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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 days ago
"I wish I had never been...

"I wish I had never been born," she said. "What are we born for?" "For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. "You can step out into it at any moment..."

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Ch. 8
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 4 days ago
Social and economic...
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Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 weeks ago
Power is not opposed to freedom....

Power is not opposed to freedom. It is precisely freedom that distinguishes power from violence or coercion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 days ago
Her face seems ravaged by both...

Her face seems ravaged by both lightning and hail. But on yours there is something like the promise of a storm: one day passion will burn it to the bone.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 1 week ago
There is no more consensus on...

There is no more consensus on what justice means than there is on the character of the good. If anything, there is less. Among the virtues, justice is one of the most shaped by convention. For that reason it is among the most changeable.

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'Modus Vivendi' (p.34)
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 days ago
Need-love cries to God from our...

Need-love cries to God from our poverty; Gift-love longs to serve, or even to suffer for, God; Appreciative love says: "We give thanks to thee for thy great glory." Need-love says of a woman "I cannot live without her"; Gift-love longs to give her happiness, comfort, protection - if possible, wealth; Appreciative love gazes and holds its breath and is silent, rejoices that such a wonder should exist even if not for him, will not be wholly dejected by losing her, would rather have it so than never to have seen her at all.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 1 week ago
That a joint stock company should...

That a joint stock company should be able to carry on successfully any branch of foreign trade, when private adventurers can come into any sort of open and fair competition with them, seems contrary to all experience.

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Chapter I, Part III, Article I, p. 810.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 3 days ago
A Parliament speaking through reporters to...

A Parliament speaking through reporters to Buncombe and the twenty-seven millions, mostly fools.

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Latter Day Pamphlets, No. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 4 days ago
You must die erect and unyielding.

You must die erect and unyielding.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
To suffer is the great modality...

To suffer is the great modality of taking the world seriously.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The saying that a little knowledge...

The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable possession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

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"On Elementary Instruction in Physiology"
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 day ago
Prose is private drama; poetry is...

Prose is private drama; poetry is corporate drama.

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(p. 275)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
4 months 5 days ago
This sacrifice of common sense is...

This sacrifice of common sense is the certain badge which distinguishes slavery from freedom; for when men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. 

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"Reflections on Titles", Pennsylvania Magazine
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 day ago
Science fiction may be defined as...

Science fiction may be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the response of human beings to advances in science and technology. Actual change in science and technology, occurring quickly enough and striking deeply enough to affect a human being in the course of his normal lifetime, is a phenomenon peculiar to the world only since the Industrial Revolution ... The first well-known writer who responded to this new factor in human affairs by dealing regularly with science fiction, by studying the effect of additional scientific advance upon mankind ... was Jules Verne. In the English language, the early master was H. G. Wells. Between them, they laid the foundation for every theme upon which science fiction writers have been ringing variations ever since.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 3 weeks ago
In the human reality, all existence...

In the human reality, all existence that spends itself in procuring the prerequisites of existence is thus an "untrue" and unfree existence. Obviously this reflects the not at all ontological condition of a society based on the proposition that freedom is incompatible with the activity of procuring the necessities of life, that this activity is the "natural" function of a specific class, and that cognition of the truth and true existence imply freedom from the entire dimension of such activity. ... Society still is organized in such a way that procuring the necessities of life constitutes the full-time and life-long occupation of specific social classes, which are therefore unfree and prevented from a human existence. In this sense, the classical proposition according to which truth is incompatible with enslavement by socially necessary labor is still valid.

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pp. 127-128
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
Crime in full glory consolidates authority...

Crime in full glory consolidates authority by the sacred fear it inspires.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
1 month 4 weeks ago
Youth now flees on feathered foot....

Youth now flees on feathered foot.

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To Will H. Low, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
2 months 5 days ago
My theory is that all women...

My theory is that all women have hydrofluoric acid bottled up inside.

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On difficulties with women, as quoted in "Kurt Vonnegut, Writer of Classics of the American Counterculture, Dies at 84" by Dinitia Smith in The New York Times
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
The question of questions for mankind-the...

The question of questions for mankind-the problem which underlies all others, and is more deeply interesting than any other-is the ascertainment of the place which Man occupies in nature and of his relations to the universe of things.

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Ch.2, p. 71
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 1 day ago
You rejoice in having made a...

You rejoice in having made a convert to Atheism. I think there is something unnatural in a zeal of proselytism in an Atheist. I do not believe in an intellectual God, a God made after the image of man. In the vulgar acceptation of the word, therefore, I think a man is right who does not believe in God, but I am also persuaded that a man is wrong who is without religion.

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Letter to H. B. Rosser (7 March 1820), quoted in C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, Vol. II (1876), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 3 days ago
I care little about the sword:...

I care little about the sword: I will allow a thing to struggle for itself in this world, with any sword or tongue or implement it has, or can lay hold of. We will let it preach, and pamphleteer, and fight, and to the uttermost bestir itself, and do, beak and claws, whatsoever is in it; very sure that it will, in the long-run, conquer nothing which does not deserve to be conquered. What is better than itself, it cannot put away, but only what is worse. In this great Duel, Nature herself is umpire, and can do no wrong: the thing which is deepest-rooted in Nature, what we call truest, that thing and not the other will be found growing at last.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 5 days ago
"Let us work without reasoning," said...

"Let us work without reasoning," said Martin; "it is the only way to make life endurable."

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Although life is a matter of...

Although life is a matter of indifference, the use which you make of it is not a matter of indifference.

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Book II, ch. 6, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 4 days ago
May it not be the fact...

May it not be the fact that mankind, who after all are made up of single human beings, obtain a greater sum of happiness when each pursues his own, under the rules and conditions required by the good of the rest, than when each makes the good of the rest his only object, and allows himself no personal pleasures not indispensable to the preservation of his faculties? The regimen of a blockaded town should be cheerfully submitted to when high purposes require it, but is it the ideal perfection of human existence?

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Auguste Comte and Positivism, p. 142
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 days ago
We have two bits of evidence...

We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place.) ...The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put in our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.

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Book I, Chapter 5, "We Have Cause to Be Uneasy"
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
God judged it better to bring...

God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.

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Enchiridion (c. 420 ), Ch. 27
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
The fly that doesn't want to...

The fly that doesn't want to be swatted is most secure when it lights on the fly-swatter.

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J 70 Variant translation: The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 2 weeks ago
Man is born as a freak...

Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind.

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The Revolution of Hope: Toward a Humanized Technology (1968), p. 61
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months ago
The erotic instinct is something questionable,...

The erotic instinct is something questionable, and will always be so whatever a future set of laws may have to say on the matter. It belongs, on the one hand, to the original animal nature of man, which will exist as long as man has an animal body. On the other hand, it is connected with the highest forms of the spirit. But it blooms only when the spirit and instinct are in true harmony. If one or the other aspect is missing, then an injury occurs, or at least there is a one-sided lack of balance which easily slips into the pathological. Too much of the animal disfigures the civilized human being, too much culture makes a sick animal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
4 days ago
To cleave that sea in the...

To cleave that sea in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.

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On the Aegean Sea, in Ch. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month ago
You cannot endow even the best...

You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers.

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Ch. I: "Routineer and Inventor", p. 30.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Jaspers
Karl Jaspers
2 months 3 weeks ago
Man, if he is to remain...

Man, if he is to remain man, must advance by way of consciousness. There is no road leading backward. ... We can no longer veil reality from ourselves by renouncing self-consciousness without simultaneously excluding ourselves from the historical course of human existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 days ago
Talents differ; all is well and...

Talents differ; all is well and wisely put; If I cannot carry forests on my back, Neither can you crack a nut.

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Fable
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 weeks ago
Ritual society is a society of...

Ritual society is a society of rules. It is based not on virtues but on a passion for rules.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 day ago
Any new technology is an evolutionary...

Any new technology is an evolutionary and biological mutation opening doors of perception and new spheres of action to mankind.

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(p. 67)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
3 days ago
May it be to the world,...

May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all), the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.

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Letter to Roger C. Weightman, on the decision for Independence made in 1776, often quoted as if in reference solely to the document the Declaration of Independence
Philosophical Maxims
A. J. Ayer
A. J. Ayer
3 months ago
"I exist" does not follow from...

"I exist" does not follow from "there is a thought now." The fact that a thought occurs at a given moment does not entail that any other thought has occurred at any other moment, still less that there has occurred a series of thoughts sufficient to constitute a single self. As Hume conclusively showed, no one event intrinsically points to any other. We infer the existence of events which we are not actually observing, with the help of general principle. But these principles must be obtained inductively. By mere deduction from what is immediately given we cannot advance a single step beyond. And, consequently, any attempt to base a deductive system on propositions which describe what is immediately given is bound to be a failure.

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p. 47.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
3 weeks 3 days ago
It is our fatalest misery just...

It is our fatalest misery just now, not easily alterable, and yet urgently requiring to be altered, That no British man can attain to be a Statesman, or Chief of Workers, till he has first proved himself a Chief of Talkers: which mode of trial for a Worker, is it not precisely, of all the trials you could set him upon, the falsest and unfairest?

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Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
4 months 3 weeks ago
The necessary connexion of movement and...

The necessary connexion of movement and time is real and time is something the soul constructs in movement.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
2 months 1 week ago
Erudition can produce foliage without bearing...

Erudition can produce foliage without bearing fruit.

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C 26
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Jacques Rousseau
Jean Jacques Rousseau
4 months 6 days ago
The origin of our passions, the...

The origin of our passions, the root and spring of all the rest, the only one which is born with man, which never leaves him as long as he lives, is self-love; this passion is primitive, instinctive, it precedes all the rest, which are in a sense only modifications of it. In this sense, if you like, they are all natural. But most of these modifications are the result of external influences, without which they would never occur, and such modifications, far from being advantageous to us, are harmful. They change the original purpose and work against its end; then it is that man finds himself outside nature and at strife with himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
Virtue (or the man of...

Virtue (or the man of virtue) is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
The superior man examines his heart,...

The superior man examines his heart, that there may be nothing wrong there, and that he may have no cause for dissatisfaction with himself. That wherein the superior man cannot be equaled is simply this, his work which other men cannot see.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
4 days ago
May he be cursed on earth...

May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue,that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and givesbut bad receipts for payment in the lower world.Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go,all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!

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Book IX, line 402
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
3 weeks 5 days ago
Patriotism ruins history. Conversation with Friedrich...

Patriotism ruins history.

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Conversation with Friedrich Wilhem Riemer
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 3 weeks ago
To call war the soil of...

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.

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Ch. III: Industry, Government, the peasants
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 3 days ago
The faith that stands on authority...

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

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The Over-soul
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 weeks ago
None can be free who is...

None can be free who is a slave to, and ruled by, his passions.

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As quoted in Florilegium, XVIII, 23, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 368
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 weeks ago
The ethic of Reverence for Life...

The ethic of Reverence for Life is the ethic of Love widened into universality.

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Epilogue, p. 235
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 days ago
As soon as it is held...

As soon as it is held that any belief, no matter what, is important for some other reason than that it is true, a whole host of evils is ready to spring up. Discouragement of inquiry, ... is the first of these, but others are pretty sure to follow. Positions of authority will be open to the orthodox. Historical records must be falsified if they throw doubt on received opinion. Sooner or later unorthodoxy will come to be considered a crime to be dealt with by the stake, the purge, or the concentration camp. I can respect the men who argue that religion is true and therefore ought to be believed, but I can only feel profound moral reprobation for those who say that religion ought to be believed because it is useful, and that to ask whether it is true is a waste of time.

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3 quoted from Why I Am Not a Muslim (1995), Ibn Warraq
Philosophical Maxims
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