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Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
1 month 1 week ago
I have always taken as the...

I have always taken as the standard of the mode of teaching and writing, not the abstract, particular, professional philosopher, but universal man, that I have regarded man as the criterion of truth, and not this or that founder of a system, and have from the first placed the highest excellence of the philosopher in this, that he abstains, both as a man and as an author, from the ostentation of philosophy, i.e., that he is a philosopher only in reality, not formally, that he is a quiet philosopher, not a loud and still less a brawling one.

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Preface to Second Edition
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 2 days ago
Philosophy is the childhood of the...

Philosophy is the childhood of the intellect, and a culture that tries to skip it will never grow up.

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p. 12.
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
2 months 2 weeks ago
The reproduction of mankind is a...

The reproduction of mankind is a great marvel and mystery. Had God consulted me in the matter, I should have advised him to continue the generation of the species by fashioning them of clay, in the way Adam was fashioned.

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752
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 1 week ago
How it could come to pass...

How it could come to pass I do not know, but I remember it clearly. The dream embraced thousands of years and left in me only a sense of the whole. I only know that I was the cause of their sin and downfall. Like a vile trichina, like a germ of the plague infecting whole kingdoms, so I contaminated all this earth, so happy and sinless before my coming. They learnt to lie, grew fond of lying, and discovered the charm of falsehood.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 month 1 week ago
We are always on stage, even...

We are always on stage, even when we are stabbed in earnest at the end.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Sooner or later, each desire must...

Sooner or later, each desire must encounter its lassitude: its truth . . .

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
This organization of functional discourse is...

This organization of functional discourse is of vital importance; it serves as a vehicle of coordination and subordination. The unified, functional language is an irreconcilably anti-critical and anti-dialectical language. In it, operational and behavioral rationality absorbs the transcendent, negative, oppositional elements of Reason.

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p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 week 6 days ago
Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from...

Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from a pacific or calm part of the soul. Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and aggression.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 months 1 week ago
We all see this....
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Main Content / General
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
Men are most apt to believe...

Men are most apt to believe what they least understand.

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Book III, Ch. 11. Of Cripples
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 1 day ago
Perdiccas threatened to put him to...

Perdiccas threatened to put him to death unless he came to him, "That's nothing wonderful," Diogenes said, "for a beetle or a tarantula would do the same."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
1 month 3 weeks ago
Many words befall men, mean and...

Many words befall men, mean and noble alike; do not be astonished by them, nor allow yourself to be constrained. If a lie is told, bear with it gently. But whatever I tell you, let it be done completely. Let no one persuade you by word or deed to do or say whatever is not best for you.

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As quoted in Divine Harmony: The Life and Teachings of Pythagoras by John Strohmeier and Peter Westbrook.
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
3 weeks 6 days ago
Our argument is not flatly circular,...

Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

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"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
The only subversive mind is the...

The only subversive mind is the one that questions the obligation to exist; all the others, the anarchist at the top of the list, compromise with the established order.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 1 week ago
It is hard to have patience...

It is hard to have patience with people who say 'There is no death' or 'Death doesn't matter.' There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 weeks 5 days ago
We do not require elaborate training...

We do not require elaborate training merely in order to refrain from embarking upon intricate trains of inference. Such abstinence is only too easy.

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Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect (1927).
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
The concept of freedom, as the...

The concept of freedom, as the Philosophy of Right has shown, follows the pattern of free ownership. As a result, the history of the world that Hegel looks out upon exalts and enshrines the history of the middle-class, which based itself on this pattern. There is a stark truth in Hegel's strangely certain announcement that history has reached its end. But it announces the funeral of a class, not of history.

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P. 227
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
3 weeks 4 days ago
While it is in no way...

While it is in no way racist for any author to write a book exclusively about white women, it is fundamentally racist for books to be published that focus solely on the American white woman's experience in which that experience is assumed to be the American woman's experience.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 1 week ago
When a sixth of the population...

When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 2 days ago
The form most contradictory to human...

The form most contradictory to human life that can appear among the human species is the "self-satisfied man."

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 weeks 6 days ago
This was once revealed to me...

This was once revealed to me in a dream.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
After having thus successively taken each...

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

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Book Four, Chapter VI.
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
The subversive character of truth inflicts...

The subversive character of truth inflicts upon thought an imperative quality. Logic centers on judgments which are, as demonstrative propositions, imperatives, - the predicative "is" implies an "ought." ... Verification of the proposition involves a process in fact as well as in thought: (S) must become that which it is. The categorical statement thus turns into a categorical imperative; it does not state a fact but the necessity to bring about a fact. For example, it could be read as follows: man is not (in fact) free, endowed with inalienable rights, etc., but he ought to be.

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pp. 132-133
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 1 day ago
Being asked where in Greece he...

Being asked where in Greece he saw good men, he replied, "Good men nowhere, but good boys at Sparta."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing prints more lively in our...

Nothing prints more lively in our minds than something we wish to forget.

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Book II, Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
3 weeks 3 days ago
There is no getting around authority...

There is no getting around authority and power, and no getting around the intellectual's relationship to them. How does the intellectual address authority: as a professional supplicant or as its unrewarded, amateurish conscience?

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p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
1 month 1 week ago
In the philosophy of Mach a...

In the philosophy of Mach a world without matter is unthinkable. Matter in Mach's philosophy is not merely required as a test body to display properties of something already there ...it is an essential feature in causing those properties which it able to display, Inertia, for example, would not appear by the insertion of one test body in the world; in some way the presence of other matter is a necessary condition. It will be seen how welcome to such a philosophy is the theory that space and the inertial frame come into being with matter, and grow as it grows.

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Arthur Eddington, Space, Time and Gravitation
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
We see in tragedy the noblest...

We see in tragedy the noblest men, after a long conflict and suffering, finally renounce forever all the pleasure of life and the aims till then pursued so keenly, or cheerfully and willingly give up life itself.

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Book 1
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 4 days ago
The neo-conservative critics of leftist critics...

The neo-conservative critics of leftist critics of mass culture ridicule the protest against Bach as background music in the kitchen, against Plato and Hegel, Shelley and Baudelaire, Marx and Freud in the drugstore. Instead, they insist on recognition of the fact that the classics have left the mausoleum and come to life again, that people are just so much more educated. True, but coming to life as classics, they come to life as other than themselves; they are deprived of their antagonistic force, of the estrangement which was the very dimension of their truth.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
3 weeks 3 days ago
The effects of mescalin or LSD...

The effects of mescalin or LSD can be, in some respects, far more satisfying than those of alcohol. To begin with, they last longer; they also leave behind no hangover, and leave the mental faculties clear and unimpaired. They stimulate the faculties and produce the ideal ground for a peak experience.

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p. 88
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 2 weeks ago
What would become of history, had...

What would become of history, had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian, according to the experience, what we have had of mankind?

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§ 8.18
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 1 week ago
Commoners are weightless. But he was...

Commoners are weightless. But he was a royal bon vivant who, no matter what, always weighed 125 kilos. I would be very surprised if he didn't have a few pounds left.

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A soldier in Argos, speaking of the dead King Agamemnon, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
3 weeks ago
Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of...

Evaluations, in essence, are... ways of being, modes of existence of those who judge and evaluate.

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 week 4 days ago
The only absolute knowledge attainable by...

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

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Ch. 5, translated by David Patterson, 1983
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Sir Henry Wotton used to say...

Sir Henry Wotton used to say that critics are like brushers of noblemen's clothes.

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No. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 days ago
Let us consider first the view...

Let us consider first the view that it is always wrong to take an innocent human life. We may call this the "sanctity of life" view. People who take this view oppose abortion and euthanasia. They do not usually, however, oppose the killing of nonhuman animals-so perhaps it would be more accurate to describe this view as the "sanctity of human life" view. The belief that human life, and only human life, is sacrosanct is a form of speciesism.

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Ch. 1: All Animals Are Equal
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 week ago
Hope is the normal form of...

Hope is the normal form of delirium.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 weeks 5 days ago
The consequences of a plethora of...

The consequences of a plethora of half-digested theoretical knowledge are deplorable.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
1 month 2 weeks ago
Pursue Virtue virtuously...

Pursue Virtue virtuously.

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These words also appear in Christian Morals, Part I, Section I
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 week ago
I am not advocating a morality...

I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave.

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Ch. 1. Why Are People?
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
3 weeks 6 days ago
The whole economic system of Capitalism...

The whole economic system of Capitalism is an offshoot of a devouring and overwhelming lust, of a kind that can hold sway only in a society that has deliberately renounced the Christian asceticism and turned away from Heaven to give itself over exclusively to earthly gratifications. ... It is the result of a secularization of economic life, and by it the hierarchical subordination of the material to the spiritual is inverted. The autonomy of economics has ended in their dominating the whole life of human societies: the worship of Mammon has become the determining force of the age. And the worst of it is that this undisguised "mammonism" is regarded as a very good thing, an attainment to the knowledge of truth and a release from illusions. Economic materialism formulates this to perfection when it brands the whole spiritual life of man as a deception and a dream.

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p. 92
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
1 month 2 weeks ago
He was as great as a...

He was as great as a man can be without morality.

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Said of Napoleon (1842)
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 weeks ago
The immeasurable beauty of life is...

The immeasurable beauty of life is a very fine thing to write about, and there are, indeed, some who resign themselves to accept it and accept it as it is, and even some who would persuade us that there is no problem in the "trap." But it has been said by Calderón that "to seek to persuade a man that the misfortunes which he suffers are not misfortunes, does not console him for them, but it is another misfortune in addition." And furthermore, "only the heart can speak to the heart," as Fray Diego de Estella said.

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(Vanidad del Mundo, cap. xxi.)
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
1 month 2 days ago
Liberalism - it is well to...

Liberalism - it is well to recall this today-is the supreme form of generosity; it is the right which the majority concedes to minorities and hence it is the noblest cry that has ever resounded in this planet. It announces the determination to share existence with the enemy; more than that, with an enemy which is weak. It was incredible that the human species should have arrived at so noble an attitude, so paradoxical, so refined, so acrobatic, so anti-natural. Hence, it is not to be wondered at that this same humanity should soon appear anxious to get rid of it. It is a discipline too difficult and complex to take firm root on earth.

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Chap. VIII: The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 days ago
We cannot grasp any idea, any...

We cannot grasp any idea, any organ of meditation, we cannot possess it in full force, until we have felt and sensed it, as much so as if it were an odor or a color.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 weeks 6 days ago
God's love for us is not...

God's love for us is not the reason for which we should love him. God's love for us is the reason for us to love ourselves.

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p. 270
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
2 months 3 weeks ago
Violence and injury....

Violence and injury enclose in their net all that do such things, and generally return upon him who began.

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Book V, lines 1152-1153 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
Christ's whole body groans in pain....

Christ's whole body groans in pain. Until the end of the world, when pain will pass away, this man groans and cries to God. And each one of us has part in the cry of that whole body. Thou didst cry out in thy day, and thy days have passed away; another took thy place and cried out in his day. Thou here, he there, and another there. The body of Christ ceases not to cry out all the day, one member replacing the other whose voice is hushed. Thus there is but one man who reaches unto the end of time, and those that cry are always His members.

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p.423
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 2 weeks ago
All true metaphysics is taken from...

All true metaphysics is taken from the essential nature of the thinking faculty itself, and therefore in nowise invented, since it is not borrowed from experience, but contains the pure operations of thought, that is, conceptions and principles à priori, which the manifold of empirical presentations first of all brings into legitimate connection, by which it can become empirical knowledge, i.e. experience. ...mathematical physicists were thus quite unable to dispense with such metaphysical principles...

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Preface, Tr. Bax, 1883
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 1 week ago
It is in the social sphere,...

It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.

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Chapter 3 (p. 22)
Philosophical Maxims
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