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William James
William James
1 month 3 weeks ago
Our minds thus grow in spots;...

Our minds thus grow in spots; and like grease-spots, the spots spread. But we let them spread as little as possible: we keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can. We patch and tinker more than we renew. The novelty soaks in; it stains the ancient mass; but it is also tinged by what absorbs it.

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Lecture V, Pragmatism and Common Sense
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 1 week ago
What is love's perfection? To love...

What is love's perfection? To love our enemies, and to love them to the end that they may be our brothers.

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First Homily, as translated by John Burnaby (1955), p. 266
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 weeks 6 days ago
The New Englander is attached to...

The New Englander is attached to his township because it is strong and independent; he has an interest in it because he shares in its management; he loves it because he has no reason to complain of his lot; he invests his ambition and his future in it; in the restricted sphere within his scope, he learns to rule society; he gets to know those formalities without which freedom can advance only through revolutions, and becoming imbued with their spirit, develops a taste for order, understands the harmony of powers, and in the end accumulates clear, practical ideas about the nature of his duties and the extent of his rights.

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Chapter V.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 1 day ago
The people are led to find...

The people are led to find in the productive apparatus the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered. And in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent.

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Conscience is absolved by reification. p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 2 weeks ago
Beholding beauty with the eye of...

Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth, not images of beauty, but realities (for he has hold not of an image but of a reality), and bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and be immortal, if mortal man may.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 weeks 4 days ago
The third argument, enclosing and defending...

The third argument, enclosing and defending the other two, consists in the development of those principles of logic according to which the humble argument is the first stage of a scientific inquiry into the origin of the three Universes, but of an inquiry which produces, not merely scientific belief, which is always provisional, but also a living, practical belief, logically justified in crossing the Rubicon with all the freightage of eternity.

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V
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
1 month 3 weeks ago
I would say to the readers...

I would say to the readers of the Scriptures, if they wish for a good book, read the Bhagavad-Gita...translated by Charles Wilkins. It deserves to be read with reverence even by yankees...Besides the Bhagvat-Geeta, our Shakespeare seems sometimes youthfully green...Ex oriente lux may still be the motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived from the East all the light it is destined to derive thence.

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Quoted in Sushama Londhe, A Tribute to Hinduism (New Delhi: Pragun Publication, 2008) p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
To those who inquire as to...

To those who inquire as to the purpose of mathematics, the usual answer will be that it facilitates the making of machines, the travelling from place to place, and the victory over foreign nations, whether in war or commerce. ... The reasoning faculty itself is generally conceived, by those who urge its cultivation, as merely a means for the avoidance of pitfalls and a help in the discovery of rules for the guidance of practical life.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 day ago
The concept of space...
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Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is also the becoming-space of...

It is also the becoming-space of the spoken chain - which has been called temporal or linear; a becoming-space which makes possible both writing and every correspondence between speech and writing, every passage from one to the other.The activity or productivity connoted by the a of différance refers to the generative movement in the play of differences. The latter are neither fallen from the sky nor inscribed once and for all in a closed system, a static structure that a synchronic and taxonomic operation could exhaust. Differences are the effects of transformations, and from this vantage the theme of différance is incompatible with the static, synchronic, taxonomic, ahistoric motifs in the concept of structure.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Ever from one who comes to-morrow...

Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

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Merlin's Song, II
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 2 days ago
Consciousness, the craving for more, more,...

Consciousness, the craving for more, more, always more, hunger of eternity and thirst of infinity, appetite for God - these are never satisfied. Each consciousness seeks to be itself and all other consciousnesses without ceasing to be itself; it seeks to be God. And matter, unconsciousness, tends to be less and less, tends to be nothing, its thirst being a thirst for repose. Spirit says: I wish to be! and matter answers: I wish not to be!

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
2 months 1 day ago
We must learn how to imitate...

We must learn how to imitate Cicero from Cicero himself. Let us imitate him as he imitated others.

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in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 1 week ago
Remember that you ought to behave...

Remember that you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it. Or it has not come to you yet; do not project your desire to meet it, but wait until it comes in front of you. So act toward children, so toward a wife, so toward office, so toward wealth.

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(15).
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 weeks 1 day ago
Religion in its humility restores man...

Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace.

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Ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 1 week ago
It is not by change of...

It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits.

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p. 433
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
1 month 3 weeks ago
If man in the state of...

If man in the state of nature be so free, as has been said; if he be absolute lord of his own person and possessions, equal to the greatest, and subject to no body, why will he part with his freedom, this empire, and subject himself to the dominion and control of any other power?

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. IX, sec. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 4 days ago
There is an innate anxiety which...

There is an innate anxiety which supplants in us both knowledge and intuition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 2 weeks ago
Don't get involved in partial problems,...

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 1 day ago
Enter by the narrow gate; for...

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it.

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Matthew 7:13-14 (NKJV) (Also Luke 13:24)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 weeks 4 days ago
Not to be born is undoubtedly...

Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 week 2 days ago
I can assure you that no...

I can assure you that no kingdom has ever had as many civil wars as the kingdom of Christ.

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No. 29. (Rica writing to Ibben)
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 week 2 days ago
And above all, we must feel...

And above all, we must feel and act as if an endless continuation of our earthly life awaited us after death; and if it be that nothingness is the fate that awaits us we must not, in the words of Obermann, so act that it shall be a just fate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 4 days ago
None can be free who is...

None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions.

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As quoted in Florilegium, XVIII, 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 368
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 5 days ago
The mind must not be forced;...

The mind must not be forced; artificial and constrained manners fill it with foolish presumption, through unnatural elevation and vain and ridiculous inflation, instead of solid and vigorous nutriment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
I have heard with admiring submission...

I have heard with admiring submission the experience of the lady who declared "that the sense of being perfectly well-dressed gives a feeling of inward tranquility which religion is powerless to bestow".

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Social Aims
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
Whatever we may think or affect...

Whatever we may think or affect to think of the present age, we cannot get out of it; we must suffer with its sufferings, and enjoy with its enjoyments; we must share in its lot, and, to be either useful or at ease, we must even partake its character.

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"The Spirit of the Age, I", Examiner (9 January 1831), p. 20 Full text online
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
Whatever is known to us by...

Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
5 days ago
The outsider, Haller says, is a...

The outsider, Haller says, is a self-divided man; being self-divided, his chief desire is to be unified. He is selfish as a man with a lifelong raging toothache.

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Chapter Three, The Romantic Outsider
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 weeks 1 day ago
The fact disclosed by a survey...

The fact disclosed by a survey of the past that majorities have usually been wrong, must not blind us to the complementary fact that majorities have usually not been entirely wrong.

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Pt. I, The Unknowable; Ch. I, Religion and Science
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 weeks 4 days ago
With this as its basic constitution,...

With this as its basic constitution, civilization achieved things of which gentile society was not even remotely capable. But it achieved them by setting in motion the lowest instincts and passions in man and developing them at the expense of all his other abilities. From its first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization; wealth and again wealth and once more wealth, wealth, not of society, but of the single scurvy individual-here was its one and final aim. If at the same time the progressive development of science and a repeated flowering of supreme art dropped into its lap, it was only because without them modern wealth could not have completely realized its achievements.

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The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) as translated by Ernest Untermann (1902)
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
4 days ago
I believe that the nature of...

I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers. I believe that every answer to these contradictions can really satisfy the condition of helping man to overcome the sense of separation and to achieve a sense of agreement, of unity, and of belonging. I believe that in every answer to these contradictions, man has the possibility of choosing only between going forward or going back; these choices, which are translated into specific actions, are means toward the regressing or toward the progressing of the humanity that is in us.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
1 month 3 weeks ago
The suppression of liberty is always...

The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational.

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Chapter IV, Section 33, p. 210
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
I have seen manners that make...

I have seen manners that make a similar impression with personal beauty, that give the like exhilaration and refine us like that; and in memorable experiences they are suddenly better than beauty, and make that superfluous and ugly. But they must be marked by fine perception, the acquaintance with real beauty. They must always show control; you shall not be facile, apologetic, or leaky, but king over your word; and every gesture and action shall indicate power at rest. They must be inspired by the good heart. There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy, and not pain, around us.

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p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is as useless for a...

It is as useless for a person to want first of all to decide the externals and after that the fundamentals as it is for a cosmic body, thinking to form itself, first of all to decide the nature of its surface, to what bodies it should turn its light, which its dark side, without first letting the harmony of centrifugal and centripetal forces realize its existence and letting the rest come of itself. One must learn to know oneself before knowing anything else (gnothi seauton). Not until a person has inwardly understood himself and then sees the course he is to take does his life gain peace and meaning.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
We are in hell and I...

We are in hell and I will have my turn!

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Inès warns Garcin and Estelle not to make love in her presence, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is something feeble and a...

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.

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p. 219-220
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 1 day ago
I could not be true and...

I could not be true and constant to the argument I handle, if I were not willing to go beyond others; but yet not more willing than to have others go beyond me again: which may the better appear by this, that I have propounded my opinions naked and unarmed, not seeking to preoccupate the liberty of men's judgments by confutations.

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Book II
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
4 days ago
To understand God's thoughts we must...

To understand God's thoughts we must study statistics, for these are the measure of His purpose.

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As quoted in Chance Rules : An Informal Guide to Probability, Risk, and Statistics (1999) by Brian Everitt, p. 137
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
1 month 2 weeks ago
Don't get involved in partial problems,...

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

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Journal entry
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
4 weeks 1 day ago
Given that annihilation of nature in...

Given that annihilation of nature in its entirety is impossible, and that death and dissolution are not appropriate to the whole mass of this entire globe or star, from time to time, according to an established order, it is renewed, altered, changed, and transformed in all its parts.

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Fifth Dialogue
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 week 6 days ago
In philosophical anthropology, ... where the...

In philosophical anthropology, ... where the subject is man in his wholeness, the investigator cannot content himself, as in anthropology as an individual science, with considering man as another part of nature and with ignoring the fact that he, the investigator, is himself a man and experiences this humanity in his inner experience in a way that he simply cannot experience any part of nature.

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p. 147
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
1 month 3 weeks ago
For instance, if you have by...

For instance, if you have by a lie hindered a man who is even now planning a murder, you are legally responsible for all the consequences. But if you have strictly adhered to the truth, public justice can find no fault with you, be the unforeseen consequence what it may. It is possible that whilst you have honestly answered Yes to the murderer's question, whether his intended victim is in the house, the latter may have gone out unobserved, and so not have come in the way of the murderer, and the deed therefore have not been done; whereas, if you lied and said he was not in the house, and he had really gone out (though unknown to you) so that the murderer met him as he went, and executed his purpose on him, then you might with justice be accused as the cause of his death. For, if you had spoken the truth as well as you knew it, perhaps the murderer while seeking for his enemy in the house might have been caught by neighbours coming up and the deed been prevented.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
At the present stage in the...

At the present stage in the development of the art of war, there is only way of coping with them, and that is to keep out of war. In all the densely populated countries of Western Europe, it seems almost certain that, within a few days of the outbreak of war, panic will seize the surviving inhabitants of the capitals and the industrial areas, leading to anarchy, starvation, and paralysis of all warlike effort. The only sensible course, therefore, is to prevent war if possible, and to remain neutral if war occurs.

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Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 3 weeks ago
Fanaticism is the danger of the...

Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.

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The Future of Science (1959), p. 79; also in BBC The Listener, Vol. 61 (1959), p. 505
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
1 month 3 weeks ago
Truth is a standard…

Truth is a standard both of itself and of falsity.

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Part II, Prop. XLIII, Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 week 6 days ago
This grave dissociation of past and...

This grave dissociation of past and present is the generic fact of our time and the cause of the suspicion, more or less vague, which gives rise to the confusion characteristic of our present-day existence. We feel that we actual men have suddenly been left alone on the earth; that the dead did not die in appearance only but effectively; that they can no longer help us. Any remains of the traditional spirit have evaporated. Models, norms, standards are no use to us. We have to solve our problems without any active collaboration of the past, in full actuality, be they problems of art, science, or politics. The European stands alone, without any living ghosts by his side; like Peter Schlehmil he has lost his shadow. This is what always happens when midday comes.

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"The Dehumanisation of Art"; Ortega y Gasset later used this passage in The Revolt of the Masses (1929), quoting it in Ch. III: The Height Of The Times
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
1 month 3 weeks ago
The object of this Essay is...

The object of this Essay is to explain as clearly as I am able grounds of an opinion which I have held from the very earliest period when I had formed any opinions at all on social political matters, and which, instead of being weakened or modified, has been constantly growing stronger by the progress reflection and the experience of life. That the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes - the legal subordination of one sex to the other - is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant,...

Things are pretty, graceful, rich, elegant, handsome, but, until they speak to the imagination, not yet beautiful.

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Beauty
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
2 months 1 week ago
Moderation, in the pursuit of honors...

Moderation, in the pursuit of honors or riches, is the only security against disappointment and vexation. A wise man, therefore, will prefer the simplicity of rustic life to the magnificence of courts.

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Philosophical Maxims
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