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Voltaire
Voltaire
4 months 5 days ago
Faith consists…

Faith consists in believing what reason cannot.

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"The Flood", 1764
Philosophical Maxims
Ernst Bloch
Ernst Bloch
2 days ago
In ourselves alone the absolute light...

In ourselves alone the absolute light keeps shining, a sigillum falsi et sui, mortis et vitae aeternae [false signal and signal of eternal life and death itself], and the fantastic move to it begins: to the external interpretation of the daydream, the cosmic manipulation of a concept that is utopian in principle. Finding this concept, finding the right for whose sake it behoves us to live, to be organized, to have time-this is where we are headed, why we are clearing the metaphysically constitutive trails afresh, calling for what is not, building into the blue that lines all edges of the world; this is why we build ourselves into the blue and search for truth and reality where mere factuality vanishes.

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p. 43
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 4 days ago
It is not necessary to ask...

It is not necessary to ask whether soul and body are one, just as it is not necessary to ask whether the wax and its shape are one, nor generally whether the matter of each thing and that of which it is the matter are one. For even if one and being are spoken of in several ways, what is properly so spoken of is the actuality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 week ago
Lucid intervals and happy pauses...

Lucid intervals and happy pauses.

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History of King Henry VII, III
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 days ago
Our cause is never more in...

Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending to do our Enemy's will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.

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Letter VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 4 days ago
If there is some end of...

If there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake, clearly this must be the good. Will not knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what we should? If so, we must try, in outline at least, to determine what it is.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 weeks 1 day ago
If every pure....
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Main Content / General
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
2 weeks 4 days ago
What maintains the marriage and what...

What maintains the marriage and what is it? Only the knowledge of the hearts, that is its beginning and end.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
4 months 5 days ago
A great affliction of all Philistines...

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

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E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 345
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 month 2 weeks ago
Nuclear power started in weaponry. It...

Nuclear power started in weaponry. It was designed for war. And any instrument that has its origins in war always has the potential for war. First because the material you need to make bombs, you're multiplying it though nuclear power, you're taking uranium and turn it into plutonium. Second by equipping governments and private companies with this potential, in society you spread this potential, that here is a weapon of mass destruction available. This is exactly what happened with fertilizers. Chemical fertilizers came from explosive factories are increasingly used in terrorist attacks.

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On nuclear power, as quoted in "Koodankulam Must Be Stopped: Vandana Shiva", DiaNuke
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 day ago
Milton Ashe is not the type...

Milton Ashe is not the type to marry a head of hair and a pair of eyes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thales of Miletus
Thales of Miletus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Water is the first principle of...

Water is the first principle of everything.

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As quoted in Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983b
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
Just now
Be not unwilling in what thou...

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody.

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III, 5
Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 3 weeks ago
With an ill-famed man form no...

With an ill-famed man form no connection.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Bergson
Henri Bergson
2 months 3 weeks ago
The prestige of the Nobel Prize...

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.

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In a letter accepting the 1927 Nobel Prize in literature, read by the French minister, Armand Bernard.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 4 weeks ago
Not to be born is undoubtedly...

Not to be born is undoubtedly the best plan of all. Unfortunately, it is within no one's reach.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
3 months 3 weeks ago
Ethics increases the range of what...

Ethics increases the range of what it is about ourselves that we can will-extending it from our actions to the motives and character traits and dispositions from which they arise. We want to be able to will the sources of our actions down to the very bottom.

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p. 135.
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 1 week ago
I pass, at length, to the...

I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.

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Ch. 11, Of Democracy
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months ago
The little world of childhood with...

The little world of childhood with its familiar surroundings is a model of the greater world. The more intensively the family has stamped its character upon the child, the more it will tend to feel and see its earlier miniature world again in the bigger world of adult life. Naturally this is not a conscious, intellectual process.

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The Theory of Psychoanalysis
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 4 weeks ago
In the Greek conception of parrhesia......

In the Greek conception of parrhesia... truth-having is guaranteed by the possession of... moral qualities... required... to know... and... convey such truth...

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 3 weeks ago
Faith exalts the human heart, by...

Faith exalts the human heart, by removing it from the market-place, making it sacred and unexchangeable. Under the jurisdiction of religion our deeper feelings are sacralized, so as to become raw material for the ethical life: the life lived in judgement.

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"Avant-garde and Kitsch" (p. 91)
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
5 months 1 day ago
They do not know the penalty...

They do not know the penalty of unrighteousness, which is the thing they most ought to know. For it is not what they think it is scourgings and death, which they sometimes escape entirely when they have done wrong but a penalty which it is impossible to escape. Two patterns, my friend, are set up in the world, the divine, which is most blessed, and the godless, which is most wretched, and their silliness and extreme foolishness blind them to the fact that through their unrighteous acts they are made like the one and unlike the other. They therefore pay the penalty for this by living a life that conforms to the pattern they resemble.

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Philosophical Maxims
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the first place for over...

In the first place for over two centuries religion has been on the defensive, and on a weak defensive. The result of the repetition of this undignified retreat, during many generations, has at last almost entirely destroyed the intellectual authority of religious thinkers. Consider this contrast: when Darwin or Einstein proclaim theories which modify our ideas, it is a triumph for science. We do not go about saying that there is another defeat for science, because its old ideas have been abandoned. We know that another step of scientific insight has been gained.Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development.

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Ch. 12: "Religion and Science", p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months ago
The unconscious is not just evil...

The unconscious is not just evil by nature, it is also the source of the highest good: not only dark but also light, not only bestial, semihuman, and demonic but superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, "divine."

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The Practice of Psychotherapy, p. 364
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 weeks ago
Anyone who proposes to do good...

Anyone who proposes to do good must not expect people to roll stones out of his way, but must accept his lot calmly if they even roll a few more upon it. A strength which becomes clearer and stronger through its experience of such obstacles is the only strength that can conquer them. Resistance is only a waste of strength.

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p. 164
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 4 days ago
The march of the human mind...

The march of the human mind is slow.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
2 months 3 weeks ago
Progress, far from consisting in change,...

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. This famous statement has produced many paraphrases and variants: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember their past are condemned to repeat their mistakes. Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it. Those who fail to learn from the mistakes of their predecessors are destined to repeat them. Those who do not know history's mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

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There is a similar quote by Edmund Burke (in Revolution in France) that often leads to misattribution: "People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors."
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
2 weeks ago
We await the Indian thinker who...

We await the Indian thinker who will expound to us the mysticism of spiritual union with infinite Being as it is in itself, not as it is set down in the ancient texts or according to the meaning read into them by their interpreters. It belongs to the nature of mysticism that it is timeless and appeals to no other authority than that of the truth which it carries within it. The pathway from imperfect to perfect recognised truth leads through the valley of reality.

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Ch. XVI : Looking Backward and Forward, p. 256
Philosophical Maxims
Parmenides
Parmenides
3 months 3 weeks ago
Never will this prevail, that the...

Never will this prevail, that the things that are not are - bar your thought from this road of inquiry.

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Frag. B 7.1-2, quoted by Plato, Sophist, 237a
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
2 months 3 weeks ago
So long as you "have" yourself,...

So long as you "have" yourself, have yourself as an object, your experience of man is only as of a thing among things.

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p. 148
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 days ago
I tell you in truth: all...

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
3 months 3 weeks ago
He said they that were serious...

He said they that were serious in ridiculous matters would be ridiculous in serious affairs.

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Cato the Elder
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 4 days 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
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 week ago
For the inquisition of Final Causes...

For the inquisition of Final Causes is barren, and like a virgin consecrated to God produces nothing.

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Book III, viii
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 days ago
I say a murder is abstract....

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

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Act 5, sc. 2
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 1 week ago
Human knowledge increases, while human irrationality...

Human knowledge increases, while human irrationality stays the same. Scientific inquiry may be an embodiment of reason, but what such inquiry demonstrates is that humans are not rational animals. The fact that humanists refuse to accept the demonstration only confirms its truth.

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An Old Chaos: Humanism and Flying Saucers (p. 81)
Philosophical Maxims
Cornel West
Cornel West
3 months 4 weeks ago
You can't lead the people if...

You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people, if you don't serve the people.

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Hope on a Tightrope: Words and Wisdom (2008); also on "The Way I See It" Starbucks Coffee Cup #284
Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
1 month 1 week ago
Today, status quo bias runs deep....

Today, status quo bias runs deep. Conservation biology is an ideology masquerading as a science. Many researchers seek to extend the tenets of conservation biology to humans. By contrast, a benevolent superintelligence might view Darwinian life on Earth as an infestation of biological malware and act accordingly. The amount of suffering caused by Homo sapiens is hard to quantify. But the suffering is immense and growing daily with the spread of industrialised animal abuse. Reply to "Why would someone want to end humanity?"

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, Quora, 10 Mar. 2018
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 2 weeks ago
Power is not opposed to freedom....

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
3 months 3 weeks ago
Wealth and poverty do not lie...

Wealth and poverty do not lie in a person's estate, but in their souls.

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iv. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Schmitt
Carl Schmitt
2 days ago
The metaphysical image that a definite...

The metaphysical image that a definite epoch forges of the world has the same structure as what the world immediately understands to be appropriate as a form of its political organization.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 day ago
Political Freedom without economic equality is...

Political Freedom without economic equality is a pretense, a fraud, a lie; and the workers want no lying.

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The Red Association
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
May we not say, perhaps, that...

May we not say, perhaps, that the evil man is annihilated because he wished to be annihilated, or that he did not wish strongly enough to eternalize himself because he was evil? May we say that it is not believing in the other life which causes a man to be good, but rather that being good causes him believe in it? And what is being good and being evil? These states belong to the sphere of ethics, not of religion; or rather, does not the doing good though being evil pertain to ethics, and the being good [forgivable] though doing evil, to religion?

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Philosophical Maxims
Zoroaster
Zoroaster
3 months 3 weeks ago
Unto Thee, O Lord, the Soul...

Unto Thee, O Lord, the Soul of Creation cried: "For whom didst Thou create me, and who so fashioned me? Feuds and fury, violence and the insolence of might have oppressed me; None have I to protect me save Thee; Command for me then the blessings of a settled, peaceful life."

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Ahunuvaiti Gatha; Yasna 29, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
5 months ago
Then we understand that rebellion cannot...

Then we understand that rebellion cannot exist without a strange form of love. Those who find no rest in God or in history are condemned to live for those who, like themselves, cannot live; in fact, for the humiliated.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
I prefer to reach the few...

I prefer to reach the few who really want to learn, rather than the many who come to be amused.

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Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
2 months 3 weeks ago
A word is a bud attempting...

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

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Introduction, sect. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months ago
The meeting of two personalities is...

The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.

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p. 49
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 4 days ago
Granted that any practice causes more...

Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.

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Dr. Whewell on Moral Philosophy (1852), in Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical, vol. 2, London: John W. Parker and son, 1859, p. 485
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
In the root of the word...

In the root of the word "faith" itself... there is implicit the idea of confidence, of surrender to the will of another, to a person. Confidence is placed only in persons. We trust in Providence, which we perceive as something personal and conscious, not in Fate, which is something impersonal. And thus it is in the person who tells us the truth, in the person that gives us hope, that we believe, not directly or immediately in truth itself or in hope itself.

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Philosophical Maxims
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