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Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 days ago
The standard bearers have grown...

The standard bearers have grown weak in the defense of their priceless heritage, and the powers of darkness have been strengthened thereby. Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character; it becomes lack of power to act with courage proportionate to danger. All this must lead to the destruction of our intellectual life unless the danger summons up strong personalities able to fill the lukewarm and discouraged with new strength and resolution.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 2 weeks ago
You need only look around you,...

You need only look around you, replied PHILO, to satisfy yourself with regard to this question. A tree bestows order and organisation on that tree which springs from it, without knowing the order; an animal in the same manner on its offspring; a bird on its nest; and instances of this kind are even more frequent in the world than those of order, which arise from reason and contrivance. To say, that all this order in animals and vegetables proceeds ultimately from design, is begging the question; nor can that great point be ascertained otherwise than by proving, a priori, both that order is, from its nature, inseparably attached to thought; and that it can never of itself, or from original unknown principles, belong to matter.

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Philo to Demea, Part VII
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 2 weeks ago
I was taught that the human...

I was taught that the human brain was the crowning glory of evolution so far, but I think it's a very poor scheme for survival.

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As quoted in The Observer [London]
Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 month 2 days ago
Sixty years ago I knew everything....

Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

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Quoted in "Teachers: The Essence of the Centuries", Time magazine, 13 August 1965
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 1 week ago
It is not the same thing....

It is not the same thing. You are perhaps not lying, but you are not telling the truth.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 2 weeks ago
Life is a task to be...

Life is a task to be done. It is a fine thing to say defunctus est; it means that the man has done his task.

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"On the Sufferings of the World"
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
3 days ago
I believe that whatever we...

I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

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Interview with Rabindranath Tagore (14 April 1930), published in The Religion of Man (1930) by Rabindranath Tagore, p. 222, and in The Tagore Reader (1971) edited by Amiya Chakravarty
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 3 weeks ago
First, most producers are employees of...

First, most producers are employees of firms, not owners. Viewed from the vantage point of classical economic theory, they have no reason to maximize the profits of firms, except to the extent that they can be controlled by owners. Moreover, profit-making firms, nonprofit organizations, and bureaucratic organizations all have exactly the same problem of inducing their employees to work toward organizational goals. There is no reason, a priori, why it should be easier (or harder) to produce this motivation in organizations aimed at maximizing profits than in organizations with different goals. If it is true in an organizational economy that organizations motivated by profits will be more efficient than other organizations, additional postulates will have to be introduced to account for it.

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Simon (1991) "Organizations and Markets:" in: Journal of Economic Perspectives. 5 (2 Spring 1991): p. 28.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The worst is not ennui nor...

The worst is not ennui nor despair but their encounter, their collision. To be crushed between the two!

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
The reason I cannot really say...

The reason I cannot really say that I positively enjoy nature is that I do not quite realize what it is that I enjoy. A work of art, on the other hand, I can grasp. I can - if I may put it this way - find that Archimedian point, and as soon as I have found it, everything is readily clear for me. Then I am able to pursue this one main idea and see how all the details serve to illuminate it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Porphyry
Porphyry
3 months 3 weeks ago
So people should abstain from other...

So people should abstain from other animals just as they should from the human.

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4, 9, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
Predicting the future is a hopeless,...

Predicting the future is a hopeless, thankless task, with ridicule to begin with and, all too often, scorn to end with.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 4 weeks ago
But the inner part is the...

But the inner part is the better part; for to it, as both ruler and judge, all these messengers of the senses report the answers of heaven and earth and all the things therein, who said, "We are not God, but he made us." My inner man knew these things through the ministry of the outer man, and I, the inner man, knew all this, I, the soul, through the senses of my body. I asked the whole frame of earth about my God, and it answered, "I am not he, but he made me."

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X, 6
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The most interesting aspect of suffering...

The most interesting aspect of suffering is the sufferer's belief in its absoluteness. He believes he has a monopoly on suffering. I think that I alone suffer, that I alone have the right to suffer, although I also realize that there are modalities of suffering more terrible than mine, pieces of flesh falling from the bones, the body crumbling under one's very eyes, monstrous, criminal , shameful sufferings. One asks oneself, How can this be, and if it be, how can one still speak of finality and other such old wives' tales? Suffering moves me so much that I lose all my courage. I lose heart because I do not understand why there is suffering in the world.

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in essay: the monopoly of suffering
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
The conception of the necessary unit...

The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being.

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p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months 1 week ago
Artistic creation is a demand for...

Artistic creation is a demand for unity and a rejection of the world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
3 weeks 3 days ago
The clock of communism has stopped...

The clock of communism has stopped striking. But its concrete building has not yet come crashing down. For that reason, instead of freeing ourselves, we must try to save ourselves from being crushed by its rubble.

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How We Must Rebuild Russia in Komsomolskaya Pravda
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
The skepticism which fails to contribute...

The skepticism which fails to contribute to the ruin of our health is merely an intellectual exercise.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 1 week ago
The legacy of modernity is a...

The legacy of modernity is a legacy of fratricidal wars, devastating "development," cruel "civilization," and previously unimagined violence. Erich Auerbach once wrote that tragedy is the only genre that can properly claim realism in Western literature, and perhaps this is true precisely because of the tragedy Western modernity has imposed on the world.

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46
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
4 months 1 week ago
The paradox of race in America...

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

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(p4)
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 5 days ago
They [the wise spirits of antiquity...

They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life.

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Obiter Scripta
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 3 weeks ago
If people should ever start to...

If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

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C 54 Variant translation: If all mankind were suddenly to practice honesty, many thousands of people would be sure to starve.
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
1 month 1 week ago
I was obliged to retract, like...

I was obliged to retract, like a good Catholic, this opinion of mine; and as a punishment my dialogue was prohibited; and after five months being dismissed from Rome (at the time that the city of Florence was infected with plague), the habitation which with generous pity was assigned to me, was that of the dearest friend I had in Siena, Monsignor the Archbishop Piccolomini, whose most agreeable conversation I enjoyed with such quite and satisfaction of mind, that having there resumed my studies, I discovered and demonstrated a great number on the mechanical conclusions on the resistance of solids ... after about five months, the pestilence having ceased, the confinement of that house was changed by His Holiness for the freedom of the country so agreeable to me, whence I returned to the villa of Bellosguardo, and afterwards to Arcetri, where I still breathe salubrious air near my dear native-country Florence.

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Stay sane. p. 251-253
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 1 week ago
What the cinema can do better...

What the cinema can do better than literature or the spoken drama is to be fantastic.

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"Where are the Movies Moving?" in Essays Old and New, 1926
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 1 week ago
The rights and duties of man...

The rights and duties of man thus simplified, it seems almost impertinent to attempt to illustrate truths that appear so incontrovertible: yet such deeply rooted prejudices have clouded reason, and such spurious qualities have assumed the name of virtues, that it is necessary to pursue the course of reason as it has been perplexed and involved in error, by various adventitious circumstances, comparing the simple axiom with casual deviations.Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, which they have imbibed, they cannot trace how, rather than to root them out. The mind must be strong that resolutely forms its own principles; for a kind of intellectual cowardice prevails which makes many men shrink from the task, or only do it by halves. Yet the imperfect conclusions thus drawn, are frequently very plausible, because they are built on partial experience, on just, though narrow, views.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 6 days ago
Ritual society...
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Main Content / General
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
2 months 3 days ago
Whenever you say anything good about...

Whenever you say anything good about East Germany, immediately somebody jumps up and says, "My God, you're a Stalinist..." I'm not defending everything about it, of course. But I laboured on the chapter that talks about the east. I fact-checked it; I had somebody else fact-check it. I knew that I was going to get a lot of flak for that. But in the beginning, East Germany did a better job. They just did.

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From an interview with Alex Clark, as cited in "Nazism, slavery, empire: can countries learn from national evil?", The Guardian
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 1 week ago
A fool with a heart and...

A fool with a heart and no sense is just as unhappy as a fool with sense and no heart.

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Part 1, Chapter 7
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
Lying and guile need only to...

Lying and guile need only to be revealed and recognized to be undone. When once lying is recognized as such, it needs no second stroke; it falls of itself and vanishes in shame.

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p. 60
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is sometimes said….

It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare.

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Philosophical Dictionary ('Sens Commun') (1767). Compare Juvenal, Satires, viii:73: Original Latin: rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
To think is to run after...

To think is to run after insecurity, to be demoralized for grandiose trifles, to immure oneself in abstractions with a martyr's avidity, to hunt up complications the way others pursue collapse or gain. The thinker is by definition keen for torment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 2 weeks ago
A constellation of the most pedantic,...

A constellation of the most pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption, mixed with a kind of rustic incivility, which would try the patience of Job.

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Declaration about the scholars of England, particularly those of Oxford
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
Pure justice....

Pure justice emerges from symmetry applied human life, and human beings as ends in themselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 4 weeks ago
Concern for the symbol has completely...

Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science. And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.

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The Need for Roots (1949), p. 292
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 1 week ago
If I were to give a...

If I were to give a simple formula or recipe for distinguishing between what I consider to be admissible plans for social reform and inadmissible Utopian blueprints, I might say: Work for the elimination of concrete evils rather than for the realization of abstract goods. Do not aim at establishing happiness by political means. Rather aim at the elimination of concrete miseries.

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p. 385
Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
3 weeks 2 days ago
Engels feared that the Socialists, in...

Engels feared that the Socialists, in order to gain adherents in the electoral struggles rapidly, would make promises which were contrary to Marxist doctrine. The antisemites told the peasants and the small shopkeepers that they would protect them from the development of capitalism. Engels thought that an imitation of this procedure would be dangerous, since, in his opinion, the social revolution could only be realised when capitalism had almost completely destroyed the small proprietors and small industries; if the Socialists, then, endeavoured to hinder this evolution, they would ultimately compromise their own cause.

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Reflections on Violence, London: UK, George Allen & Unwin, (reprinted in Saxony 1925) p. 180
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 week ago
As for large landed property, its...

As for large landed property, its defenders have always, sophistically, identified the economic advantages offered by large-scale agriculture with large-scale landed property, as if it were not precisely as a result of the abolition of property that this advantage, for one thing, would receive its greatest possible extension, and, for another, only then would be of social benefit.

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Rent of Land, p. 66.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 week 6 days ago
History has informed us that bodies...

History has informed us that bodies of men, as well as individuals, are susceptible of the spirit of tyranny.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 week 3 days ago
All things are interwoven with one...

All things are interwoven with one another; a sacred bond unites them; there is scarcely one thing that is isolated from another. Everything is coordinated, everything works together in giving form to one universe. The world-order is a unity made up of multiplicity: God is one, pervading all things; all being is one, all law is one (namely, the common reason which all thinking persons possess) and all truth is one- if, as we believe, there can be but one path to perfection for beings that are alike in kind and reason.

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VII. 9, trans. Maxwell Staniforth
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 2 weeks ago
In the land of the blind…

In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is lord.

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Act III, scene ix
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas
5 months 1 day ago
Nothing is in the intellect that...

Nothing is in the intellect that was not first in the senses.

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q. 2, art. 3, arg. 19 This is known as the Peripatetic axiom.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 4 days ago
Descend where you will into the...

Descend where you will into the lower class, in Town or Country, by what avenue you will, by Factory Inquiries, Agricultural Inquiries, by Revenue Returns, by Mining-Labourer Committees, by opening your own eyes and looking, the same sorrowful result discloses itself: you have to admit that the working body of this rich English Nation has sunk or is fast sinking into a state, to which, all sides of it considered, there was literally never any parallel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
The heathen really make their self-invented...

The heathen really make their self-invented notions and dreams of God and idol. Ultimately, they put their trust in that which is nothing. So it is with all idolatry. For it happens not merely by erecting an image and worshipping it, but rather it happens in the heart. For the heart seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils. It neither cares for God, nor looks to Him for anything better than to believe that He is willing to help.

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"On Infant Baptism," Large Catechism
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
We boil at different degrees....

We boil at different degrees.

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Eloquence
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
3 months 1 week ago
If women be educated for dependence;...

If women be educated for dependence; that is, to act according to the will of another fallible being, and submit, right or wrong, to power, where are we to stop?

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Ch. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
1 week 3 days ago
I reduce to two the systems...

I reduce to two the systems of philosophy which deal with man's soul. The first and older system is materialism; the second is spiritualism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 weeks ago
Of all these experiences that seem...

Of all these experiences that seem so frightful, none is insuperable. Separate trials have been over- come by many: fire by Mucius, crucifixion by Regulus, poison by Socrates, exile by Rutilius, and a sword-inflicted death by Cato; therefore, let us also overcome something.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
1 month 5 days ago
It would be silly, of course,...

It would be silly, of course, to be either 'for' or 'against' modernity tout court, not only because it is pointless to try to stop the development of technology, science, and economic rationality, but because both modernity and antimodernity may be expressed in barbarous and antihuman terms.

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"Modernity on Endless Trial"
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 1 week ago
I read your piece on Plato....

I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him.

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as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 weeks ago
The mystical impulse in men is...

The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

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p. 108
Philosophical Maxims
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