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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
We invite this Congress, and through...

We invite this Congress, and through it the scientists of the world and the general public, to subscribe to the following resolution: "In view of the fact that in any future world war nuclear weapons will certainly be employed, and that such weapons threaten the continued existence of mankind, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them".

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
A beautiful face….

A beautiful face is a silent commendation.

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Maxim 283
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
Our aim is precisely to establish...

Our aim is precisely to establish the human kingdom as a pattern of values in distinction from the material world. But the subjectivity which we thus postulate as the standard of truth is no narrowly individual subjectivism, for as we have demonstrated, it is not only one's own self that one discovers in the cogito, but those of others too. Contrary to the philosophy of Descartes, contrary to that of Kant, when we say "I think" we are attaining to ourselves in the presence of the other, and we are just as certain of the other as we are of ourselves. Thus the man who discovers himself directly in the cogito also discovers all the others, and discovers them as the condition of his own existence. He realizes that he can't be anything unless others recognize him as such. I cannot obtain any truth whatsoever about myself, except through the mediation of another. The other is indispensable to my existence, and equally so to any knowledge I can have of myself.

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p. 45
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
We may well call it black...

We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself withersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.

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Wealth
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 6 days ago
The blessing that the market does...

The blessing that the market does not ask about birth is paid for in the exchange society by the fact that the possibilities conferred by birth are molded to fit the production of goods that can be bought on the market.

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E. Jephcott, trans., p. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 1 week ago
When the great religious and philosophical...

When the great religious and philosophical conceptions were alive, thinking people did not extol humility and brotherly love, justice and humanity because it was realistic to maintain such principles and odd and dangerous to deviate from them, or because these maxims were more in harmony with their supposedly free tastes than others. They held to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God or of a transcendental mind, or even of nature as an eternal principle.

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p. 34.
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
2 months 3 weeks ago
It is then unnecessary to investigate...

It is then unnecessary to investigate whether there be beyond the heaven Space, Void or Time. For there is a single general space, a single vast immensity which we may freely call Void; in it are innumerable globes like this one on which we live and grow. This space we declare to be infinite, since neither reason, convenience, possibility, sense-perception nor nature assign to it a limit. In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as our own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
A man is a god in...

A man is a god in ruins.

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Prospects
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 1 week ago
An eternal purgatory, then, rather than...

An eternal purgatory, then, rather than a heaven of glory; an eternal ascent. If there is an end to all suffering, however pure and spiritualized we may suppose it to be, if there is an end to all desire, what is it that makes the blessed in paradise go on living? If in paradise they do not suffer for want of God, how shall they love Him? And if there, in the heaven of glory, while they behold God little by little and closer and closer, yet without ever wholly attaining Him, there does not always remain something more for them to know and desire, if there does not always remain a substratum of doubt, how shall they not fall asleep?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
2 months 1 week ago
Sudden Glory, is the passion which...

Sudden Glory, is the passion which maketh those Grimaces called LAUGHTER.

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The First Part, Chapter 6, p. 27 (italics and spelling as per text)
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
3 months 2 weeks ago
[T]hings are impressed better by active...

[T]hings are impressed better by active than by passive repetition. ...[I]t pays better to wait and recollect by an effort from within, than to look at the book again.

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Ch. 16
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 2 days ago
True and perfect Friendship is, to...

True and perfect Friendship is, to make one heart and mind of many hearts and bodies.

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Philosophical Maxims
Zeno of Citium
Zeno of Citium
3 months 2 days ago
That which exercises reason is more...

That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason; there is nothing more excellent than the universe, therefore the universe exercises reason.

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As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.; iii. 9.
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 3 weeks ago
Go into the London Stock Exchange...

Go into the London Stock Exchange - a more respectable place than many a court - and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker.

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Letters on England, letter 6, "On the Presbyterians" as quoted in Trust and Tolerance, Richard H. Dees, Routledge, London and New York, (2004) p. 92, published first in English in 1733.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 1 week ago
A single breaker may recede; but...

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

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pp. 266-267
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 3 weeks ago
A white spot is on the...

A white spot is on the horizon. There it is. A terrible storm is brewing. But no one sees the white spot or has any inkling of what it might mean. But no (this would not be the most terrible situation either), no, there is one person who sees it and knows what it means-but he is a passenger. He has no authority on the ship, can take no action. ... The fact that in Christendom there is visible on the horizon a white speck which means that a storm is threatening-this I knew; but, alas, I was an am only a passenger.

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Philosophical Maxims
Al-Ghazali
Al-Ghazali
2 months 3 weeks ago
For those endowed with insight there...

For those endowed with insight there is in reality no object of love but God, nor does anyone but He deserve love Love, Longing, Intimacy and Contentment.

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Islamic Texts Society. 2011. p. 23. ISBN 978-1-903682-27-2. Translated with an introduction and notes by Eric Ormsby.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 2 weeks ago
This legible lesson, this ritual recording,...

This legible lesson, this ritual recording, must be repeated as often as possible; the punishments must be a school rather than a festival; an ever-open book rather than a ceremony. The duration that makes the punishment effective for the guilty is also useful for the spectators. They must be able to consult at each moment the permanent lexicon of crime and punishment. A secret punishment is a punishment half wasted. Children should be allowed to come to the places where the penalty is being carried out; there they will attend their classes in civics. And grown men will periodically relearn the laws. Let us conceive of places of punishment as a Garden of the Laws that families would visit on Sundays.

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Chapter Three, The Gentle Way in Punishment
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 3 weeks ago
Our inventions are wont to be...

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

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pp. 60-61
Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
2 weeks 2 days ago
Society attacks early, when the individual...

Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless.

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Walden Two (1948), p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Lucretius
Lucretius
4 months 5 days ago
What once sprung…

What once sprung from earth sinks back into the earth.

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Book II, lines 999-1000 (tr. Bailey)
Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 weeks ago
He was genuinely incapable of uttering...

He was genuinely incapable of uttering a single sentence that was not a cliché. Eichmann, despite his rather bad memory, repeated word for word the same stock phrases and self-invented clichés (when he did succeed in constructing a sentence of his own, he repeated it until it became a cliché) each time he referred to an incident or event of importance to him. The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely to think from the standpoint of somebody else. No communication was possible with him, not because he lied but because he was surrounded by the most reliable of all safeguards against the words and the presence of others, and hence against reality as such.

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Ch. III
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
Night is falling: at dusk, you...

Night is falling: at dusk, you must have good eyesight to be able to tell the Good Lord from the Devil.

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Act 10, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is true: Man is the...

It is true: Man is the microcosm: I am my world.

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Journal entry (12 October 1916), p. 84e
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 1 week ago
Whenever a man talks he lies,...

Whenever a man talks he lies, and so far as he talks to himself - that is to say, so far as he thinks, knowing that he thinks - he lies to himself. The only truth in human life is that which is physiological. Speech - this thing that they call a social product - was made for lying.

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Niebla [Mist]
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 2 weeks ago
Since it is difficult to approve...

Since it is difficult to approve the reasons people invoke, each time we leave one of our 'fellow men', the question which comes to mind is invariably the same: how does he keep from killing himself?

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 2 weeks ago
The ancients, even though they believed...

The ancients, even though they believed in destiny, believed primarily in nature, in which they participated wholeheartedly. To rebel against nature amounted to rebelling against oneself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
5 days ago
To animals not only human virtues...

To animals not only human virtues but even human vices are forbidden: their whole constitution, mental and bodily, is unlike that of human beings...they possess intellect, the greatest attribute of all, but in a rough and inexact condition. It is, consequently, able to grasp those visions and semblances which rouse it to action, but only in a cloudy and indistinct fashion. Their impulses and outbreaks are violent, and that they do not feel fear, anxieties, grief, or anger, but some semblances of these feelings: wherefore they quickly drop them and adopt the converse of them: they graze after showing the most vehement rage and terror, and after frantic bellowing and plunging they straightaway sink into quiet sleep.

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Philosophical Maxims
chanakya
chanakya
1 month ago
Our bodies are perishable, wealth is...

Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 5 days ago
Universality is....
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Main Content / General
David Pearce
David Pearce
4 weeks 1 day ago
Nothing is too terrible to be...

Nothing is too terrible to be true if it is consistent with the laws of nature.

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The Pinprick Argument, BLTC Research, 2005
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
Understand that all the evils from...

Understand that all the evils from which you suffer, you yourselves cause by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!

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Patriotism and Government
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Simmel
Georg Simmel
Just now
If wandering is the liberation from...

If wandering is the liberation from every given point in space, and thus the conceptional opposite to fixation at such a point, the sociological form of the "stranger" presents the unity, as it were, of these two characteristics.

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p. 402; Opening line.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
It pays to be obvious, especially...

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is rarely a creative man...

There is rarely a creative man who does not have to pay a high price for the divine spark of his greatest gifts...the human element is frequently bled for the benefit of the creative element and to such an extent that it even brings out the bad qualities, as for instance, ruthless, naive egoism (so-called "auto-eroticism"), vanity, all kinds of vices-and all this in order to bring to the human I at least some life-strength, since otherwise it would perish of sheer inanition.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 2 weeks ago
There is no way of being...

There is no way of being almost funny or mildly funny or fairly funny or tolerably funny. You are either funny or not funny and there is nothing in between. And usually it is the writer who thinks he is funny and the reader who thinks he isn't.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
No man treats a motorcar as...

No man treats a motorcar as foolishly as he treats another human being. When the car will not go, he does not attribute its annoying behaviour to sin; he does not say, "You are a wicked motorcar, and I shall not give you any more petrol until you go." He attempts to find out what is wrong and to set it right. An analogous way of treating human beings is, however, considered to be contrary to the truths of our holy religion.

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"The Doctrine of Free Will"
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
2 months 3 weeks ago
How did they meet? By chance,...

How did they meet? By chance, like everybody ... Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?

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Prologue
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
2 weeks 3 days ago
We have come to see that...

We have come to see that Huxley was right when he said that "a man's worst difficulties begin when he is able to do as he likes." The evidences of these greater difficulties lie all about us: in the brave and brilliant atheists who have defied the Methodist God, and have become very nervous; in the women who have emancipated themselves from the tyranny of fathers, husbands, and homes, and with the intermittent but expensive help of a psychoanalyst, are now enduring liberty as interior decorators; in the young men and women who are world-weary at twenty-two; in the multitudes who drug themselves with pleasure; in the crowds enfranchised by the blood of heroes who cannot be persuaded to take an interest in their destiny; in the millions, at last free to think without fear of priest or policeman, who have made the moving pictures and the popular newspapers what they are.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 5 days ago
In all philosophic theory there is...

In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed creativity; and [[God] is its primordial, non-temporal accident. In monistic philosophies, Spinoza's or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed The Absolute. In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, eminent reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.

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Pt. I, ch. 1, sec. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
1 month 4 weeks ago
Analytic philosophers - both in the...

Analytic philosophers - both in the 'constructivist' camp and in the camp that studies 'the ordinary use of words' - are disturbingly unanimous in regarding 2-valued logic as having a privileged position: privileged, not just in the sense of corresponding to the way we do speak, but in the sense of having no serious rival for logical reasons. If the foregoing analysis is correct, this is a prejudice of the same kind as the famous prejudice in favor of a privileged status for Euclidean geometry (a prejudice that survives in the tendency to cite 'space has three dimensions' as some kind of 'necessary' truth). One can go over from a 2-valued to a 3-valued logic without totally changing the meaning of 'true' and 'false'; and not just in silly ways, like the ones usually cited (e.g. equating truth with high probability, falsity with low probability, and middlehood with 'in between' probability).

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"Three-valued logic"
Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 3 days ago
We all observe that the reality...

We all observe that the reality of sexual intercourse is far from perfect; yet this does not convince us that sex is a greatly overrated occupation. Every time a man glimpses a pretty girl pulling up her stocking, he catches a glimpse of what might be called the "primal sexual vision." It is unfortunate that there seems to be a certain disparity between this primal vision and most ordinary sexual experience. But it dances in front of us like a will-o'-the-wisp, luring us into tormented effort. It can lead novelists to write novels, poets to write poems, and musicians to write symphonies.

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p. 39
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
At this point we find ourselves...

At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?

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Chapter 12 (p. 116)
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 4 weeks ago
It is not without good reason...

It is not without good reason said, that he who has not a good memory should never take upon him the trade of lying.

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Ch. 9. Of Liars, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Hazlitt, 1842
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
The majority of mankind and people...

The majority of mankind and people who lack refinement conceive it to be pleasure, and hence they approve a life of sensual enjoyment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
1 week 5 days ago
He who exerts his mind to...

He who exerts his mind to the utmost knows his nature.

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7A:1, as translated by Wing-tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (1963), p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Max Stirner
Max Stirner
6 days ago
For the state it is indispensable...

For the state it is indispensable that nobody have an own will; if one had, the state would have to exclude (lock up, banish, etc.) this one; if all had, they would do away with the state. (...) The own will of me is the state's destroyer; it is therefore denounced by the state as 'self-will'. Own will and the state are powers in deadly hostility, between which no 'perpetual peace' is possible. As long as the state asserts itself, it represents own will, its ever-hostile opponent, as unreasonable, evil; and the latter lets itself be talked into believing this.

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Cambridge 1995, p. 174, 175
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 2 weeks ago
Don't turn back when you are...

Don't turn back when you are just at the goal.

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Maxim 580
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 3 weeks ago
Man has an invincible inclination to...
Man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring.
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Philosophical Maxims
Will Durant
Will Durant
1 week 3 days ago
Let us ask the Gods not...

Let us ask the Gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than consuming them.

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Ch. 2 : On Youth
Philosophical Maxims
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