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Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 1 week ago
However many ways there may be...

However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead.

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Chapter 1 "Explaining the Very Improbable"
Philosophical Maxims
Cisero
Cisero
6 months 2 days ago
They are such fools that they...

They are such fools that they seem to expect that, though the Republic is lost, their fish-ponds will be safe.

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Letters to Atticus, Book I, 18.
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 3 weeks ago
Instead of enabling humans to improve...

Instead of enabling humans to improve their lot, science degrades the natural environment in which humans must live. Instead of enabling death to be overcome, it produces ever more powerful technologies of mass destruction. None of this is the fault of science; what it shows is that science is not sorcery. The growth of knowledge enlarges what humans can do. It cannot reprieve them from being what they are.

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Sweet Morality (p. 235)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is...

Solitude, the safeguard of mediocrity, is to genius the stern friend.

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Culture
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
7 months 1 week ago
Dreaming of everybody winning...
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Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 2 weeks ago
Today, local economies are being destroyed...

Today, local economies are being destroyed by the "pluralistic," displaced, global economy, which has no respect for what works in a locality. The global economy is built on the principle that one place can be exploited, even destroyed, for the sake of another place.

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Interview in New Perspectives Quarterly (1992), quoted in his Profile at The Poetry Foundation
Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
4 months 5 days ago
In ressentiment morality, love for the...

In ressentiment morality, love for the "small," the "poor," the "weak," and the "oppressed" is really disguised hatred, repressed envy, an impulse to detract, etc., directed against the opposite phenomena: "wealth," "strength," "power," "largesse." When hatred does not dare to come out into the open, it can be easily expressed in the form of ostensible love-love for something which has features that are the opposite of those of the hated object. This can happen in such a way that the hatred remains secret. When we hear that falsely pious, unctuous tone (it is the tone of a certain "socially-minded" type of priest), sermonizing that love for the "small" is our first duty, love for the "humble" inspirit, since God gives "grace" to them, then it is often only hatred posing as Christian love.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), pp. 96-97
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago
The directing motive, the end and...

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.

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Vol. I, Ch. 13, pg. 363.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry George
Henry George
1 month 1 week ago
The progress of civilization necessitates the...

The progress of civilization necessitates the giving of greater and greater attention and intelligence to public affairs. And for this reason I am convinced that we make a great mistake in depriving one sex of voice in public matters, and that we could in no way so increase the attention, the intelligence and the devotion which may be brought to the solution of social problems as by enfranchising our women.

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Ch. 21 : Conclusion
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 months 1 week ago
The sun, with all those planets...

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

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Loose paraphrase of Salviati on Day 3
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
1 month 1 week ago
The essence of liberalism is negotiation,...

The essence of liberalism is negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 3 weeks ago
Before we can establish any immutable...

Before we can establish any immutable 'principles' of administration, we must be able to describe, in words, exactly how an administrative organization looks and exactly how it works.

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p. xiv.
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 1 day ago
I have told you that... we...

I have told you that... we know nothing save what we have first, in one way or another, desired; and it may even be added that we can know nothing well save what we love, save what we pity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 months 1 week ago
I have been in my bed...

I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release.

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Compiled primarily from his correspondence and that of his eldest daughter, Sister Maria Celeste (1870) by Mary Allan-Olney, p. 278
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 weeks ago
If you know that "I", in...

If you know that "I", in the sense of the person, the front, the ego, it really doesn't exist. Then...it won't go to your head too badly, if you wake up and discover that you're God.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
The infliction of cruelty with a...

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

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Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
4 months 2 weeks ago
The recognition of the light of...

The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction - both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality - that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy - is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.

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Part III, Section 31
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 6 days ago
Just because emotion is essential to...

Just because emotion is essential to that act of expression which produces a work of art, it is easy for inaccurate analysis to misconceive its mode of operation and conclude that the work of art has emotion for its significant content. One may cry out with joy or even weep upon seeing a friend from whom one has been long separated. The outcome is not an expressive object -- save to the onlooker. But if the emotion leads one to gather material that is affiliated to the mood which is aroused, a poem may result. In the direct outburst, an objective situation is the stimulus, the cause, of the emotion. In the poem, objective material becomes the content and matter of the emotion, not just its evocative occasion.

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pp. 71-72
Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
2 months 3 weeks ago
The serpent, the king, the tiger,...

The serpent, the king, the tiger, the stinging wasp, the small child, the dog owned by other people, and the fool: these seven ought not to be awakened from sleep.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 5 days ago
Mahomet can work no miracles; he...

Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your eyes were open!

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 1 week ago
Man, in wearing himself out his...

Man, in wearing himself out his whole life long by saying: What is that! and what is that called! and what does that mean! is a big spectacle to himself if he wants to open his eyes. All his natural powers tending towards the truth, he never ceases looking for true names; he senses a language prior to that of Babel, and even of Eden.

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p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
Turn thy thoughts now to the...

Turn thy thoughts now to the consideration of thy life, thy life as a child, as a youth, thy manhood, thy old age, for in these also every change was a death. Is this anything to fear?

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IX, 21
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
2 months 3 weeks ago
The belief that torture is always...

The belief that torture is always wrong is a prejudice inherited from an obsolete philosophy. We need to shed the belief that human rights are violated when a terrorist is tortured. As Rawls and others have shown, basic freedoms must form a coherent whole. Self-evidently, there can be no right to attack basic human rights. Therefore, once the proper legal procedures are in place, torturing terrorists cannot violate their rights. In fact, in a truly liberal society, terrorists have an inalienable right to be tortured.This is what demonstrates the moral superiority of liberal societies over others, past and present. Other societies have degraded terrorists by subjecting them to lawless and unaccountable power. In the new world that is taking shape, terrorists, although they themselves degrade human rights by practising terrorism, will be afforded the full dignity of due legal process, even while being tortured.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
4 months 2 weeks ago
Be charitable before Wealth makes thee...

Be charitable before Wealth makes thee covetous.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 1 week ago
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule...

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

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Part 3, Ch. 13, § 3
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Idea of Cause is expressed...

The Idea of Cause is expressed for purposes of science by these three Axioms:-'Every Event must have a Cause':-'Causes are measured by their Effects':-'Reaction is equal and opposite to Action'.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
1 month 4 weeks ago
If you could be alarmed into...

If you could be alarmed into the semblance of modesty, you would charm everybody; but remember my joke against you about the Moon and the Solar System;-"Damn the solar system! bad light - planets too distant - pestered with comets - feeble contriviance; - could make a better with great ease."

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Vol. II, letter to Lord Jeffrey (1806), p. 23 Discussed in David A. Kent, D. R. Ewen, "Romantic Parodies, 1797-1831", The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 44, No. 175, (1993), pp. 430-432
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months ago
Du pouvoir de transformer un homme...

From the power to transform him into a thing by killing him there proceeds another power, and much more prodigious, that which makes a thing of him while he still lives.

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in The Simone Weil Reader, p. 155
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
1 month 1 week ago
I observe, that of late Chymistry...

I observe, that of late Chymistry begins, as indeed it deserves, to be cultivated by Learned Men who before despis'd it; and to be pretended to by many who never cultivated it, that they may be thought not to ignore it: Whence it is come to passe, that divers Chymical Notions about Matters Philosophical are taken for granted and employ'd, and so adopted by very eminent Writers both Naturalists and Physitians. Now this I fear may prove somewhat prejudicial to the Advancement of solid Philosophy: For though I am a great Lover of Chymical Experiments, and though I have no mean esteem of divers Chymical Remedies, yet I distinguish these from their Notions about the causes of things, and their manner of Generation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 1 week ago
Soon you will have…

Soon you will have forgotten the world, and soon the world will have forgotten you.

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VII, 21
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
3 months 3 weeks ago
In order to survive, the organization...

In order to survive, the organization must have an objective that appeals to its customers, so that they will make the contributions necessary to sustain it. Hence, organization objectives are constantly adapted to conform to the changing values of customers, or to secure new groups of customers in place of customers who have dropped away. The organization may also undertake special activities to induce acceptance of its objectives by customers - advertising, missionary work, and propaganda of all sorts.

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p. 114.
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 weeks ago
There is no formula for generating...

There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied. You cannot talk yourself into it or rouse it by straining at the emotions or by dedicating yourself solemnly to the service of mankind. Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. This conviction will not come through condemnations, through hating oneself, through calling self love bad names in the universe. It comes only in the awareness that one has no self to love.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 months 5 days ago
Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps...

Diogenes, in his mud-covered sandals, tramps over the carpets of Aristippus. The cynic pullulated at every corner, and in the highest places. This cynic did nothing but saboter the civilisation of the time. He was the nihilist of Hellenism. He created nothing, he made nothing. His role was to undo - or rather to attempt to undo, for he did not succeed in his purpose. The cynic, a parasite of civilisation, lives by denying it, for the very reason that he is convinced that it will not fail. What would become of the cynic among a savage people where everyone, naturally and quite seriously, fulfils what the cynic farcically considers to be his personal role?

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
1 month 3 weeks ago
You do not ask what is...

You do not ask what is the value, or what is the use, of this feeling. Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use-which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing-for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.

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p. 92
Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
4 months 1 day ago
A man should be mourned at...

A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.

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No. 40. (Usbek writing to Ibben)
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
5 months 3 weeks ago
Most Christians are superstitious rather than...

Most Christians are superstitious rather than pious, and except for the name of Christ differ hardly at all from superstitious pagans.

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The Erasmus Reader (1990), pp. 140-141.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
5 months 1 week ago
Animals come when their names are...

Animals come when their names are called. Just like human beings.

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p. 67e
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
1 month 2 weeks ago
We are living in the most...

We are living in the most destructive and, hence, the most stupid period of the history of our species.

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A Poem of Difficult Hope
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
Immortality. I notice that as soon...

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

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May 1849
Philosophical Maxims
Niels Bohr
Niels Bohr
1 month 3 weeks ago
What is it that we humans...

What is it that we humans depend on? We depend on our words... Our task is to communicate experience and ideas to others. We must strive continually to extend the scope of our description, but in such a way that our messages do not thereby lose their objective or unambiguous character ... We are suspended in language in such a way that we cannot say what is up and what is down. The word "reality" is also a word, a word which we must learn to use correctly.

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Quoted in Philosophy of Science Vol. 37 (1934), p. 157, and in The Truth of Science : Physical Theories and Reality (1997) by Roger Gerhard Newton, p. 176
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
4 months 2 weeks ago
What most astonishes me in the...

What most astonishes me in the United States, is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings, as the innumerable multitude of small ones.

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Book Two, Chapter XIX.
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
3 months 2 weeks ago
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you...

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to acquire the skills of writing and speaking that make for candor, rigor, and clarity. You cannot think clearly if you cannot speak and write clearly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
5 months 1 week ago
There are many difficulties impeding the...

There are many difficulties impeding the rapid spread of reasonableness. One of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 months 1 week ago
We are interested in others, when...

We are interested in others, when they are interested in us.

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Maxim 16
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 1 week ago
Religious beauty is superior to ideal...

Religious beauty is superior to ideal beauty, since it is the ideal of the ideal.

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p. 287
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 1 week ago
It is always necessary to call...

It is always necessary to call men back to history, which is the first master in politics, or more exactly the only master.

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p. 120
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
To live without duties is obscene....

To live without duties is obscene.

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Aristocracy
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
5 months 2 weeks ago
There are two things which make...

There are two things which make it impossible to believe that this world is the successful work of an all-wise, all-good, and, at the same time, all-powerful Being; firstly, the misery which abounds in it everywhere; and secondly, the obvious imperfection of its highest product, man, who is a burlesque of what he should be.

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
5 months 3 weeks ago
Let us not flutter too high,...

Let us not flutter too high, but remain by the manger and the swaddling clothes of Christ, in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

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50
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
4 months 1 week ago
When we assume God to be...

When we assume God to be a guiding principle-well, sure enough, a god is usually characteristic of a certain system of thought or morality. For instance, take the Christian God, the summum bonum: God is love, love being the highest moral principle; and God is spirit, the spirit being the supreme idea of meaning. All our Christian moral concepts derive from such assumptions, and the supreme essence of all of them is what we call God.

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Nietzsche's Zarathustra (1988), p. 40
Philosophical Maxims
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