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David Hume
David Hume
3 months 6 days ago
I say, then, that belief is...

I say, then, that belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain.

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§ 4.9
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
Does man think because he has...

Does man think because he has found that thinking pays? Does he bring his children up because he has found it pays?

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§ 467
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 4 weeks ago
Why is psychology the youngest of...

Why is psychology the youngest of the empirical sciences? Why have we not long since discovered the unconscious and raised up its treasure-house of eternal images? Simply because we had a religious formula for everything psychic - and one that is far more beautiful and comprehensive than immediate experience. Though the Christian view of the world has paled for many people, the symbolic treasure-rooms of the East are still full of marvels that can nourish for a long time to come the passion for show and new clothes. What is more, these images - be they Christian or Buddhist or what you will - are lovely, mysterious, richly intuitive.

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p. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 3 weeks ago
In the darkest region of the...

In the darkest region of the political field the condemned man represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 4 weeks ago
Tell them I've had a wonderful...

Tell them I've had a wonderful life.

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Last words, to his doctor's wife (28 April 1951)-as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 100
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
By extensively studying all learning, and...

By extensively studying all learning, and keeping himself under the restraint of the rules of propriety, one may thus likewise not err from what is right.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 days ago
When the woman showed her love...

When the woman showed her love for the children that were not her own, and wept over them, I saw in her the living God, and understood What men live by.

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Ch. XI
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
2 months 2 days ago
The statue of Freedom has not...

The statue of Freedom has not been cast yet, the furnace is hot, we can all still burn our fingers.

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Act I.
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 weeks ago
Culture is on the horns of...

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble, it must remain rare, if common, it must become mean.

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Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 4 days ago
What a pity and what a...

What a pity and what a poverty of spirit, to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which affect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, &c. [...] Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table, and dissect him living, to show the mezarian veins. You discover in him all the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves to be incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature. [...] The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts, who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.

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"Beasts", in A Philosophical Dictionary, Volume 2, J. and H. L. Hunt, 1824, p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
Courtesy is a science of the...

Courtesy is a science of the highest importance. It is, like grace and beauty in the body, which charm at first sight, and lead on to further intimacy and friendship, opening a door that we may derive instruction from the example of others, and at the same time enabling us to benefit them by our example, if there be anything in our character worthy of imitation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 days ago
Once in his early youth a...

Once in his early youth a man allowed himself to be so far carried away in an overwrought irresponsible state as to visit a prostitute. It is all forgotten. Now he wants to get married. Then anxiety stirs. He is tortured day and night with the thought that he might possibly be a father, that somewhere in the world there could be a created being who owed his life to him. He cannot share his secret with anyone; he does not even have any reliable knowledge of the fact. –For this reason the incident must have involved a prostitute and taken place in the wantonness of youth; had it been a little infatuated or an actual seduction, it would be hard to imagine that he could know nothing about it, but now this this very ignorance is the basis of his agitated torment. On the other hand, precisely because of the rashness of the whole affair, his misgivings do not really start until he actually falls in love.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 5 days ago
Socialism itself can hope to exist...
Socialism itself can hope to exist only for brief periods here and there, and then only through the exercise of the extremest terrorism. For this reason it is secretly preparing itself for rule through fear and is driving the word 'justice' into the heads of the half-educated masses like a nail so as to rob them of their reason... and to create in them a good conscience for the evil game they are to play.
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Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
1 month 4 days ago
Nonviolence does not make sense without...

Nonviolence does not make sense without a commitment to equality. The reason why nonviolence requires a commitment to equality can best be understood by considering that in this world some lives are more clearly valued than others, and that this inequality implies that certain lives will be more tenaciously defended than others. If one opposes the violence done to human lives-or, indeed, to other living beings-this presumes that it is because those lives are valuable. Our opposition affirms those lives as valuable. If they were to be lost as a result of violence, that loss would be registered as a loss only because those lives were affirmed as having a living value, and that, in turn, means we regard those lives as worthy of grief.

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p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 5 days ago
Is it reasonable to assume a...

Is it reasonable to assume a purposiveness in all the parts of nature and to deny it to the whole?

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Seventh Thesis
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 3 weeks 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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 days ago
The cup of life is not...

The cup of life is not so shallow

That we have drained the best 

That all the wine at once we swallow 

And lees make all the rest.

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1827
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 5 days ago
Of corruption, the principal and direct...

Of corruption, the principal and direct use is, to engage the representatives of the people to betray their trust, and sell themselves and the people to the universal corrupter-the monarch, in his capacity of corrupter-general.

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Constitutional Code (written between 1820 and 1832), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. XVII (1841), p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 weeks ago
Position expresses the poised readiness of...

Position expresses the poised readiness of the live creature to meet the impact of surrounding forces, to meet so as to endure and persist, to extend or expand through undergoing the very forces that, apart from its response, are indifferent and hostile. Through going out into the environment, position unfolds into volume; through the pressure of environment, mass is retracted into energy of position, and space remains, when matter is contracted, as an opportunity for further action.

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p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 3 weeks ago
To understand this for sense it...

To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad. On the proposition that the volume generated by revolving the region under 1/x from 1 to infinity has finite volume.

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Quoted in Mathematical Maxims and Minims by N. Rose
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 3 weeks ago
Man is a creation of desire,...

Man is a creation of desire, not a creation of need.

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The Psychoanalysis of Fire, ch. 2, "Fire and Reverie"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 days ago
Genius is always sufficiently the enemy...

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.

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par. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Notwithstanding I have a few things...

Notwithstanding I have a few things against thee, because thou sufferest that woman Jezebel, which calleth herself a prophetess, to teach and to seduce my servants to commit fornication, and to eat things sacrificed unto idols. And I gave her space to repent of her fornication; and she repented not. Behold, I will cast her into a bed, and them that commit adultery with her into great tribulation, except they repent of their deeds. And I will kill her children with death; and all the churches shall know that I am he which searcheth the reins and hearts: and I will give unto every one of you according to your works.

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Revelation
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 days ago
One that confounds good and evil...

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to the good.

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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), p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 2 days ago
As we take, in fact, a...

As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months ago
It seems to be almost an...

It seems to be almost an invariable rule that as real power declines, the symbols of power multiply and intensify in compensation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 weeks ago
Mankind was never so happily inspired...

Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.

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An Inland Voyage (1878).
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 4 weeks ago
Nietzsche ... does not shy from...

Nietzsche ... does not shy from conscious exaggeration and one-sided formulations of his thought, believing that in this way he can most clearly set in relief what in his vision and in his inquiry is different from the run-of-the-mill.

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p. 50
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 4 weeks ago
Existence is illusory and it is...

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 3 days ago
Humiliate the reason and distort the...

Humiliate the reason and distort the soul...

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Part 2, Chapter ?
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 3 days ago
What we principally thought of, was...

What we principally thought of, was to alter people's opinions; to make them believe according to evidence, and know what was their real interest, which when they once knew, they would, we thought, by the instrument of opinion, enforce a regard to it upon one another. While fully recognizing the superior excellence of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, we did not expect the regeneration of mankind from any direct action on those sentiments, but from the effect of educated intellect, enlightening the selfish feelings. Although this last is prodigiously important as a means of improvement in the hands of those who are themselves impelled by nobler principles of action, I do not believe that any one of the survivors of the Benthamites or Utilitarians of that day, now relies mainly upon it for the general amendment of human conduct.

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(pp. 111-112)
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 4 weeks ago
In deduction the mind is under...

In deduction the mind is under the dominion of a habit or association by virtue of which a general idea suggests in each case a corresponding reaction. This is the way the hind legs of a frog separated from the rest of the body, reason, when you pinch them. It is the lowest form of psychical manifestation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 4 weeks ago
I find that all my thoughts...

I find that all my thoughts circle around God like the planets around the sun, and are as irresistibly attracted by Him. I would feel it to be the grossest sin if I were to oppose any resistance to this force.

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Sources: David John Tacey (2007)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
The world begins and ends with...

The world begins and ends with us. Only our consciousness exists, it is everything, and this everything vanishes with it. Dying, we leave nothing. Then why so much fuss around an event that is no such thing?

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
1 month 2 weeks ago
No tyranny is more...

No tyranny is more cruel than the one practiced in the shadow of the laws and under color of justice - when, so to speak, one proceeds to drown the unfortunate on the very plank by which they had saved themselves.

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See Chap. XIV of Considérations sur les causes de la grandeur des Romains et de leur décadence. Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and their Decline (1734), p. 89.
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 5 days ago
Through failures one becomes intelligent; but...

Through failures one becomes intelligent; but the one who has trained himself in this subject so that he can make others wise through their own failures, has used his intelligence. Ignorance is not stupidity.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 100
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 6 days ago
The difference between the most dissimilar...

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

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Chapter II, p. 17.
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 3 weeks ago
I daresay anything can be made...

I daresay anything can be made holy by being sincerely worshipped.

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The Message to the Planet (1989) p. 322.
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 days ago
Honest work is much better than...

Honest work is much better than a mansion.

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p. 82
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 days ago
Nature is no sentimentalist, - does...

Nature is no sentimentalist, - does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman, but swallows your ships like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons.

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p. 182
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 4 days ago
For a work to become immortal...

For a work to become immortal it must possess so many excellences that it will not be easy to find a man who understands and values them all; so that there will be in all ages men who recognise and appreciate some of these excellences; by this means the credit of the work will be retained throughout the long course of centuries and ever-changing interests, for, as it is appreciated first in this sense, then in that, the interest is never exhausted.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Let him who seeks continue seeking...

Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All.

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-2
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 days ago
Exchange value forms the substance of...

Exchange value forms the substance of money, and exchange value is wealth.

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Notebook II, The Chapter on Money, p. 141.
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Son of man shall be...

The Son of man shall be betrayed into the hands of men: And they shall kill him, and the third day he shall be raised again.

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17:22-23 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
Any madness in us gains from...

Any madness in us gains from being expressed, because in this way one gives a human form to what separates us from humanity.

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p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
Either we must...
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Main Content / General
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
1 month 1 week ago
Well, he wasn't a relativist. There's...

Well, he wasn't a relativist. There's a long and complicated story of the rise of a desire for scientific relativism. Part of it may well be simply sort of rage against reason, the fear of the sciences and a kind of total dislike of the arrogance of a great many scientists who say we're finding out the truth about everything-and here [with Kuhn] there was a way to undermine that arrogance.

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Ian Hacking, in Gary Stix, "A Q&A with Ian Hacking on Thomas Kuhn's Legacy as "The Paradigm Shift" Turns 50"
Philosophical Maxims
Empedocles
Empedocles
2 months 3 weeks ago
With deep roots….

With deep roots Ether plunged into earth.

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fr. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Maslow explained that, some time in...

Maslow explained that, some time in the late thirties, he had been struck by the thought that modern psychology is based on the study of sick people. But since there are more healthy people around than sick people, how can this psychology give a fair idea of the workings of the human mind? It struck him that it might be worthwhile to devote some time to the study of healthy people.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 3 weeks ago
Antiquity believed that the forces of...

Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used sparingly,and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
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