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Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
8 months 1 week ago
A process which led from the...

A process which led from the amœba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress - though whether the amœba would agree with this opinion is not known.

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Ch. 1: Mysticism and Logic
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
8 months 2 weeks ago
If the slavery of the parents...

If the slavery of the parents be unjust, much more is their children's; if the parents were justly slaves, yet the children are born free; this is the natural, perfect right of all mankind; they are nothing but a just recompense to those who bring them up: And as much less is commonly spent on them than others, they have a right, in justice, to be proportionably sooner free.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
7 months 5 days ago
And hereby it comes to passe,...

And hereby it comes to passe, that Intemperance, is naturally punished with Diseases; Rashness, with Mischance; Injustice; with Violence of Enemies; Pride, with Ruine; Cowardice, with Oppression; Negligent government of Princes, with Rebellion; and Rebellion with Slaughter.

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The Second Part, Chapter 31, p. 194
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
8 months 1 week ago
Your church is a whore: she...

Your church is a whore: she sells her favors to the rich.

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Act 1
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
8 months 2 weeks ago
The world neither ever saw, nor...

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

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Chapter X, Part I.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
7 months 1 week ago
I see not the shadow of...

I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

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-26
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
6 months 3 weeks ago
It is true that parents today...

It is true that parents today are learning to enhance the physical qualities of their children. But their minds and characters they cannot mould. The antiquated system of education and our perverse social influences unfortunately do that. In view of the numerous misfit and marred children these institutions have created, I am quite content not to have contributed any of my own.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
4 months 3 weeks ago
A trifling debt…

A trifling debt makes a man your debtor; a large one makes him an enemy.

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Line 11.
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
8 months 1 week ago
Technically speaking, since our complex societies...

Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

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Habermas (2004) in: Giovanna Borradori (2004) Philosophy in a Time of Terror: : Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. p. 34
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
4 months 3 weeks ago
Awakening of Western thought will not...

Awakening of Western thought will not be complete until that thought steps outside itself and comes to an understanding with the search for a world-view as this manifests itself in the thought of mankind as a whole. We have too long been occupied with the developing series of our own philosophical systems, and have taken no notice of the fact that there is a world-philosophy of which our Western philosophy is only a part. If, however, one conceives philosophy as being a struggle to reach a view of the world as a whole, and seeks out the elementary convictions which are to deepen it and give it a sure foundation, one cannot avoid setting our own thought face to face with that of the Hindus, and of the Chinese in the Far East. ... Our Western philosophy, if judged by its own latest pronouncements, is much naiver than we admit to ourselves, and we fail to perceive this only because we have acquired the art of expressing what is simple in a pedantic way.

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Philosophical Maxims
Rosa Luxemburg
Rosa Luxemburg
4 months 1 week ago
Militarism in both its forms -...

Militarism in both its forms - as war and as armed peace - is a legitimate child, a logical result of capitalism, which can only be overcome with the destruction of capitalism, and that hence whoever honestly desires world peace and liberation from the tremendous burden of armaments must also desire Socialism. Only in this way can real Social Democratic enlightenment and recruiting be carried on in connection with the armaments debate.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
6 months 1 week ago
More generally it is completely unrealistic...

More generally it is completely unrealistic to claim, as Gould and many others do, that religion keeps itself away from science's turf, restricting itself to morals and values. A universe with a supernatural presence would be a fundamentally and qualitatively different kind of universe from one without. The difference is, inescapably, a scientific difference. Religions make existence claims, and this means scientific claims.

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When Religion Steps on Science's Turf, Free Inquiry
Philosophical Maxims
Ernest Renan
Ernest Renan
5 months 1 week ago
The regeneration of the inferior…

The regeneration of the inferior or bastard races by the superior ones is consistent with God's plans for humanity. The man of the people, in our countries, is always a fallen aristocrat; his hands are made to handle the sword rather than the laborer's tools. He prefers warring to working, that is, he returns to his original calling.

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93, as translated by Asselin Charles, in "Colonial Discourse Since Christopher Columbus," Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2 (November 1995), 147
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
8 months 2 weeks ago
My opinion concerning God differs widely...

My opinion concerning God differs widely from that which is ordinarily defended by modern Christians. For I hold that God is of all things the cause immanent, as the phrase is, not transient. I say that all things are in God and move in God, thus agreeing with Paul, and, perhaps, with all the ancient philosophers, though the phraseology may be different ; I will even venture to affirm that I agree with all the ancient Hebrews, in so far as one may judge from their traditions, though these are in many ways corrupted. The supposition of some, that I endeavour to prove in the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus the unity of God and Nature (meaning by the latter a certain mass or corporeal matter), is wholly erroneous. As regards miracles, I am of opinion that the revelation of God can only be established by the wisdom of the doctrine, not by miracles, or in other words by ignorance.

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Letter 21 (73) to Henry Oldenburg , November
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
8 months 2 weeks ago
If you are a preacher of...

If you are a preacher of mercy, do not preach an imaginary but the true mercy. If the mercy is true, you must therefore bear the true, not an imaginary sin. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong (sin boldly), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. We, however, says Peter (2. Peter 3:13) are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth where justice will reign.

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Letter 99, Paragraph 13. Erika Bullmann Flores, Tr. from: Dr. Martin Luther's Saemmtliche SchriftenDr. Johann Georg Walch Ed. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, N.D.), Vol. 15, cols. 2585-2590.
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
4 months 3 weeks ago
We say in popular speech that...

We say in popular speech that we come into this world, but we do nothing of the kind. We come out of it. In the same way as the fruit comes out of the tree, the egg from the chicken, and the baby from the womb, we are symptomatic of the universe. Just as in the retina there are myriads of little nerve endings, we are the nerve endings of the universe.

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p. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Anaxagoras
Anaxagoras
8 months 2 days ago
Thought is something limitless and independent,...

Thought is something limitless and independent, and has been mixed with no thing but is alone by itself. ... What was mingled with it would have prevented it from having power over anything in the way in which it does. ... For it is the finest of all things and the purest.

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Frag. B12, in Jonathan Barnes, Early Greek Philosophy (1984), p. 190.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
6 months 1 week ago
The river of my title is...

The river of my title is a river of DNA, and it flows through time, not space. It is a river of information, not a river of bones and tissues.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
7 months 1 week ago
Difficulty is a severe instructor, set...

Difficulty is a severe instructor, set over us by the supreme ordinance of a parental Guardian and Legislator, who knows us better than we know ourselves, as he loves us better too. Pater ipse colendi haud facilem esse viam voluit. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

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Volume iii, p. 453
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
8 months 1 week ago
I can imagine no man who...

I can imagine no man who will look with more horror on the End than a conscientious revolutionary who has, in a sense sincerely, been justifying cruelties and injustices inflicted on millions of his contemporaries by the benefits which he hopes to confer on future generations: generations who, as one terrible moment now reveals to him, were never going to exist. Then he will see the massacres, the faked trials, the deportations, to be all ineffaceably real, an essential part, his part, in the drama that has just ended: while the future Utopia had never been anything but a fantasy.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
8 months 4 weeks ago
We were ensnared by the wisdom...

We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God.

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1:14 Latin: Serpentis sapientia decepti sumus, Dei stultitia liberamur.
Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
9 months 1 week ago
Neither perception nor true opinion, nor...

Neither perception nor true opinion, nor reason or explanation combined with true opinion could be knowledge. Then our art of midwifery declare to us that all the offspring that have been born are mere wind-eggs and not worth rearing and if you remain barren, you will be less harsh and gentler to your associates, for you will have the wisdom not to think you know that which you do not know.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edward Said
Edward Said
6 months 3 weeks ago
The intellectual's spirit as an amateur...

The intellectual's spirit as an amateur can enter and transform the merely professional routine most of us go through into something much more lively and radical; instead of doing what one is supposed to do one can ask why one does it, who benefits from it, how can it reconnect with a personal project and original thoughts.

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p. 83
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
8 months 1 week ago
The man who comes back through...

The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less cocksure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable Mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend.

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Page 191
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
5 months 3 days ago
Luther's merit in literary history is...

Luther's merit in literary history is of the greatest: his dialect became the language of all writing. They are not well written, these Four-and-twenty Quartos of his; written hastily, with quite other than literary objects. But in no Books have I found a more robust, genuine, I will say noble faculty of a man than in these. A rugged honesty, homeliness, simplicity; a rugged sterling sense and strength. He dashes out illumination from him; his smiting idiomatic phrases seem to cleave into the very secret of the matter. Good humor too, nay tender affection, nobleness and depth: this man could have been a Poet too! He had to work an Epic Poem, not write one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
8 months 1 week ago
Ironclads and Maxim guns must be...

Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.

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Quoted in The Edinburgh Review: Or Critical Journal, Vol. 209 (1909), p. 387
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
8 months 1 week ago
Water and navigation had that role...

Water and navigation had that role to play. Locked in the ship from which he could not escape, the madman was handed over to the thousand-armed river, to the sea where all paths cross, and the great uncertainty that surrounds all things. A prisoner in the midst of the ultimate freedom, on the most open road of all, chained solidly to the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence, the prisoner of the passage. It is not known where he will land, and when he lands, he knows not whence he came. His truth and his home are the barren wasteland between two lands that can never be his own. One thing is certain: the link between water and madness is deeply rooted in the dream of the Western man.

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Part One: 1. Stultifera Navis
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
7 months 1 week ago
The pursuit of individual happiness within...

The pursuit of individual happiness within those limits prescribed by social conditions, is the first requisite to the attainment of the greatest general happiness.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 70, pp. 190-191
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
8 months 1 week ago
It is time to be old,...

It is time to be old, To take in sail: - The god of bounds, Who sets to seas a shore, Came to me in his fatal rounds, And said: 'No more!

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Terminus
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
6 months 2 weeks ago
Advancing bourgeois society...
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John Searle
John Searle
6 months 2 weeks ago
In the performance of an illocutionary...

In the performance of an illocutionary act in the literal utterance of a sentence, the speaker intends to produce a certain effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect; and furthermore, if he is using the words literally, he intends this recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the rules for using the expressions he utters associate the expression with the production of that effect.

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P. 45.
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
7 months 3 weeks ago
Power is the near neighbour of...

Power is the near neighbour of necessity.

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As quoted in Aurea Carmina (8) by Hierocles of Alexandria, as translated in Dictionary of Quotations (1906) by Thomas Benfield Harbottle, p. 356
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
8 months 2 weeks ago
The trade of insurance gives great...

The trade of insurance gives great security to the fortunes of private people, and by dividing among a great many that loss which would ruin an individual, makes it fall light and easy upon the whole society.

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Chapter I, Part III, p. 821.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
8 months 2 weeks ago
It should be noted that children...

It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity. Variants: It should be noted that the games of children are not games, and must be considered as their most serious actions. For truly it is to be noted, that children's plays are not sports, and should be deemed as their most serious actions.

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Book I, Ch. 23
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
8 months 2 weeks ago
In true education, anything that comes...

In true education, anything that comes to our hand is as good as a book: the prank of a page-boy, the blunder of a servant, a bit of table talk- they are all part of the curriculum.

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The Autobiography of Michel de Montaigne, Chapter III, pg. 24 (Translated by Marvin Lowenthal
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
8 months 3 weeks ago
The human understanding is moved by...

The human understanding is moved by those things most which strike and enter the mind simultaneously and suddenly, and so fill the imagination; and then it feigns and supposes all other things to be somehow, though it cannot see how, similar to those few things by which it is surrounded.

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Aphorism 47
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
8 months 2 weeks ago
Writing does not cause misery. It...

Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
6 months 4 weeks ago
If anyone possesses this faculty, then...

If anyone possesses this faculty, then his attention is in reality directed beyond the world, whether he is aware of it or not. The link which attaches the human being to the reality outside the world is, like the reality itself, beyond the reach of human faculties. The respect that it makes us feel as soon as it is recognized cannot be shown to us by evidence or testimony.

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Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
7 months 1 week ago
To romanticize the world is to...

To romanticize the world is to make us aware of the magic, mystery and wonder of the world; it is to educate the senses to see the ordinary as extraordinary, the familiar as strange, the mundane as sacred, the finite as infinite.

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As quoted in "Bildung in Early German Romanticism" by Frederick C. Beiser, in Philosophers on Education : Historical Perspectives (1998) by Amélie Rorty, p. 294
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
7 months 5 days ago
At the classical origins of philosophic...

At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.

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pp. 134-135
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
8 months 2 days ago
At times the world….

At times the world sees straight, but many times the world goes astray.

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Book II, epistle i, line 63
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
8 months 1 week ago
If you tried to doubt...

If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
7 months 1 week ago
Whatever is supreme in a state,...

Whatever is supreme in a state, ought to have, as much as possible, its judicial authority so constituted as not only not to depend upon it, but in some sort to balance it. It ought to give a security to its justice against its power. It ought to make its judicature, as it were, something exterior to the state.

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Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
8 months 3 weeks ago
Do not be guilty of possessing...

Do not be guilty of possessing a library of learned books while lacking learning yourself.

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Letter to Christian Northoff (1497), as translated in Collected Works of Erasmus (1974), p. 115
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
7 months 4 days ago
If one examines the reason why...

If one examines the reason why certain works of art offend us, one is likely to find that the cause is that there is no personally felt emotion guiding the selecting the assembling of the materials presented. We derive the impression that the artist, say the author of a novel, is trying to regulate by conscious intent the nature of the emotion aroused. We are irritated by a feeling that he is manipulating materials to secure an effect decided upon in advance. The facets of the work, the variety so indispensable to it, are held together by some external force. The movement of the parts and the conclusion disclose no logical necessity. The author, not the subject matter, is the arbiter.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
5 months 3 days ago
My father's education was altogether of...

My father's education was altogether of the worst and most limited. I believe he was never more than three months at any school. What he learned there showed what he might have learned. A solid knowledge of arithmetic, a fine antique handwriting - these, with other limited practical etceteras, were all the things he ever heard mentioned as excellent. He had no room to strive for more.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
8 months 2 weeks ago
The good King of France desires...

The good King of France desires only that you would take his word and let him be quiet till he has got the West Indies into his hands and his grandson well established in Spain, and then you may be sure you shall be as safe as he will let you be in your religion, property and trade, to all which who can be such an infidel as not to believe him a great friend?

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Letter to Peter King (5 April 1701), quoted in Maurice Cranston, John Locke: A Biography (1957; 1985), p. 452
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
7 months 1 week ago
I am a strange compound of...

I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind - my wayward heart creates its own misery - Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child - long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

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Undated letter to Joseph Johnson (October? 1792), published in The Collected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraft (2004), edited by Janet Todd, p. 206.
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
8 months 3 weeks ago
They [theologians] will explain to...

They [theologians] will explain to you how Christ was formed in the Virgin's womb; how accident subsists in synaxis without domicile in place. The most ordinary of them can do this. Those more fully initiated explain further whether there is an instans in Divine generation; whether in Christ there is more than a single filiation; whether 'the Father hates the Son' is a possible proposition; whether God can become the substance of a woman, of an ass, of a pumpkin, or of the devil, and whether, if so, a pumpkin could preach a sermon, or work miracles, or be crucified. And they can discover a thousand other things to you besides these. They will make you understand notions, and instants, formalities, and quiddities, things which no eyes ever saw, unless they were eyes which could see in the dark what had no existence.

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as quoted by Froude ibid.,
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
8 months 4 weeks ago
If you believe what you like...

If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don't like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.

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Earliest attribution found in Who Said That?: More than 2,500 Usable Quotes and Illustrations (1995) by George Sweeting. Online sources always attribute the quote to Augustine, but never specify in which of his works it is to be found.
Philosophical Maxims
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