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Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
Homer tells us also that Sisyphus...

Homer tells us also that Sisyphus had put Death in chains. Pluto could not endure the sight of his deserted, silent empire. He dispatched the god of war, who liberated Death from the hands of her conqueror.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 2 weeks ago
The hypostasis of the particular methods...

The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science ... results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a "crucial experiment" rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature.

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p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 2 weeks ago
Interest only becomes one-sided and morbid...

Interest only becomes one-sided and morbid only when it ceases to be frank, and becomes sly and furtive.

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p. 197
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
2 months 2 weeks ago
When we are told, in the...

When we are told, in the same tone, that these people will be rewarded in "heaven" for their distress, and that "heaven" is the exact reverse of the earthly order ("the first shall be last"), we distinctly feel how the ressentiment-laden man transfers to God the vengeance he himself cannot wreak on the great. In this way, he can satisfy his revenge at least in imagination, with the aid of an other-worldly mechanism of rewards and punishments.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 weeks ago
Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously...

Scepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical, when it tries to raise doubts where no questions can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer exists, and an answer only where something can be said.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 1 week ago
At the time of its initial...

At the time of its initial publication, Public Administration helped to define this field of study and practice by introducing two major new emphases: an orientation toward human behavior and human relations in organizations, and an emphasis on the interaction between administration, politics, and policy. Without neglecting more traditional concerns with organization structure, Simon, Thompson, and Smithburg viewed administration in its behavioral and political contexts. The viewpoints they express still are at the center of public administration's concerns.

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Book abstract, 1991
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
Saying is one thing and doing...

Saying is one thing and doing is another.

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Ch. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 3 weeks 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
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 1 week ago
Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it;...

Philosophy finds religion, and modifies it; and conversely religion is among the data of experience which philosophy must weave into its own scheme. Religion is an ultimate craving to infuse into the insistent particularity of emotion that non-temporal generality which primarily belongs to conceptual thought alone. In the higher organisms the differences of tempo between the mere emotions and the conceptual experiences produce a life-tedium, unless this supreme fusion has been effected. The two sides of the organism require a reconciliation in which emotional experiences illustrate a conceptual justification, and conceptual experiences find an emotional illustration.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
Mass man is a phenomenon of...

Mass man is a phenomenon of electric speed, not of physical quantity.

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Access, Issues 165-176, National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 1984, p. xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 weeks ago
The peculiar and amusing nature of...

The peculiar and amusing nature of those answers stems from the fact that modern history is like a deaf person who is in the habit of answering questions that no one has put to them. If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement of humanity and of the peoples, the first question - in the absence of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible - is: what is the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books. All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it is not what was asked.

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Vol 2, pt 5, p 236 - Selected Works, Moscow, 1869
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 2 weeks ago
Many evils, no doubt, were produced...

Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
Cultural dominance by either the left...

Cultural dominance by either the left or the right hemisphere is largely dependent upon environmental factors.

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p. 72
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Always to have lived with the...

Always to have lived with the nostalgia to coincide with something, but not really knowing with what - it is easy to shift from unbelief to belief, or conversely. But what is there to convert to, and what is there to abjure, in a state of chronic lucidity?

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 4 weeks ago
To be in love is not...

To be in love is not the same as loving. You can be in love with a woman and still hate her.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
Necessity may be...
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Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 1 week ago
For he who is unmusical is...

For he who is unmusical is a child in music; he who is without letters is a child in learning; he who is untaught, is a child in life.

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Book III, ch. 19, 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 days ago
The method of the science not...

The method of the science not being practiced much nowadays, except what logic prescribes to all sciences generally, that fitted for the peculiar nature of metaphysics being simply ignored, it is no wonder that those who everlastingly turn the Sisyphean stone of this inquiry do not seem so far to have made much progress. Though here I neither can nor will expatiate upon so important and extensive a subject, I shall briefly shadow forth what constitutes no despicable part of this method, namely, the infection between sensuous and intellectual cognition, not only as creeping in on those incautious in the application of principles, but even producing spurious principles under the appearance of axioms.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 3 weeks ago
Is there anything in life so...

Is there anything in life so disenchanting as attainment?

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The Suicide Club, The Adventure of the Hansom Cabs.
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 weeks 5 days ago
Sixty years ago I knew everything....

Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

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Quoted in "Teachers: The Essence of the Centuries", Time magazine, 13 August 1965
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 1 week ago
For no fact….

For no fact is so simple we believe it at first sight, And there is nothing that exists so great or marvellous That over time mankind does not admire it less and less.

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Book II, lines 1026-1029 (tr. Stallings)
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 1 week ago
Lying takes the form of mass...

Lying takes the form of mass media creating the myth that feminist movement has completely transformed society, so much so that the politics of patriarchal power have been inverted and that men, particularly white men, just like emasculated black men, have become the victims of dominating women. So, it goes, all men (especially black men) must pull together (as in the Clarence Thomas hearings) to support and reaffirm patriarchal domination. Add to this the widely held assumptions that blacks, other minorities, and white women are taking jobs from white men, and that people are poor and unemployed because they want to be, and it becomes most evident that part of our contemporary crisis is created by a lack of meaningful access to truth.

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Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
Guide the people by law, subdue...

Guide the people by law, subdue them by punishment; they may shun crime, but will be void of shame. Guide them by example, subdue them by courtesy; they will learn shame, and come to be good.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
He that is without sin among...

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.

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8:7 (King James Version)
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 days ago
The Union was a measure from...

The Union was a measure from which infinite Good has been derived to this country.

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Letter to William Strahan (4 April 1760), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months ago
Aristotle's view that philosophy begins with...

Aristotle's view that philosophy begins with wonder, not as in our day with doubt, is a positive point of departure for philosophy. Indeed, the world will no doubt learn that it does not do to begin with the negative, and the reason for success up to the present is that philosophers have never quite surrendered to the negative and thus have never earnestly done what they have said. They merely flirt with doubt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
The unconscious is not just evil...

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

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The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 2 days ago
The third of this kind of...

The third of this kind of principles is : matter neither originates nor perishes; all the changes in the world concern form only ; a postulate which on the recommendation of common sense has spread through all philosophical schools, not because it is to be taken as having been found so, or as having been demonstrated by arguments a priori, but because if we were to admit that matter itself is fleeting and transitory, nothing at all that is stable and lasting would be left any longer to serve for the explication of phenomena according to universal and perpetual laws, and hence nothing at all would be left for the exercise of the intellect.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 3 weeks ago
No doubt the spirit or energy...

No doubt the spirit or energy of the world is what is acting in us, as the sea is what rises in every little wave; but it passes through us, and cry out as we may, it will move on. Our privilege is to have perceived it as it moves.

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p. 199
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 3 days ago
The greatest improvement in the productive...

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

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Chapter I, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
There are men and gods, and...

There are men and gods, and beings like Pythagoras.

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Of himself, as quoted in A History of Western Philosophy (1945) by Bertrand Russell
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
What every man who loves his...

What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 3 weeks ago
At the end of reasons...

At the end of reasons comes persuasion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
Good is a good doctor, but...

Good is a good doctor, but Bad is sometimes a better.

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Considerations by the Way
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months 1 week ago
A doubtful balance is made between...

A doubtful balance is made between truth and pleasure, and... the knowledge of one and the feeling of the other stir up a combat the success of which is very uncertain, since, in order to judge of it, it would be necessary to know all that passes in the innermost spirit of the man, of which man himself is scarcely ever conscious.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 day ago
He who lives as children live
He who lives as children live who does not struggle for his bread and does not believe that his actions possess any ultimate significance remains childlike.
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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 3 days ago
The same good sense, that directs...

The same good sense, that directs men in the ordinary occurrences of life, is not hearkened to in religious matters, which are supposed to be placed altogether above the cognizance of human reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 weeks ago
"'Are the gods not just?' 'Oh...

"'Are the gods not just?' 'Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?'"

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Orual & The Fox
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 4 weeks ago
Those who cavalierly reject the Theory...

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
Wealth begins in a tight roof...

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits of clothes, so to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn; in a good double-wick lamp; and three meals; in a horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tolls and auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and knowledge, and good-will.Wealth begins with these articles of necessity.

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Wealth
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Fortunate those who, born before science,...

Fortunate those who, born before science, were privileged to die of their first disease!

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 4 days ago
The hatred that men bear to...

The hatred that men bear to privilege increases in proportion as privileges become fewer and less considerable, so that democratic passions would seem to burn most fiercely just when they have least fuel. I have already given the reason for this phenomenon. [all conditions are unequal, no inequality is so great as to offend the eye, whereas the slightest dissimilarity is odious in the midst of general uniformity; the more complete this uniformity is, the more insupportable the sight of such a difference becomes.] Hence it is natural that the love of equality should constantly increase together with equality itself, and that it should grow by what it feeds on.

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Chapter III.
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Be your money's master, not its...

Be your money's master, not its slave.

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Maxim 657
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months ago
I knew a parson who frightened...

I knew a parson who frightened his congregation terribly by telling them that the second coming was very imminent indeed, but they were much consoled when they found that he was planting trees in his garden.

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"Defects in Christ's Teaching"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 2 days ago
I remembered the way out suggested...

I remembered the way out suggested by a great princess when told that the peasants had no bread: "Well, let them eat cake".

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This passage contains a statement Qu'ils mangent de la brioche that has usually come to be attributed to Marie Antoinette; this was written in 1766, when Marie Antoinette was 10
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months ago
If I were to imagine a...

If I were to imagine a girl deeply in love and some man who wanted to use all his reasoning powers and knowledge to ridicule her passion, well, there's surely no question of the enamoured girl having to choose between keeping her wealth and being ridiculed. No, but if some extremely cool and calculating man calmly told the young girl, "I will explain to you what love is," and the girl admitted that everything he told her was quite correct, I wonder if she wouldn't choose his miserable common sense rather than her wealth?

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Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 week 3 days ago
I have always done things in...

I have always done things in my own way, which is at once the way that comes naturally to me, that is honest, sincere, genuine, and unforced; but also perverse, although you must remember that this word means per (through) verse (poetry), out-of-the-way and wayward, which is surely towards the way, and that to be queer-to "follow your own weird"-is wholeheartedly to accept your karma, or fate, or destiny, and thus to be odd in the service of God, "whose service," as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer declares, "is perfect freedom."

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p. xiii
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 months 4 weeks ago
To enrich God, man must become...

To enrich God, man must become poor; that God may be all, man must be nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks ago
What say you…

"What," say you, "are you giving me advice? Indeed, have you already advised yourself, already corrected your own faults? Is this the reason why you have leisure to reform other men?" No, I am not so shameless as to undertake to cure my fellow-men when I am ill myself. I am, however, discussing with you troubles which concern us both, and sharing the remedy with you, just as if we were lying ill in the same hospital.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
For his purposes (and mine), scientific...

For his purposes (and mine), scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine. Conversely, if a technique devised by the President of the Royal College of Physicians consistently fails in double-blind trials, it will cease to be a part of 'orthodox' medicine. Whether it will then become 'alternative' will depend upon whether it is adopted by a sufficiently ambitious quack (there are always sufficiently gullible patients).

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Foreword to Snake Oil and Other Preoccupations by John Diamond, Vintage, 2001.
Philosophical Maxims
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