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Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
People think they have taken quite...

People think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy.

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Introduction to 1891 edition of Karl Marx's, The Civil War in France
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
Tolerance - the function of an...

Tolerance - the function of an extinguished ardor - tolerance cannot seduce the young.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
The lover who kills himself for...

The lover who kills himself for a girl has an experience which is more complete and much more profound than the hero who overturns the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
"For I am holy." When I...

"For I am holy." When I hear these words I recognize the voice of the Saviour. But shall I take away my own? Certainly when He speaks thus He speaks in inseparable union with His body. But can I say, "I am holy"? If I mean a holiness that I have not received, I should be proud and a liar; but if I mean a holiness that I have received - as it is written: "Be ye holy because I the Lord your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2) - then let the body of Christ say these words. And let this one man, who cries from the ends of the earth, say with his Head and united with his Head: "I am holy." … That is not foolish pride, but an expression of gratitude. If you were to say that you are holy of yourselves, that would be pride; but if, as one of Christ's faithful and as a member of Christ, you say that you are not holy, you are ungrateful.

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p.428
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 months 1 week ago
Another response to racism has been...

Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
1 month 3 weeks ago
He whom God has touched will...

He whom God has touched will always be a being apart: he is, whatever he may do, a stranger among men; he is marked by a sign.

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Oeuvres Complètes, vol. 3. L'Avenir de la Science (1890).
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
3 months 2 weeks ago
This mortal Don Quixote died and...

This mortal Don Quixote died and descended into hell, which he entered lance on rest, and freed all the condemned, as he freed the galley slaves, and he shut the gates of hell, and tore down the scroll that Dante saw there and replaced it by one on which was written "Long live hope!" and escorted by those whom he had freed, and they laughing at him, he went to heaven. And God laughed paternally at him, and this divine laughter filled his soul with eternal happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 4 weeks ago
Art is not, as the metaphysicians...

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious Idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, [play or] a game in which one releases surplus energy, ...not the production of pleasing objects, and is above all, not pleasure itself, but it is the means of union among mankind, joining them in the same feelings, and necessary for the life and progress toward the good of the individual and of humanity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 3 weeks ago
Truly to escape Hegel involves an...

Truly to escape Hegel involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him. It assumes that we are aware of the extent to which Hegel, insidiously perhaps, is close to us; it implies a knowledge, in that which permits us to think against Hegel, of that which remains Hegelian. We have to determine the extent to which our anti-Hegelianism is possibly one of his tricks directed against us, at the end of which he stands, motionless, waiting for us.

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Discourse on Language, Inaugural Lecture at the Collège de France, 1970-1971. tr. A. M. Sheridan Smith
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
5 months ago
I die adoring God…

I die adoring God, loving my friends, not hating my enemies, and detesting superstition.

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Déclaration de Voltaire, note to his secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière, 28 February 1778
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months ago
You find as you look around...

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress of humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or even mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

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"The Emotional Factor"
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 weeks ago
Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating,...

Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
My thought is me...

My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think ... and I can't prevent myself from thinking.

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Lundi ("Monday")
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 days ago
Indeed it may be...
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Friedrich Schelling
Friedrich Schelling
3 months 4 weeks ago
The end of the philosophical dialogue...

The end of the philosophical dialogue lies in itself; it can never serve a purpose outside of itself. Just as a sculptor does not cease to be a work of art even if it lies at the bottom of the sea, so indeed every work of philosophy endures, even if uncomprehended in its own time. One would be grateful if it were merely a matter of incomprehension. Instead, the work is usually refitted and appropriated by various entities-some playing the part of the opponent; others, that of the proponent.

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P.3-4
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 week ago
The art of progress is to...

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
A good judge…

A good judge condemns wrongful acts, but does not hate them.

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De Ira (On Anger): Book 1, cap. 16, line 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
3 months 4 weeks ago
One must love humanity in order...

One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.

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Lenz (1835).
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
4 months 2 weeks ago
Let hopes and sorrows….

Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be, and think each day that dawns the last you'll see; For so the hour that greets you unforeseen, will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.

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Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 4 weeks ago
The conscience of a man of...

The conscience of a man of our circle, if he retains but a scrap of it, cannot rest, and poisons all the comforts and enjoyments of life supplied to us by the labour of our brothers, who suffer and perish at that labour. And not only does every conscientious man feel this himself (he would be glad to forget it, but cannot do so in our age) but all the best part of science and art - that part which has not forgotten the purpose of its vocation - continually reminds us of our cruelty and of our unjustifiable position. The old firm justifications are all destroyed; the new ephemeral justifications of the progress of science for science's sake and art for art's sake do not stand the light of simple common sense. Men's consciences cannot be set at rest by new excuses, but only by a change of life which will make any justification of oneself unnecessary as there will be nothing needing justification.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 1 week ago
Ah, you flavour everything; you are...

Ah, you flavour everything; you are the vanilla of society.

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Vol. I, ch. 9, p. 312
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 3 weeks ago
Whenever government assumes to deliver us...

Whenever government assumes to deliver us from the trouble of thinking for ourselves, the only consequences it produces are those of torpor and imbecility.

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Vol. 2, bk. 6, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 weeks ago
My Lords, to obtain empire is...

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of imperial sway over other nations by the high superintending justice of the sovereign state has not many striking examples among any people.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 398
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 week ago
But by far the greatest hindrance...

But by far the greatest hindrance and aberration of the human understanding proceeds from the dullness, incompetency, and deceptions of the senses; in that things which strike the sense outweigh things which do not immediately strike it, though they be more important. Hence it is that speculation commonly ceases where sight ceases; insomuch that of things invisible there is little or no observation.

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Aphorism 50
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are not arrogant, not hubristic,...

We are not arrogant, not hubristic, to celebrate the sheer bulk and detail of what we know through science. We are simply telling the honest and irrefutable truth. Also honest is the frank admission of how much we don't yet know - how much more work remains to be done. That is the very antithesis of hubristic arrogance. Science combines a massive contribution, in volume and detail, of what we do know with humility in proclaiming what we don't. Religion, by embarrassing contrast, has contributed literally zero to what we know, combined with huge hubristic confidence in the alleged facts it has simply made up.

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The Intellectual and Moral Courage of Atheism
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 4 weeks ago
And what is it in us...

And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I'd say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened....Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

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Part 1, Chapter 7
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute...

Absolute freedom mocks at justice. Absolute justice denies freedom. To be fruitful, the two ideas must find their limits in each other. 

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"Historical Murder", as translated by Anthony Bower
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 3 days ago
Pithy sentences are like sharp nails...

Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations (1908) by Tryon Edwards, p. 338
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 2 weeks ago
The number 2 thought of by...

The number 2 thought of by one man cannot be added to the number 2 thought of by another man so as to make up the number 4.

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Oppression and Liberty (1958), p. 82
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
3 months 1 week ago
You ask me why I do...

You ask me why I do not write something... I think one's feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions and into actions which bring results.

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Letter to a friend, quoted in The Life of Florence Nightingale (1913) by Edward Tyas Cook, p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 months 3 weeks ago
Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence,...

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are all such accidents. We...

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.

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Great Jewish Short Stories, introduction to the Dell paperback edition
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 1 day ago
Enjoin him to play so many...

Enjoin him to play so many hours every day, and look that he do it; and you shall see he will quickly be sick of it; and willing to leave it. By this means making the recreations you dislike a business to him, he will of himself with delight betake himself to those things you would have him do, especially if they be proposed as rewards for having performed the task in that play which is commanded of him.

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Sec. 129
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 3 weeks ago
The soul...

The soul is the prison of the body.

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Discipline and Punish (1977) as translated by Alan Sheridan, p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
2 weeks 5 days ago
"The physical world is real."...

"The physical world is real." That is supposed to be the fundamental hypothesis. What does "hypothesis" mean here? For me, a hypothesis is a statement, whose truth must be assumed for the moment, but whose meaning must be raised above all ambiguity. The above statement appears to me, however, to be, in itself, meaningless, as if one said: "The physical world is cock-a-doodle-do." It appears to me that the "real" is an intrinsically empty, meaningless category (pigeon hole), whose monstrous importance lies only in the fact that I can do certain things in it and not certain others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 3 weeks ago
I know only one Church: it...

I know only one Church: it is the society of men.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
O thou who art able to...

O thou who art able to write a Book, which once in the two centuries or oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity him whom they name Conqueror or City-burner! Thou too art a Conqueror and Victor; but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: thou too hast built what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder-bringing City of the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Prophetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the Earth will pilgrim.

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Bk. II, ch. 8.
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 3 weeks ago
The old form of trade union,...

The old form of trade union, which was born in the nineteenth century and aimed primarily at negotiating wages for a specific trade is no longer sufficient. First of all, as we have been arguing, the old trade unions are not able to represent the unemployed, the poor, or even the mobile and flexible post-Fordist workers with short term contracts, all of whom participate actively in social production and increase social wealth. Second, the old unions are divided according to the various products and tasks defined in the heyday of industrial production - a miners' union, a pipefitters' union, a machinists' union and so forth. Today, insofar as the conditions and the relations of labor are becoming common, these traditional divisions (or even newly defined divisions) no longer make sense and serve only as an obstacle. Finally the old unions have become purely economic, not political, organization.

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136
Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
1 month 3 weeks ago
We admire people to the extent...

We admire people to the extent that we cannot explain what they do, and the word "admire" then means "marvel at."

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Beyond Freedom and Dignity
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 3 weeks ago
Were the ends of a person...

Were the ends of a person already explicit, there would be no room for development, for growth, for life; and consequently there would be no personality. The mere carrying out of predetermined purposes is mechanical. This remark has an application to the philosophy of religion. It is that genuine evolutionary philosophy, that is, one that makes the principle of growth a primordial element of the universe, is so far from being antagonistic to the idea of a personal creator, that it is really inseparable from that idea; while a necessitarian religion is in an altogether false position and is destined to become disintegrated. But a pseudo-evolutionism which enthrones mechanical law above the principle of growth is at once scientifically unsatisfactory, as giving no possible hint of how the universe has come about, and hostile to all hopes of personal relations to God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 months 2 weeks ago
Underlying the concept of positivity is...

Underlying the concept of positivity is the conviction that the positive is intrinsically positive in itself, without anyone pausing to ask what is to be regarded as positive. ... It is significant and really quite interesting that the term 'positive' actually contains this ambivalence. On the one hand, 'positive' means what is given, is postulated, is there-as when we speak of positivism as the philosophy that sticks to the facts. But, equally, 'positive' also refers to the good, the approvable, in a certain sense, the ideal. And I imagine that this semantic constellation expresses with precision what countless people actually feel to be the case.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Thou sayest that I am a...

Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

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18:37, (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 1 week ago
When you wander, as you often...

When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.

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Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 3 weeks ago
By all means begin your folio;...

By all means begin your folio; even if the doctor does not give you a year, even if he hesitates about a month, make one brave push and see what can be accomplished in a week.

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316
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
3 months ago
What should young people do with...

What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.

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Commencement Address to Hobart and William Smith Colleges, May 26, 1974
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
To suffer is to produce knowledge.

To suffer is to produce knowledge.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
5 months 2 weeks ago
Venerate the martyrs...

Venerate the martyrs, praise, love, proclaim, honor them. But worship the God of the martyrs.

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273:9; translation from: The works of Saint Augustine, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, ISBN 1565480600 ISBN 9781565480605 p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 2 days ago
Goods can serve many other purposes...

Goods can serve many other purposes besides purchasing money, but money can serve no other purpose besides purchasing goods.

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Chapter I, p. 471.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
4 weeks 1 day ago
We may say with truth and...

We may say with truth and meaning that governments are more or less republican, as they have more or less of the element of popular election and control in their composition; and believing, as I do, that the mass of the citizens is the safest depository of their own rights, and especially, that the evils flowing from the duperies of the people are less injurious than those from the egoism of their agents, I am a friend to that composition of government which has in it the most of this ingredient. And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.

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Letter to John Taylor (28 May 1816) ME 15:23
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 4 weeks ago
We are not so absurd as...

We are not so absurd as to propose that the teacher should not set forth his own opinions as the true ones and exert his utmost powers to exhibit their truth in the strongest light. To abstain from this would be to nourish the worst intellectual habit of all, that of not finding, and not looking for, certainty in any teacher. But the teacher himself should not be held to any creed; nor should the question be whether his own opinions are the true ones, but whether he is well instructed in those of other people, and, in enforcing his own, states the arguments for all conflicting opinions fairly.

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"Civilization," London and Westminster Review, April 1836
Philosophical Maxims
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