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St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
Let each look to his own...

Let each look to his own heart: let him not keep hatred against his brother for any hard word; on account of earthly contention let him not become earth.

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First Homily, Paragraph 11, as translated by H. Browne, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, Vol. 7 (1888)
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
Whenever a human being, through the...

Whenever a human being, through the commission of a crime, has become exiled from good, he needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. The suffering should be inflicted with the aim of bringing the soul to recognize freely some day that its infliction was just. This reintegration with the good is what punishment is. Every man who is innocent, or who has finally expiated guilt, needs to be recognized as honourable to the same extent as anyone else.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months ago
We think of beauty as being...

We think of beauty as being most worthy of reverence. But what is most worthy of reverence lights up only where the magnificent strength to revere is alive. To revere is not a thing for the petty and lowly, the incapacitated and underdeveloped. It is a matter of tremendous passion; only what flows from such passion is in the grand style.

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p. 125
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
Just as the performance of the...

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

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F 87
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 3 days ago
We all remember how many religious...

We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 5 days ago
We may assume the superiority ceteris...

We may assume the superiority ceteris paribus [all things being equal] of the demonstration which derives from fewer postulates or hypotheses—in short from fewer premisses; for... given that all these are equally well known, where they are fewer knowledge will be more speedily acquired, and that is a desideratum. The argument implied in our contention that demonstration from fewer assumptions is superior may be set out in universal form...

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 5 days ago
How could one speak properly about...

How could one speak properly about love if you were forgotten, you God of love, source of all love in heaven and on earth; you who spared nothing but in love gave everything; you who are love, so that one who loves is what he is only by being in you.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 5 days ago
The great writers to whom the...

The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief.

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Ch. 1: Introductory
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 weeks ago
Never since the heroic days of...

Never since the heroic days of Greece has the world had such a sweet, just, boyish master.

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"The British Character"
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 2 weeks ago
There are two atheisms of which...

There are two atheisms of which one is a purification of the notion of God.

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As quoted in The New Christianity (1967) edited by William Robert Miller
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 1 week ago
All... good and useful properties of...

All... good and useful properties of character have a price in exchange for others which have just as much use. Talent has a market price, since the sovereign or estate-owner can use a talented person in all sorts of ways. Temperament has a fancy price,22 since one can converse well with such a person; he is a pleasant companion. But, character has an inner value[,] and it is above all price.

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Kant, Immanuel (1996), page 203
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 1 day ago
Most of what we strive for...

Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 6 days ago
And the final event to himself...

And the final event to himself has been, that, as he rose like a rocket, he fell like the stick.

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On Edmund Burke's reactions to the American and French revolutions.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
To conceive a thought - just...

To conceive a thought - just one, but one that would tear the universe to pieces.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
3 months 2 weeks ago
Christ is not valued at all...

Christ is not valued at all unless He be valued above all.

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p. 395
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
2 months 1 week ago
After having thus successively taken each...

After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the government then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence: it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

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Book Four, Chapter VI.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 5 days ago
The truly good and wise man...

The truly good and wise man will bear all kinds of fortune in a seemly way, and will always act in the noblest manner that the circumstances allow.

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 4 days ago
The deadliest enemies of nations are...

The deadliest enemies of nations are not their foreign foes; they always dwell within their borders. And from these internal enemies civilization is always in need of being saved. The nation blest above all nations is she in whom the civic genius of the people does the saving day by day, by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans or empty quacks.

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Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
1 month 2 weeks ago
Chronic boredom - compensated or uncompensated...

Chronic boredom - compensated or uncompensated - constitutes one of the major psychopathological phenomena in contemporary technotronic society, although it is only recently that it has found some recognition.

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p. 273
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
All natures, all formed things, all...

All natures, all formed things, all creatures exist in and with one another and will again be resolved into their own roots, because the nature of matter is dissolved into the roots of its nature alone. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month ago
So long as we love we...

So long as we love we serve; so long as we are loved by others, I would almost say that we are indispensable; and no man is useless while he has a friend.

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"Lay Morals" Ch. 4, in Lay Morals and Other Essays (1911).
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 days ago
It is too early to love....

It is too early to love. We will buy the right to do so by shedding blood.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 2 weeks ago
Before one blames, one should always...

Before one blames, one should always find out whether one cannot excuse. To discover little faults has been always the particularity of such brains that are a little or not at all above the average. The superior ones keep quiet or say something against the whole and the great minds transform without blaming.

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K 39 Variant translation: Before we blame we should first see whether we cannot excuse.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 1 week ago
The Jesuits founded their politics on...

The Jesuits founded their politics on the virtual disappearance of God and on the worldly and spectacular manipulation of consciences-the evanescence of God in the epiphany of power-the end of transcendence, which now only serves as an alibi for a strategy altogether free of influences and signs. Behind the baroqueness of images hides the éminence grise of politics.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 2 weeks ago
The law of nature teaches me...

The law of nature teaches me to speak in my own defence: With respect to this charge of bribery I am as innocent as any man born on St. Innocents Day. I never had a bribe or reward in my eye or thought when pronouncing judgment or order. I am ready to make an oblation of myself to the King.

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(17 April 1621) Quoted by Baron John Campbell (1818), J. Murray in "The Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal of England"
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
4 weeks 1 day ago
The alleged power....
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Main Content / General
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 days ago
The user of the electric light...

The user of the electric light -- or a hammer, or a language, or a book -- is the content. As such, there is a total metamorphosis of the user by the interface. It is the metamorphosis that I consider the message.

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Letter to Edward T. Hall, 1971, Letters of Marshall McLuhan, p. 397
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is not society's fault that...

It is not society's fault that most men seem to miss their vocation. Most men have no vocation.

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Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 6 days ago
Prejudice is an opinion…

Prejudice is an opinion without judgement.

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"Prejudices", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 4 weeks ago
The painter is turning his eyes...

The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by that gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we were: the model itself. But, inversely, the painter's gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange.

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Las Menias
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 1 week ago
If you have hitherto believed that...
If you have hitherto believed that life was one of the highest value and now see yourselves disappointed, do you at once have to reduce it to the lowest possible price?
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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
3 months 1 week ago
Much more naturally than you do:...

Much more naturally than you do: because flight is a much more natural consequence of fear than of hate. He doesn't flee men because he hates them, but because he is afraid of them. He doesn't flee them in order to harm them, but to try o escape the harm they wish to do to him. They, on the contrary, don't seek him through friendship, but through hate. They seek him and he flees from them just as in the wilderness of Africa, where there are few men and many tigers, the men flee the tigers, the men flee the tigers, and the tigers seek the men.

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Second Dialogue; translated by Judith R. Bush, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 days ago
Bless Madison Ave for restoring the...

Bless Madison Ave for restoring the magical art of the cavemen to suburbia.

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(p. 130)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 5 days ago
I have always thought respectable people...

I have always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

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Quoted in Alan Wood Bertrand Russell: The Passionate Skeptic: A Biography, Vol. 2 (1958), p. 233
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 weeks ago
...Zen Buddhism, this religion of immanence.

...Zen Buddhism, this religion of immanence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
'Resignation' is a keynote in Comte's...

Resignation' is a keynote in Comte's writings, deriving directly from assent to invariable social laws. 'True resignation, that is, a disposition to endure necessary evils steadfastly and without any hope of compensation therefore, can result only from a profound feeling for the invariable laws that govern the variety of natural phenomena.

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P. 345
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 5 days ago
Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the...

Hypocrisy, of course, delights in the most sublime speculations; for, never intending to go beyond speculation, it costs nothing to have it magnificent.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 4 days ago
Technological progress has merely provided us...

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

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Ch. 1, p. 9 [2012 reprint]. Also in "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" in Adonis and the Alphabet (1956); later in Collected Essays (1959), p. 293
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
3 weeks 2 days ago
To sum up the whole, we...

To sum up the whole, we should say that the aim of the Platonic philosophy was to exalt man into a god. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to provide man with what he requires while he continues to be man. The aim of the Platonic philosophy was to raise us far above vulgar wants. The aim of the Baconian philosophy was to supply our vulgar wants. The former aim was noble; but the latter was attainable.

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'Lord Bacon', The Edinburgh Review (July 1837), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review, Vol. II (1843), p. 395
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 days ago
He [the child] does not despise...

He [the child] does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted.

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"On Three Ways of Writing for Children", 1952
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 5 days ago
For what are they all in...

For what are they all in their high conceit, When man in the bush with God may meet?

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Good-bye, st. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 4 days ago
The supporters of the Development Hypothesis......

The supporters of the Development Hypothesis... can show that any existing species-animal or vegetable-when placed under conditions different from its previous ones, immediately begins to undergo certain changes fitting it for the new conditions. They can show that in successive generations these changes continue; until, ultimately, the new conditions become the natural ones. They can show that in cultivated plants, in domesticated animals, and in the several races of men, such alterations have taken place. They can show that the degrees of difference so produced are often, as in dogs, greater than those on which distinctions of species are in other cases founded.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
2 months 4 days ago
Just as when a man commits...

Just as when a man commits suicide ne negates the body, this rational limit of subjectivity, so when he lapses into fantastic and trascendental practice he associates himself with embodied divine and ghostly appearances, namely, he negates in practise the difference between imagination and perception.

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Part III, Section 29
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 weeks ago
What happens in the movement of...

What happens in the movement of art is emergence of new materials of experience demanding expression, and therefore involving in their expression new forms and techniques.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 1 day ago
This morning I thought, hence lost...

This morning I thought, hence lost my bearings, for a good quarter of an hour.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 5 days ago
If human nature were unchangeable, as...

If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.

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Ch. 17: Some Prospects: Cheerful and Otherwise
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
When the whole is at stake,...

When the whole is at stake, there is no crime except that of rejecting the whole, or not defending it. ... Those who identify themselves with the whole, who are installed as the leaders and defenders of the whole can make mistakes, but they cannot do wrong-they are not guilty. They may become guilty again when this identification no longer holds, when they are gone.

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pp. 82-83
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months ago
For a truly religious man nothing...

For a truly religious man nothing is tragic.

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Conversation of 1930
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
We are again confronted with one...

We are again confronted with one of the most vexing aspects of advanced industrial civilization: the rational character of its irrationality. Its productivity and efficiency, its capacity to increase and spread comforts, ... the extent to which this civilization transforms the object world into an extension of man's mind and body makes the very notion of alienation questionable. The people recognize themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment. The very mechanism which ties the individual to his society has changed, and social control is anchored in the new needs which it has produced.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
3 months 3 weeks ago
The world is divided into men...

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

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Philosophical Maxims
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