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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 3 weeks ago
The Prodigal Son at least walked...

The Prodigal Son at least walked home on his own feet. But who can duly adore that Love which will open the high gates to a prodigal who is brought in kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance of escape?

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 3 weeks ago
The way for a person to...

The way for a person to develop a [writing] style is (a) to know exactly what he wants to say, and (b) to be sure he is saying exactly that. The reader, we must remember, does not start by knowing what we mean. If our words are ambiguous, our meaning will escape him. I sometimes think that writing is like driving sheep down a road. If there is any gate open to the left or the right the readers will most certainly go into it.

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As quoted in part 2 of Sherwood Eliot Wirt in "The Final Interview of C. S. Lewis", 1963
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 3 weeks ago
Can one be a saint without...

Can one be a saint without God?, that's the problem, in fact the only problem, I'm up against today.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 weeks ago
My desire and wish is that...

My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
I dream of a language whose...

I dream of a language whose words, like fists, would fracture jaws.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 3 weeks ago
We unfold out of the Idea...

We unfold out of the Idea of Space the propositions of geometry, which are plainly truths of the most rigorous necessity and universality. But if the idea of space were merely collected from observation of the external world, it could never enable or entitle us to assert such propositions: it could never authorize us to say that not merely some lines, but all lines, not only have, but must have, those properties which geometry teaches. Geometry in every proposition speaks a language which experience never dares to utter; and indeed of which she but half comprehends the meaning.

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Part I Of Ideas, Book I Of Ideas in General, Chap. 12 The Fundamental Ideas Are Not Derived From Experience
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
6 months 2 weeks ago
The greatness of the human being...

The greatness of the human being consists in this: that it is capable of the universe.

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q. 1, art. 2, ad 4
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 3 weeks 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
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
5 months 3 weeks ago
What is called "objectivity," scientific for...

What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions ... and yet which still remains a context.

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Limited Inc
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 3 weeks ago
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely...

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

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God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
Philosophical Maxims
Humphry Davy
Humphry Davy
1 month 3 weeks ago
Fortunately science, like that nature to...

Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply, - there are always new worlds to conquer.

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Discourse Delivered at the Royal Society (30 November 1825)
Philosophical Maxims
Mozi
Mozi
2 months 4 days ago
What is the purpose of houses?...

What is the purpose of houses? It is to protect us from the wind and cold of winter, the heat and rain of summer, and to keep out robbers and thieves. Once these ends have been secured, that is all. Whatever does not contribute to these ends should be eliminated.

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Ch 20, as quoted in Van Norden, Bryan W. (2011). Introduction to Classical Chinese Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 52. ISBN 978-1-60384-468-0.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
I wanted pure love: foolishness; to...

I wanted pure love: foolishness; to love one another is to hate a common enemy: I will thus espouse your hatred. I wanted Good: nonsense; on this earth and in these times, Good and Bad are inseparable: I accept to be evil in order to become good.

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Act 11, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 4 days ago
The souls of emperors and cobblers...

The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold...The same reason that makes us wrangle with a neighbor creates a war betwixt princes.

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Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 2 weeks ago
I do not open up...

I do not open up the truth to one who is not eager to get knowledge, nor help out any one who is not anxious to explain himself. When I have presented one corner of a subject to any one, and he cannot from it learn the other three, I do not repeat my lesson.

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Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is from the shadow of...

It is from the shadow of a cloister that there emerges one of mankind's greatest very greatest scourges. Luther appears; Calvin follows him. The Peasants' Revolt; the Thirty Years' War; the civil war in France; the massacre of the Low Countries; the massacre of Ireland; the massacre of the Cévennes; St Bartholomew's Day; the murders of Henry II, Henry IV, Mary Stuart, and Charles I; and finally, in our day, from the same source, the French Revolution.

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Chapter III, p. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
Religion comforts us for the defeat...

Religion comforts us for the defeat of our will to power. It adds new worlds to ours, and thus brings us hope of new conquests and new victories. We are converted to religion out of fear of suffocating within the narrow confines of this world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 3 weeks ago
He wanted to assume his entire...

He wanted to assume his entire condition, to carry the world on his shoulders and to become, in defiance of all, what all have made of him.

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p. 384
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 2 weeks ago
The free will, the actual motor...

The free will, the actual motor of reason in society, necessarily creates wrong. The individual must clash with the social order that claims to represent his own will in its objective form. But the wrong and the 'avenging justice' that remedies it not only expresses a 'higher logical necessity,' but also prepare the transition to a higher social form of freedom, the transition from abstract right to morality. For, in committing a wrong, and in accepting punishment for his deed, the individual becomes conscious of the 'infinite subjectivity' of his freedom. He learns that he is free only as a private person.

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P. 198
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 1 week ago
The improver of natural knowledge absolutely...

The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise, for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of the spirit of blind faith; and the most ardent votary of science holds his firmest convictions, not because the men he most venerates hold them; not because their verity is testified by portents and wonders; but because his experience teaches him that whenever he chooses to bring these convictions into contact with their primary source, Nature - whenever he thinks fit to test them by appealing to experiment and to observation - Nature will confirm them. The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification. On the advisableness of improving natural knowledge

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1866
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months 5 days ago
Organizations and institutions provide the general...

Organizations and institutions provide the general stimuli and attention-directors that channelize the behaviors of the members of the group, and that provide those members with the intermediate objectives that stimulate action.

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p. 100.
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
6 months 4 weeks ago
When someone hides something behind a...
When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal' I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man.
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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 3 weeks ago
'When two equal weights are supported...

'When two equal weights are supported on the middle point between them, the pressure on the fulcrum is equal to the sum of the weights.'

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Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
5 months 2 weeks ago
To resist him that is set...

To resist him that is set in authority is evil. .

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Maxim no. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
6 months 5 days ago
For all knowledge and wonder (which...

For all knowledge and wonder (which is the seed of knowledge) is an impression of pleasure in itself.

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Book I, i, 3
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 3 weeks ago
It seems to me that science...

It seems to me that science has a much greater likelihood of being true in the main than any philosophy hitherto advanced (I do not, of course, except my own). In science there are many matters about which people are agreed; in philosophy there are none. Therefore, although each proposition in a science may be false, and it is practically certain that there are some that are false, yet we shall be wise to build our philosophy upon science, because the risk of error in philosophy is pretty sure to be greater than in science. If we could hope for certainty in philosophy, the matter would be otherwise, but so far as I can see such a hope would be chimerical.

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Logical Atomism, 1924
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Boyle
Robert Boyle
1 month 3 weeks ago
That which I am now entering...

That which I am now entering upon being the Consideration of the things themselves whereinto Spagyrists resolve mixt Bodies by the Fire, If I can shew that these are not of an Elementary Nature, it will be no great matter what names these or those Chymists have been pleased to give them. And I question not that to a Wise man, and consequently to Eleutherius, it will be lesse considerable to know, what Men Have thought of Things, then what they Should have thought.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
4 months 1 week ago
In its solitariness the spirit asks,...

In its solitariness the spirit asks, What, in the way of value, is the attainment of life? And it can find no such value till it has merged its individual claim with that of the objective universe.

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Religion is world-loyalty. Religion in the Making (February 1926), Lecture II: "Religion and Dogma".
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
5 months 3 weeks ago
The need of reason is not...

The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.

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p. 15
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 2 weeks ago
Eternal vigilance...
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Main Content / General
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 3 weeks ago
The global village is a place...

The global village is a place of very arduous interfaces and very abrasive situations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
6 months 4 days ago
We must remove the Decalogue out...

We must remove the Decalogue out of sight and heart.

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Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette, 4, 188. As cited by Jonathan Ramachandran (January 1, 2019), Lake of Fire - Hope for the Wicked One Day? - Essays in First Christianity, 5 Loaf 2 Fish Publications, p. 1264.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 1 week ago
Mercy often means…

Mercy often means giving death, not life.

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line 329
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
6 months 2 weeks ago
Thus intrigues and conspiracies do not...

Thus intrigues and conspiracies do not arise, and thievery and robbery do not occur; therefore doors need never be locked.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 3 weeks ago
The acquisition of Canada this year,...

The acquisition of Canada this year, as far as the neighborhood of Quebec, will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us experience for the attack of Halifax the next, and the final expulsion of England from the American continent.

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Statement during an early stage of the War of 1812, in a letter to William Duane
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
4 months 3 weeks 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
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 1 week ago
The vain man is in like...

The vain man is in like cause with the avaricious - he takes the mean for the end; forgetting the end he pursues the means for its own sake and goes no further. The seeming to be something, conducive to being it, ends by forming our objective. We need that others should believe in our superiority to them in order that we may believe in it ourselves, and upon their belief base our faith in our own persistence, or at least in the persistence of our fame. We are more grateful to him that congratulates us on the skill with which we defend a cause than we are to him who recognizes the truth or goodness of the cause itself. A rabid mania for originality is rife in the modern intellectual world and characterizes all individual effort. We would rather err with genius than hit the mark with the crowd.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
1 month 3 weeks ago
As the entire middle class, the...

As the entire middle class, the bourgeois and petty bourgeois intelligentsia, boycotted the Soviet government for months after the October Revolution and crippled the railroad, post and telegraph, and educational and administrative apparatus, and, in this fashion, opposed the workers government, naturally all measures of pressure were exerted against it. These included the deprivation of political rights, of economic means of existence, etc., in order to break their resistance with an iron fist. It was precisely in this way that the socialist dictatorship expressed itself, for it cannot shrink from any use of force to secure or prevent certain measures involving the interests of the whole.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 2 weeks ago
May they not forget to...

May they not forget to keep pure the great heritage that puts them ahead of the West: the artistic configuration of life, the simplicity and modesty of personal needs, and the purity and serenity of the Japanese soul.

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Comment made after a six-week trip to Japan in November-December 1922, published in Kaizo 5, no. 1 (January 1923), 339. Einstein Archive 36-477.1. Appears in The New Quotable Einstein by Alice Calaprice (2005), p. 269
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is false that kings are...

It is false that kings are entitled to the eminence they obtain. They possess no intrinsic superiority over their subjects. The line of distinction that is drawn is the offspring of pretense, an indirect means employed for effecting certain purposes, and not the language of truth. It tramples upon the genuine nature of things, and depends for its support upon this argument, 'that, were it not for impositions of a similar nature, mankind would be miserable.'

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Book V, Ch. 6, "Of Subjects"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 2 weeks ago
The most remarkable piece of reading...

The most remarkable piece of reading that you may be recommended to take and try if you can study is a book by Goethe-one of his last books, which he wrote when he was an old man, about seventy years of age-I think one of the most beautiful he ever wrote, full of mild wisdom, and which is found to be very touching by those who have eyes to discern and hearts to feel it. It is one of the pieces in "Wilhelm Meister's Travels." I read it through many years ago; and, of course, I had to read into it very hard when I was translating it (applause), and it has always dwelt in my mind as about the most remarkable bit of writing that I have known to be executed in these late centuries. I have often said, there are ten pages of that which, if ambition had been my only rule, I would rather have written than have written all the books that have appeared since I came into the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 3 weeks ago
The Plan of the System, may...

The Plan of the System, may aim at a Natural or an Artificial System. But no classes can be absolutely artificial, for if they were, no assertions could be made concerning them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 3 weeks ago
Computers can do better than ever...

Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly.

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(p. 109)
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
5 months 3 weeks ago
As soon as we cease to...

As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs, then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

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"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
5 months 1 day ago
It lays down, as is generally...

It lays down, as is generally known, that our speculations upon all subjects whatsoever, pass necessarily through three successive stages: a Theological stage, in which free play is given to spontaneous fictions admitting of no proof; the Metaphysical stage, characterized by the prevalence of personified abstractions or entities; lastly, the Positive stage, based upon an exact view of the real facts of the case.

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p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
4 months 2 weeks ago
To disappear into deep water or...

To disappear into deep water or to disappear toward a far horizon, to become part of depth of infinity, such is the destiny of man that finds its image in the destiny of water.

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Introduction
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
5 months 3 weeks ago
In any race between human numbers...

In any race between human numbers and natural resources, time is against us.

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Chapter 12 (p. 113)
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
3 months 2 weeks ago
The will of man has no...

The will of man has no power whatever over his opinions; he must, and ever did, and ever will, believe what has been, is, or may be impressed on his mind by his predecessors, and the circumstances which surround him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 3 weeks ago
Why don't I kill myself? If...

Why don't I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 3 weeks ago
A young man who wishes to...

A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere... God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.

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p. 191
Philosophical Maxims
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