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Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 3 weeks ago
Ignorance is not a simple lack...

Ignorance is not a simple lack of knowledge but an active aversion to knowledge, the refusal to know, issuing from cowardice, pride or laziness of mind. 

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Principle attributed to Popper by Ryszard Kapiscinski in New York Times obituary, 1995.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
3 months 3 weeks ago
My kingdom is not of this...

My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.

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18: 36, (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 1 week ago
Although our case is different from...

Although our case is different from that of ascetics who remove themselves from the world, the situation of the latest technological civilization might offer the incentive for commitments of this kind. In a large city, in mass society, among the almost unreal swarming of faceless beings, an essential sense of isolation or of detachment often occurs naturally, perhaps even more than in the solitude of moors and mountains.

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p. 121
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
1 month 2 weeks ago
Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we...

Normal science, the puzzle-solving activity we have just examined, is a highly cumulative enterprise, eminently successful in its aim, the steady extension of the scope and precision of scientific knowledge. In all these respects it fits with great precision the most usual image of scientific work. Yet one standard product of the scientific enterprise is missing. Normal science does not aim at novelties of fact or theory and, when successful, finds none.

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p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 3 weeks ago
Americans must be the most sententious...

Americans must be the most sententious people in history. Far too busy to be religious, they have always felt that they sorely needed guidance.

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The Jefferson Lectures (1977), p. 139
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 weeks ago
Those who have been once intoxicated...

Those who have been once intoxicated with power, and have derived any kind of emolument from it, even though but for one year, never can willingly abandon it. They may be distressed in the midst of all their power; but they will never look to any thing but power for their relief.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months ago
The foundations on which several duties...

The foundations on which several duties are built, and the foundations of right and wrong from which they spring, are not perhaps easily to be let into the minds of grown men, not us'd to abstract their thoughts from common received opinions. Much less are children capable of reasonings from remote principles. They cannot conceive the force of long deductions. The reasons that move them must be obvious, and level to their thoughts, and such as may be felt and touched. But yet, if their age, temper, and inclination be consider'd, they will never want such motives as may be sufficient to convince them.

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Sec. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 3 weeks ago
If one thing goes without saying,...

If one thing goes without saying, almost anything can.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 1 day ago
We are, all of us, growing...
We are, all of us, growing volcanoes that approach the hour of their eruption; but how near or distant that is, nobody knows not even God.
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Philosophical Maxims
George Berkeley
George Berkeley
4 months 5 days ago
That there is no such thing...

That there is no such thing as what philosophers call material substance, I am seriously persuaded: but if I were made to see any thing absurd or skeptical in this, I should then have the same reason to renounce this, that I imagine I have now to reject the contrary opinion.

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Philonous to Hylas
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 1 week ago
In the last 50 years agrotoxins...

In the last 50 years agrotoxins have spread and are pushing bees to extinction. The choices before humanity are clear, a Poison Free Future to save bees, farmers, our food and humanity. Or continue to use poisons, threatening our common future by walking blindly to extinction through the arrogance that we can substitute bees with artificial intelligence and robots... There is no substitute for the amazing biodiversity and gifts of bees. Let us together as diverse species and diverse cultures and through poison free organic food and farming, rejuvenate the biodiversity of our pollinators and restore their sacredness. We have the creative power to stop the sixth mass extinction and climate catastrophe without the need for these false technocratic solutions.

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Poisons Mean Extinction: For Bees and Humanity article for Common Dreams
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 3 weeks ago
What we are destroying is nothing...

What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stood.

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§ 118
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
4 months 3 weeks ago
The intolerant can be viewed as...

The intolerant can be viewed as free-riders, as persons who seek the advantages of just institutions while not doing their share to uphold them.

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Chapter VI, Section 59, pg. 388
Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 1 week ago
Preaching has become a byword for...

Preaching has become a byword for long and dull conversation of any kind; and whoever wishes to imply, in any piece of writing, the absence of everything agreeable and inviting, calls it a sermon.

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Vol. I, ch. 3, p. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 4 days ago
The happiness and unhappiness of the...

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

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IX, 16
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
2 months 1 week ago
I do not allow myself to...

I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself creates new potential.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 1 week ago
No member of a crew is...

No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.

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"Harvard: The Future," The Atlantic Monthly, September 1936
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Treat your friend as if he...

Treat your friend as if he might become an enemy.

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Maxim 401
Philosophical Maxims
Willard van Orman Quine
Willard van Orman Quine
3 months 2 weeks ago
Logic chases truth up the tree...

Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar.

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Philosophy of Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 month 3 weeks ago
We see that experience plays an...

We see that experience plays an indispensable role in the genesis of geometry; but it would be an error thence to conclude that geometry is, even in part, an experimental science. If it were experimental it would be only approximative and provisional. And what rough approximation!...The object of geometry is the study of a particular 'group'; but the general group concept pre-exists... in our minds. It is imposed on us, not as form of our sense, but as form of our understanding. Only, from among all the possible groups, that must be chosen... will be... the standard to which we shall refer natural phenomena.Experience guides us in this choice without forcing it upon us; it tells us not which is the truest geometry, but which is the most convenient.Notice that I have been able to describe the fantastic worlds... imagined without ceasing to employ the language of ordinary geometry.

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Ch. IV: Space and Geometry, Conclusions (1905) Tr. George Bruce Halstead
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 2 days ago
By liberty, then, we can only...

By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.

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§ 8.23
Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
4 months 1 week ago
Time is the wisest…

Time is the wisest of all things that are; for it brings everything to light.

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As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 3 weeks ago
When one is not understood one...

When one is not understood one should as a rule lower one's voice, because when one really speaks loudly enough and is not heard, it is because people do not want to hear. One had better begin to mutter to oneself, then they get curious.

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Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1988), p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 3 weeks ago
A people represents not so much...

A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 4 weeks ago
I am well aware of how...

I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 4 weeks ago
The Hindoos are most serenely and...

The Hindoos are most serenely and thoughtfully religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer, more independent and impersonal knowledge of God. Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a conscientious return, a grosser and more personal repentance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are chief of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to him. The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo philosophers approach and discourse on forbidden themes is admirable. In 1853.

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A Tribute to Hinduism, 2008
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
2 months 1 week ago
The equation of religion with belief...

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

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Christianity Among the Religions of the World (New York: Scribner's, 1957) p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 2 weeks ago
God give me strength to face...

God give me strength to face a fact though it slay me.

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As quoted in Nature Vol. 149 (Jan-Jun) 1942 p. 291, and A Philosophy for Our Time (1954) by Bernard Mannes Baruch, p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Austrian Germans and Magyars will...

The Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.

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The Magyar Struggle in Neue Rheinische Zeitung (13 January 1849) Referring to the Serb uprising of 1848-49
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 2 weeks ago
He has now a second far...

He has now a second far greater success to gain: to seek out his real superiors, whom not the Tailor but the Almighty God has made superior to him, and see a little what he will do with these! Rebel against these also? Pass by with minatory eagle-glance, with calm-sniffing mockery, or even without any mockery or sniff, when these present themselves? The lion-hearted will never dream of such a thing. Forever far be it from him! His minatory eagle-glance will veil itself in softness of the dove: his lion- heart will become a lamb's; all is just indignation changed into just reverence, dissolved in blessed floods of noble humble love, how much heavenlier than any pride, nay, if you will, how much prouder!

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
3 months 2 days ago
Our design, not respecting arts, but...

Our design, not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject, not manual, but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this - from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena...

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
1 month 1 week ago
Only the search back to the...

Only the search back to the origins of one's ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them at all, can liberate us. Our study of history has taught us to laugh at the follies of the whole past, the monarchies, oligarchies, theocracies, and aristocracies with the fanaticism for empire or salvation, once taken so seriously. But we have very few tools for seeing ourselves in the same way, as others will see us. Each age always conspires to make its own way of thinking appear to be the only possible or just way, and our age has the least resistance to the triumph of its own way. There is less real presence of respectable alternatives and less knowledge of the titanic intellectual figures who founded our way.

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Western Civ, p. 20.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 4 days ago
I intend no Monopoly, but a...

I intend no Monopoly, but a Community in Learning; I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves.

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Section 3
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 4 weeks ago
Is dogmatic or scholastic theology less...

Is dogmatic or scholastic theology less doubted in point of fact for claiming, as it does, to be in point of right undoubtable? And if not, what command over truth would this kind of theology really lose if, instead of absolute certainty, she only claimed reasonable probability for her conclusions? If we claim only reasonable probability, it will be as much as men who love the truth can ever at any given moment hope to have within their grasp. Pretty surely it will be more than we could have had, if we were unconscious of our liability to err.

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Lectures XIV and XV, "The Value of Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Mach
Ernst Mach
3 months 3 weeks ago
Mathematical and physiological researches have shown...

Mathematical and physiological researches have shown that the space of experience is simply an actual case of many conceivable cases, about whose peculiar properties experience alone can instruct us.

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p. 205; On the space of experience.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 1 day ago
Political independence, as the right to...

Political independence, as the right to owe his existence and continuance in society not to the arbitrary will of another, but to his own rights and powers as a member of the commonwealth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 1 week ago
You can tell…

You can tell the character of every man when you see how he gives and receives praise.

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Line 12.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 weeks ago
Religion, always a principle of energy,...

Religion, always a principle of energy, in this new people, is no way worn out or impaired; and their mode of professing it is also one main cause of this free spirit. The people are Protestants; and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favourable to liberty, but built upon it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 4 days ago
Do not act as if thou...

Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

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IV. 17, trans. George Long
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
3 weeks 4 days ago
Consider thyself to be dead, and...

Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee. Variant: Think of yourself as dead. You have lived your life. Now, take what's left and live it properly.

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VII, 56
Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
4 months 2 weeks ago
He used to reason as follows:...

He used to reason as follows: 'Everything belongs to the gods; the wise are friends of the gods; friends hold all things in common; ergo, everything belongs to the wise.'

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 37, as reported in Diogenes the Cynic: Sayings and Anecdotes as translated by Robin Hard (Oxford: 2012), p. 13
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 3 days ago
The most formidable of all the...

The most formidable of all the ills that threaten the future of the Union arises from the presence of a black population upon its territory; and in contemplating the cause of the present embarrassments, or the future dangers of the United States, the observer is invariably led to this as a primary fact.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 days ago
Personally, people know...
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Main Content / General
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 months 2 weeks ago
In a free nation, it matters...

In a free nation, it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision and from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effects of reasoning.

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Quoted by Thomas Erskine in the trial of Thomas Paine, 1792
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
5 months 1 day ago
There must be a seed of...

There must be a seed of every good thing in the character of men, otherwise no one can bring it out. Lacking that, analogous motives, honor, etc., are substituted. Parents are in the habit of looking out for the inclinations, for the talents and dexterity, perhaps for the disposition of their children, and not at all for their heart or character.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 13
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 3 weeks ago
My life was not useless; I...

My life was not useless; I gave important truths to the world, and it was only for want of understanding that they were disregarded. I have been ahead of my time.

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Deathbed statement (November 1858), in response to a church minister who asked if he regretted wasting his life on fruitless projects; as quoted in Harold Hill : A People's History
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 4 weeks ago
The plea of anger or of...

The plea of anger or of drunkenness - as having placed the criminal for the moment beyond the control of his reason - relieves him from the charge of premeditated and malicious intent; but a rational legislation will rather provide more severe than milder punishment for such cases, particularly if such a state of mind is habitual with the accused; for a single unlawful act may well constitute an exception from an otherwise blameless life. But a person who pleads, "I habitually get so angry or so drunk as not to be any longer master of my senses!" confesses thereby that he changes himself into a beast on a fixed principle, and that he is, therefore, not fit to live among rational beings.

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P. 351
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1 month 3 weeks ago
Patriotism ruins history. Conversation with Friedrich...

Patriotism ruins history.

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Conversation with Friedrich Wilhem Riemer
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 weeks ago
So much of modern mathematical work...

So much of modern mathematical work is obviously on the border-line of logic, so much of modern logic is symbolic and formal, that the very close relationship of logic and mathematics has become obvious to every instructed student. The proof of their identity is, of course, a matter of detail: starting with premisses which would be universally admitted to belong to logic, and arriving by deduction at results which as obviously belong to mathematics, we find that there is no point at which a sharp line can be drawn, with logic to the left and mathematics to the right. If there are still those who do not admit the identity of logic and mathematics, we may challenge them to indicate at what point, in the successive definitions and deductions of Principia Mathematica, they consider that logic ends and mathematics begins. It will then be obvious that any answer must be quite arbitrary.

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Ch. 18: Mathematics and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 4 weeks ago
Instinct is blind;-a consciousness without insight....

Instinct is blind;-a consciousness without insight. Freedom, as the opposite of Instinct, is thus seeing, and clearly conscious of the grounds of its activity.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
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