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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
From Antisthenes: It is royal to...

From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and be abused.

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VII, 36
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 1 day 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
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
As if there could be true...

As if there could be true stories: things happen in one way, and we retell them in the opposite way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 weeks ago
I tell you again that the...

I tell you again that the recollection of the manner in which I saw the Queen of France in the year 1774 and the contrast between that brilliancy, Splendour, and beauty, with the prostrate Homage of a Nation to her, compared with the abominable Scene of 1789 which I was describing did draw Tears from me and wetted my Paper. These Tears came again into my Eyes almost as often as I lookd at the description. They may again. You do not believe this fact, or that these are my real feelings, but that the whole is affected, or as you express it, 'downright Foppery'. My friend, I tell you it is truth-and that it is true, and will be true, when you and I are no more, and will exist as long as men-with their Natural feelings exist.

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Letter to Philip Francis (20 February 1790), quoted in Alfred Cobban and Robert A. Smith (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VI: July 1789-December 1791 (1967), p. 91
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
I exist, that is all, and...

I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 3 weeks ago
There are two things which make...

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2 months 2 weeks ago
The spirits that I summoned upI...

The spirits that I summoned up, I now can't rid myself of.

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Der Zauberlehrling (The Sorcerer's Apprentice)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 months 3 weeks ago
One may dream of a culture...

One may dream of a culture where everyone bursts into laughter when someone says: this is true, this is real.

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Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
6 months 1 week ago
The necessary connexion of movement and...

The necessary connexion of movement and time is real and time is something the soul constructs in movement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
4 months ago
To me it seems clear that...

To me it seems clear that the descriptions of human life we find in the novels of Tolstoy or George Eliot are not mere entertainment; they teach us to perceive what goes on in social and individual life. And such descriptions require the many subtle distinctions that ordinary language has made available to us. The question of the relevance or irrelevance of "how we speak" is not just a question for philosophers, although it is that too. It is a question for philosophers because once ordinary language is laughed out of the room, philosophical theories are no longer held responsible at all to the ways we actually speak and actually live; but it is a question for more than just philosophers because, at bottom, contempt for ordinary language is contempt for all the humanities.

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"Science and Philosophy"
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Familiarity breeds contempt.

Familiarity breeds contempt.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 5 days ago
I do not mean to deny...

I do not mean to deny the biologic, physiologic, or psychologic factors in creating crime; but there is hardly an advanced criminologist who will not concede that the social and economic influences are the most relentless, the most poisonous germs of crime.

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Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 month 2 weeks ago
We must admit, with the same...

We must admit, with the same frankness, that we are ignorant whether matter has in itself the faculty of feeling, or only the power of acquiring it by those modifications or forms to which matter is susceptible; for it is true that this faculty of feeling appears only in organic bodies.This is then another new faculty which might exist only potentially in matter, like all the others which have been mentioned; and this was the hypothesis of the ancients, whose philosophy, full of insight and penetration, deserves to be raised above the ruins of the philosophy of the moderns.

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Ch. VI Concerning the Sensitive Faculty of Matter
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 3 weeks ago
Society and conversation, therefore, are the...

Society and conversation, therefore, are the most powerful remedies for restoring the mind to its tranquillity, if, at any time, it has unfortunately lost it; as well as the best preservatives of that equal and happy temper, which is so necessary to self-satisfaction and enjoyment. Men of retirement and speculation, who are apt to sit brooding at home over either grief or resentment, though they may often have more humanity, more generosity, and a nicer sense of honour, yet seldom possess that equality of temper which is so common among men of the world.

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Section I, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 5 days ago
And the central assertion of his...

And the central assertion of his philosophy is that this inner realm is the 'spiritual world' and that once man has learned to enter this realm, he realizes that it is not a mere imaginative reflection of the external world, but a world that possesses its own independent reality.

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p. 161
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 3 weeks ago
To this I answer: That force...

To this I answer: That force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force. Whoever makes any opposition in any other case, draws on himself a just condemnation, both from God and man...

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Second Treatise of Government, Ch. XVIII, sec. 204
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 3 weeks ago
Buying books would be a good...

Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 23, § 296a
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 1 day ago
It is not possible to run...

It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

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Aphorism 81
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 2 weeks ago
Titles are an important part of...

Titles are an important part of a story and I take considerable care in choosing one. In fact, I cannot start a story until I have chosen a title.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 3 weeks ago
The liar is a person who...
The liar is a person who uses the valid designations, the words, in order to make something which is unreal appear to be real. He says, for example, "I am rich," when the proper designation for his condition would be "poor." He misuses fixed conventions by means of arbitrary substitutions or even reversals of names. If he does this in a selfish and moreover harmful manner, society will cease to trust him and will thereby exclude him. What men avoid by excluding the liar is not so much being defrauded as it is being harmed by means of fraud. Thus, even at this stage, what they hate is basically not deception itself, but rather the unpleasant, hated consequences of certain sorts of deception. It is in a similarly restricted sense that man now wants nothing but truth: he desires the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth. He is indifferent toward pure knowledge which has no consequences; toward those truths which are possibly harmful and destructive he is even hostilely inclined.
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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
Men exist for the sake of...

Men exist for the sake of one another. Teach them then or bear with them.

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(Long translation) All men are made one for another: either then teach them better, or bear with them. (trans. Meric Casaubon). VIII, 59
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 weeks ago
The practical consequence of such a[n...

The practical consequence of such a[n individualistic] philosophy is the well-known democratic respect for the sacredness of individuality,-is, at any rate, the outward tolerance of whatever is not itself intolerant. These phrases are so familiar that they sound now rather dead in our ears. Once they had a passionate inner meaning. Such a passionate inner meaning they may easily acquire again if the pretension of our nation to inflict its own inner ideals and institutions vi et armis upon Orientals should meet with a resistance as obdurate as so far it has been gallant and spirited. Religiously and philosophically, our ancient national doctrine of live and let live may prove to have a far deeper meaning than our people now seem to imagine it to possess.

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"Preface"
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
6 months 1 week ago
Praise be to God with all...

Praise be to God with all due praise, and a prayer for Muhammad His chosen servant and apostle. The purpose of this treatise is to examine, from the standpoint of the study of the Law, whether the study of philosophy and logic is allowed by the Law, or prohibited, or commanded either by way of recommendation or as obligatory.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 weeks ago
We have an enemy, to whose...

We have an enemy, to whose virtues we can owe nothing; but on this occasion we are infinitely obliged to one of his vices. We owe more to his insolence than to our own precaution.

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p.3
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
We confide in our strength, without...

We confide in our strength, without boasting of it; we respect that of others, without fearing it.

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Letter to William Carmichael and William Short
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 3 weeks ago
Everything in the universe goes by...

Everything in the universe goes by indirection. There are no straight lines.

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Works and Days
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 months 2 days ago
Are you not aware that all...

Are you not aware that all offerings whether great or small that are brought to the gods with piety have equal value, whereas without piety, I will not say hecatombs, but, by the gods, even the Olympian sacrifice of a thousand oxen is merely empty expenditure and nothing else?

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Oration to the Cynic Heracleios
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 1 week ago
All people respect and love their...

All people respect and love their own parents and children, as well as the parents and children of others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 weeks ago
Perhaps the best hope for the...

Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 2 weeks ago
Propaganda...

Propaganda:

Good = God (take a letter)
Evil = Devil (add a letter)

😁🚀📖

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 months 2 weeks ago
Those, no doubt, are in some...

Those, no doubt, are in some way fortunate who have brought themselves, or have been brought by others, to obey some ultimate principle before the bar of which all problems can be brought. Single-minded monists, ruthless fanatics, men possessed by an all-embracing coherent vision do not know the doubts and agonies of those who cannot wholly blind themselves to reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 1 week ago
It is indeed foolish to be...

It is indeed foolish to be unhappy now because you may be unhappy at some future time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 3 weeks ago
The body of all true religion...

The body of all true religion consists, to be sure, in obedience to the will of the Sovereign of the world, in a confidence in His declarations, and in imitation of His perfections.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
5 months 3 weeks ago
Let's go dance under the elms...

Let's go dance under the elms:

Step lively, young lassies.

Let's go dance under the elms:

Gallants, take up your pipes.

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Le devin du village, 1752
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
6 months 2 weeks ago
Well, it was healthy to miss...

Well, it was healthy to miss once in a while. It kept self-confidence balanced at a point safely short of arrogance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
5 months 1 week ago
Becoming a vegetarian is not merely...

Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering upon them.

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Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
4 months 1 week ago
At root what is needed for...

At root what is needed for scientific inquiry is just receptivity to data, skill in reasoning, and yearning for truth. Admittedly, ingenuity can help too.

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S.4
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 1 week ago
The superior man examines his heart,...

The superior man examines his heart, that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause for dissatisfaction with himself. That wherein the superior man cannot be equaled is simply this, his work which other men cannot see.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
I wish it were possible to...

I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution. I would be willing to depend on that alone for the reduction of the administration of our government to the genuine principles of its Constitution; I mean an additional article, taking from the federal government the power of borrowing.

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Letter to John Taylor (26 November 1798), shortened in The Money Masters to "I wish it were possible to obtain a single amendment to our Constitution ... taking from the federal government their power of borrowing".
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
In television, images are projected at...

In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point.

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(p. 125)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 weeks ago
Good nature is, of all moral...

Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
6 months 1 week ago
Never trust her at any time….

Never trust her at any time, when the calm sea shows her false alluring smile.

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Book II, lines 557-559 (tr. Rouse)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
In a valiant suffering for others,...

In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
4 months 3 weeks ago
I am beginning to feel that...

I am beginning to feel that I am growing old; soon, I shall have to eat mush like children. I shall no longer be able to speak, which will be a rather great advantage for others and but a small inconvenience for myself.... The time in which I count in years is gone; that in which I count in days is here.... I had thought that the fibers of the heart would grow callous with age, it's not at all the case. I am not sure that my sensitivity hasn't increased; everything moves me, affects me.... To fade out between a man feeling your pulse and another bothering your head; not to know where one comes from, why one came, where one is going ...

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Letter to his sister Denise, as quoted in Diderot, Reason and Resonance (1982) by Élisabeth de Fontenay, pp. 270-271
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 2 weeks ago
Fate is not in man but...

Fate is not in man but around him.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
5 months 3 weeks ago
This life is worth living, we...

This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.

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"Is Life Worth Living?"
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 months 1 day ago
One indeed is the Creator of...

One indeed is the Creator of all things, but many are the creative powers revolving in the heavens; we must, therefore, place the influence of the Sun as intermediate with respect to each single operation affecting the earth. Moreover, the principle productive of Life is vastly superabundant in the Intelligible World; our world, also, is evidently full of generative life. It is therefore clear that the life-producing power of the sovereign Sun is intermediate between these two, since the phenomena of Nature bear testimony to the fact; for some kinds of things the Sun brings to perfection, others of them he brings to pass, others he regulates, others he excites, and there exists nothing that, without the creative influence of the Sun, comes to light and is born.

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Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
6 months 5 days ago
Rules for Axioms. I. Not to...

Rules for Axioms. I. Not to omit any necessary principle without asking whether it is admittied, however clear and evident it may be. II. Not to demand, in axioms, any but things that are perfectly evident in themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
Farewell to the monsters…

Farewell to the monsters, farewell to the saints. Farewell to pride. All that is left is men.

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Act 10, sc. 4
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
Try as I will....
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