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Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
2 months 3 days ago
Place is the greatest thing….

Place is the greatest thing, as it contains all things.

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As quoted in Diogenes Laërtius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, I, 35
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Blessed is the lion which becomes...

Blessed is the lion which becomes man when consumed by man; and cursed is the man whom the lion consumes, and the lion becomes man. (7) This saying has been interpreted by some as referring to such anger as consumes a man…(rather than is consumed by him, through his reason and love), 'til that man is the lion of Anger. Other more mystical interpretations might also be found or devised that have merit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
New technological environments are commonly cast...

New technological environments are commonly cast in the molds of the preceding technology out of the sheer unawareness of their designers.

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(p. 47)
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 2 weeks ago
Korell is that frequent phenomenon in...

Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal, honor and court etiquette.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Sleep is for the inhabitants of...

Sleep is for the inhabitants of Planets only. In another time, Man will sleep and wake continually at once. The greater part of our Body, of our Humanity itself, yet sleeps a deep sleep.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
You can never do a kindness...

You can never do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

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Culture
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
1 month 2 weeks ago
Childhood lasts all through life. It...

Childhood lasts all through life. It returns to animate broad sections of adult life.... Poets will help us to find this living childhood within us, this permanent, durable immobile world.

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Introduction, sect. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 2 weeks ago
A sub-clerk in the post office...

A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks ago
While imprisoned in the shed Pierre...

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....

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Bk. XIV, ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month ago
Roughly speaking, rationality is concerned with...

Roughly speaking, rationality is concerned with the selection of preferred behavior alternatives in terms of some system of values, whereby the consequences of behavior can be evaluated.

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p. 84.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 1 week ago
Fine words and an insinuating...

Fine words and an insinuating appearance are seldom associated with true virtue. 

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Variant: Someone who is a clever speaker and maintains a 'too-smiley' face is seldom considered a humane person.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is not by recognizing the...

It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself.

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p. 44e
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 1 day ago
There are two ways of extending...

There are two ways of extending life: firstly by moving the two points "born" and "died" farther away from one another... The other method is to go more slowly and leave the two points wherever God wills they should be, and this method is for the philosophers.

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B 22
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 4 weeks ago
He who is not sure of...

He who is not sure of his memory, should not undertake the trade of lying. 

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Book I, Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
2 months 3 weeks ago
The rich man... is always sold...

The rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 2 weeks ago
The most thought provoking…

The most thought provoking thing in our thought provoking time is that we are still not thinking.

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What is Called Thinking? (1951-1952), as translated by Fred D. Wieck and J. Glenn Gray
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 2 weeks ago
If those who lead you say,...

If those who lead you say, 'See, the Kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty. (3) And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

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(Luke 17:21)
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks ago
The inherent contradiction of human life...

The inherent contradiction of human life has now reached an extreme degree of tension: on the one side there is the consciousness of the beneficence of the law of love, and on the other the existing order of life which has for centuries occasioned an empty, anxious, restless, and troubled mode of life, conflicting as it does with the law of love and built on the use of violence. This contradiction must be faced, and the solution will evidently not be favourable to the outlived law of violence, but to the truth which has dwelt in the hearts of men from remote antiquity: the truth that the law of love is in accord with the nature of man. But men can only recognize this truth to its full extent when they have completely freed themselves from all religious and scientific superstitions and from all the consequent misrepresentations and sophistical distortions by which its recognition has been hindered for centuries.

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VI
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 3 weeks ago
As Being and Life are one...

As Being and Life are one and the same, so are Death and Nothingness one and the same. But there is no real Death and no real Nothing ness, as we have already said. There is, however, an Apparent Life, and this is the mixture of life and death, of being and nothingness.

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P. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was...

Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time.

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The Gioconda smile, in Mortal Coils, 1921
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
3 months 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
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 1 week ago
Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether...

Dionysius the Elder, being asked whether he was at leisure, he replied, "God forbid that it should ever befall me!"

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32 Dionysius
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
2 weeks 5 days ago
Success makes some crimes honorable. Maxim...

Success makes some crimes honorable.

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Maxim 326
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
1 month 3 weeks ago
Raise your eyes and count the...

Raise your eyes and count the small gang of your oppressors who are only strong through the blood they suck from you and through your arms which you lend them unwillingly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 2 weeks ago
The whole nature of man presupposes...

The whole nature of man presupposes woman, both physically and spiritually. His system is tuned into woman from the start, just as it is prepared for a quite definite world where there is water, light, air, salt, carbohydrates etc.

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"Two Essays in Analytical Psychology" In CW 7: P. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks ago
To care only for well-being seems...

To care only for well-being seems to me positively ill-bred. Whether it's good or bad, it is sometimes very pleasant, too, to smash things.

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Part 1, Chapter 9
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
And here, facing this supreme religious...

And here, facing this supreme religious sacrifice, we reach the summit of the tragedy, the very heart of it - the sacrifice of our own individual consciousness upon the alter of the perfected Human Consciousness, of the Divine Consciousness. But is there really a tragedy? ...if we could succeed in understanding and feeling that we were going to enrich Christ, should we hesitate for a moment in surrendering ourselves to Him? Would the stream that flows into the sea, and feels in the freshness of its waters the bitterness of the salt of the ocean, wish to flow back to its source? would it wish to return to the cloud which drew it life from the sea? is it not joy to feel itself absorbed?

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks ago
Whilst shame keeps...
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Main Content / General
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 1 week ago
Being good is just a matter...

Being good is just a matter of temperament in the end.

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The Nice and the Good (1968), ch. 14, p. 127. Murdoch attributed this opinion to her character Kate Gray. It was not her own.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
...wickedness, when you examine it, turns...

...wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. in other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.

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Book II, Chapter 2, "The Invasion"
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 6 days ago
Whatever moral rules you have deliberately...

Whatever moral rules you have deliberately proposed to yourself abide by them as they were laws, and as if you would be guilty of impiety by violating any of them. Don't regard what anyone says of you, for this, after all, is no concern of yours. How long, then, will you put off thinking yourself worthy of the highest improvements and follow the distinctions of reason? You have received the philosophical theorems, with which you ought to be familiar, and you have been familiar with them. What other master, then, do you wait for, to throw upon that the delay of reforming yourself?... Let whatever appears to be the best be to you an inviolable law.

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(50).
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
Let others complain that the age...

Let others complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men's thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy. They do their duty, these shopkeeping souls, but they clip the coin a trifle, like the Jews; they think that even if the Lord keeps ever so careful a set of books, they may still cheat Him a little. Out upon them! This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings; they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
The man who comes back through...

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

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Page 191
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 1 week ago
In all ranges of experience, externality...

In all ranges of experience, externality of means defines the mechanical.

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p. 206
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 weeks 6 days ago
The specialist is one who never...

The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving towards the grand fallacy.

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(p. 154)
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 1 week ago
Those who claim to care about...

Those who claim to care about the wellbeing of human beings and the preservation of our environment should become vegetarians for that reason alone. They would thereby increase the amount of grain available to feed people elsewhere, reduce pollution, save water and energy, and cease contributing to the clearing of forests; moreover, since a vegetarian diet is cheaper than one based on meat dishes, they would have more money available to devote to famine relief, population control, or whatever social or political cause they thought most urgent. ... when nonvegetarians say that "human problems come first" I cannot help wondering what exactly it is that they are doing for human beings that compels them to continue to support the wasteful, ruthless exploitation of farm animals.

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Ch. 6: Speciesism Today
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 week 3 days ago
Joe Hume talked to me very...

Joe Hume talked to me very earnestly about the necessity of an union of Liberals. He said much about Ballot and the Franchise. I told him that I could easily come to some compromise with him and his friends on these matters, but that there were other questions about which I feared that there was an irreconcileable difference, particularly the vital question of national defence. He seemed quite confounded, and had absolutely nothing to say. I am fully determined to make them eat their words on that point, or to have no political connection with them.

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Journal entry (November 1852), quoted in George Otto Trevelyan, The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, Volume II (1876), p. 368
Philosophical Maxims
Emmanuel Levinas
Emmanuel Levinas
1 month 2 weeks ago
The mores I return to myself,...

The mores I return to myself, the more I divest myself, under the traumatic effect of persecution , of my freedom as a constituted, wilful, imperialistic subject, the more I discover myself to be responsible' the more just I am, the more guilty I am. I am 'in myself' through others.

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The Levinas reader by Levinas, Emmanuel p. 102
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
2 months 3 weeks ago
To his dog, every man is...

To his dog, every man is Napoleon; hence the constant popularity of dogs.

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Reader's Digest, 1934
Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 2 weeks ago
In writing a history of madness,...

In writing a history of madness, Foucault has attempted-and this is the greatest merit, but also the very infeasibility of his book-to write a history of madness itself. Itself.

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Of madness itself. That is by letting madness speak for itself. Cogito and The History of Madness, p.37 (Routledge classics edition)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
In fact, it is as difficult...

In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

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Quotation and Originality
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
For want of the apparatus of...

For want of the apparatus of propositional functions, many logicians have been driven to the conclusion that there are unreal objects. It is argued, e.g., by Meinong, that we can speak about "the golden mountain," "the round square," and so on; we can make true propositions of which these are the subjects; hence they must have some kind of logical being, since otherwise the propositions in which they occur would be meaningless. In such theories, it seems to me, there is a failure of that feeling for reality which ought to be preserved even in the most abstract studies. Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can; for logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.

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Ch. 16: Descriptions
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
2 months 2 weeks ago
The domination of the public way...

The domination of the public way in which things have been interpreted has already decided upon even the possibilities of being attuned, that is, about the basic way in which Da-sein lets itself be affected by the world. The they prescribes that attunement, it determines what and how one "sees."

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Stambaugh translation
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
3 months 3 weeks ago
It is the mark of an...

It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician scientific proofs.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 2 weeks ago
I would like to go mad...

I would like to go mad on one condition, namely, that I would become a happy madman, lively and always in a good mood, without any troubles and obsessions, laughing senselessly from morning to night.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
2 weeks 4 days ago
Living organisms had existed on earth,...

Living organisms had existed on earth, without ever knowing why, for over three thousand million years before the truth finally dawned on one of them. His name was Charles Darwin. To be fair, others had had inklings of the truth, but it was Darwin who first put together a coherent and tenable account of why we exist.

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Ch. 1. Why Are People?
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
The full expression of personality depends...

The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Die before you Die. There is...

Die before you Die. There is no chance after.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
1 month 3 weeks 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
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Seeing only what is fair, Sipping...

Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care.

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To the Humble Bee, st. 6
Philosophical Maxims
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