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Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Two enemies - the same man...

Two enemies - the same man divided.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 4 weeks ago
Even the free importation of foreign...

Even the free importation of foreign corn could very little affect the interest of the farmers of Great Britain. Corn is a much more bulky commodity than butcher's-meat. A pound of wheat at a penny is as dear as a pound of butcher's-meat at fourpence. The small quantity of foreign corn imported even in times of the greatest scarcity, may satisfy our farmers that they can have nothing to fear from the freest importation.

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Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 weeks 4 days ago
We are not born free, nor...

We are not born free, nor do we come into this world with a self-identity and autonomy of our own. We achieve those things, through the conflict and cooperation that weave us into the social fabric.

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Where We Are: The State of Britain Now
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
Art is naturally concerned with man...

Art is naturally concerned with man in his existential aspect, not in his scientific aspect. For the scientist, questions about man's stature and significance, suffering and power, are not really scientific questions; consequently he is inclined to regard art as an inferior recreation. Unfortunately, the artist has come to accept the scientist's view of himself. The result, I contend, is that art in the twentieth century - literary art in particular - has ceased to take itself seriously as the primary instrument of existential philosophy. It has ceased to regard itself as an instrument for probing questions of human significance. Art is the science of human destiny. Science is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of nature; art is the attempt to discern the order that underlies the chaos of man. At its best, it evokes unifying emotions; it makes the reader see the world momentarily as a unity.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
I could show, that the same...

I could show, that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions, and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny; I could show, that they have all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause, and their own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last importance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
The real importance of Swedenborg lies...

The real importance of Swedenborg lies in the doctrines he taught, which are the reverse of the gloom and hell-fire of other breakaway sects. He rejects the notion that Jesus died on the cross to atone for the sin of Adam, declaring that God is neither vindictive nor petty-minded, and that since he is God, he doesn't need atonement. It is remarkable that this common-sense view had never struck earlier theologians. God is Divine Goodness, and Jesus is Divine Wisdom, and Goodness has to be approached through Wisdom. Whatever one thinks about the extraordinary claims of its founder, it must be acknowledged that there is something very beautiful and healthy about the Swedenborgian religion. Its founder may have not been a great occultist, but he was a great man.

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p. 280
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 4 days ago
The two ways of contemplation are...

The two ways of contemplation are not unlike the two ways of action commonly spoken of by the ancients: the one plain and smooth in the beginning, and in the end impassable; the other rough and troublesome in the entrance, but after a while fair and even. So it is in contemplation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

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Book I, v, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 4 days ago
There is no single speech nor...

There is no single speech nor article in which it is not said that the purpose of all these orgies is the peace of Europe. At a dinner given by the representatives of French literature, all breathe of peace. M. Zola, who, a short time previously, had written that war was inevitable, and even serviceable; M. de Vogue, who more than once has stated the same in print, say, neither of them, a word as to war, but speak only of peace. The sessions of Parliament open with speeches upon the past festivities; the speakers mention that such festivities are an assurance of peace to Europe. It is as if a man should come into a peaceful company, and commence energetically to assure everyone present that he has not the least intention to knock out anyone's teeth, blacken their eyes, or break their arms, but has only the most peaceful ideas for passing the evening.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
My aim is: to teach you...

My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense.

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§ 464
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
The public is a ferocious beast…

The public is a ferocious beast: one must chain it up or flee from it.

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Letter to Mademoiselle Quinault, quoted in Charles Sainte-Beuve, "Lettres inédites de Voltaire," Causeries de Lundi (20 October 1856) ; an English translation can be found on this page:
Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 3 days ago
The entire method consists in the...

The entire method consists in the order and arrangement of the things to which the mind's eye must turn so that we can discover some truth.

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Rules for the Direction of the Mind: X.379 As quoted in Clarke, Desmond M. (2006). Descartes : a Biography. Cambridge Press. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-521-82301-2.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
Thus, while the refugee serfs only...

Thus, while the refugee serfs only wished to be free to develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, will have to abolish the very condition of their existence hitherto (which has, moreover, been that of all society up to the present), namely, labour. Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves collective expression, that is, the State. In order, therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the State.

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"Communism. The Production of the Form of Intercourse Itself", The Marx-Engels Reader
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week 4 days ago
Education is the instruction of the...

Education is the instruction of the intellect in the laws of Nature, under which name I include not merely things and their forces, but men and their ways; and the fashioning of the affections and of the will into an earnest and loving desire to move in harmony with those laws. For me, education means neither more nor less than this. Anything which professes to call itself education must be tried by this standard, and if it fails to stand the test, I will not call it education, whatever may be the force of authority, or of numbers, upon the other side.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Idleness is only fatal to the...

Idleness is only fatal to the mediocre.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Her absence is no more emphatic...

Her absence is no more emphatic in those places than anywhere else. It's not local at all. I suppose if one were forbidden all salt one wouldn't notice it much more in any one food more than another. Eating in general would be different, every day, at every meal. It is like that. The act of living is different all through. Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
2 months 3 weeks ago
Society is undergoing a silent revolution,...

Society is undergoing a silent revolution, which must be submitted to, and which takes no more notice of the human existences it breaks down than an earthquake regards the houses it subverts. The classes and the races, too weak to master the new conditions of life, must give way. But can there be anything more puerile, more short-sighted, than the views of those Economists who believe in all earnest that this woeful transitory state means nothing but adapting society to the acquisitive propensities of capitalists, both landlords and money-lords?

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"Forced Emigration," New York Daily Tribune, 22 March 1853.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 4 days ago
There is nothing I congratulate myself...

There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.

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As quoted in Thomas More and Erasmus (1965) by Ernest Edwin Reynolds, p. 248 [citation needed]
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is also a study peculiarly...

It is also a study peculiarly adapted to an early stage in the education of philosophical students, since it does not presuppose the slow process of acquiring, by experience and reflection, valuable thoughts of their own.

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(pp. 19-20)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week 4 days ago
So far as cerebral structure goes......

So far as cerebral structure goes... it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain and that of a Lemur.

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Ch.2, p. 120
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
The happy consciousness is shaky enough-a...

The happy consciousness is shaky enough-a thin surface over fear, frustration, and disgust.

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p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 1 week ago
Has not authority from time immemorial...

Has not authority from time immemorial stamped every step of progress as treasonable?

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 4 weeks ago
I am an investigator by inclination....

I am an investigator by inclination. I feel a great thirst for knowledge and an impatient eagerness to advance, also satisfaction at each progressive step. There was a time when I thought that all this could constitute the honor of humanity, and I despised the mob, which knows nothing about it. Rousseau set me straight. This dazzling excellence vanishes; I learn to honor men, and would consider myself much less useful than common laborers if I did not believe that this consideration could give all the others a value, to establish the rights of humanity.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 55
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are infinitely many variations of...

There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.

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Chapter III, Section 21, pg. 126
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 2 days ago
Physiologically, man in the normal use...

Physiologically, man in the normal use of technology (or his variously extended body) is perpetually modified by it and in turn finds ever new ways of modifying his technology. Man becomes, as it were, the sex organs of the machine world, as the bee of the plant world, enabling it to fecundate and to evolve ever new forms. The machine world reciprocates man's love by expediting his wishes and desires, namely, in providing him with wealth. One of the merits of motivation research has been the revelation of man's sex relation to the motorcar.

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(p.46)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
A world without delight and without...

A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.

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The Scientific Outlook, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 2 days ago
All media work us over completely....

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical.

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(p. 26)
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 3 weeks ago
Tools arm the man. One can...

Tools arm the man. One can well say that man is capable of bringing forth a world; he lacks only the necessary apparatus, the corresponding armature of his sensory tools. The beginning is there. Thus the principle of a warship lies in the idea of the shipbuilder, who is able to incorporate this thought by making himself into a gigantic machine, as it were, through a mass of men and appropriate tools and materials. Thus the idea of a moment often required monstrous organs, monstrous masses of materials, and man is therefore a potential, if not an actual creator.

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Fragment No. 88
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
2 months 2 weeks ago
If we compare the third-person attitude...

If we compare the third-person attitude of someone who simply says how things stand (this is the attitude of the scientist, for example) with the performative attitude of someone who tries to understand what is said to him (this is the attitude of the interpreter, for example), the implications ... become clear. ... First, interpreters relinquish superiority that observers have by virtue of their privileged position, in that they themselves are drawn, at least potentially, into negotiations about the meaning and validity of utterances. By taking part in communicative action, they accept in principle the same status as those whose utterances they are trying to understand. ... It is impossible to decide a priori who is to learn from whom.

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p. 26
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 2 weeks ago
Perhaps there is one chain [of...

Perhaps there is one chain [of inference] leading from the mental and the physical to a common source. It is conceivable in the abstract that if mental phenomena derive from the properties of matter at all, these may be identical at some level with nonphysical properties from which physical phenomena also derive. ...If there were such properties, they would be discoverable only by explanatory inference from both mental and physical phenomena. ... There would be properties of matter that were not physical from which the mental properties of organic systems were derived. This could still be called panpsychism.

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"Panpsychism" (1979), pp. 184-185.
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
To talk about religion except in...

To talk about religion except in terms of human psychology is an irrelevance.

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"One and Many," p. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 3 weeks ago
A certain maxim of Logic which...

A certain maxim of Logic which I have called Pragmatism has recommended itself to me for diverse reasons and on sundry considerations. Having taken it as my guide for most of my thought, I find that as the years of my knowledge of it lengthen, my sense of the importance of it presses upon me more and more. If it is only true, it is certainly a wonderfully efficient instrument. It is not to philosophy only that it is applicable. I have found it of signal service in every branch of science that I have studied. My want of skill in practical affairs does not prevent me from perceiving the advantage of being well imbued with pragmatism in the conduct of life.

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Lecture I : Pragmatism : The Normative Sciences, CP 5.14
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Plato was synthesis of Europe and...

Plato was synthesis of Europe and Asia, and a decidedly Oriental element pervades his philosophy, giving it a sunrise color.

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Quoted in Swami Abhedananda, India and Her People, 6th ed., Calcutta: Ramakrishna Vedanta Math, 1945
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
Most men pursue pleasure with such...

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
2 months 2 weeks ago
'Tis not in strength of body...

'Tis not in strength of body nor in gold that men find happiness, but in uprightness and in fulness of understanding.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
If the colleges were better, if...

If the colleges were better, if they ... had the power of imparting valuable thought, creative principles, truths which become powers, thoughts which become talents, - if they could cause that a mind not profound should become profound, - we should all rush to their gates: instead of contriving inducements to draw students, you would need to set policy at the gates to keep order in the in-rushing multitude.

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The Celebration of Intellect, 1861
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
We assert then that nothing has...

We assert then that nothing has been accomplished without interest on the part of the actors; and - if interest be called passion, inasmuch as the whole individuality, to the neglect of all other actual or possible interests and claims, is devoted to an object with every fibre of volition, concentrating all its desires and powers upon it - we may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Often abbreviated to: Nothing great in the World has been accomplished without passion. Variant translation: We may affirm absolutely that nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without enthusiasm.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Fear not, then, thou child infirm,...

Fear not, then, thou child infirm, There's no god dare wrong a worm.

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Compensation, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 3 weeks ago
Let me now try to gather...

Let me now try to gather up all these odds and ends of commentary and restate the law of mind, in a unitary way.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 days ago
A propensity to hope....
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Main Content / General
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
Reason ... contradicts the established order...

Reason ... contradicts the established order of men and things on behalf of existing societal forces that reveal the irrational character of this order - for "rational" is a mode of thought and action which is geared to reduce ignorance, destruction, brutality, and oppression.

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pp. 141-142
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
We make choices, decisions, as long...

We make choices, decisions, as long as we keep to the surface of things; once we reach the depths, we can neither choose nor decide, we can do nothing but regret the surface...

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Philosophical Maxims
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
1 month 2 weeks ago
Philosophy is in history, and is...

Philosophy is in history, and is never independent of historical discourse. But for the tacit symbolism of life it substitutes, in principle, a conscious symbolism; for a latent meaning, one that is manifest. It is never content to accept its historical situation. It changes this situation by revealing it to itself.

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p. 57
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
His power to adore is responsible...

His power to adore is responsible for all his crimes: a man who loves a god unduly forces other men to love his god, eager to exterminate them if they refuse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
Sexual activity is driven by the...

Sexual activity is driven by the same aims and motives as reading poetry or listening to music: to escape the limitations imposed by the need for particularity in the consciousness.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 days ago
Saying is one thing, doing another....

Saying is one thing, doing another.

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Book II, Ch. 31. Of Anger
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 days ago
There is no need for you...

There is no need for you to develop an armed insurrection. Christ himself has already begun an insurrection with his mouth.

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pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 5 days 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
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
I take it for granted, when...

I take it for granted, when I am invited to lecture anywhere, - for I have had a little experience in that business, - that there is a desire to hear what I think on some subject, though I may be the greatest fool in the country, - and not that I should say pleasant things merely, or such as the audience will assent to; and I resolve, accordingly, that I will give them a strong dose of myself. They have sent for me, and engaged to pay for me, and I am determined that they shall have me, though I bore them beyond all precedent.

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p. 484
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 4 weeks ago
Though experience be our only guide...

Though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact; it must be acknowledged, that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors.

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Section 10 : Of Miracles Pt. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 3 weeks ago
Superstition is to religion…

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy, the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

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"Whether it is useful to maintain the people in superstition," Treatise on Toleration, 1763
Philosophical Maxims
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