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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
1 month 4 weeks ago
It is the duty of all...

It is the duty of all who care for their country or for civilisation to point out that we cannot further any of our ideals by participation in the next war, and that we ought therefore to resist all measures based upon the assumption that we shall take part in it. In the late war it was arguable that victory, being possible, might do some good. With the modern technique of gas attack, no belligerent can hope for victory. Absolute pacifism, therefore, in every country, in which it is politically possible, is the only sane policy both for Governments and individuals.

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Letter to The New Statesman and Nation (10 August 1935), quoted in Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 5 days ago
Not because Socrates said so,... I...

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

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Book III, Ch. 9. Of Vanity
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 6 days ago
Foxes have their dens and birds...

Foxes have their dens and birds have their nests, but human beings have no place to lay down and rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
3 weeks 2 days ago
The class of big capitalists, who,...

The class of big capitalists, who, in all civilized countries, are already in almost exclusive possession of all the means of subsistance and of the instruments (machines, factories) and materials necessary for the production of the means of subsistence. This is the bourgeois class, or the bourgeoisie.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months 1 day ago
TO LOVE is to find pleasure...

TO LOVE is to find pleasure in the happiness of others. Thus the habit of loving someone is nothing other than BENEVOLENCE by which we want the good of others, not for the profit that we gain from it, but because it is agreeable to us in itself. CHARITY is a general benevolence. And JUSTICE is charity in accordance with wisdom. ... so that one does not do harm to someone without necessity, and that one does as much good as one can, but especially where it is best employed.

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"A Dialogue" (after 1695), as quoted in The Shorter Leibniz Texts (2006) edited by Lloyd H. Strickland, p. 170
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 weeks ago
There ought to be system of...

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 weeks ago
We must needs believe in the...

We must needs believe in the other life, in the eternal life beyond the grave. ...And we must needs believe in that other life, perhaps, in order that we may deserve it, in order that we may obtain it, for it may be that he neither deserves it nor will obtain it who does not passionately desire it above reason and, if need be, against reason.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 5 days ago
The public weal requires that men...

The public weal requires that men should betray and lie and massacre.

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Book III, Ch. 1. Of Profit and Honesty
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 1 day ago
Mercy to the guilty is cruelty...

Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

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Section II, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
1 month 4 weeks ago
Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver...

It is better to risk sparing a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.

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Zadig, 1747
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 weeks 6 days ago
All men cannot receive this saying,...

All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

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19:11-12 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
2 months 1 day ago
By liberty, then, we can only...

By liberty, then, we can only mean a power of acting or not acting, according to the determinations of the will.

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§ 8.23
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
1 week 5 days ago
Our habitual experience is a complex...

Our habitual experience is a complex of failure and success in the enterprise of interpretation. If we desire a record of uninterpreted experience, we must ask a stone to record its autobiography.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 6.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 3 days ago
Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in...

Everyone is mistaken, everyone lives in illusion. At best, we can admit a scale of fictions, a hierarchy of unrealities, giving preference to one rather than to another; but to choose, no, definitely not that...

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
2 months 3 weeks ago
Whatever the subject of your...

Parmenides: Whatever the subject of your hypothesis, if you suppose that it is or is not, or that it experiences any other affection, you must consider what happens to it and to any other particular things you may choose, and to a greater number and to all in the same way; and you must consider other things in relation to themselves and to anything else you may choose in any instance, whether you suppose that the subject of your hypothesis exists or does not exist, if you are to train yourself completely to see the truth perfectly.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
2 months 5 days ago
Not because Socrates said so, but...

Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition - and perchance to some excess - I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond.

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Ch. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 weeks 3 days ago
Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the...

Unconscious assumptions or opinions are the worst enemy of woman; they can even grow into a positively demonic passion that exasperates and disgusts men, and does the woman herself the greatest injury by gradually smothering the charm and meaning of her femininity and driving it into the background. Such a development naturally ends in profound psychological disunion, in short, in a neurosis.

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P.245
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 4 weeks ago
Can anybody remember when the times...

Can anybody remember when the times were not hard and money not scarce?

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Works and Days
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
2 weeks 6 days ago
Thought is led, by the situation...

Thought is led, by the situation of its objects, to measure their truth in terms of another logic, another universe of discourse. And this logic projects another mode of existence: the realization of the truth in the words and deeds of man. And inasmuch as this project involves man as societal animal," the polis, the movement of thought has a political content. Thus, the Socratic discourse is political discourse inasmuch as it contradicts the established political institutions. The search for the correct definition, for the "concept" of virtue, justice, piety, and knowledge becomes a subversive undertaking, for the concept intends a new polis.

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pp. 133-134
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 3 days ago
What every man who loves his...

What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
3 weeks 4 days ago
Many counterrevolutionary books have been written...

Many counterrevolutionary books have been written in favor of the Revolution. But Burke has written a revolutionary book against the Revolution.

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Fragment No. 104; on Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 week ago
Ideas too are a life and...

Ideas too are a life and a world.

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F 70
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 weeks 5 days ago
"Relation" in its idiomatic usage denotes...

"Relation" in its idiomatic usage denotes something direct and active, something dynamic and energetic. It fixes attention upon the way things bear upon one another, their clashings and unitings, the way they fulfill and frustrate, promote and retard, excite and inhibit one another. Intellectual relations subsist in propositions; they state the connection of terms with one another. In art, as in nature and in life, relations are modes of interaction.

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p. 139
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
1 month 3 weeks ago
'It comes, it comes!' they sang....

It comes, it comes!' they sang. 'Sleepers awake! It comes, it comes, it comes.' One dreadful glance over my shoulder I essayed - not long enough to see (or did I see?) the rim of the sunrise that shoots Time dead with golden arrows and puts to flight all phantasmal shapes. Screaming, I buried my face in the fold of the Teacher's robe. 'The morning! The morning!' I cried. 'I am caught by the morning and I am a ghost.'

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Ch. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
6 months 3 days ago
You are the buyer of your own life

They are trying as directly as possible to sell you experiences, i.e. what you are able to do with the car, not the car as a product itself. An extreme example of this is this existing economic marketing concept, which basically evaluates the value of you as a potential consumer of your own life. Like how much are you worth, in the sense of all you will spend to buy back your own life as a certain quality life. You will spend so much in doctors, so much in beauty, so much in transcendental meditation, so much for music, and so on. What you are buying is a certain image and practice of your life. So what is your market potential, as a buyer of your own life in this sense?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 weeks 6 days ago
But yet they that have no...

But yet they that have no Science, are in better, and nobler condition with their naturall Prudence; than men, that by their mis-reasoning, or by trusting them that reason wrong, fall upon false and absurd generall rules.

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The First Part, Chapter 5, p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 4 weeks ago
The highest compact we can make...

The highest compact we can make with our fellow, is, - "Let there be truth between us two forevermore".

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Behavior
Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
1 month 4 weeks ago
Noise is the most impertinent of...

Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.

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"On Noise"
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
2 months 1 day ago
I have seen something of the...

I have seen something of the project of M. de St. Pierre, for maintaining a perpetual peace in Europe. I am reminded of a device in a cemetery, with the words: Pax perpetua; for the dead do not fight any longer: but the living are of another humor; and the most powerful do not respect tribunals at all. Letter 11 to Grimarest: Passages Concerning the Abbe de St. Pierre's 'Project for Perpetual Peace' (June 1712).

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Taken from Leibniz: Political Writings (2nd Edition, 1988), Edited by Patrick Riley.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1 month 4 weeks ago
But these young scholars who invade...

But these young scholars who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.

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Blight, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
6 days ago
The criterion of efficiency dictates that...

The criterion of efficiency dictates that choice of alternatives which produces the largest result for the given application of resources.

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Simon (1945, p. 179); As cited in: Harry M. Johnson (1966) Sociology: A Systematic Introduction. p. 287.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
Just now
Watergate was thus nothing but a...

Watergate was thus nothing but a lure held out by the system to catch its adversaries-a simulation of scandal for regenerative ends.

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"The Precession of Simulacra," p. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 weeks ago
But as to our country and...

But as to our country and our race, as long as the well compacted structure of our church and state, the sanctuary, the holy of holies of that ancient law, defended by reverence, defended by power, a fortress at once and a temple, shall stand inviolate on the brow of the British Sion-as long as the British Monarchy, not more limited than fenced by the orders of the State, shall, like the proud Keep of Windsor, rising in the majesty of proportion, and girt with the double belt of its kindred and coeval towers, as long as this awful structure shall oversee and guard the subjected land-so long as the mounds and dykes of the low, fat, Bedford level will have nothing to fear from all the pickaxes of all the levellers of France.

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pp. 52-53
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months ago
Let them have what instructions you...

Let them have what instructions you will, and ever so learned lectures of breeding daily inculcated into them, that which will most influence their carriage will be the company they converse with, and the fashion of those about them.

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Sec. 67
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
1 month 2 weeks ago
The man who is fortunate in...

The man who is fortunate in his choice of son-in-law gains a son; the man unfortunate in his choice loses his daughter also.

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Freeman (1948), p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
2 months 2 weeks ago
It is only he, possessed of...

It is only he, possessed of all sagely qualities that can exist under heaven, who shows himself quick in apprehension, clear in discernment, of far-reaching intelligence, and all-embracing knowledge, fitted to exercise rule; magnanimous, generous, benign, and mild, fitted to exercise forbearance; impulsive, energetic, firm, and enduring, fitted to maintain a firm hold; self-adjusted, grave, never swerving from the Mean, and correct, fitted to command reverence; accomplished, distinctive, concentrative, and searching, fitted to exercise discrimination. All-embracing is he and vast, deep and active as a fountain, sending forth in their due season his virtues. All-embracing and vast, he is like Heaven. Deep and active as a fountain, he is like the abyss. He is seen, and the people all reverence him; he speaks, and the people all believe him; he acts, and the people all are pleased with him.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 weeks ago
I will not say that the...

I will not say that the more or less poetical and unphilosophical doctrines that I am about to set forth are those which make me live; but I will venture to say that it is my longing to live and to live for ever that inspires these doctrines within me. And if by means of them I succeed in strengthening and sustaining this same longing in another, perhaps when it is all but dead, then I shall have performed a man's work, and above all, I shall have lived. In a word, be it with reason or without reason or against reason, I am resolved not to die. And if, when at last I die out, I die altogether, then I shall not have died out of myself - that is, I shall not have yielded myself to death, but my human destiny shall have killed me. Unless I come to lose my head, or rather my heart, I will not abdicate from life - life will be wrested from me.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
2 months 1 week ago
For this too is a very...

For this too is a very pleasant strand woven into the Cynic's pattern of life; he must needs be flogged like an ass, and while he is being flogged he must love the men who flog him, as though he were the father or brother of them all.

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Book III, ch. 22, 54
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
1 month 3 weeks ago
Fear? If I have gained anything...

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 3 days ago
To be is to be cornered.

To be is to be cornered.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 4 days ago
Exclusion....

You're either excluding the right people or including the wrong people.

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ComfortDragon
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
1 month 3 weeks ago
This investigation aims to analyze the...

This investigation aims to analyze the type "bourgeois public sphere". Its particular approach is required, to begin with, by the difficulties specific to an object whose complexity precludes exclusive reliance on the specialized methods of a single discipline. Rather, the category. "public sphere" must be investigated within the broad field formerly reflected in the perspective of the traditional science of "politics."' When particular social-scientific discipline, this object disintegrates. The problems that result from fusing aspects of sociology and economics, of constitutional law and political science, and of social and intellectual history are obvious: given the present state of differentiation and specialization in the social sciences, scarcely anyone will be able to master several, let alone all, of these disciplines.

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p.xvii
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 3 weeks ago
Lenin saying things that seem true....
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Main Content / General
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
1 week ago
Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer rests on...

Nietzsche's break with Schopenhauer rests on precisely this point; it is a matter of knowing whether the will is unitary or multiple.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 week 4 days ago
I found Randi likable and plausible;...

I found Randi likable and plausible; the only thing that bothered me was the sweeping and intense nature of his skepticism. He was obviously working from the premise that all paranormal phenomena, without exception, are fakes or delusions. He seemed to take to take it for granted that all of us - there were also two women present - shared his opinions, and he made jovial, disparaging remarks about psychics and other such weirdos. I began to get the uncomfortable feeling of a Jew who has accidentally walked into a Nazi meeting, or a Jehovah's Witness at a convention of militant atheists. As a supposedly scientific psychic investigator, Randi struck me as being oddly fixed in his opinions.

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pp. 39-40
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
1 month 2 days ago
Men are not allowed to think...

Men are not allowed to think freely about chemistry and biology: why should they be allowed to think freely about political philosophy?

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As quoted in A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991) by Alan Lindsay Mackay
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
6 days ago
The principle of bounded rationality [is]...

The principle of bounded rationality [is] the capacity of the human mind for formulating and solving complex problems is very small compared with the size of the problems whose solution is required for objectively rational behavior in the real world - or even for a reasonable approximation to such objective rationality.

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p. 198.
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
4 weeks ago
Government is a contrivance of human...

Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for by this wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 weeks 6 days ago
To know how just a cause...

To know how just a cause we have for grieving is already a consolation.

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Ch. IV.: Music
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 weeks 3 days ago
The skeptic is the least mysterious...

The skeptic is the least mysterious man in the world, and yet, starting from a certain moment, he no longer belongs to this world.

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Philosophical Maxims
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