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Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 5 days ago
And what is it in us...

And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I'd say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened....Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

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Part 1, Chapter 7
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 days ago
Lord, you have cursed Cain and...

Lord, you have cursed Cain and Cain's children: thy will be done. You have allowed men's hearts to be corrupted, that their intentions be rotten, that their actions putrefy and stink: thy will be done.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 6 days ago
Without being known too well, it...

Without being known too well, it [India] has existed for millennia in the imagination of the Europeans as a wonderland. Its fame, which it has always had with regard to its treasures, both its natural ones, and in particular, its wisdom, has lured men there.

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Friedrich Hegel .source: Contesting the Master Narrative, Jeffrey Cox and Shelton Stromquist Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013).
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 1 week ago
There can be no doubt that...

There can be no doubt that the Virgin Mary is in heaven. How it happened we do not know.

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Weimar edition of Martin Luther's Works (Translation by William J. Cole) Vol. 10, p. 268
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 1 week ago
All things are artificial, for nature...

All things are artificial, for nature is the Art of God.

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Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 5 days ago
Nothing is so fatiguing as the...

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.

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To Carl Stumpf, 1 January 1886
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
Whatever happens, I cannot be a...

Whatever happens, I cannot be a silent witness to murder or torture. Anyone who is a partner in this is a despicable individual. I am sorry I cannot be moderate about it...

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Quoted in The New York Times Biographical Service, Vol. I (1970), p. 294, said by Russell "in the spring of 1967"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
He who created...
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Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 5 days ago
Half of the human race lives...

Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause. Their sudden and fantastic alternations constitute the ordinary weather of our minds. These moods, of which the more gravely numinous may be hypostasized as gods, the lighter, if we will, as hobgoblins and fairies, are the children of the blood and humours. But the blood and humours obey, among many other masters, the changing moon. Touching the soul directly through the eyes and, indirectly, along the dark channels of the blood, the moon is doubly a divinity.

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"Meditation on the Moon"
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 1 week ago
Through the fortunate effect of my...

Through the fortunate effect of my frankness, I had the rarest and surest opportunity to know a man well, which is to study him at leisure in his private life and living, so to speak, with himself. For he share himself without reservation and made me feel as much at home in his house as in mine. I had almost no other abode than his own.

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Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
We will walk on our own...

We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds...A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

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par. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
None shall rule but the humble,...

None shall rule but the humble, And none but Toil shall have.

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Boston Hymn
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 1 week ago
Contemplating the universe, the whole system...

Contemplating the universe, the whole system of creation, in this point of light, we shall discover, that all that which is called natural philosophy is properly a divine study- It is the study of God through his works - It is the best study, by which we can arrive at a knowledge of the existence, and the only one by which we can gain a glimpse of his perfection. Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the Creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is?

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Search not written or printed books, but the Scripture called the Creation. A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 4 days ago
Now, to-day, this moment, is our...

Now, to-day, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last for ever. We must take it or leave it.

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Book II, Chapter 5, "The Practical Conclusion"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 weeks ago
From the point of view of...

From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight-whereby the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given.

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(February 1888) "The Struggle for Existence: A Programme". The Nineteenth Century 23: 161-180. (quote from p. 163)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
The best authorities are unanimous in...

The best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with H-bombs might possibly put an end to the human race. It is feared that if many H-bombs are used there will be universal death, sudden only for a minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration. Many warnings have been uttered by eminent men of science and by authorities in military strategy. None of them will say that the worst results are certain. What they do say is that these results are possible, and no one can be sure that they will not be realized. We have not yet found that the views of experts on this question depend in any degree upon their politics or prejudices. They depend only, so far as our researches have revealed, upon the extent of the particular expert's knowledge. We have found that the men who know most are the most gloomy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 1 week ago
Happiest are the people who give...

Happiest are the people who give most happiness to others.

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As quoted in Happyology by Harald W. Tietze, p. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
To have committed every crime but...

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 2 weeks ago
A speech comes alive only if...

A speech comes alive only if it rises from the heart, not if it floats on the lips.

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in The Erasmus Reader (1990), p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime...

I anticipated witnessing in my lifetime the disappearance of our species. But the Gods have been against me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 6 days ago
Physics is mathematical not because we...

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little: it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover.

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An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics, 1927
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 4 days ago
Power and violence are opposites; where...

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.

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"On Violence"
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months ago
Technically speaking, since our complex societies...

Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

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Habermas (2004) in: Giovanna Borradori (2004) Philosophy in a Time of Terror: : Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
When I play with my cat,...

When I play with my cat, who knows whether I do not make her more sport than she makes me?

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
As far as I am concerned,...

As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and aesthetic ideals? It's all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 day ago
The contradictory conceptual couple, identity and...

The contradictory conceptual couple, identity and difference, is not the adequate framework for understanding the organization of the multitude. Instead we are a multiplicity of singular forms of life and at the same time share a common global existence. The anthropology of the multitude is an anthropology of singularity and commonality.

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127
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 1 week ago
But the chief design of this...

But the chief design of this paper is not to disprove it, which many have sufficiently done; but to entreat Americans to consider.

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 1 week ago
It has been said that love...

It has been said that love robs those who have it of their wit, and gives it to those who have none.

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Paradoxe sur le Comédien
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months ago
The bourgeois public sphere may be...

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

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p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
To venture upon an undertaking of...

To venture upon an undertaking of any kind, even the most insignificant, is to sacrifice to envy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 days ago
To two men living the same...

To two men living the same number of years, the world always provides the same sum of experiences. It is up to us to be conscious of them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
7 months 1 week ago
Ghandi had balls

One should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions — but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted. … This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not ‘have the balls’ to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i.e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive.”
In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 3 weeks ago
Once the needs of hunger are...

Once the needs of hunger are satisfied - and they are soon satisfied - the vanity, the necessity - for it is a necessity - arises of imposing ourselves upon and surviving in others. Man habitually sacrifices his life to his purse, but he sacrifices his purse to his vanity. He boasts even of his weakness and his misfortunes, for want of anything better to boast of, and is like a child who, in order to attract attention, struts about with a bandaged finger.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is...

Never self-possessed, or prudent, love is all abandonment.

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p. 158
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
Just now
Never has any one been less...

Never has any one been less a priest than Jesus, never a greater enemy of forms, which stifle religion under the pretext of protecting it. By this we are all his disciples and his successors; by this he has laid the eternal foundation-stone of true religion; and if religion is essential to humanity, he has by this deserved the Divine rank the world has accorded him.

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Ch. 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 days ago
Media are means of extending and...

Media are means of extending and enlarging our organic sense lives into our environment.

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"The Care and Feeding of Communication Innovation", Dinner Address to Conference on 8 mm Sound Film and Education, Teachers College, Columbia University, 8 November 1961
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 days ago
Does the interiorization of media such...

Does the interiorization of media such as letters alter the ratio among our senses and change mental processes?

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(p. 28)
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 6 days ago
One cannot too soon forget his...

One cannot too soon forget his errors and misdemeanors. To dwell long upon them is to add to the offense. Repentance and sorrow can only be displaced by something better, which is as free and original as if they had not been.

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January 9, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
My appetite comes to me while...

My appetite comes to me while eating.

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Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Hölderlin
Friedrich Hölderlin
2 months 6 days ago
What is all that men have...

What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
In the torments of the intellect,...

In the torments of the intellect, there is a certain bearing which is to be sought in vain among those of the heart. Skepticism is the elegance of anxiety.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 days ago
Ha! to forget. How childish! I...

Ha! to forget. How childish! I feel you in my bones. Your silence screams in my ears. You may nail your mouth shut, you may cut out your tongue, can you keep yourself from existing? Will you stop your thoughts.

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Inès reiterating to Garcin that they cannot ignore one another, Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 1 week ago
We are constantly railing against the...

We are constantly railing against the passions; we ascribe to them all of man's afflictions, and we forget that they are also the source of all his pleasures ... But what provokes me is that only their adverse side is considered ... and yet only passions, and great passions, can raise the soul to great things. Without them there is no sublimity, either in morals or in creativity. Art returns to infancy, and virtue becomes small-minded.

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As translated in Diderot (1977) by Otis Fellows, p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
The mentality of mankind and the...

The mentality of mankind and the language of mankind created each other. If we like to assume the rise of language as a given fact, then it is not going too far to say that the souls of men are the gift from language to mankind. The account of the sixth day should be written: He gave them speech, and they became souls.

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Modes of Thought (1938).
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
3 months 1 week ago
It is enough to ask somebody...

It is enough to ask somebody for his weapons without saying 'I want to kill you with them', because when you have his weapons in hand, you can satisfy your desire.

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Book 1, Ch 44 (as translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 days ago
The best way to describe anyone...

The best way to describe anyone is to give an example of the kind of thing he would do.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
4 weeks ago
Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance...

Conservatism is a philosophy of inheritance and stewardship; it does not squander resources but strives to enhance them and pass them on.

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Stand up for the real meaning of freedom, The Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 month 2 weeks ago
The chief error in philosophy is...

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 1.
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 1 week ago
The next good quality belonging to...

The next good quality belonging to a gentleman, is good breeding [manners]. There are two sorts of ill-breeding: the one a sheepish bashfulness, and the other a mis-becoming negligence and disrespect in our carriage; both of which are avoided by duly observing this one rule, not to think meanly of ourselves, and not to think meanly of others.

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Sec. 141
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 4 days ago
First, what do we mean by...

First, what do we mean by anguish? The existentialist frankly states that man is in anguish. His meaning is as follows-When a man commits himself to anything, fully realizing that he is not only choosing what he will be, but is thereby at the same time a legislator deciding for the whole of mankind-in such a moment a man cannot escape from the sense of complete and profound responsibility.

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p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
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