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Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
1 month 1 week ago
If man's love for himself be...

If man's love for himself be necessary, then his love for Him through whom, first his coming-to-be, and second, his continuance in his essential being with all his inward and outward traits, his substance and his accidents, occur must also be necessary. Whoever is so besotted by his fleshy appetites as to lack this love neglects his Lord and Creator. He possesses no authentic knowledge of Him; his gaze is limited to his cravings and to things of sense. 

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Al-Ghazali on Love, Longing, Intimacy & Contentment, Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby. Cambridge: The Islamic Texts Society (2011), p. 25.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 6 days ago
Concerning the generation of animals akin...

Concerning the generation of animals akin to them, as hornets and wasps, the facts in all cases are similar to a certain extent, but are devoid of the extraordinary features which characterize bees; this we should expect, for they have nothing divine about them as the bees have.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
1 month 2 days ago
It seems that I have spent...

It seems that I have spent my entire time trying to make life more rational and that it was all wasted effort.

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As quoted in The Observer (17 August 1986).
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 weeks ago
It is not meet to take...

It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.

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15:26 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 1 week ago
In any country where talent and...

In any country where talent and virtue produce no advancement, money will be the national god. Its inhabitants will either have to possess money or make others believe that they do. Wealth will be the highest virtue, poverty the greatest vice. Those who have money will display it in every imaginable way. If their ostentation does not exceed their fortune, all will be well. But if their ostentation does exceed their fortune they will ruin themselves. In such a country, the greatest fortunes will vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Those who don't have money will ruin themselves with vain efforts to conceal their poverty. That is one kind of affluence: the outward sign of wealth for a small number, the mask of poverty for the majority, and a source of corruption for all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
1 month 1 day ago
Labor is a commodity, like any...

Labor is a commodity, like any other, and its price is therefore determined by exactly the same laws that apply to other commodities. In a regime of big industry or of free competition - as we shall see, the two come to the same thing - the price of a commodity is, on the average, always equal to its cost of production. Hence, the price of labor is also equal to the cost of production of labor. But, the costs of production of labor consist of precisely the quantity of means of subsistence necessary to enable the worker to continue working, and to prevent the working class from dying out. The worker will therefore get no more for his labor than is necessary for this purpose; the price of labor, or the wage, will, in other words, be the lowest, the minimum, required for the maintenance of life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
The composer reveals the innermost nature...

The composer reveals the innermost nature of the world, and expresses the profoundest wisdom in a language that his reasoning faculty does not understand, just as a magnetic somnambulist gives information about things of which she has no conception when she is awake. Therefore in the composer, more than in any other artist, the man is entirely separate and distinct from the artist.

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Vol. I, Ch. III, The World As Representation
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
2 months 3 weeks ago
But the inner part is the...

But the inner part is the better part; for to it, as both ruler and judge, all these messengers of the senses report the answers of heaven and earth and all the things therein, who said, "We are not God, but he made us." My inner man knew these things through the ministry of the outer man, and I, the inner man, knew all this, I, the soul, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of earth about my God, and it answered, "I am not he, but he made me."

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X, 6
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 4 days ago
I think that if God forgives...

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

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Letter (19 April 1951); published in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966), p. 230
Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 weeks 5 days ago
When television screens had only rare...

When television screens had only rare images of black folks, black people were more critically vigilant about these representations. Even when blackness was represented 'positiviely,' as it was in early black television shows like Julia, which focused on the life of a black nurse, the beauty standard was a reflection of white supremacist aesthetics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
2 months 4 days ago
Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The...

Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.

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"Thoughts on Politics and Revolution: A Commentary"
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Hope is a good breakfast, but...

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

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No. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
3 weeks ago
If one is to take Lulu's...

If one is to take Lulu's twelve-tone chord as the integral totality of complementary harmony, then Berg's allegorical genius proves itself within a historical perspective which makes the brain reel: just as Lulu in the world of total illusion longs for nothing but her murderer and finally finds him in that sound, so does all harmony of unrequited happiness long for its fatal chord as the cipher of fulfillment - twelve-tone music is not to be separated from dissonance. Fatal: because all dynamics come to a standstill within it without finding release. The law of complementary harmony already implies the end of the musical experience of time, as this was heralded in the dissociation of time according to Expressionistic extremes.

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Philosophy of Modern Music (1973) as translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 weeks ago
Verily I say unto you, All...

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

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(Mark 3:28-29) (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 6 days ago
To understand a name you must...

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 6 days ago
It is a general popular error...

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 1 day ago
Effort supposes resistance....

Effort supposes resistance.

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Vol. I, par. 320
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 day ago
Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate...

Vanity dies hard; in some obstinate cases it outlives the man.

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Prince Otto, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
5 days ago
Anna Pávlovna's reception was in full...

Anna Pávlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt, beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed round the abbé. Another, of young people, was grouped round the beautiful Princess Hélène, Prince Vasíli's daughter, and the little Princess Bolkónskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna Pávlovna.

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Bk. I, Ch. III
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 6 days ago
Real life is, to most men,...

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity embodying in splendid edifices the passionate aspiration after the perfect from which all great work springs. Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos, where pure thought can dwell as in its natural home, and where one, at least, of our nobler impulses can escape from the dreary exile of the actual world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 3 weeks ago
We know nothing accurately in reality,...

We know nothing accurately in reality, but [only] as it changes according to the bodily condition, and the constitution of those things that flow upon [the body] and impinge upon it.

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Freeman (1948), p. 142
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 5 days ago
That the uneducated and the ill-educated...

That the uneducated and the ill-educated should think the hypothesis that all races of beings, man inclusive, may in process of time have been evolved from the simplest monad, a ludicrous one, is not to be wondered at. But for the physiologist, who knows that every individual being is so evolved-who knows, further, that in their earliest condition the germs of all plants and animals whatever are so similar, "that there is no appreciable distinction amongst them, which would enable it to be determined whether a particular molecule is the germ of a Conferva or of an Oak, of a Zoophyte or of a Man";-for him to make a difficulty of the matter is inexcusable.

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Spencer here references William Benjamin Carpenter, Principles of Comparative Physiology see p. 473
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 6 days ago
You can hardly convince a man...

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a lifetime, but must content yourself with the reflection that the progress of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grandchildren may be.

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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 week ago
If the immutable character of sex...

If the immutable character of sex is contested, perhaps this construct called 'sex' is as culturally constructed as gender; indeed, perhaps it was always already gender, with the consequence that the distinction between sex and gender turns out to be no distinction at all.

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Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 weeks 4 days ago
Thinking men and women the world...

Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 4 days ago
Subject matters in general do not...

Subject matters in general do not exist. There are no subject matters; no branches of learning-or, rather, of inquiry: there are only problems, and the urge to solve them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 6 days ago
There lies before us, if we...

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? We appeal as human beings to human beings: Remember your humanity, and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
2 months 1 week ago
A single part of…

A single part of physics occupies the lives of many men, and often leaves them dying in uncertainty.

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"A Madame la Marquise du Châtelet, Avant-Propos," Eléments de Philosophie de Newton, 1738
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 3 weeks ago
A life without a holiday is...

A life without a holiday is like a long journey without an inn to rest at.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
2 months 3 weeks ago
Suppose a person entering a house...

Suppose a person entering a house were to feel heat on the porch, and going further, were to feel the heat increasing, the more they penetrated within. Doubtless, such a person would believe there was a fire in the house, even though they did not see the fire that must be causing all this heat. A similar thing will happen to anyone who considers this world in detail: one will observe that all things are arranged according to their degrees of beauty and excellence, and that the nearer they are to God, the more beautiful and better they are.

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Art. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 weeks 6 days ago
Nature gets credit which should in...

Nature gets credit which should in truth be reserved for ourselves: the rose for its scent: the nightingale for his song: and the sun for his radiance. The poets are entirely mistaken. They should address their lyrics to themselves, and should turn them into odes of self-congratulation on the excellency of the human mind.

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Ch. 3: "The Century of Genius", p. 77
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 4 days ago
God cannot give us a happiness...

God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 6 days ago
The rich in all societies may...

The rich in all societies may be thrown into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their toilsome days and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place them in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labour continually, which is the severest labour, but their hearts are torn by the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice, by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity, benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 1 day ago
What is the case, the fact,...

What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.

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(2) Original German: Was der Fall ist, die Tatsache, ist das Bestehen von Sachverhalten.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 day ago
The genes are the master programmers,...

The genes are the master programmers, and they are programming for their lives.

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Ch. 4. The Gene machine
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 6 days ago
I take toleration to be a...

I take toleration to be a part of religion. I do not know which I would sacrifice; I would keep them both: it is not necessary that I should sacrifice either.

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Speech on the Bill for the Relief of Protestant Dissenters
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
The love of God....
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Main Content / General
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
2 months 2 weeks ago
The method of not erring is...

The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 1 day ago
We are born to exist, not...

We are born to exist, not to know, to be, not to assert ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Cato the Younger
Cato the Younger
1 month 3 weeks ago
Nay, men, if any of you...

Nay, men, if any of you had heeded what I was ever foretelling and advising, ye would now neither be fearing a single man nor putting your hopes in a single man.

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Quoted by Plutarch, Life of Cato the Younger, 52 Bernadotte Perrin, ed. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. 8, LCL 100 (1919), pp. 247, 361
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
4 weeks ago
Christian Kings may erre in deducing...

Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?

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The Third Part, Chapter 43, p. 330
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 1 week ago
If each us had a different...
If each us had a different kind of sense perception — if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound, then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence.
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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 6 days ago
I think that there is nothing,...

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself, than this incessant business.

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p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 week ago
III. Every tax ought to be...

III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it.

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Chapter II Part II, p. 893.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 days ago
Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and...

Inspect every piece of pseudoscience and you will find a security blanket, a thumb to suck, a skirt to hold. What does the scientist have to offer in exchange? Uncertainty! Insecurity!

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
2 months 1 week ago
A book can never be anything...

A book can never be anything more than the impression of its author's thoughts [Ein Buch kann nie mehr seyn, als der Abdruck der Gedanken des Verfassers]. The value of these thoughts lies either in the matter about which he has thought, or in the form in which he develops his matter - that is to say, what he has thought about it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
2 months ago
The task of universal pragmatics is...

The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 6 days ago
France has done more for even...

France has done more for even English history than England has.

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John Stuart Mill. Michelet.On the writing of English history. Complete Works Vol 20. Page 221.
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 weeks 4 days ago
I realize the malady of the...

I realize the malady of the oppressed and disinherited masses only too well, but I refuse to prescribe the usual ridiculous palliatives which allow the patient neither to die nor to recover. One cannot be too extreme in dealing with social ills; besides, the extreme thing is generally the true thing. My lack of faith in the majority is dictated by my faith in the potentialities of the individual. Only when the latter becomes free to choose his associates for a common purpose, can we hope for order and harmony out of this world of chaos and inequality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
2 months 1 week ago
As the analysis of a substantial...

As the analysis of a substantial composite terminates only in a part which is not a whole, that is, in a simple part, so synthesis terminates only in a whole which is not a part, that is, the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
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