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Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
His obedience is real since he...

His obedience is real since he really and truly fulfills his mission, since he runs real risks in order to carry out the beloved's orders. But, on the other hand, it is imaginary because he submits only to a creature of his mind.

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p. 152
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
1 week 5 days ago
Now why, if freedom is striven...

Now why, if freedom is striven after for love of the I after all - why not choose the I himself as beginning, middle, and end?

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Dover 2005, p. 163
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 months 2 weeks ago
The people are led to find...

The people are led to find in the productive apparatus the effective agent of thought and action to which their personal thought and action can and must be surrendered. And in this transfer, the apparatus also assumes the role of a moral agent.

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Conscience is absolved by reification. p. 79
Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
1 month 4 weeks ago
High school is closer to the...

High school is closer to the core of the American experience than anything else I can think of.

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Introduction to Our Time Is Now: Notes From the High School Underground, John Birmingham, ed.
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Man consists in Truth. If he...

Man consists in Truth. If he exposes Truth, he exposes himself. If he betrays Truth, he betrays himself. We speak not here of lies, but of acting against Conviction.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 3 weeks ago
Democracy does not contain any force...

Democracy does not contain any force which will check the constant tendency to put more and more on the public payroll. The state is like a hive of bees in which the drones display, multiply and starve the workers so the idlers will consume the food and the workers will perish.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
6 days ago
Above all, the ominous clouds of...

Above all, the ominous clouds of those phenomena that we are with varying success seeking to explain by means of the quantum of action, are throwing their shadows over the sphere of physical knowledge, threatening no one knows what new revolution.

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Ch. 3 "Relativity of Space and Time"
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
A whole is that which has...

A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months 3 weeks ago
The more cunning a man is,...

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
2 months 3 weeks ago
We have not made the Revolution,...

We have not made the Revolution, the Revolution has made us.

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Act II.
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 months 6 days ago
When Nietzsche praises egoism it is...

When Nietzsche praises egoism it is always in an aggressive or polemical way, against the virtues, against the virtue of disinterestedness. But in fact egoism is a bad interpretation of the will, just as atomism is a bad interpretation of force. In order for there to be egoism it is necessary for there to be an ego.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 1 week ago
Since it is Reason which shapes...

Since it is Reason which shapes and regulates all other things, it ought not itself to be left in disorder.

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Book I, ch. 17, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 4 days ago
What we have is a device...

What we have is a device for producing sentences in response to sentences. But none of these sentences is at all connected to the real world. If one coupled two of these machines and let them play the Imitation Game with each other, then they would go on 'fooling' each other forever, even if the rest of the world disappeared! There is no more reason to regard the machine's talk of apples as referring to real world apples than there is to regard the ant's 'drawing' as referring to Winston Churchill.

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Chap. 1 : Brains in a vat
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 5 days ago
No one has yet been found...

No one has yet been found so firm of mind and purpose as resolutely to compel himself to sweep away all theories and common notions, and to apply the understanding, thus made fair and even, to a fresh examination of particulars. Thus it happens that human knowledge, as we have it, is a mere medley and ill-digested mass, made up of much credulity and much accident, and also of the childish notions which we at first imbibed.

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Aphorism 97
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 3 days ago
Originality is a thing we constantly...

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with; as if, observes our author himself, any originality but our own could be expected to content us! In fact all strange thing are apt, without fault of theirs, to estrange us at first view, and unhappily scarcely anything is perfectly plain, but what is also perfectly common.

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Richter.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 2 weeks ago
At one level, this movement on...

At one level, this movement on behalf of oppressed farm animals is emotional...Yet the movement is also the product of a deep intellectual ferment pioneered by the Princeton scholar Peter Singer...This idea popularized by Professor Singer - that we have ethical obligations that transcend our species - is one whose time appears to have come...What we're seeing now is an interesting moral moment: a grass-roots effort by members of one species to promote the welfare of others...animal rights are now firmly on the mainstream ethical agenda.

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Nicholas Kristof, "Humanity Even for Nonhumans," in The New York Times (8 April 2009).
Philosophical Maxims
Nikolai Berdyaev
Nikolai Berdyaev
2 months 1 week ago
Surprisingly, Berdyaev was able to write,...

Surprisingly, Berdyaev was able to write, lecture and publish for five years after the October Revolution of 1917. He was once detained and interviewed by the fearsome head of the Cheka, Felix Dzerzhinsky. Although he was released, the Bolsheviks gradually realized that Berdyaev was unassimilable to their cause and gave him a choice, along with a group of other intellectuals, of exile or execution. Reluctantly, Berdyaev chose exile to Berlin. He was never again to return to Russia.

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Richard Schain, in In Love with Eternity : Philosophical Essays and Fragments (2005), Ch. 7 : Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev - A Champion of the Spirit, p. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 1 week ago
Physiology does not teach us how...

Physiology does not teach us how to digest, nor logic how to discourse, nor esthetics how to feel beauty or express it, nor ethics how to be good. And indeed it is well if they do not teach us how to be hypocrites; for pedantry, whether it be pedantry of logic, or of esthetics, or of ethics, is at bottom nothing but hypocrisy.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 4 days ago
We are brought to a belief...

We are brought to a belief of God either by reason or by force. Atheism being a proposition as unnatural as monstrous, difficult also and hard to establish in the human understanding, how arrogant soever, there are men enough seen, out of vanity and pride, to be the authors of extraordinary and reforming opinions, and outwardly to affect the profession of them; who, if they are such fools, have, nevertheless, not the power to plant them in their own conscience. Yet will they not fail to lift up their hands towards heaven if you give them a good thrust with a sword in the breast, and when fear or sickness has abated and dulled the licentious fury of this giddy humour they will easily re-unite, and very discreetly suffer themselves to be reconciled to the public faith and examples.

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Ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
When we are young, we take...

When we are young, we take a certain pleasure in our infirmities. They seem so new, so rich! With age, they no longer surprise us, we know them too well. Now, without anything unexpected in them, they do not deserve to be endured.

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Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 weeks 6 days ago
All truths are easy to understand...

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

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As quoted in Angels in the workplace: stories and inspirations for creating a new world of work (1999) by Melissa Giovagnoli
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
Those who keep the masses of...

Those who keep the masses of men in subjection by exercising force and cruelty deprive them at once of two vital foods, liberty and obedience; for it is no longer within the power of such masses to accord their inner consent to the authority to which they are subjected. Those who encourage a state of things in which the hope of gain is the principal motive take away from men their obedience, for consent which is its essence is not something which can be sold.

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p. 97
Philosophical Maxims
Niccolò Machiavelli
Niccolò Machiavelli
4 months 4 days ago
For as when much superfluous matter...

For as when much superfluous matter has gathered in simple bodies, nature makes repeated efforts to remove and purge it away, thereby promoting the health of these bodies, so likewise as regards that composite body the human race, when every province of the world so teems with inhabitants that they can neither subsist where they are nor remove elsewhere, every region being equally crowded and over-peopled, and when human craft and wickedness have reached their highest pitch, it must needs come about that the world will purge herself in one or another of these three ways, to the end that men, becoming few and contrite, may amend their lives and live with more convenience.

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Book 1 Ch. 5 (as translated by Ninian Hill Thomson)
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
A rolling stone…

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

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Maxim 524
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
Consciousness, then, does not appear to...

Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits ... A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 3 days ago
It is the property of every...

It is the property of every Hero, in every time, in every place and situation, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by Koreishes or Conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months ago
The rulers of Great Britain have,...

The rulers of Great Britain have, for more than a century past, amused the people with the imagination that they possessed a great empire on the west side of the Atlantic. This empire, however, has hitherto existed in imagination only.

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Chapter III, Part V, p. 1032 (Last Page).
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 1 week ago
By relieving the brain of all...

By relieving the brain of all unnecessary work, a good notation sets it free to concentrate on more advanced problems, and in effect increases the mental power of the race..

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ch. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 2 weeks ago
The endeavor of scientific research to...

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

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p. 150.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 1 week ago
One of the greatest...
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Main Content / General
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
3 weeks 1 day ago
We are by no means opposed...

We are by no means opposed to the globalization of relationships as such-in fact, as we said, the strongest forces of Leftist internationalism have effectively led this process. The enemy, rather, is a specific regime of global relations that we call Empire.

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45-46
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 month 5 days ago
I don't believe in total freedom...

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it.

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Artistic Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 3 weeks ago
In its widest possible sense, however,...

In its widest possible sense, however, a man's Self is the sum total of all that he can call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account. All these things give him the same emotions. If they wax and prosper, he feels triumphant; if they dwindle and die away, he feels cast down.

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Ch. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Federico Fellini
Federico Fellini
1 month 5 days ago
I've always written at the top...

I've always written at the top of my lungs and from some secret motives within. I have followed the advice of my good friend Federico Fellini who, when asked about his work, said, "Don't tell me what I'm doing, I don't want to know."

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Ray Bradbury, "Author's Introduction" to 2003 Folio Society edition of Fahrenheit 452
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 3 weeks ago
Magnanimity in politics is not seldom...

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

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Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 4 weeks ago
Human reason is by nature architectonic....

Human reason is by nature architectonic.

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B 502
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 5 days ago
Confusion of sapience with sentience can...

Confusion of sapience with sentience can be ethically catastrophic.

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Social Media Unsorted Postings 2016
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
I do not know but it...

I do not know but it is too much to read one newspaper a week. I have tried it recently, and for so long it seems to me that I have not dwelt in my native region. The sun, the clouds, the snow, the trees say not so much to me. You cannot serve two masters. It requires more than a day's devotion to know and to possess the wealth of a day.

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p. 491
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 4 days ago
Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at...

Therefore, my dear Lucilius, begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
Genius is always sufficiently the enemy...

Genius is always sufficiently the enemy of genius by over influence.

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par. 19
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
3 weeks 1 day ago
It is not easy for any...

It is not easy for any of us to stop measuring the world against the standard of Europe, but the concept of the multitude requires it of us. It is a challenge. Embrace it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 2 weeks ago
In so far as words are...

In so far as words are not used obviously to calculate technically relevant probabilities or for other practical purposes, ... they are in danger of being suspect as sales talk of some kind.

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p. 22.
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
3 months 2 weeks ago
We do not have to make...

We do not have to make self- sacrifice a necessary element of altruism. We can regard people as altruists because of the kind of interests they have rather than because they are sacrificing their interests.

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Chapter 9: Altruism and Happiness (p. 103)
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
The original thinking force of the...

The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
The Grecian are youthful and erring...

The Grecian are youthful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in many important respects essentially of the divine race. In my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter Iambe; for the great god Pan is not dead, as was rumored. No god ever dies. Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient Greece, I am most constant at his shrine.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
People seem not to see that...

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

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Worship
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
3 months 4 weeks ago
Rights are, then, the fruits of...

Rights are, then, the fruits of the law, and of the law alone. There are no rights without law-no rights contrary to the law-no rights anterior to the law. Before the existence of laws there may be reasons for wishing that there were laws-and doubtless such reasons cannot be wanting, and those of the strongest kind;-but a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, does not constitute a right. To confound the existence of a reason for wishing that we possessed a right, with the existence of the right itself, is to confound the existence of a want with the means of relieving it. It is the same as if one should say, everybody is subject to hunger, therefore everybody has something to eat.

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Pannomial Fragments (c. 1831), quoted in The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. III (1838), p. 221
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 3 days ago
Literature is the Thought of thinking...

Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 3 weeks ago
The many do not know...

Zeno: The many do not know that except by this devious passage through all things the mind cannot attain to the truth. Zeno: Most people are not aware that this roundabout progress through all things is the only way in which the mind can attain truth and wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 5 days ago
To God, truly, the Giver and...

To God, truly, the Giver and Architect of Forms, and it may be to the angels and higher intelligences, it belongs to have an affirmative knowledge of forms immediately, and from the first contemplation. But this assuredly is more than man can do, to whom it is granted only to proceed at first by negatives, and at last to end in affirmatives, after exclusion has been exhausted.

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Aphorism XV
Philosophical Maxims
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