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Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
The sick individual finds himself at...

The sick individual finds himself at home with all other similarly sick individuals. The whole culture is geared to this kind of pathology. The result is that the average individual does not experience the separateness and isolation the fully schizophrenic person feels. He feels at ease among those who suffer from the same deformation; in fact, it is the fully sane person who feels isolated in the insane society - and he may suffer so much from the incapacity to communicate that it is he who may become psychotic. In the context of this study the crucial question is whether the hypothesis of a quasi-autistic or of low-grade schizophrenic disturbance would help us to explain some of the violence spreading today.

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p. 395
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
5 days ago
A man should be upright, not...

A man should be upright, not kept upright.

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III, 5
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 2 weeks ago
... a penny saved is better...

... a penny saved is better than a penny earned.

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The Duty of a Husband and Wife (17 March 1539), No. 4408. LW 54:337
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 2 weeks ago
Divinity reveals herself in all things......

Divinity reveals herself in all things... everything has Divinity latent within itself. For she enfolds and imparts herself even unto the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, because she is the essence of the existence of the first unto the last being.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 2 weeks ago
I have seen no more evident...

I have seen no more evident monstrosity and miracle in the world than myself.

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Ch. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 4 days ago
If I used to ask myself,...

If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, "what good did it do the occupant to be born?" I now put the same question about anyone alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 weeks ago
There are, in fact, people who...

There are, in fact, people who appear to think only with the brain, or with whatever may be the specific thinking organ; while others think with all the body and all the soul, with the blood, with the marrow of the bones, with the heart, with the lungs, with the belly, with the life. And the people who think only with the brain develop into definition-mongers; they become the professionals of thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
2 months 1 week ago
In historical events great men -...

In historical events great men - so-called - are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity.

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Bk. IX, ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 1 week ago
To say that a life is...

To say that a life is grievable is to claim that a life, even before it is lost, is, or will be, worthy of being grieved on the occasion of its loss; the life has value in relation to mortality. One treats a person differently if one brings the sense of the grievability of the other to one's ethical bearing toward the other. If an other's loss would register as a loss, would be marked and mourned, and if the prospect of loss is feared, and precautions are thus taken to safeguard that life from harm or destruction, then our very ability to value and safeguard a life depends upon an ongoing sense of its grievability-the conjectured future of a life as an indefinite potential that would be mourned were it cut short or lost.

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p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
2 weeks 3 days ago
Prussia had been the creation of...

Prussia had been the creation of a dynasty that had the nobility, the army and the higher bureaucracy for its backbone. The primary element was not the 'nation' or the Volk. Rather the state, more than the land or the ethnos, constituted the real foundation and unifying principle. There was none of that in Hitlerism.

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p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 2 weeks ago
Our philosophy... reduceth to a single...

Our philosophy... reduceth to a single origin and relateth to a single end, and maketh contraries to coincide so that there is one primal foundation both of origin and of end. From this coincidence of contraries, we deduce that ultimately it is divinely true that contraries are within contraries; wherefore it is not difficult to compass the knowledge that each thing is within every other.

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As translated by Dorothea Waley Singer
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 2 weeks ago
Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction,...

Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.

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Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works, Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is a strong affinity between...

There is a strong affinity between the forces of empire and a politics of hate that justifies policies of domination and exclusion. So long as people's attention is focused on fear and hatred of foreigners or members of a particular religious group, such as Muslims, they are distracted from organizing to deal with the system of institutional domination and exploitation that is the real source of their insecurity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 months 4 weeks ago
Avoid melancholy with all your might....

Avoid melancholy with all your might. It hurts the service of God more than sin. Satan takes less pleasure in sin than in a man's melancholy over having sinned again and so feeling that he is a slave to sin. Thus the Evil One has caught the poor soul in the net of despair.

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Rabbi Jaacob Yitzchak, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 6 days ago
Democracy does not contain any force...

Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
The regime which is destroyed by...

The regime which is destroyed by a revolution is almost always an improvement on its immediate predecessor, and experience teaches that the most critical moment for bad governments is the one which witnesses their first steps toward reform.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 1 week ago
Opinion is ultimately determined by the...

Opinion is ultimately determined by the feelings, and not by the intellect.

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Pt. IV, Ch. 30 : General Considerations
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
2 months 2 days ago
The lowest stage of humanity is...

The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others.

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Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
3 months ago
A philosophy has no private store...

A philosophy has no private store of knowledge or methods for attaining truth, so it has no private access to good. As it accepts knowledge and principles from those competent in science and inquiry, it accepts the goods that are diffused in human experience. It has no Mosaic or Pauline authority of revelation entrusted to it. But it has the authority of intelligence, of criticism of these common and natural goods.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
2 months 1 day ago
Europe owes its greatness to the...

Europe owes its greatness to the fact that the primary loyalties of the European people have been detached from religion and re-attached to the land. Those who believe that the division of Europe into nations has been the primary cause of European wars should remember the devastating wars of religion that national loyalties finally brought to an end. And they should study our art and literature for its inner meaning. In almost every case, they will discover, it is an art and literature not of war but of peace, an invocation of home and the routines of home, of gentleness, everydayness and enduring settlement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 1 week ago
An avidity to punish is always...

An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
The purpose of consciousness is to...

The purpose of consciousness is to illuminate the world. If we try to run consciousness at half its proper voltage, the result will be a "devalued" world. But that is not the fault of the world; it is our fault. Low-voltage consciousness shows us less of the world than high-voltage consciousness, just as we would see an art gallery less clearly by candlelight than by sunlight.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
3 weeks 2 days ago
Kindly remember…

Kindly remember that he whom you call your slave sprang from the same stock, is smiled upon by the same skies, and on equal terms with yourself breathes, lives and dies. It is just as possible for you to see in him a free-born man as for him to see in you a slave.

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Line 10.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 3 weeks ago
Ethics occupies a central place in...

Ethics occupies a central place in philosophy because it is concerned with sin, with the origin of good and evil and with moral valuations. And since these problems have a universal significance, the sphere of ethics is wider than is generally supposed. It deals with meaning and value and its province is the world in which the distinction between good and evil is drawn, evaluations are made and meaning is sought.

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The Destiny of Man (1931), p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
As one digs deeper into the...

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

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Letter to Ernest de Chabrol, 9 June 1831 Selected Letters, ed. Roger Boesche, UofC Press 1985, p. 39.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 1 week ago
I am trying here to prevent...

I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would be either a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3 months 1 week ago
The true Christian knows no Covenant...

The true Christian knows no Covenant or Mediation with God, but only the Old, Eternal, and Unchangeable Relation, that in Him we live, and move, and have our being; and he asks not who has said this, but only what has been said;-even the book wherein this may be written is nothing to him as a proof, but only as a means of culture; he bears the proof in his own breast. This is my view of the matter...

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p. 105
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
I tell you in truth: all...

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 1 week ago
The best doctor is the one...

The best doctor is the one you run for and can't find.

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As quoted in Selected Thoughts from the French: XV Century - XX Century, with English Translations (1913) by James Raymond Solly, p. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 weeks 1 day ago
No man who has once heartily...

No man who has once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably bad.

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Bk. I, ch. 4.
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 week 2 days ago
The centuries are thick, dark waves...

The centuries are thick, dark waves that rise and fall, steeped in blood. Every moment is a gaping abyss. Gaze on the dark sea without staggering, confront the abyss every moment without illusion or impudence or fear. ... But this is not enough; take a further step: battle to give meaning to the confused struggles of man.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 6 days ago
Perfectibility is one of the most...

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

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Vol. 1, bk. 1 : Of the Powers of Man Considered in his Social Capacity, ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
The life, the fortune, and the...

The life, the fortune, and the happiness of every one of us, and, more or less, of those who are connected with us, do depend upon our knowing something of the rules of a game infinitely more difficult and complicated than chess. It is a game which has been played for untold ages, every man and woman of us being one of the two players in a game of his or her own. The chessboard is the world, the pieces are the phenomena of the universe, the rules of the game are what we call the laws of Nature. The player on the other side is hidden from us. We know that his play is always fair, just, and patient. But also we know, to our cost, that he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance. To the man who plays well, the highest stakes are paid, with that sort of overflowing generosity with which the strong shows delight in strength. And one who plays ill is checkmated - without haste, but without remorse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 1 week ago
In cases of this sort, let...

In cases of this sort, let us say adultery, rightness and wrongness do not depend on committing it with the right woman at the right time and in the right manner, but the mere fact of committing such action at all is to do wrong.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
Poetry - No definition of poetry...

Poetry - No definition of poetry is adequate unless it be poetry itself. The most accurate analysis by the rarest wisdom is yet insufficient, and the poet will instantly prove it false by setting aside its requisitions. It is indeed all that we do not know. The poet does not need to see how meadows are something else than earth, grass, and water, but how they are thus much. He does not need discover that potato blows are as beautiful as violets, as the farmer thinks, but only how good potato blows are. The poem is drawn out from under the feet of the poet, his whole weight has rested on this ground. It has a logic more severe than the logician's. You might as well think to go in pursuit of the rainbow, and embrace it on the next hill, as to embrace the whole of poetry even in thought.

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January 26, 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
No doubt a tumult caused by...

No doubt a tumult caused by local and temporary irritation ought to be suppressed with promptitude and vigour. Such disturbances, for example, as those which Lord George Gordon raised in 1780, should be instantly put down with the strong hand. But woe to the Government which cannot distinguish between a nation and a mob! Woe to the Government which thinks that a great, a steady, a long continued movement of the public mind is to be stopped like a street riot! This error has been twice fatal to the great House of Bourbon. God be praised, our rulers have been wiser. The golden opportunity which, if once suffered to escape, might never have been retrieved, has been seized. Nothing, I firmly believe, can now prevent the passing of this noble law, this second Bill of Rights.

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Speech in the House of Commons on the Reform Bill (5 July 1831), quoted in Speeches of the Right Honourable T. B. Macaulay, M.P. (1854), pp. 34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
People do not deserve to have...

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

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1841
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 3 weeks ago
Just like Chief Seattle talked about...

Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human-we are a continuum.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 weeks 1 day ago
Work is the grand cure for...

Work is the grand cure for all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,-honest work, which you intend getting done.

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Address as Lord Rector of Edinburgh University, (April 2, 1866), reported in A dictionary of quotations in prose, edited by A. L. Ward (1889).
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
When some one....
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Main Content / General
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
III. Every tax ought to be...

III. Every tax ought to be levied at the time, or in the manner, in which it is most likely to be convenient for the contributor to pay it.

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Chapter II Part II, p. 893.
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 1 week ago
From fanaticism to barbarism is only...

From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

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Essai sur le Mérite de la Vertu (1745)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 1 week ago
The force of mind is only...

The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.

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Preface (J. B. Baillie translation), § 10
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 weeks 1 day ago
In all cases, therefore, we will...

In all cases, therefore, we will agree with the judicious Mrs. Glass: 'First catch your hare!' First get your man; all is got: he can learn to do all things, from making boots, to decreeing judgments, governing communities; and will do them like a man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
4 weeks 1 day ago
I say, it is the everlasting...

I say, it is the everlasting privilege of the foolish to be governed by the wise; to be guided in the right path by those who know it better than they. This is the first "right of man;" compared with which all other rights are as nothing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 months 4 days ago
Some propose mere welfare measures -...

Some propose mere welfare measures - while others come forward with grandiose systems of reform which, under the pretense of re-organizing society, are in fact intended to preserve the foundations, and hence the life, of existing society. Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
4 months 1 week ago
Morality is not properly the doctrine...

Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 3 weeks ago
Life is an offensive, directed against...

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

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p. 102.
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
4 months 3 days ago
The dissimulation of the woven texture...

The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web: a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries; reconstituting it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading. There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object," without risking- which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caught- the addition of some new thread.

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Plato's Pharmacy
Philosophical Maxims
Iamblichus
Iamblichus
6 days ago
Hence the Pythagoreans in their theology...

Hence the Pythagoreans in their theology called it sometimes "universe," sometimes "heaven," sometimes "all," sometimes "Fate" and "eternity," "power" and "trust" and "Necessity," "Atlas" and "unwearying," and simply "God" and "Phanes" and "sun."They called it "universe," because all things are arranged by it both in general and in particular, and because it is the most perfect boundary of number, in the sense that "decad" is, as it were, "receptacle," just as heaven is the receptacle of all things, they called it "heaven" and, among the Muses, "Ourania."

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On the Decad
Philosophical Maxims
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