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Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig von Mises
2 months 3 weeks ago
The unhampered market economy is not...

The unhampered market economy is not a system which would seem commendable from the standpoint of the selfish group interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists. It is not the particular interests of a group or of individual persons that require the market economy, but regard for the common welfare. It is not true that the advocates of the free-market economy are defenders of the selfish interests of the rich. The particular interests of the entrepreneurs and capitalists also demand interventionism to protect them against the competition of more efficient and active men. The free development of the market economy is to be recommended, not in the interest of the rich, but in the interest of the masses of the people.

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Ch. VII : The Economic, Social, and Political Consequences of Interventionism § 1. The Economic Consequences
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
3 months 2 weeks ago
The history of almost every civilization...

The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.

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Abridgement of Vols. 1-6 by D. C. Somervell
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 5 days ago
That which is produced.....
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Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 months 2 days ago
It is the worst of all...

It is the worst of all quaint and of all cheap ways of life that they bring us at last to the pinch of some humiliation.

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Episodes in the Story of a Mine.
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 6 days ago
Religion, therefore, as I now ask...

Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. Since the relation may be either moral, physical, or ritual, it is evident that out of religion in the sense in which we take it, theologies, philosophies, and ecclesiastical organizations may secondarily grow.

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Lecture II, "Circumscription of the Topic"
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 6 days ago
I never will, by any word...

I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance, or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.

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Letter to Edward Dowse
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
4 months 3 weeks ago
The hypostasis of the particular methods...

The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science ... results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a "crucial experiment" rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature.

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p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
5 months 6 days ago
The administrators of the executive power...

The administrators of the executive power may be either elective or not; and in the former case all or only some of them may be elective. They are elective in a proper democracy, that is to say, in a democracy which recognizes representation. If all the public officials are directly elected by the whole people, the democracy is a pure democracy; if only some, it is a mixed democracy. The public officials may also fill vacancies themselves; this is the case in a pure aristocracy. But if only some of the magistrates are thus replaced by the public officers, and if the others are again directly elected by the people, then the form of government is that of a democratic aristocracy. A permanent president (monarch) may also be elected to exercise the executive power during his lifetime. In all these cases, either all citizens of the commonwealth, or only some of them, are eligible to office. Eligibility may, therefore, be limited or unlimited.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
6 months 1 week ago
The career a young man should...

The career a young man should choose should be one that is most consonant with our dignity, one that is based on ideas of whose truth we are wholly convinced, one that offers us largest scope in working for humanity and approaching that general goal towards which each profession offers only one of the means: the goal of perfection ... If he works only for himself he can become a famous scholar, a great sage, an excellent imaginative writer [Dichter], but never a perfected, a truly great man.

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in Karl Marx and World Literature (1976) by S. S. Prawer, p. 2.
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 3 weeks ago
Alexander is to a peasant proprietor...

Alexander is to a peasant proprietor what Don Juan is to a happily married husband.

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p. 78,
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
5 months 1 week ago
No protracted war can fail to...

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

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Book Three, Chapter XXII.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 days ago
Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists...

Only optimists commit suicide, the optimists who can no longer be . . . optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why should they have any to die?

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
5 months 3 weeks ago
When some one reminded him that...

When some one reminded him that the people of Sinope had sentenced him to exile, he said, "And I sentenced them to stay at home."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 49
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
6 months 1 week ago
May we not return….

May we not return to those scoundrels of old, the illustrious founders of superstition and fanaticism, who first took the knife from the altar to make victims of those who refused to be their disciples?

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Letter to Frederick II of Prussia (December 1740), published in Oeuvres complètes de Voltaire, Vol. 7 (1869), edited by Georges Avenel, p. 105; as translated by Richard Aldington
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 6 days ago
Many people think they are thinking...

Many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices. 

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To his young son from the Yosemite Valley on
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
2 months 6 days ago
Facts are the materials of science,...

Facts are the materials of science, but all Facts involve Ideas. Since, in observing Facts, we cannot exclude Ideas, we must, for the purposes of science, take care that the Ideas are clear and rigorously applied.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months 2 days ago
If a man has not, by...

If a man has not, by the time he is 30, yielded to the fascination of every form of extremism, I don't know if he is to be admired or scorned - a saint or a corpse.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
If some great Power would agree...

If some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. The only freedom I care about is the freedom to do right; the freedom to do wrong I am ready to part with on the cheapest terms to any one who will take it of me.

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"On Descartes' Discourse touching the method of using one's reason rightly and of seeking scientific truth"
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
6 months 5 days ago
Justice as fairness provides what we...

Justice as fairness provides what we want.

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Chapter III, Section 30, pg. 190
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 months 3 weeks ago
Now a life of honour includes...

Now a life of honour includes various kinds of conduct; it may include the chest in which Regulus was confined, or the wound of Cato which was torn open by Cato's own hand, or the exile of Rutilius, or the cup of poison which removed Socrates from gaol to heaven.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Everywhere the human soul stands between...

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will.

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Essays, Goethe's Works.
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
4 months 2 days ago
He and his tyrannicide! I am...

He and his tyrannicide! I am in a mad fury about these explosions. If that is the new world! Damn O'Donovan Rossa; damn him behind and before, above, below, and roundabout; damn, deracinate, and destroy him, root and branch, self and company, world without end. Amen. I write that for sport if you like, but I will pray in earnest, O Lord, if you cannot convert, kindly delete him!

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Letter to Sidney Colvin, 2 August 1881. Quoted in Terrorism and Literature Chapter 12 - "Parliament Is Burning" by Deaglán Ó Donghaile ISBN 9781316987292
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 1 week 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
John Locke
John Locke
6 months 1 week ago
The boundaries of the species, whereby...

The boundaries of the species, whereby men sort them, are made by men.

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Book III, Ch. 6, sec. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 1 week ago
Either we must have war against...

Either we must have war against Russia, before she has the atom bomb, or we will have to lie down and let them govern us. ... Anything is better than submission.

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Speech quoted in The Observer (21 November 1948), quoted in Robert Skildesky, Oswald Mosley (1981), p. 542 and Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (1987), p. 52
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 6 days ago
Ever from one who comes to-morrow...

Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

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Merlin's Song, II
Philosophical Maxims
Chrysippus
Chrysippus
5 months 3 weeks ago
If I had followed the multitude,...

If I had followed the multitude, I should not have studied philosophy.

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As quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, vii. 182.
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
5 months 1 week ago
All things are in all. V...

All things are in all.

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V 9; as translated by Dorothea Waley Singer
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
6 months 1 week ago
The perception of beauty is a...

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

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June 21, 1852
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 4 weeks ago
Behold, a sower went forth to...

Behold, a sower went forth to sow; And when he sowed, some seeds fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up: Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth: And when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: But other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him hear.

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13:3-9 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 4 days ago
The inner trip is not the...

The inner trip is not the sole prerogative of the LSD traveler; it's the universal experience of TV watchers.

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Philosophical Maxims
Averroes
Averroes
6 months 3 weeks ago
Philosophers do not claim that God...

Philosophers do not claim that God does not know particulars; they rather claim that He does not know them the way humans do. God knows particulars as their Creator whereas humans know them as a privileged creations of God might know them.

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Philosophical Maxims
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
4 months 3 weeks ago
I am I and….

I am I and my circumstance, and if I don't save it I don't save myself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
6 months 2 weeks ago
For what is life but a...

For what is life but a play in which everyone acts a part until the curtain comes down?

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
6 months 6 days ago
Who is going to educate the...

Who is going to educate the human race in the principles and practice of conservation?

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Chapter 12 (p. 112)
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
6 months 5 days ago
Thus, Beauty is neither an appearance...

Thus, Beauty is neither an appearance nor a being, but a relationship: the transformation of being into appearance

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p. 408
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
4 months 4 days ago
For him who loves labor, there...

For him who loves labor, there is always something to do.

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Maxim 219
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
We are to remember what an...

We are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom; your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat, - the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest, - has silently turned all the rest to some benefit too, and makes no complaint about it! So everywhere in Nature! She is true and not a lie; and yet so great, and just, and motherly in her truth. She requires of a thing only that it be genuine of heart; she will protect it if so; will not, if not so. There is a soul of truth in all the things she ever gave harbor to. Alas, is not this the history of all highest Truth that comes or ever came into the world?

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
4 months 2 weeks ago
"What I believe" is a process...

"What I believe" is a process rather than a finality. Finalities are for gods and governments, not for the human intellect. While it may be true that Herbert Spencer's formulation of liberty is the most important on the subject, as a political basis of society, yet life is something more than formulas. In the battle for freedom, as Ibsen has so well pointed out, it is the struggle for, not so much the attainment of, liberty, that develops all that is strongest, sturdiest and finest in human character.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
4 months 3 weeks ago
Love is not consolation, it is...

Love is not consolation, it is light.

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As quoted in Simone Weil (1954) by Eric Walter Frederick Tomlin, p. 47
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
7 months 1 week ago
Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic....

Rhetoric is the counterpart of Dialectic. Both alike are concerned with such things as come, more or less, within the general ken of all men and belong to no definite science. Accordingly, all men make use, more or less, of both; for to a certain extent all men attempt to discuss statements and to maintain them, to defend themselves and to attack others.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
4 months 2 weeks ago
First we have to believe, and...

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

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K 55
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
7 months 1 week ago
A man who for a long...

A man who for a long time has gone around hiding a secret becomes mentally deranged. At this point one would imagine that his secret would have to come out, but despite his derangement his soul still sticks to its hideout, and those around him become even more convinced that the false story he told to deceive them is the truth. He is healed of his insanity, knows everything that has gone on, and thereby perceives that nothing has been betrayed. Was this gratifying to him or not; he might wish to have disposed of his secret in his madness; it seems as if there were a fate which forced him to remain in his secret and would not let him go away from it. Or was it for the best, was there a guardian spirit who helped him keep his secret.

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Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
5 months 2 weeks ago
But after these, Pythagoras changed that...

But after these, Pythagoras changed that philosophy, which is conversant about geometry itself, into the form of a liberal doctrine, considering its principles in a more exalted manner; and investigating its theorems immaterially and intellectually; who likewise invented a treatise of such things as cannot be explained in geometry, and discovered the constitution of the mundane figures.

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Chap. IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Find in any country the Ablest...

Find in any country the Ablest Man that exists there; raise him to the supreme place, and loyally reverence him: you have a perfect government for that country; no ballot-box, parliamentary eloquence, voting, constitution-building, or other machinery whatsoever can improve it a whit.

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Philosophical Maxims
Proclus
Proclus
5 months 2 weeks ago
Again, Amyclas the Heracleotean, one of...

Again, Amyclas the Heracleotean, one of Plato's familiars, and Menæchmus, the disciple, indeed, of Eudoxus, but conversant with Plato, and his brother Dinostratus, rendered the whole of geometry as yet more perfect. But Theudius, the Magnian, appears to have excelled, as well in mathematical disciplines, as in the rest of philosophy. For he constructed elements egregiously, and rendered many particulars more universal. Besides, Cyzicinus the Athenian, flourished at the same period, and became illustrious in other mathematical disciplines, but especially in geometry. These, therefore, resorted by turns to the Academy, and employed themselves in proposing common questions.

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Ch. IV.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
2 months 6 days ago
The principle of rotation... in the...

The principle of rotation... in the body of [bank] directors... breaks in upon the esprit de corps so apt to prevail in permanent bodies; it gives a chance for the public eye penetrating into the sanctuary of those proceedings and practices, which the avarice of the directors may introduce for their personal emolument, and which the resentments of excluded directors, or the honesty of those duly admitted, might betray to the public; and it gives an opportunity at the end of the year, or at other periods, of correcting a choice, which on trial, proves to have been unfortunate.

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Letter to Albert Gallatin, 1803. ME 10:437
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is a word very commonly...

There is a word very commonly used these days: "anti-communism." It's a very stupid word, badly put together. It makes it appear as though communism were something original, something basic, something fundamental. Therefore, it is taken as the point of departure, and anti-communism is defined in relation to communism. Here is why I say that this word was poorly selected, that it was put together by people who do not understand etymology: the primary, the eternal concept is humanity. And communism is anti-humanity. Whoever says "anti-communism" is saying, in effect, anti-anti-humanity. A poor construction. So we should say: that which is against communism is for humanity. Not to accept, to reject this inhuman Communist ideology is simply to be a human being. It isn't being a member of a party.

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Speech in Washington D.C. (30 June 1975), published in Solzhenitsyn: The Voice of Freedom (1975), p. 30
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
6 months 6 days ago
So nigh is grandeur to our...

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

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Voluntaries, st. 3
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
6 months 1 day ago
Sometimes, because my position has not...

Sometimes, because my position has not been made clear enough, people think I'm a sort of radical anarchist who has an absolute hatred of power. No! What I am trying to do is to approach this extremely important and tangled phenomenon in our society, the exercise of power, with the most reflective, and I would say prudent attitude. Prudent in my analysis, in the moral and theoretical postulates I use: I try to figure out what's at stake. But to question the relations of power in the most scrupulous and attentive manner possible, looking into all the domains of its exercise, that's not the same thing as constructing a mythology of power as the beast of the apocalypse.

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"Power, Moral Values, and the Intellectual", interview in History of the Present 4
Philosophical Maxims
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