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Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 3 weeks ago
To require that a so-called layman...

To require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), pages 94-95
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 2 weeks ago
After World War II, we hoped...

After World War II, we hoped the world might be united for the sake of peacemaking. Now the world is being "globalized" for the sake of trade and the so-called free market - for the sake, that is, of plundering the world for cheap labor, cheap energy, and cheap materials. How nations, let alone regions and communities, are to shape and protect themselves within this "global economy" is far from clear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
All meaning alters with acceleration, because...

All meaning alters with acceleration, because all patterns of personal and political interdependence change with any acceleration of information.

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(p. 178-179)
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
2 months 1 week ago
We should like to represent... the......

We should like to represent... the... universe, and... feel... we understood it. We... never can attain this representation: our weakness is too great. But... we desire... to conceive an infinite intelligence... which should see all, and... classify all in its time, as we classify, in our time, the little we see. ...This supreme intelligence would be only a demigod; infinite in one sense... limited in another, since it would have... imperfect recollection of the past... otherwise all recollections would be equally present... and for it there would be no time.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
I think He made one law...

I think He made one law of that kind in order that there might be obedience. In all these other matters what you call obeying Him is but doing what seems good in your eyes also. Is love content with that? You do them, indeed, because they are His will, but not only because they are his will. Where can you taste the joy of obeying unless he bids you do something for which His bidding is the only reason?

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 1 week ago
The philosopher ... subjects experience to...

The philosopher ... subjects experience to his critical judgment, and this contains a value judgment - namely, that freedom from toil is preferable to toil, and an intelligent life is preferable to a stupid life. It so happened that philosophy was born with these values. Scientific thought had to break this union of value judgment and analysis, for it became increasingly clear that the philosophic values did not guide the organisation of society.

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p. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
4 months 2 weeks ago
What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic...

What is Nature? An encyclopedical, systematic Index or Plan of our Spirit. Why will we content us with the mere catalogue of our Treasures? Let us contemplate them ourselves, and in all ways elaborate and use them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 months 5 days ago
He who is infatuated with Man...

He who is infatuated with Man leaves persons out of account so far as that infatuation extends, and floats in an ideal, sacred interest. Man, you see, is not a person, but an ideal, a spook.

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Dover 2005, p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 2 days ago
I ... understand why the saints...

I ... understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has primarily to do with distractions ... Women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life or saintly life.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 2 weeks ago
Faith and patriotism are the two...

Faith and patriotism are the two great thaumaturges of this world. Both are divine; all their actions are prodigies. Do not go to them talking of examination, choice, or discussion; they will say that you blaspheme. They know only two words: submission and belief; with these two levers they raise the world. Even their errors are sublime. These two children of Heaven prove their origin to all eyes by creating and conserving; but if they unite, join their forces, and together take possession of a nation, they exalt it, they divinize it, and they increase its forces a hundred-fold.

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p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
The cucumber is bitter? Then throw...

The cucumber is bitter? Then throw it out. There are brambles in the path? Then go around them. That's all you need to know.

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(Hays translation) VIII, 50
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 2 weeks ago
Suppose a surface to be part...

Suppose a surface to be part red and part blue; so that every point on it is either red or blue, and of course, no part can be both red and blue. What then, is the color of the surface in the immediate neighborhood of the point. ...it follows that the boundary is half red and half blue. In like manner, we find it necessary to hold that consciousness essentially occupies time... Thus, the present is half past and half time to come. ...Take another case: the velocity of a particle at any instant of time is its mean velocity during an infinitesimal instant in which that time is consumed. Just so, my immediate feeling is my feeling through an infinitesimal duration containing the present instant.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick
2 months 3 weeks ago
One persistent strand in utopian thinking,...

One persistent strand in utopian thinking, as we have often mentioned, is the feeling that there is some set of principles obvious enough to be accepted by all men of good will, precise enough to give unambiguous guidance in particular situations, clear enough so that all will realize its dictates, and complete enough to cover all problems which actually arise. Since I do not assume that there are such principles, I do not presume that the political realm will whither away. The messiness of the details of a political apparatus and the details of how it is to be controlled and limited do not fit easily into one's hopes for a sleek, simple utopian scheme.

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Ch. 10 : A Framework for Utopia; Utopian Means and Ends, p. 330
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 4 weeks ago
This misplacing hath caused a deficience,...

This misplacing hath caused a deficience, or at least a great improficience in the sciences themselves. For the handling of final causes, mixed with the rest in physical inquiries, hath intercepted the severe and diligent inquiry of all real and physical causes, and given men the occasion to stay upon these satisfactory and specious causes, to the great arrest and prejudice of further discovery. For this I find done not only by Plato, who ever anchoreth upon that shore, but by Aristotle, Galen, and others which do usually likewise fall upon these flats of discoursing causes.

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Book VII, 7
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
5 months 1 day ago
Do not ask who started it....

Do not ask who started it.

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Finish it A Dictionary of Thoughts (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 234
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 months 1 week ago
Men looke not at the greatnesse...

Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.

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The First Part, Chapter 15, p. 76 (Italics as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 month 3 weeks ago
I am absolutely prepared to talk...

I am absolutely prepared to talk about the spiritual life of an electronic computer: to state that it is reflecting or is in a bad mood... The question whether the machine really feels or ponders, or whether it merely looks as though it did, is of course absolutely meaningingless.

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As quoted in a letter written from J. Kalckar to John A. Wheeler dated June 10, 1977, which appears in Wheeler's "Law Without Law," pg 207.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 3 days ago
I now come to the second...

I now come to the second reason for the modern fading of interest in religion. Religion is the reaction of human nature to its search for God. The presentation of God under the aspect of power awakens every modern instinct of critical reaction. This is fatal; for religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent. In this respect the old phraseology is at variance with the psychology of modern civilisations. This change in psychology is largely due to science, and is one of the chief ways in which the advance of science has weakened the hold of the old religious forms of expression.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", pp. 266-267
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
3 months 3 weeks ago
Even if we consider not words...

Even if we consider not words by themselves but rules deciding what words may appropriately be produced in certain contexts - even if we consider, in computer jargon, programs for using words - unless those programs themselves refer to something extra-linguistic there is still no determinate reference that those words possess. This will be a crucial step in the process of reaching the conclusion that the Brain-in-a-Vat Worlders cannot refer to anything external at all (and hence cannot say that they are Brain-in-a-Vat Worlders).

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Chap. 1 : Brains in a vat
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 2 weeks ago
Dogmatics must be designed in this...

Dogmatics must be designed in this way. Above all, every science must vigorously lay hold of its own beginning and not live in complicated relations with other sciences. If dogmatics begins by wanting to explain sinfulness or by wanting to prove its actuality, no dogmatics will come out of it, but the entire existence of dogmatics will become problematic and vague.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
6 months 2 weeks ago
Anxiety and nothing always correspond to...

Anxiety and nothing always correspond to each other. As soon as the actuality of freedom and of spirit is posited, anxiety is canceled. But what then does the nothing of anxiety signify more particularly in paganism. This is fate. Fate is a relation to spirit as external. It is the relation between spirit and something else that is not spirit and to which fate nevertheless stands in a spiritual relation. Fate may also signify exactly the opposite, because it is the unity of necessity and accidental. ... A necessity that is not conscious of itself is eo ipso the accidental in relation to the next moment. Fate, then, is the nothing of anxiety.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 4 weeks ago
If we make a couple of...

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever.... Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we discover the incomprehensible sooner or later.

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F 82
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
The concessions of the weak are...

The concessions of the weak are the concessions of fear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
People must be governed in a...

People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 76.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
3 months 1 week ago
The will of man has no...

The will of man has no power whatever over his opinions; he must, and ever did, and ever will, believe what has been, is, or may be impressed on his mind by his predecessors, and the circumstances which surround him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
5 months 1 week ago
Into the middle things…

Into the middle things.

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Line 148
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
5 months 1 week ago
A person may be greedy, envious,...

A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental effort of will.

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"Moral Luck" (1976), p. 32.
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
6 months 2 days ago
The source of the errors of...

The source of the errors of these two sects, is in not having known that the state of man at the present time differs from that of his creation; so that the one, remarking some traces of his first greatness and being ignorant of his corruption, has treated nature as sound and without need of redemption, which leads him to the height of pride; whilst the other, feeling the present wretchedness and being ignorant of the original dignity, treats nature as necessarily infirm and irreparable, which precipitates it into despair of arriving at real good, and thence into extreme laxity.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
5 months 2 weeks ago
The creed which accepts as the...

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure.

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Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
There is always a certain meanness...

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
6 months 2 days ago
As to the objection that these...

As to the objection that these rules are common in the world, that it is necessary to define every thing and to prove every thing, and that logicians themselves have placed them among their art, I would that the thing were true and that it were so well known... But so little is this the case, that, geometricians alone excepted, who are so few in number that they are a single in a whole nation and long periods of time, we see no others that know it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
4 months 1 day ago
I believe that man is the...

I believe that man is the product of natural evolution that is born from the conflict of being a prisoner and separated from nature, and from the need to find unity and harmony with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 1 week ago
Matters of religion should never be...

Matters of religion should never be matters of controversy. We neither argue with a lover about his taste, nor condemn him, if we are just, for knowing so human a passion.

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Ch. VI
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 3 weeks ago
Talk of secularism is meaningful when...

Talk of secularism is meaningful when it refers to the weakness of traditional religious belief or the lack of power of churches and other religious bodies. That is what is meant when we say Britain is a more secular country than the United States, and in this sense secularism is an achievable condition. But if it means a type of society in which religion is absent, secularism is a kind of contradiction, for it is defined by what it excludes. Post-Christian secular societies are formed by the beliefs they reject, whereas a society that had truly left Christianity behind would lack the concepts that shaped secular thought.

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Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 267-8)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 2 weeks ago
In memory yet green, in joy...

In memory yet green, in joy still felt, The scenes of life rise sharply into view. We triumph; Life's disasters are undealt, And while all else is old, the world is new.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 weeks ago
Just because science can't in practice...

Just because science can't in practice explain things like the love that motivates a poet to write a sonnet, that doesn't mean that religion can. It's a simple and logical fallacy to say, 'If science can't do something, therefore religion can'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 2 weeks ago
An atom blaster is a good...

An atom blaster is a good weapon, but it can point both ways.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
"I don't want to! Why should...

"I don't want to! Why should I?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't." "So what? I don't care about other people." "You should." "But why?" "Because more people will be happier if you do than if you don't."

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Dialogue between Russell and his daughter Katharine, as quoted in My Father - Bertrand Russell, 1975
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 2 weeks ago
If I seem happy to you...

If I seem happy to you . . . You could never say anything that would please me more. For men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy.

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Book II, Chapter 4 (trans. Constance Garnett)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whenever a system of communication evolves,...

Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends.

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Ch. 4. The Gene machine
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
Every pitifulest whipster that walks within...

Every pitifulest whipster that walks within a skin has had his head filled with the notion that he is, shall be, or by all human and divine laws ought to be, 'happy.' His wishes, the pitifulest whipster's, are to be fulfilled for him; his days, the pitifulest whipster's, are to flow on in an ever-gentle current of enjoyment, impossible even for the gods. The prophets preach to us, Thou shalt be happy; thou shalt love pleasant things, and find them. The people clamor, Why have we not found pleasant things? ...God's Laws are become a Greatest Happiness Principle. There is no religion; there is no God; man has lost his soul.

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Bk. III, ch. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 6 days ago
I should say....
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Main Content / General
William James
William James
5 months 2 weeks ago
Consciousness, then, does not appear to...

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits ... A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
6 months 1 week ago
It is quite clear to you...

It is quite clear to you that all the people see that lower kinds of creation could have been made in a different way from that in which they really are, and as they see this lower degree in many things they think that they must have been made by chance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
No, the Great Man does not...

No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere! The great Fact of Existence is great to him. Fly as he will, he cannot get out of the awful presence of this Reality. His mind is so made; he is great by that, first of all. Fearful and wonderful, real as Life, real as Death, is this Universe to him. Though all men should forget its truth, and walk in a vain show, he cannot. At all moments the Flame-image glares in upon him; undeniable, there, there!-I wish you to take this as my primary definition of a Great Man. A little man may have this, it is competent to all men that God has made: but a Great Man cannot be without it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 2 weeks ago
Rats and roaches live by competition...

Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.

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Economy and Pleasure
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 month 4 weeks ago
I am not indeed ignorant that...

I am not indeed ignorant that certain over-wise people will call these legends "old wives' fables," and not worth listening to; but I think, for my part, that in such matters it is better to believe the testimony of nations than of those witty individuals, whose little soul is acute indeed, but has a clear insight into no one thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months 3 weeks ago
It is said that…

It is said that God is always on the side of the big battalions.

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Letter to François-Louis-Henri Leriche (6 February 1770) Note: In his Notebooks (c.1735-c.1750)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 4 weeks ago
Above all, every relation must be...

Above all, every relation must be considered as suspicious, which depends in any degree upon religion, as the prodigies of Livy: And no less so, everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy, or such authors, who seem, all of them, to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable.

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Aphorism 29
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
5 months 2 weeks ago
For anyone who at the end...

For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely "What basic character do beings manifest?" or "How may the being of beings be characterized?" but "What is this 'being' itself?" The decisive question is that of "the meaning of being," not merely that of the being of beings.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
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