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Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
4 months 2 weeks ago
Time with its continuity logically involves...

Time with its continuity logically involves some other kind of continuity than its own. Time, as the universal form of change, cannot exist unless there is something to undergo change, and to undergo a change continuous in time, there must be a continuity of changeable qualities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
Instinctively we divide mankind into friends...

Instinctively we divide mankind into friends and foes - friends, towards whom we have the morality of co-operation; foes, towards whom we have that of competition. But this division is constantly changing; at one moment a man hates his business competitor, at another, when both are threatened by Socialism or by an external enemy, he suddenly begins to view him as a brother. Always when we pass beyond the limits of the family it is the external enemy which supplies the cohesive force. In times of safety we can afford to hate our neighbour, but in times of danger we must love him.

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Authority and the Individual, 1949
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
3 months 4 weeks ago
Much can be inferred about a...

Much can be inferred about a man from his mistress: in her one beholds his weaknesses and his dreams.

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F 88
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 3 weeks ago
The value of money is in...

The value of money is in proportion to the quantity of the necessaries of life which it will purchase.

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Chapter II, Part II, Article IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Writers, especially when they act in...

Writers, especially when they act in a body and with one direction, have great influence on the public mind.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks ago
People do not deserve to have...

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

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1841
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 3 days ago
To no creature besides man has...

To no creature besides man has been given wisdom, foresight, industry, and reflection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
4 months 2 weeks ago
Always to have lived with the...

Always to have lived with the nostalgia to coincide with something, but not really knowing with what - it is easy to shift from unbelief to belief, or conversely. But what is there to convert to, and what is there to abjure, in a state of chronic lucidity?

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks ago
The mob has always....
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Main Content / General
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
2 months 2 weeks ago
Democracy is a meaningless word unless...

Democracy is a meaningless word unless it signifies that differences of opinion have been expressed, represented, and even satisfied in the decision.

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Ch. IV: "The Line of Least Resistance", pp. 47-48
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
For love is ever the beginning...

For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.

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Carlyle, Essays, Death of Goethe. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 weeks ago
If you are not already dead,...

If you are not already dead, forgive. Rancor is heavy, it is worldly; leave it on earth: die light.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
4 months 2 weeks ago
To get to know a truth...

To get to know a truth properly, one must polemicize it.

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Quoted in The Viking Book of Aphorisms by Wystan Hugh Auden (1962) p. 323
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
5 months 1 week ago
At times the world….

At times the world sees straight, but many times the world goes astray.

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Book II, epistle i, line 63
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
Legal and economic equality are absolutely...

Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
5 months 3 weeks ago
Labour not after riches first, and...

Labour not after riches first, and think thou afterwards wilt enjoy them. He who neglecteth the present moment, throweth away all that he hath. As the arrow passeth through the heart, while the warrior knew not that it was coming; so shall his life be taken away before he knoweth that he hath it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Fukuyama
Francis Fukuyama
2 months 1 week ago
A right exists in theory... All...

A right exists in theory... All human beings have the same set of rights, but rights need to be enforced by the state. It needs to rely on the coercive power of the state... its army, its police force, to actually make those rights something real that citizens can enjoy, and the enforcement power is not universal. ...We wouldn't want to live in a world in which every liberal state wanted to enforce liberal rights in every other state in the world.

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24:09
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
4 months 2 weeks ago
Hegel determines and presents only the...

Hegel determines and presents only the most striking differences of various religions, philosophies, time and peoples, and in a progressive series of stages, but he ignores all that is common and identical in all of them. ... His system knows only subordination and succession; coordination and coexistence are unknown to it.

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Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 54
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
Writing turned a spotlight on the...

Writing turned a spotlight on the high, dim Sierras of speech; writing was the visualization of acoustic space. It lit up the dark.

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(p. 14)
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
1 month 2 weeks ago
If you don't have a consistent...

If you don't have a consistent goal in life, you can't live it in a consistent way."

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(Hays translation) XI, 21
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
Many agnostics (including myself) are quite...

Many agnostics (including myself) are quite as doubtful of the body as they are of the soul, but this is a long story taking one into difficult metaphysics. Mind and matter alike, I should say, are only convenient symbol in discourse, not actually existing things.

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What is an Agnostic?, 1953
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
4 months 2 weeks ago
The pursuit of individual happiness within...

The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 70, pp. 190-191
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months 3 days ago
What is the first business of...

What is the first business of one who practices philosophy? To get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows.

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Book II, ch. 17, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 months 2 weeks ago
All media work us over completely....

All media work us over completely. They are so pervasive in their personal, political, economic, aesthetic, psychological, moral, ethical, and social consequences that they leave no part of us untouched, unaffected, unaltered. The medium is the massage. Any understanding of social and cultural change is impossible without a knowledge of the way media work as environments. All media are extensions of some human faculty - psychic or physical.

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(p. 26)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 1 week ago
The work we desire and prize...

The work we desire and prize is not the courage to die decently, but to live manfully.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
5 months 2 weeks ago
Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself:...

Yes, Lord, you are innocence itself: how could you conceive of Nothingness, you who are plenitude? Your gaze is light and transforms all into light: how could you know the half-light in my heart?

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Act 3, sc. 6
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
4 months 2 weeks ago
The principles of logic and mathematics...

The principles of logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else. And the reason for this is that we cannot abandon them without contradicting ourselves, without sinning against the rules which govern the use of language, and so making our utterances self-stultifying. In other words, the truths of logic and mathematics are analytic propositions or tautologies.

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p. 77.
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
5 months 2 weeks ago
I wish to propose for the...

I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.

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Ch. 1: The Value of Scepticism
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 1 week ago
Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as...

Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else.

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As quoted by David Macey, The lives of Michel Foucault (1993) p. 177. Citing 'Les Intellectuels et le Pouvoir', Le'Arc 49, 1972, pp. 3-10.
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
5 months 3 weeks ago
To desire you to read my...

To desire you to read my book over and mark all the corrections you would wish me to make...would oblige me greatly: I know how much I shall be benefitted and I shall at the same time preserve the pretious right of private judgement for the sake of which our forefathers kicked out the Pope and the Pretender. I believe you to be much more infalliable than the Pope, but as I am a Protestant my conscience makes me scruple to submit to any unscriptural authority.

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Letter to William Strahan (4 April 1760), quoted in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, eds. E. C. Mossner and I. S. Ross (1987), pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
4 months 2 weeks ago
The best definition of man is:...

The best definition of man is: a being that goes on two legs and is ungrateful.

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Part 1, Chapter 8 (tr. David Magarshack, 1950) The best definition of man is: a biped, ungrateful.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 2 weeks ago
This heart within me I can...

This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
6 months 2 weeks ago
Philosophy is the science of truth.

Philosophy is the science of truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 1 week ago
Verily I say unto you, That...

Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

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19:23-24 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
1 month 2 weeks ago
The moral sense, or conscience, is...

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted, indeed, in some degree, to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
5 months 2 weeks ago
If you can speak what you...

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 month 2 weeks ago
Enlighten the dark blood of your...

Enlighten the dark blood of your ancestors, shape their cries into speech, purify their will, widen their narrow, unmerciful brows. This is your second duty. For you are not only a slave. As soon as you were born, a new possibility was born with you, a free heartbeat stormed through the great sunless heart of your race.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
5 months 1 week ago
The problem is not to discover...

The problem is not to discover in oneself the truth of one's sex, but, rather, to use one's sexuality henceforth to arrive at a multiplicity of relationships. And, no doubt, homosexuality is not a form of desire but something desirable. Therefore, we have to work at becoming homosexuals.

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"Friendship as a Way of Life," interview in Gai pied, April 1981, as translated in Ethics, Subjectivity and Truth (1994), pp. 135-136
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
5 months 2 weeks 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
William Whewell
William Whewell
1 month 2 weeks ago
'Intuitive' is opposed to 'discursive' reason....

'Intuitive' is opposed to 'discursive' reason. In intuition, we obtain our conclusions by dwelling upon 'one' aspect of the fundamental Idea; in discursive reasoning, we combine several aspects of the Idea

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
When they have really learned to...

When they have really learned to love their neighbours as themselves, they will be allowed to love themselves as their neighbours.

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Letter XIV
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
5 months 2 weeks ago
Something that is merely negative creates...

Something that is merely negative creates nothing.

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Notebook VI, The Chapter on Capital, p. 532.
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
5 months 2 weeks ago
"'Are the gods not just?' 'Oh...

"'Are the gods not just?' 'Oh no, child. What would become of us if they were?'"

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Orual & The Fox
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
3 months 2 weeks ago
There's nothing nonsensical about saying that...

There's nothing nonsensical about saying that what would evolve if Darwinian selection has its head is something that you don't want to happen. And I could easily imagine trying to go against Darwinism.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 1 week ago
Verily I say unto you, If...

Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 1 week ago
The liberating force of technology-the instrumentalization...

The liberating force of technology-the instrumentalization of things-turns into ... the instrumentalization of man.

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p. 159
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 4 days ago
The state of conformity is an...

The state of conformity is an imitation of grace. By a strange mystery - which is connected with the power of the social element - a profession can confer on quite ordinary men in their exercise of it, virtues which, if they were extended to all circumstances of life, would make of them heroes or saints. But the power of the social element makes these virtues natural.

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Accordingly they need a compensation. p. 124
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
4 months 2 weeks ago
I know now that I shall....

I know now that I shall. But all Actual Knowledge brings with it, by its formal nature, its schematised apposition; - although I now know of the Schema of God, yet I am not yet immediately this Schema, but I am only a Schema of the Schema. The required Being is not yet realised. I shall be. Who is this I? Evidently that which is, - the Ego gives in Intuition, the Individual. This shall be. What does its Being signify? It is given as a Principle in the World of Sense. Blind Instinct is indeed annihilated, and in its place there now stands the clearly perceived Shall. But the Power that at first set this Instinct in motion remains, in order that the Shall my now set it (the Power) in motion, and become its higher determining Principle. By means of this Power, I shall therefore, within its sphere, - the World of Sense, - produce and make manifest that which I recognise as my true Being in the Supersensuous World.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
5 months 3 weeks ago
Do not wonder…

Do not wonder, if the common people speak more truly than those of high rank; for they speak with more safety.

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Exempla Antithetorum, IX. Laus, Existimatio (Pro.)
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
6 months 2 weeks ago
If there is a sin against...

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

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Philosophical Maxims
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