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Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
5 months 2 weeks ago
Contemplating the universe, the whole system...

Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study- It is the study of God through his works - It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection. Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is?

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Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation. A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
A fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with...

A fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with it very far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and feeling, in philosophy and art and private relations, seems absolutely necessary if industrialism is to become the servant of man instead of his master. In all this, I am at one with the Bolsheviks; politically, I criticize them only when their methods seem to involve a departure from their own ideals.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
They reckon ill who leave me...

They reckon ill who leave me out; When me they fly, I am the wings; I am the doubter and the doubt; And I the hymn the Brahmin sings.

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Brahma, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Everyone must destroy their life. According...

Everyone must destroy their life. According to the way they do it, they're either triumphants or failures.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 3 weeks ago
The French want no-one to be...

The French want no-one to be their superior. The English want inferiors. The Frenchman constantly raises his eyes above him with anxiety. The Englishman lowers his beneath him with satisfaction.

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Journeys to England and Ireland (1835).
Philosophical Maxims
Isaiah Berlin
Isaiah Berlin
4 months 1 week ago
Few new truths have ever won...

Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated. 

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As quoted in Communications and History : Theories of Knowledge, Media and Civilization (1988) by Paul Heyer, p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
5 months 1 week ago
The political triumph of Donald Trump...

The political triumph of Donald Trump is a symbol and symptom-not cause or origin-of our imperial meltdown. Trump is neither alien nor extraneous to American culture and history. In fact, he is as American as apple pie. Yet he is a sign of our spiritual bankruptcy-all spectacle and no substance, all narcissism and no empathy, all appetite and greed and no wisdom and maturity. Yet his triumph flows from the implosion of a Republican Party establishment beholden to big money, big military, and big scapegoating of vulnerable peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women; from a Democratic Party establishment beholden to big money, big military, and the clever deployment of peoples of color, LGBTQ peoples, immigrants, Muslims, and women to hide and conceal the lies and crimes of neoliberal policies here and abroad; and from a corporate media establishment that aided and abetted Trump owing to high profits and revenues.

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2017 introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 month 3 weeks ago
One of the commonplaces of modern...

One of the commonplaces of modern historiography is the polemical exaltation of the civilization of the Renaissance over and against medieval civilization. This is not just the expression of a typical misunderstanding, since this mentality is the effect of one among the innumerable deceptions purposely spread in modern culture by the leaders of global subversion. The truth is that after the collapse of the ancient world, if there ever was a civilization that deserves the name of Renaissance, this was the civilization of the Middle Ages. In its objectivity, its virile spirit, its hierarchical structure, its proud antihumanistic simplicity so often permeated by the sense of the sacred, the Middle Ages represented a return to the origins.

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p.309
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
4 months 1 day ago
The real issue is not whether...

The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or men who love living.

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Chapter Nine, Breaking the Circuit
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 weeks ago
Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself:...

Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself: how could you conceive of Nothingness, you who are plenitude? Your gaze is light and transforms all into light: how could you know the half-light in my heart?

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Act 3, sc. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 3 weeks ago
The whole life of an American...

The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle.

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Chapter XVIII.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
First of all: what is work?...

First of all: what is work? Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 weeks ago
I was not the one to...

I was not the one to invent lies: they were created in a society divided by class and each of us inherited lies when we were born. It is not by refusing to lie that we will abolish lies: it is by eradicating class by any means necessary.

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Act 5, sc. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
If we command our wealth, we...

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

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No. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Life creates itself in delirium and...

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 weeks ago
A penny saved is of more...

A penny saved is of more value than a penny paid out.

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What Luther Says, Section on "Life, Human," No. 2438. Rules for a Thrifty Life. 2, p. 784
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Once man loses his faculty of...

Once man loses his faculty of indifference he becomes a potential murderer; once he transforms his idea into a god the consequences are incalculable. We kill only in the name of a god or of his counterfeits: the excesses provoked by the goddess Reason, by the concept of nation, class, or race are akin to those of the Inquisition or of the Reformation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 weeks ago
His Mohammed, as has been said,...

His Mohammed, as has been said, commands that ruling is to be done by the sword, and in his Koran the sword is the commonest and noblest work. Thus the Turk is, in truth, nothing but a murderer or highwayman, as his deeds show before men's eyes.

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On War against the Turk
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
5 months 2 weeks ago
New opinions are always suspected, and...

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

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Dedicatory epistle, as quoted in Fred R Shapiro (2006). The Yale Book of Quotations. Yale University Press. p. 468. ISBN 0-300-10798-6.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months ago
None can be free who is...

None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions.

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As quoted in Florilegium, XVIII, 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 368
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 month 3 weeks ago
Every valuable human being must be...

Every valuable human being must be a radical and a rebel, for what he must aim at is to make things better than they are.

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As quoted in The World of the Atom (1966) by Henry Abraham Boorse and Lloyd Motz, p. 741
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
I find men victims of illusion...

I find men victims of illusion in all parts of life. Children, youths, adults, and old men, all are led by one bawble or another. Yoganidra, the goddess of illusion, Proteus, or Momus, or Gylfi's Mocking, - for the Power has many names, - is stronger than the Titans, stronger than Apollo.

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Illusions
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
To be honest...

To be honest, as critical as I am of people for being anti-human, I love everybody so much for sinking on this ship with me. Admit it or not, we're all dying together.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
The moment we believe we've understood...

The moment we believe we've understood everything grants us the look of a murderer.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
Truly man is….

Truly man is a marvellously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgement on him.

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Ch. 1. That Men by various Ways arrive at the same End (tr. Donald M. Frame)Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 3 weeks ago
Against that positivism which stops before...
Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying "there are only facts," I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations...
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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
All is riddle, and the key...

All is riddle, and the key to a riddle is another riddle.

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Illusions
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 months 1 week ago
Time, subjectively, is the conscious sequence...

Time, subjectively, is the conscious sequence of perceptions.

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Ch. 6 : Our Souls
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 3 weeks ago
They that endeavour to abolish vice...

They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.

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Section 4
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 1 day ago
The poor, stupid, free American citizen!...

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 month 4 weeks ago
At sunset of the third day,...

At sunset of the third day, near the village of Igendja, we moved along an island set in the middle of the wide river. On a sandback to our left, four hippopotamuses and their young plodded along in our same direction. Just then, in my great tiredness and discouragement, the phrase "Reverence for Life" struck me like a flash. As far as I knew, it was a phrase I had never heard nor ever read. I realized at once that it carried within itself the solution to the problem that had been torturing me. Now I knew that a system of values which concerns itself only with our relationship to other people is incomplete and therefore lacking in power for good. Only by means of reverence for life can we establish a spiritual and humane relationship with both people and all living creatures within our reach. Only in this fashion can we avoid harming others, and, within the limits of our capacity, go to their aid whenever they need us.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
4 months 2 days ago
Creation spirituality replaced a patriarchal spirituality...

Creation spirituality replaced a patriarchal spirituality rooted in notions of fall and redemption.

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Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics (2014), p.106.
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 3 days ago
Thus the universe is to be...

Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the opposites are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of God is the way in which we understand this incredible fact that what cannot be, yet is.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 months 3 weeks ago
Particularly in the case of all...

Particularly in the case of all professional of press-images which testify of the real events. In making reality, even the most violent, emerge to the visible, it makes the real substance disappear. It is like the Myth of Eurydice : when Orpheus turns around to look at her, she vanishes and returns to hell. That is why, the more exponential the marketing of images is growing the more fantastically grows the indifference towards the real world. Finally, the real world becomes a useless function, a collection of phantom shapes and ghost events. We are not far from the silhouettes on the walls of the cave of Plato.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
5 months 3 weeks ago
From the comparison of theism and...

From the comparison of theism and idolatry, we may form some other observations, which will also confirm the vulgar observation that the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.

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Part X - With regard to courage or abasement
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 weeks ago
Patriotism, when it wants to make...

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

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Vol. 2, Ch. 21, § 255
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 2 weeks ago
If your parent is just…

If your parent is just, revere him; if not, bear with him.

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Maxim 27
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 3 weeks ago
All these present...
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Main Content / General
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
The facts of science, as they...

The facts of science, as they appeared to him [Heraclitus], fed the flame in his soul, and in its light, he saw into the depths of the world.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
3 months 2 weeks ago
Youth is wholly experimental. Letter to...

Youth is wholly experimental.

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Letter to a Young Gentleman Scribner's Magazine (September 1888).
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
4 months 2 weeks ago
Friendship and domestic happiness are continually...

Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.

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Letter 12
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 3 weeks ago
There are ages in which the...
There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.
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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 4 days ago
The essential characteristic of the first...

The essential characteristic of the first half of the twentieth century is the growing weakness, and almost the disappearance, of the idea of value.

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"The responsibility of writers," p. 167
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
3 months 2 weeks ago
When the world presents as a...

When the world presents as a force field of violence, the task of nonviolence is to find ways of living and acting in that world such that violence is checked or ameliorated, or its direction turned, precisely at moments when it seems to saturate that world and offer no way out.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
He who is not sure of...

He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying. 

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Book I, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 2 weeks ago
Since the management of industry by...

Since the management of industry by individuals necessarily implies private property, and since competition is in reality merely the manner and form in which the control of industry by private property owners expresses itself, it follows that private property cannot be separated from competition and the individual management of industry. Private property must, therefore, be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to common agreement - in a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods.

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Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
2 months 4 weeks ago
If a king is energetic, his...

If a king is energetic, his subjects will be equally energetic. If he is reckless, they will not only be reckless likewise, but also eat into his works. Besides, a reckless king will easily fall into the hands of his enemies. Hence the king shall ever be wakeful.

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Book I : "Concerning Discipline" Chapter 19 "The Duties of a King"
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I...

"Ah, Psyche," I said, "have I made you so little happy as that?"

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Orual
Philosophical Maxims
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
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months ago
Use examples; that such as thou...

Use examples; that such as thou teachest may understand thee the better!

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Philosophical Maxims
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