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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 4 weeks ago
Power may be defined as the...

Power may be defined as the production of intended effects.

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Ch. 3: The Forms of Power
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
What is asked of a man...

What is asked of a man that he may be able to pray for his enemies? To pray for one's enemies is the hardest thing of all. That is why it exasperates us so much in our present day situation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
How can you know if you...

How can you know if you are in the truth? The criterion is simple enough: if others make a vacuum around you, there is not a doubt in the world that you are closer to the essential than they are.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 3 weeks ago
All exercise of authority perverts, and...

All exercise of authority perverts, and submission to authority humiliates.

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As quoted in Michael Bakunin (1937), E.H. Carr, p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
The Yin based its propriety...

The Yin based its propriety on that of the Xia, and what it added and subtracted is knowable. The Zhou has based its propriety on that of the Shang and what it added and subtracted is knowable. In this way, what continues from the Chou, even if 100 generations hence, is knowable.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
A pupil from whom nothing is...

A pupil from whom nothing is ever demanded which he cannot do never does all he can.

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(p. 32)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
In relation to any act of...

In relation to any act of life, the mind acts as a killjoy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
When a country is well...

When a country is well governed, poverty and a mean condition are things to be ashamed of. When a country is ill governed, riches and honor are things to be ashamed of.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
It looks to me to be...

It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to apply the ordinary ideas of criminal justice to this great public contest. I do not know the method of drawing up an indictment against a whole people.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 5 days ago
Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca...

Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist-I really believe he is Antichrist-I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see I have frightened you-sit down and tell me all the news.

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Bk. I, Ch. I
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 6 days ago
One has to do something new...

One has to do something new in order to see something new.

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J 1770
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
3 days ago
Hayek watched the interwar collapse with...

Hayek watched the interwar collapse with horror, as Keynes did, and shared many of Keynes's liberal values. What he failed to understand is that these values cannot be renewed by applying any formula or doctrine, or by trying to construct an ideal liberal regime in which freedom is insulated from the contingencies of politics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
Rational and kindly behavior tends to...

Rational and kindly behavior tends to produce good results and these results remain good even when the behavior which produced them was itself produced by a pill.

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"Brave New World Revisited" (1956), in Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1977), p. 99
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 5 days ago
Further acquaintance with the labors of...

Further acquaintance with the labors of the Quakers and their works - with Fox, Penn, and especially the work of Dymond (published in 1827) - showed me not only that the impossibility of reconciling Christianity with force and war had been recognized long, long ago, but that this irreconcilability had been long ago proved so clearly and so indubitably that one could only wonder how this impossible reconciliation of Christian teaching with the use of force, which has been, and is still, preached in the churches, could have been maintained in spite of it.

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Chapter I, The Doctrine of Non-resistance to Evil by Force has been Professed by a Minority of Men from the Very Foundation of Christianity
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 6 days ago
Take our politicians: they're a bunch...

Take our politicians: they're a bunch of yo-yos. The presidency is now a cross between a popularity contest and a high school debate, with an encyclopedia of cliches.

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As quoted in The Portable Curmudgeon (1987) by Jon Winokur, p. 219
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
Public life is a situation of...

Public life is a situation of power and energy; he trespasses against his duty who sleeps upon his watch, as well as he that goes over to the enemy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 6 days ago
I feel that the entire spiritual...

I feel that the entire spiritual life consists in this: That we gradually turn from those things whose appearance is deceptive to those things that are real.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 3 weeks ago
While all these are disturbed and...

While all these are disturbed and divided by the multifarious objects to which their thoughts must be applied, the Philosopher pursues, in solitary silence and in unbroken concentration of mind, his single and undeviating course towards the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; and that is his daily labour, to which others can only resort at times for rest and refreshment after toil.

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P. 17
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
In vain I sought relief from...

In vain I sought relief from my favourite books; those memorials of past nobleness and greatness from which I had always hitherto drawn strength and animation. I read them now without feeling, or with the accustomed feeling minus all its charm; and I became persuaded, that my love of mankind, and of excellence for its own sake, had worn itself out. I sought no comfort by speaking to others of what I felt. If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition.

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(pp. 134-135)
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no sin, and there...

There is no sin, and there can be no sin on all the earth, which the Lord will not forgive to the truly repentant! Man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. Can there be a sin which could exceed the love of God?

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Book II, ch. 3 (trans. Constance Garnett) The Elder Zossima, speaking to a devout widow afraid of death
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 1 day ago
People of the same trade seldom...

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty or justice. But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.

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Chapter X, Part II, p. 152.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The bluebird carries the sky on...

The bluebird carries the sky on his back.

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April 3, 1852
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
Every one is familiar with the...

Every one is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Every one knows on any given day that there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of that day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater. Most of us feel as if we lived habitually with a sort of cloud weighing on us, below our highest notch of clearness in discernment, sureness in reasoning, or firmness in deciding. Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half-awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources.

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The Energies of Men
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Let us be understood. If the...

Let us be understood. If the Japanese surrender after the destruction of Hiroshima, having been intimidated, we will rejoice. But we refuse to see anything in such grave news other than the need to argue more energetically in favor of a true international society, in which the great powers will not have superior rights over small and middle-sized nations, where such an ultimate weapon will be controlled by human intelligence rather than by the appetites and doctrines of various states. Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for. This is no longer a prayer but a demand to be made by all peoples to their governments a demand to choose definitively between hell and reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 6 days ago
The book of the world, so...

The book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the "learned," who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
Religious persecution may shield itself under...

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), pp. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Plotinus
Plotinus
3 months 2 weeks ago
When the soul has descended into...

When the soul has descended into generation (from its first divine condition) she partakes of evil, and is carried a great way into a state the opposite of her first purity and integrity, to be entirely merged in which, is nothing more than to fall into a dark mire. ...The soul dies as much as it is possible for the soul to die: and the death to her is, while baptized or immersed in the present body, to descend into matter, and be wholly subjected by it; and after departing thence to lie there til it shall arise and turn its face away from the abhorrent filth. This is what is meant by falling asleep in Hades, of those who have come there.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the...

Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
Understand me: I wish to be...

Understand me: I wish to be a man from somewhere, a man among men. You see, a slave, when he passes by, weary and surly, carrying a heavy load, limping along and looking down at his feet, only at his feet to avoid falling down; he is in his town, like a leaf in greenery, like a tree in a forest, argos surrounds him, heavy and warm, full of herself; I want to be that slave, Electra, I want to pull the city around me and to roll myself up in it like a blanket. I will not leave.

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Orestes to Electra, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 3 days ago
Although the medium is the message,...

Although the medium is the message, the controls go beyond programming. The restraints are always directed to the "content," which is always another medium. The content of the press is literary statement, as the content of the book is speech, and the content of the movie is the novel. So the effects of radio are quite independent of its programming.

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(p. 267)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
I have often thought that the...

I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: "This is the real me!"

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To his wife, Alice Gibbons James, 1878
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
That fear which gives birth to...

That fear which gives birth to thoughts, and the fear of thoughts...

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
2 months 3 weeks ago
There is room in the world,...

There is room in the world, no doubt, and even in old countries, for a great increase of population, supposing the arts of life to go on improving, and capital to increase. But even if innocuous, I confess I see very little reason for desiring it. The density of population necessary to enable mankind to obtain, in the greatest degree, all the advantages both of co-operation and of social intercourse, has, in all the most populous countries, been attained. If the earth must lose that great portion of its pleasantness which it owes to things that the unlimited increase of wealth and population would extirpate from it, for the mere purpose of enabling it to support a larger but not a better or a happier population, I sincerely hope, for the sake of posterity, that they will be content to be stationary, long before necessity compels them to it..

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Book IV, Chapter VI, §3, p. 516
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 6 days ago
My Lord St. Albans said that...

My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads.

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No. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 3 weeks ago
What the Greeks sought, and what...

What the Greeks sought, and what they obtained, was Equal Rights for all Citizens. In a certain sense, we might even say Equal Privileges, for there was no race favoured by the constitution more than another;-but there existed a great inequality of power, which indeed arose only by accident and not by the constitution of the State, but which nevertheless the State could not remedy;-and in so far there did not exist Equal Privileges.

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p. 186
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is more shameful to distrust...

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

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Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
1 month 3 weeks ago
The problem of induction is, roughly...

The problem of induction is, roughly speaking, the problem of finding a way to prove that certain empirical generalizations which are derived from past experience will hold good also in the future. There are only two ways of approaching this problem on the assumption that it is a genuine problem, and it is easy to see that neither of them can lead to its solution.

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p. 49.
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 1 week ago
Let each look to his own...

Let each look to his own heart: let him not keep hatred against his brother for any hard word; on account of earthly contention let him not become earth.

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First Homily, Paragraph 11, as translated by H. Browne, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7 (1888)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
1 month 3 weeks ago
Every cause produces more than one...

Every cause produces more than one effect.

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On Progress: Its Law and Cause
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
2 months 3 weeks ago
What a monument of human smallness...

What a monument of human smallness is this idea of the philosopher king. What a contrast between it and the simplicity of humaneness of Socrates, who warned the statesmen against the danger of being dazzled by his own power, excellence, and wisdom, and who tried to teach him what matters most - that we are all frail human beings. What a decline from this world of irony and reason and truthfulness down to Plato's kingdom of the sage whose magical powers raise him high above ordinary men; although not quite high enough to forgo the use of lies, or to neglect the sorry trade of every shaman - the selling of spells, of breeding spells, in exchange for power over his fellow-men.

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Vol. 1, Ch 8 "The Philosopher King"
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
3 months 4 weeks ago
As a genius of construction man...
As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself.
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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
My parents, both of whom spoke...

My parents, both of whom spoke Russian fluently, made no effort to teach me Russian, but insisted on my learning English as rapidly and as well as possible. They even set about learning English themselves, with reasonable, but limited, success.In a way, I am sorry. It would have been good to know the language of Pushkin, Tolstoy, and Dostoevski. On the other hand, I would not have been willing to let anything get in the way of the complete mastery of English. Allow me my prejudice: surely there is no language more majestic than that of Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Bible, and if I am to have one language that I know as only a native can know it, I consider myself unbelievably fortunate that it is English.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 4 weeks ago
Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters....

Consider MacArthur and his Republican supporters. So limited is his intelligence and his imagination that he is never puzzled for one moment. All we have to do is to go back to the days of the Opium War. After we have killed a sufficient number of millions of Chinese, the survivors among them will perceive our moral superiority and hail MacArthur as a saviour. But let us not be one-sided. Stalin, I should say, is equally simple- minded and equally out of date. He, too, believes that if his armies could occupy Britain and reduce us all to the economic level of Soviet peasants and the political level of convicts, we should hail him as a great deliverer and bless the day when we were freed from the shackles of democracy. One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

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Part I: Man and Nature, Ch. 1: Current Perplexities, pp. 4-5
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
2 months 3 weeks ago
The necessity of faith as an...

The necessity of faith as an ingredient in our mental attitude is strongly insisted on by the scientific philosophers of the present day; but by a singularly arbitrary caprice they say that it is only legitimate when used in the interests of one particular proposition, - the proposition, namely, that the course of nature is uniform. That nature will follow to-morrow the same laws that she follows to-day is, they all admit, a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it.

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

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 5 days ago
In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is...

In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is largely characterized as a residual category - rationality is bounded when it falls short of omniscience. And the failures of omniscience are largely failures of knowing all the alternatives, uncertainty about relevant exogenous events, and inability to calculate consequences. There was needed a more positive and formal characterization of the mechanisms of choice under conditions of bounded rationality... Two concepts are central to the characterization: search and satisficing.

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p. 502; As cited in Barros (2010, p. 464-5).
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 5 days ago
Mathematics would certainly....
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Main Content / General
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Some day you will be old...

Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.

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The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), Dedication: "To Lucy Barfield"
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
With men this is impossible; but...

With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.

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19:26 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
1 week 2 days ago
I kept looking at the flowers...

I kept looking at the flowers in a vase near me: lavender sweet peas, fragile winged and yet so still, so perfectly poised, apart, and complete. They are self-sufficient, a world in themselves, a whole - perfect. Is that then, perfection? Is what those sweet peas had what I have, occasionally in moments like that? But flowers always have it - poise, completion, fulfillment, perfection; I only occasionally, like that moment. For that moment I and the sweet peas had an understanding.

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Philosophical Maxims
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