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Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 week 3 days ago
The thinking man must ... oppose...

The thinking man must ... oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. True manhood is too precious a spiritual good for us to surrender any part of it to thoughtlessness. p. 305; also in The Animal World of Albert Schweitzer (1950), p. 179 Variant : The thinking man must oppose all cruel customs no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another, even the lowliest creature; to do so is to renounce our manhood and shoulder a guilt which nothing justifies.

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As quoted in Becoming Vegan : The Complete Guide to Adopting a Healthy Plant-based Diet (2000) by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina, p. 261
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
What of a truth…

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
2 months 1 week ago
In one sense, I do believe...

In one sense, I do believe I am "like a man," as Parthe [the writer's sister] says. But how? In having sympathy. ... Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. ... They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?

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Letter to Madame Mohl
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 2 days ago
Photography and cinema contributed in large...

Photography and cinema contributed in large part to the secularization of history, to fixing it in its visible, "objective" form at the expense of the myths that once traversed it. Today cinema can place all its talent, all its technology in the service of reanimating what it itself contributed to liquidating. It only resurrects ghosts, and it itself is lost therein.

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"History: A Retro Scenario," p. 48
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 3 weeks ago
The office of the sovereign, be...

The office of the sovereign, be it a monarch or an assembly, consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the sovereign power, namely the procuration of the safety of the people, to which he is obliged by the law of nature, and to render an account thereof to God, the Author of that law, and to none but Him. But by safety here is not meant a bare preservation, but also all other contentments of life, which every man by lawful industry, without danger or hurt to the Commonwealth, shall acquire to himself. And this is intended should be done, not by care applied to individuals, further than their protection from injuries when they shall complain; but by a general providence, contained in public instruction, both of doctrine and example; and in the making and executing of good laws to which individual persons may apply their own cases.

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The Second Part, Chapter 30: Of the Office of the Sovereign Representative
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
He is a despicable sage whose...

He is a despicable sage whose wisdom does not profit himself.

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Maxim 629
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 5 days ago
Subdue petty bourgeois passions and prejudices

First, [the bourgeoisie] must recognize his own impotence, his incapacity to believe in a sense of history, even if his reason leans towards the truth, the passions and prejudices produced by his class position, prevent him from accepting it. So he should not exert himself with proving the truth of the historical mission of the working class; rather, he should learn to subdue his petty bourgeois passions and prejudices. He should take lessons from those who were once as important as he is now but are ready to risk all for the revolutionary Cause.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 weeks 1 day ago
I am owner of my might,...

I am owner of my might, and I am so when I know myself as unique. In the unique one the owner himself returns into his creative nothing, of which he is born. Every higher essence above me, be it God, be it man, weakens the feeling of my uniqueness, and pales only before the sun of this consciousness. If I concern myself for myself, the unique one, then my concern rests on its transitory, mortal creator, who consumes himself, and I may say: All things are nothing to me.

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Dover 2005, p. 366
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
The eros-driven soul produces beautiful things,...

The eros-driven soul produces beautiful things, and, above all, beautiful actions, which have a universal value.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
Blessed are the poor in spirit,...

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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5:1 12 (NIV) Often referred to as "The Beatitudes" this is the start of "The Sermon on the Mount".
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 2 weeks ago
A thing therefore…

A thing therefore never returns to nothing.

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Book I, line 248 (tr. Munro)
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
Information has no scent.

Information has no scent.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
We can see nothing whatever of...

We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a large assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.

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B 11
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
That history just unfolds, independently of...

That history just unfolds, independently of a specified direction, of a goal, no one is willing to admit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
I believe that only scientists can...

I believe that only scientists can understand the universe. It is not so much that I have confidence in scientists being right, but that I have so much in nonscientists being wrong.

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Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 1 week ago
We share this planet, our home,...

We share this planet, our home, with millions of species. Justice and sustainability both demand that we do not use more resources than we need. Restraint in resource use and living within nature's limits are preconditions for social justice. The commons are where justice and sustainability converge, where ecology and equity meet. The survival of pastures and forests as community property, or of a common good like a stable ecosystem, is only possible with social organizations with checks and controls on the use of resources built into their principles. The breakdown of a community, with the associated erosion of concepts of joint ownership and responsibility, can trigger the degradation of common resources.

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(p.50)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 1 day ago
Ancient histories…

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

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Jeannot et Colin, 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week ago
In his Experiment in Autobiography (1934),...

In his Experiment in Autobiography (1934), H.G. Wells pointed out that ever since the beginning of life, most creatures have been 'up against it'. Their lives are a drama of struggle against the forces of nature. Yet nowadays you can say to a man: Yes, you earn a living, you support a family, you love and hate, but -- what do you do? His real interest may be in something else -- art, science, literature, philosophy. The bird is a creature of the air, the fish is a creature of the water, and man is a creature of the mind.

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pp. 346-347
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 4 days ago
It is almost never when a...

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.

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Letter to Pierre Freslon, 23 September 1853 Selected Letters, p. 296 as cited in Toqueville's Road Map p. 103
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months ago
I do not know, my listener,...

I do not know, my listener, what your crime, your guilt, your sins are, but surely we are all more or less of the guilt of loving only little. Take comfort, then, in these words just as I take comfort in them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
2 weeks 5 days ago
It is a mistake to think...

It is a mistake to think that the past is dead. Nothing that has ever happened is quite without influence at this moment. The present is merely the past rolled up and concentrated in this second of time. You, too, are your past; often your face is your autobiography; you are what you are because of what you have been; because of your heredity stretching back into forgotten generations; because of every element of environment that has affected you, every man or woman that has met you, every book that you have read, every experience that you have had; all these are accumulated in your memory, your body, your character, your soul. So with a city, a country, and a race; it is its past, and cannot be understood without it.

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As quoted in "The Gentle Philosopher" (2006) by John Little at the Will Durant Foundation
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
2 months 4 weeks ago
The state is therefore everyone; the...

The state is therefore everyone; the rules within the state are laws which safeguard the welfare of all and which must originate from the welfare of all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 weeks ago
By words one transmits thoughts to...

By words one transmits thoughts to another, by means of art, one transmits feelings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
It is because you yourself fear...

It is because you yourself fear the propaganda created, after all, only by the stupidity of your own bigots.

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Philosophical Maxims
bell hooks
bell hooks
2 months 1 week ago
Radical black feminists have never confined...

Radical black feminists have never confined their vision to just the emancipation of black women or women in general, or all black people for that matter. Rather, they are the theorists and proponents of a radical humanism committed to liberating humanity and reconstructing social relations across the board. When bell hooks says "Feminism is for everybody," she is echoing what has always been a basic assumption of black feminists. We are not talking about identity politics but a constantly developing often contested, revolutionary conversation about how all of us might envision and remake the world.

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Robin Kelley Freedom Dreams
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 4 weeks ago
Science is meaningless because it gives...

Science is meaningless because it gives no answer to our question, the only question important for us: 'what shall we do and how shall we live.

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Quoted by Max Weber in his lecture "Science as a Vocation"; in Lynda Walsh (2013)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses...

Like computer viruses, successful mind viruses will tend to be hard for their victims to detect. If you are the victim of one, the chances are that you won't know it, and may even vigorously deny it. Accepting that a virus might be difficult to detect in your own mind, what tell-tale signs might you look out for? I shall answer by imaging how a medical textbook might describe the typical symptoms of a sufferer (arbitrarily assumed to be male).

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
2 months 3 weeks ago
Toute notre civilisation est aphrodisiaque Sex-appeal...

Sex-appeal is the keynote of our whole civilization.

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Chapter IV
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 day ago
Preference of vice to virtue, a...

Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.

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Book II, Ch. 21, sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
3 months 3 weeks ago
For anyone who at the end...

For anyone who at the end of Western philosophy can and must still question philosophically, the decisive question is no longer merely "What basic character do beings manifest?" or "How may the being of beings be characterized?" but "What is this 'being' itself?" The decisive question is that of "the meaning of being," not merely that of the being of beings.

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p. 18
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 6 days ago
Near-ubiquitous technological monitoring is a consequence...

Near-ubiquitous technological monitoring is a consequence of the decline of cohesive societies that has occurred alongside the rising demand for individual freedom.

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In the Puppet Theatre: An Iron Mountain and a Shifting Spectacle (p. 121)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 5 days ago
Art is the perfection of nature....

Art is the perfection of nature.

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Section 16
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 4 weeks ago
We must not be enticed by...

We must not be enticed by mathematically attractive assumptions into pretending that the contingencies of men's social positions and the asymmetries of their situations somehow even out in the end. Rather we must choose our conception of justice fully recognizing that this is not and cannot be the case.

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Chapter III, Section 28, pg. 171
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
If the single man plant himself...

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him. 6. Nature, Addresses and Lectures.

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The American Scholar
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks ago
I am endeavouring to live every...

I am endeavouring to live every day as if it were a complete life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 2 days ago
Morality is herd instinct in the...
Morality is herd instinct in the individual.
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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
Attention spans get very weak at...

Attention spans get very weak at the speed of light, and that goes along with a very weak identity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 4 weeks ago
Should it seem to me that...

Should it seem to me that truth has been put to silence, and virtue trampled under foot, and that folly and vice will certainly triumph; should it happen, when all hearts were filled with hope for the human race, that the horizon should suddenly darken around them as it had never done before; should the work, well and happily begun, on which all eyes were fixed with joyous expectation, suddenly and unexpectedly be turned into a deed of shame, - yet will I not be dismayed; nor if the good cause should appear to grow and flourish, the lights of freedom and civilization be diffused, and peace and good-will amongst men be extended, shall yet my efforts be relaxed.

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Jane Sinnett, trans 1846 p.123
Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 weeks 2 days ago
Thought is only a flash between...

Thought is only a flash between two long nights, but this flash is everything.

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Quoted in H. L. Mencken, A New Dictionary of Quotations
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 2 weeks ago
The Superego...
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Main Content / General
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 1 week ago
There is no need for you...

There is no need for you to develop an armed insurrection. Christ himself has already begun an insurrection with his mouth.

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pp. 67-68
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months ago
The pursuit of knowledge is, I...

The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique. In politics, also, a reformer may have just as strong a love of power as a despot. It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
2 weeks 1 day ago
The will is not fundamentally right,...

The will is not fundamentally right, as the practical ones would like very much to assure us; one may not pass over the desire for knowledge in order to stand immediately in the will, but knowledge perfects itself to will when it desensualizes itself and creates itself as a spirit "which builds its own body."

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
3 months 3 weeks ago
Philosophy's position with regard to science,...

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.

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p. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 3 days ago
I do not define time, space,...

I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all. Only I must observe, that the common people conceive those quantities under no other notions but from the relation they bear to sensible objects. And thence arise certain prejudices, for the removing of which it will be convenient to distinguish them into absolute and relative, true and apparent, mathematical and common.

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Definitions - Scholium
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 2 weeks ago
One could count on one's fingers...

One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists in the entire world who have a general idea of the history and development of their own particular science; there is not one who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, any scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work. . . .

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p. 13 (as quoted in On Science, Necessity, and the Love of God (1968), p.1)
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 1 day ago
Popery so threatens and so nearly...

Popery so threatens and so nearly surrounds us...every sober man would think it seasonable at this time that all dissenting Protestants should be brought to a good understanding and compliance one with another...I think all Protestants ought now by all ways to be stirred up against them [Catholics] as People that have declared themselves ready by blood, violence, and destruction to ruine our Religion and Government...[they] are nothing but either Enemys in our bowells or spies among us, whilst their General commanders whom they blindly obey declare warr, and an unalterable designe to destroy us.

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Critical Notes Upon Edward Stillingfleet's Mischief and Unreasonableness of Separation' (c. May 1681), quoted in John Marshall, John Locke: Resistance, Religion and Responsibility (Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 110
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 4 weeks ago
It cannot but happen that those...

It cannot but happen that those individuals whose functions are most out of equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces, will be those to die; and that those will survive whose functions happen to be most nearly in equilibrium with the modified aggregate of external forces. But this survival of the fittest, implies multiplication of the fittest. Out of the fittest thus multiplied, there will, as before, be an overthrowing of the moving equilibrium wherever it presents the least opposing force to the new incident force.

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The Principles of Biology, Vol. I (1864), Part III: The Evolution of Life, Ch. 7: Indirect Equilibration
Philosophical Maxims
Julius Evola
Julius Evola
1 week 1 day ago
Himmler approved the idea of recruiting...

Himmler approved the idea of recruiting divisions of the Waffen-SS with volunteers from all nations under the banner of the struggle against Communist Russia and in defence of Europe and its civilisation. This was the restoration of the function that the Order of Teutonic Knights had in the beginning as guardian of the East and, at the same time, of the spirit that had animated the Freikorps, the voluntary groups that, on their own initiative, had fought against the Bolsheviks in the eastern regions and the Baltic countries after the end of the First World War. In the end, more than seventeen nations were represented in the Waffen-SS, often with their own complete divisions: French, Belgians, Dutch, Scandinavians, Ukrainians, Spaniards, even Swiss, with a total of about 800,000 men, of whom only a part came from the Germanic area.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
The ideas of Freud were popularized...

The ideas of Freud were popularized by people who only imperfectly understood them, who were incapable of the great effort required to grasp them in their relationship to larger truths, and who therefore assigned to them a prominence out of all proportion to their true importance.

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Ch. 28, June 3, 1943.
Philosophical Maxims
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