, and if he had no prison other than the threshold itself he was still detained at this place of passage. In a highly symbolic position he is placed on the inside of the outside, or vice versa. A posture that is still his today, if we admit that what was once the visible fortress of social order is now the castle of our own consciousness.

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Part One: 1. Stultifera Navis
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months 2 weeks ago
Technically speaking, since our complex societies...

Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

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Habermas (2004) in: Giovanna Borradori (2004) Philosophy in a Time of Terror: : Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
No man can mortgage his injustice...

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 2 weeks ago
He who abhors and shuns the...

He who abhors and shuns the light of the Sun, He who refuses to behold with respect the living creation of God, He who leads the good to wickedness, He who makes the meadows waterless and the pastures desolate, He who lets fly his weapon against the innocent, An enemy of my faith, a destroyer of Thy principles is he, O Lord!

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 32, 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our condition is like that of...

Our condition is like that of the poor wolves: if one of the flock wound himself, or so much as limp, the rest eat him up incontinently. That serene Power interposes the check upon the caprices and officiousness of our wills.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 1 day ago
Human beings have....
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Main Content / General
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
The skepticism which fails to contribute...

The skepticism which fails to contribute to the ruin of our health is merely an intellectual exercise.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 1 day ago
Undue cultivation of the inward or...

Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and, especially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with their long train of baleful and well-known evils. Undue cultivation of the outward, again, though less immediately prejudicial, and even for the time productive of many palpable benefits, must, in the long-run, by destroying Moral Force, which is the parent of all other Force, prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months ago
Pursue Virtue virtuously...

Pursue Virtue virtuously.

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These words also appear in Christian Morals, Part I, Section I
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
All the concessions we make to...

All the concessions we make to Eros are holes in our desire for the absolute.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 3 days ago
The logic now in use serves...

The logic now in use serves rather to fix and give stability to the errors which have their foundation in commonly received notions than to help the search for truth. So it does more harm than good.

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Aphorism 7
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
Mr. Neo-Angular - I am doing...

Mr. Neo-Angular - I am doing my duty. My ethics are based on dogma, not on feeling. Vertue - I know that a rule is to be obeyed because it is a rule and not because it appeals to my feelings at the moment.

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Pilgrim's Regress 90
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is error only, and not...

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
It shews the anxiety of the...

It shews the anxiety of the great men who influenced the conduct of affairs at that great event, to make the Revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.

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Referring to the Glorious Revolution of 1688
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 weeks ago
Even Plato assumes that the genuinely...

Even Plato assumes that the genuinely perfect condition of man means no sex distinction (and how strange this is for people like Feuerbach who are so occupied with affirming sex-differentiation, regarding which they would do best to appeal to paganism). He assumes that originally there was only the masculine (and when there is no thought of femininity, sex-distinction is undifferentiated), but through degeneration and corruption the feminine appeared. He assumes that base and cowardly men became women in death, but he still gives them hope of being elevated again to masculinity. He thinks that in the perfect life the masculine, as originally, will be the only sex, that is, that sex-distinction is a matter of indifference. So it is in Plato, and this, the idea of the state notwithstanding, was the culmination of his philosophy. How much more so, then, the Christian view.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
For many years I was self-appointed...

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

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After February 22, 1846
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
I do not think it possible...

I do not think it possible to get anywhere if we start from scepticism. We must start from a broad acceptance of whatever seems to be knowledge and is not rejected for some specific reason.

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p. 200
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 3 weeks ago
This sacrifice of common sense is...

This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. 

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"Reflections on Titles", Pennsylvania Magazine
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 weeks ago
What, exactly, have the errors of...

What, exactly, have the errors of exegesis and philosophy done in order to confuse Christianity, and how have they confused Christianity? Quite briefly and categorically, they have simply forced back the sphere of paradox-religion into the sphere of aesthetics, and in consequence have succeeded in brings Christian terminology to such a pass that terms which, so long as they remain within their sphere, are qualitative categories, can be put to almost any use as clever expressions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 2 weeks ago
From these two immediate perceptions, we...

From these two immediate perceptions, we gain a mediate, or inferential perception of the relation of all four instants. This mediate perception is objectively, or as to the object being represented, spread over the four instants; but subjectively, or as itself the subject of duration, it is completely embraced in the second moment. (The reader will observe that I use the word instant to mean a point in time, and moment to mean an infinitesimal duration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 1 week ago
Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect...

Valour, however unfortunate, commands great respect even from enemies: but the Romans despise cowardice, even though it be prosperous.

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Aemilius Paulus 26 (Tr. Stewart and Long)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 3 weeks ago
As a general rule-never substitute the...

As a general rule-never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself; for the child's attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 1 week ago
Authority and place demonstrate and try...

Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.

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Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero 3 (Tr. Dryden and Clough)
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 2 weeks ago
The man who is fortunate in...

The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.

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Freeman (1948), p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 2 weeks ago
Death takes the mean man….

Death takes the mean man with the proud; The fatal urn has room for all.

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Book III, ode i, line 14 (trans. John Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
2 weeks 3 days ago
Far from secularization inexorably leading to...

Far from secularization inexorably leading to the death of religion, it has instead given birth to the search for new forms of religious life. The imminent victory of the Kingdom of Reason has never materialized. As a whole, mankind can never get rid of the need for religious self-identification: who am I, where did I come from, where do I fit in, why am I responsible, what does my life mean, how will I face death? Religion is a paramount aspect of human culture. Religious need cannot be excommunicated from culture by rationalist incantation. Man does not live by reason alone.

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Interview with Nathan Gardels
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 2 weeks ago
Hearken with your ears to these...

Hearken with your ears to these best counsels,Reflect upon them with illumined judgment.Let each one choose his creed with that freedom of choice each must have at great events.

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 30, 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 4 weeks ago
In manufactures, a very small advantage...

In manufactures, a very small advantage will enable foreigners to undersell our own workmen, even in the home market. It will require a very great one to enable them to do so in the rude produce of the soil. If the free importation of foreign manufactures were permitted, several of the home manufactures would probably suffer, and some of them, perhaps, go to ruin altogether, and a considerable part of the stock and industry at present employed in them, would be forced to find out some other employment. But the freest importation of the rude produce of the soil could have no such effect upon the agriculture of the country.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
Only a neutral, who is indifferent...

Only a neutral, who is indifferent to the stake and perhaps to all stakes, can appreciate aesthetically the grandeur of a fine disaster

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p. 212
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
Power is not opposed to freedom....

Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 4 weeks ago
Consumption is the sole end and...

Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer.

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Chapter VIII, p. 719.
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
2 months 2 weeks ago
He felt neither guilt nor distress...

He felt neither guilt nor distress at the pleasure with which he was now filled by the proximity of this young creature, and when he discovered in himself even physical symptoms of his inclination he did not take fright, but continued cheerfully and serenely to see Nick whenever the ordinary run of his duties suggested it, congratulating himself upon the newly achieved solidity and rational calm of his spiritual life.

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The Bell (1958) p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 days ago
Universal Humanism...

Universal Humanism:

1) Preserve Life (end)

Precludes those who think they get to decide who lives and who dies.

2) Avoid and limit suffering (means)

Precludes those who use absurd exceptions to turn their backs on functional rules.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 4 weeks ago
On doit exiger de moi que...

On doit exiger de moi que je cherche la vérité, mais non que je la trouve. One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.

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No. 29
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Everyone who knows anything of history...

Everyone who knows anything of history also knows that great social revolutions are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress may be measured precisely by the social position of the fair sex (plain ones included).

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Letter to Ludwig Kugelmann, dated 12 December 1868.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
In modern eyes, precious though wars...

In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.

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Philosophical Maxims
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