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Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 1 week ago
I do not believe that the...

I do not believe that the source of value is unitary - displaying apparent multiplicity only in its application to the world. I believe that value has fundamentally different kinds of sources, and that they are reflected in the classification of values into types. Not all values represent the pursuit of some single good in a variety of settings.

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"The Fragmentation of Value" (1977), pp. 131-132.
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
3 months 2 weeks ago
I am convinced…

I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.

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1688-1690
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 4 weeks ago
Women are never supposed to have...

Women are never supposed to have any occupation of sufficient importance not to be interrupted, except "suckling their fools "; and women themselves have accepted this, have written books to support it, and have trained themselves so as to consider whatever they do as not of such value to the world or to others, but that they can throw it up at the first "claim of social life." They have accustomed themselves to consider intellectual occupation as a merely selfish amusement, which it is their " duty " to give up for every trifler more selfish than themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
René Descartes
René Descartes
3 months 3 weeks ago
M. Desargues puts me under obligations...

M. Desargues puts me under obligations on account of the pains that it has pleased him to have in me, in that he shows that he is sorry that I do not wish to study more in geometry, but I have resolved to quit only abstract geometry, that is to say, the consideration of questions which serve only to exercise the mind, and this, in order to study another kind of geometry, which has for its object the explanation of the phenomena of nature... You know that all my physics is nothing else than geometry.

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Letter to Marin Mersenne (July 27, 1638) as quoted by Florian Cajori, A History of Mathematics (1893) letter dated in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes Vol. 3, The Correspondence (1991) ed. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, Dugald Murdoch
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 1 day ago
In theory there is nothing to...

In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.

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Book I, ch. 26, 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
If there is anyone who owes...

If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
IV. Every tax ought to be...

IV. Every tax ought to be contrived as both to take out and to keep out of the pockets of the people as little as possible, over and above what it brings into the public treasury of the state.

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Chapter II, Part II, p. 893.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
When the rich make war…

When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 1 week ago
This idea is that laws which...

This idea is that laws which purport to be statements of what actually occurs are statistical in character as distinct from so-called dynamic laws that are abstract and mathematical, and disguised definitions. Recognition of the statistical nature of physical laws was first effected in the case of gases when it became evident that generalizations regarding the behavior of swarms of molecules were not descriptions or predictions of the behavior of any individual particle. A single molecule is not and cannot be a gas. It is consequently absurd to suppose that a scientific law is about the elementary constituents of a gas. It is a statement of what happens when a large number of such constituents interact with one another under certain conditions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 2 days ago
The important thing is not the...

The important thing is not the planning of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum of current noble nouns, but rather the examination of their linguistic function.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 1 week ago
Science does not stand still, and...

Science does not stand still, and neither does philosophy, although the latter has a tendency to walk in circles.

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Afterword To The 2011 Edition, p. 187
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 1 week ago
People reserve their best thinking for...

People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties and, next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen -economics, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etc. The day's work done, they want to be entertained.

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p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week 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
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 1 week ago
Opinions differ as to the reasons...

Opinions differ as to the reasons why he became the futile laborer of the underworld. To begin with, he is accused of a certain levity in regard to the gods. He stole their secrets.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 days ago
The students of physical science are...

The students of physical science are not unfrequently told that their pursuits unfit them for the estimation of moral probability. And it may be so, for I am afraid that to those who are accustomed to severe reasoning, either in the province of Science or in that of Law, reasoning from 'moral probability' is apt to be regarded as a process of accumulating inconclusive arguments, in the hope that a great heap of them may, at least, look as firm as one good demonstration.

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The Evidence of the Miracle of the Resurrection
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 3 weeks ago
Once we have tasted the sweetness...

Once we have tasted the sweetness of what is spiritual, the pleasures of the world will have no attraction for us. If we disregard the shadows of things, then we will penetrate their inner substance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 days ago
Men ... ask nothing better, it...

Men ... ask nothing better, it would seem, than to leave their destiny, their life, and all their thoughts in the hands of a few men with a gift for the exclusive manipulation of this or that technique.

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"Wave Mechanics," p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
There can never be a man...

There can never be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corrdiors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save. There never was a man so helpless as one who cannot remember.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
If He who in Himself can...

If He who in Himself can lack nothing chooses to need us, it is because we need to be needed.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 2 weeks ago
The collective name for the ripe...

The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.

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Lectures XI, XII, AND XIII : "Saintliness"
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 week ago
To be or not to be...Neither...

To be or not to be...Neither one nor the other.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
4 months 5 days ago
Now, as the Word of God...

Now, as the Word of God is the Son of God, so the love of God is the Holy Spirit.

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Art. 8
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
1 week 4 days ago
Mathematicians do not study…

Mathematicians do not study objects, but the relations between objects; to them it is a matter of indifference if these objects are replaced by others, provided that the relations do not change. Matter does not engage their attention, they are interested in form alone.

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Ch. II: Dover abridged edition (1952), p. 20
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by...

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called, and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

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Ch. III: Of Individuality, As One of the Elements of Well-Being
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 1 week ago
Language is a part of our...

Language is a part of our organism and no less complicated than it.

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Journal entry (14 May 1915), p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
Whatever is known to us by...

Whatever is known to us by consciousness, is known beyond possibility of question. What one sees or feels, whether bodily or mentally, one cannot but be sure that one sees or feels. No science is required for the purpose of establishing such truths; no rules of art can render our knowledge of them more certain than it is in itself. There is no logic for this portion of our knowledge.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
3 months 2 weeks ago
I have said more than once…

I have said more than once, that I hold space to be something purely relative, as time; an order of coexistences, as time is an order of successions.

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Third letter to Samuel Clarke, February 25, 1716
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
I assert(1) There is no method...

I assert(1) There is no method of discovering a scientific theory.(2) There is no method of ascertaining the truth [i.e., verification] of a scientific hypothesis...(3) There is no method of ascertaining whether a hypothesis is 'probable', in the sense of the probability calculus.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 weeks 5 days ago
A global transition to a cruelty-free...

A global transition to a cruelty-free vegan diet won't just help non-human animals. The transition will also help malnourished humans who could benefit from the grain currently fed to factory-farmed animals. For factory-farming is not just cruel; it's energy-inefficient. Let's take just one example. Over the past few decades, millions of Ethiopians have died of "food shortages" while Ethiopia grew grain to sell to the West to feed cattle. Western meat-eating habits prop up the price of grain so that poor people in the developing world can't afford to buy it. In consequence, they starve by the millions.In my work, I explore futuristic, hi-tech solutions to the problem of suffering. But anybody who seriously wants to reduce human and non-human suffering alike should adopt a cruelty-free vegan lifestyle today.

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"A World Without Suffering?", Instituto Humanitas Unisinos, Jan. 2011
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
The capitalist cannot store labour-power in...

The capitalist cannot store labour-power in warehouses after he has bought it, as he may do with the raw material.

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Vol. II, Ch. XV, p. 285.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 2 days ago
You can never plan....
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Main Content / General
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 days ago
Octavia lost Marcellus, whom both his...

Octavia lost Marcellus, whom both his father-in-law and his uncle had begun to depend upon, and to place upon his shoulders the weight of the empire - a young man of keen intelligence and firm character, frugal and moderate in his desires to an extent which deserved especial admiration in one so young and so wealthy, strong to endure labour, averse to indulgence, and able to bear whatever burden his uncle might choose to lay, or I may say to pile upon his shoulders. Augustus had well chosen him as a foundation, for he would not have given way under any weight, however excessive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
2 months 3 days ago
You have to study a great...

You have to study a great deal to know a little.

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I
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 2 weeks ago
I look forward to a future...

I look forward to a future when acts of war shall be formally outlawed as between civilized peoples. All these beliefs of mine put me firmly into the anti-military party. But I do not believe that peace either ought to be or will be permanent on this globe, unless the states, pacifically organized, preserve some of the old elements of army-discipline. A permanently successful peace-economy cannot be a simple pleasure-economy. In the more or less socialistic future toward which mankind seems drifting we must still subject ourselves collectively to those severities which answer to our real position upon this only partly hospitable globe. We must make new energies and hardihoods continue the manliness to which the military mind so faithfully clings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 3 days ago
Only the feeble resign themselves to...

Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined...

Africans are always vicious... mostly inclined to lasciviousness, vengeance, theft and lies.

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As quoted in David Johnson, 'Representing the Cape "Hottentots"
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 days ago
I too have a growing inner...

I too have a growing inner certainty that there is a deposit of pure gold in me which ought to be passed on. The trouble is that I am more and more convinced by my experience and observation of my contemporaries that there is no one to receive it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 week 4 days ago
See now the power of truth;...

See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.

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Salviati, Third Day. Naturally Accelerated Motion
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 week ago
Eternity is best spent under a...

Eternity is best spent under a general anesthetic - which is what is going to happen.

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Interview with Joe Rogan on The Joe Rogan Experience (2019);
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
Spontaneous love can reach the point...

Spontaneous love can reach the point of despair, shows that it is in despair, that even when it is happy it loves with the power of despair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
The first thing to realize, if...

The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man's, so that they cannot both be right. People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.

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"How to Become a Philosopher" (1942), in The Art of Philosophizing, and Other Essays (New York: Philosophical Library, 1968), p. 2
Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 1 week ago
The species with eyes appears suddenly,...

The species with eyes appears suddenly, capriciously as it were, and it is this species which changes the environment by creating its visible aspect. The eye does not come into being because it is needed. Just the contrary; because the eye appears it can henceforth be applied as a serviceable instrument. Each species builds up its stock of useful habits by selecting among, and taking advantage of, the innumerable useless actions which a living being performs out of sheer exuberance.

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p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 3 weeks ago
Laws are always unstable unless they...

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

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Chapter XVI.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 days ago
People do not cooperate under the...

People do not cooperate under the division of labor because they love or should love one another. They cooperate because this best serves their own interests. Neither love nor charity nor any other sympathetic sentiments but rightly understood selfishness is what originally impelled man to adjust himself to the requirements of society, to respect the rights and freedoms of his fellow men and to substitute peaceful collaboration for enmity and conflict.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
Somebody ought to make a historical...

Somebody ought to make a historical study of the relations between theology and corporal punishment in childhood. I have a theory that, wherever little boys and girls are systematically flagellated, the victims grow up to think of God as - 'Wholly Other'... A people's theology reflects the state of its children's bottoms. Look at the Hebrews - enthusiastic child-beaters. And so were all good Christians in the Age of Faith. Hence Jehovah, hence Original Sin and the infinitely offended Father of Roman and Protestant orthodoxy. Whereas among Buddhists and Hindus education has always been nonviolent. No laceration of little buttocks - therefore Tat tvam asi, thou art That, mind from Mind is not divided.... Major premise: God is Wholly Other. Minor premise: man is totally depraved. Conclusion: Do to your children's bottoms what was done to yours, what your Heavenly Father has been doing to the collective bottom of humanity ever since the Fall: whip, whip, whip!

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 week 1 day ago
Why not? What is to hinder...

Why not? What is to hinder this Samson from governing? There is in him what far transcends all apprenticeships; in the man himself there exists a model of governing, something to govern by! There exists in him a heart-abhorrence of whatever is incoherent, pusillanimous, unveracious,-that is to say, chaotic, _un_governed; of the Devil, not of God. A man of this kind cannot help governing! He has the living ideal of a governor in him; and the incessant necessity of struggling to unfold the same out of him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
When an individual passes from one...

When an individual passes from one period of life to another a time comes when he cannot go on in senseless activity and excitement as before, but has to understand that although he has out-grown what before used to direct him, this does not mean that he must live without any reasonable guidance, but rather that he must formulate for himself an understanding of life corresponding to his age, and having elucidated it must be guided by it. And in the same way a similar time must come in the growth and development of humanity.

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VI
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 3 weeks ago
We may search long to find...

We may search long to find where God is, but we shall find Him in those who keep the words of Christ. For the Lord Christ saith, " If any man love me, he will keep my words; and we will make our abode with him."

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p. 278
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
2 months 1 week ago
It is ...easy to be certain....

It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

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Vol. IV, par. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
At the speed of light there...

At the speed of light there is no sequence; everything happens at the same instant.

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Philosophical Maxims
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