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Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 2 days ago
All things are the same,-familiar in...

All things are the same,-familiar in enterprise, momentary in endurance, coarse in substance. All things now are as they were in the day of those whom we have buried.

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IX, 14
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Wealth begins in a tight roof...

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits of clothes, so to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn; in a good double-wick lamp; and three meals; in a horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tolls and auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and knowledge, and good-will.Wealth begins with these articles of necessity.

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Wealth
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 2 weeks ago
The interpretation of a case is...

The interpretation of a case is corroborated only by the successful continuation of a self-formative process, that is by the completion of self-reflection, and not in any unmistakable way by what the patient says or how he behaves.

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p. 266
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton
2 months 3 weeks ago
I do not know what I...

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

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Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27).
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
3 months 1 day ago
One cannot be deeply responsive to...

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

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ABC TV
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
The belief in a political Utopia...

The belief in a political Utopia is especially dangerous. This is possibly connected with the fact that the search for a better world, like the investigation of our environment, is (if I am correct) one of the oldest and most important of all the instincts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 2 weeks ago
The inclination to act as the...

The inclination to act as the laws command, a virtue, is a synthesis in which the law ... loses its universality and the subject its particularity; both lose their opposition, while in the Kantian conception of virtue this opposition remains, and the universal becomes the master and the particular the mastered.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 1 week ago
I was still "at the church...

I was still "at the church door". Yet in belief, in the clarification of my philosophy, I had taken an important step. I no longer wavered between alternative views of the world, to be put on or taken off like alternative plays at the theatre. I now saw that there was only one possible play, the actual history of nature and of mankind, although there might well be ghosts among the characters and soliloquies among the speeches. Religions, all religions, and idealistic philosophies, all idealistic philosophies, were the soliloquies and the ghosts. They might be eloquent and profound. Like Hamlet's soliloquy they might be excellent reflective criticisms of the play as a whole. Nevertheless they were only parts of it, and their value as criticisms lay entirely in their fidelity to the facts, and to the sentiments which those facts aroused in the critic.

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p. 169
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is unjust to call imaginary...

It is unjust to call imaginary the diseases which are, on the contrary, only too real, since they proceed from our mind, the only regulator of our equilibrium and our health.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
The law of causality, I believe,...

The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

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Ch. 9: On the Notion of Cause
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 3 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
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
Merit is a work for the...

Merit is a work for the sake of which Christ gives rewards. But no such work is to be found, for Christ gives by promise. Just as if a prince should say to me, "Come to me in my castle, and I will give you a hundred florins." I do a work, certainly, in going to the castle, but the gift is not given me as the reward of my work in going, but because the prince promised it to me.

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p. 409
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
4 months 4 weeks ago
Anyone who actually admires money as...

Anyone who actually admires money as the most precious thing in life, and rests his security on it to the extent of believing that as long as he possesses it he will be happy, has fashioned too many false gods for himself. Too many people put money in the place of Christ, as if it alone has the key to their happiness or unhappiness.

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p. 100
Philosophical Maxims
Gottlob frege
Gottlob frege
3 months 1 week ago
Is it always permissible to speak...

Is it always permissible to speak of the extension of a concept, of a class? And if not, how do we recognize the exceptional cases? Can we always infer from the extension of one concept's coinciding with that of a second, that every object which falls under the first concept also falls under the second?

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Vol. 2, p. 127. Replying to Bertrand Russell's letter about Russell's Paradox; quoted in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 weeks 5 days ago
The line that connects the bombing...

The line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed by strip mining ... to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight. We're living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare - warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.

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Commencement address at Lindsey Wilson College
Philosophical Maxims
Xunzi
Xunzi
1 month 2 weeks ago
A person who is transformed by...

A person who is transformed by the instructions of a teacher, devotes himself to study, and abides by ritual and rightness may become a noble person, while one who follows his nature and emotions, is content to give free play to his passions, and abandons ritual and rightness is a lesser person.

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Sources of Chinese Tradition (1999), vol. 1, p. 180
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
2 weeks 5 days ago
One of the roots of the...

One of the roots of the problem is the focus of environmentalists. The conservation movement, for one hundred years, has, at least in this country, focused on wilderness preservation-places of spectacular rocks and waterfalls-at the expense of what I would call the "economic landscapes" of farming, forestry, and mining.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
2 weeks 6 days ago
Behind all appearances, I divine a...

Behind all appearances, I divine a struggling essence. I want to merge with it. I feel that behind appearances this struggling essence is also striving to merge with my heart. But the body stands between us and separates us. The mind stands between us and separates us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
In science men have discovered an...

In science men have discovered an activity of the very highest value in which they are no longer, as in art, dependent for progress upon the appearance of continually greater genius, for in science the successors stand upon the shoulders of their predecessors; where one man of supreme genius has invented a method, a thousand lesser men can apply it.

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Ch. 2: The Place of Science in a Liberal Education
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
I found one day in school...

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: "The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that's fair." In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.

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p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 3 weeks ago
A common monetary standard will be...

A common monetary standard will be established, with the consent of the various governments, by which industrial transactions will be greatly facilitated. Three spheres made respectively of gold, silver, and platinum, and each weighing fifty grammes, would differ sufficiently in value for the purpose. The sphere should have a small flattened base, and on the great circle parallel to it the Positivist motto would be inscribed. At the pole would be the image of the immortal Charlemagne, the founder of the Western Republic, and round the image his name would be engraved, in its Latin form, Carolus; that name, respected as it is by all nations of Europe alike, would be the common appellation of the universal monetary standard.

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p. 430
Philosophical Maxims
David Wood
David Wood
1 month 4 weeks ago
To say that all philosophy is...

To say that all philosophy is writing is, minimally, to say that it is never the transparent expression of thought.

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Chapter 3, Deconstruction and Criticism, p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 2 weeks ago
The circle of day and night...

The circle of day and night is the law of the classical world: the most restricted but most demanding of the necessities of the world, the most inevitable but the simplest of the legislations of nature.This was a law that excluded all dialectics and all reconciliation, consequently laying the foundations for the smooth unity of knowledge as well as the uncompromising division of tragic existence. It reigns on a world without darkness, which knows neither effusiveness nor the gentle charms of lyricism. All is waking or dreams, truth or error, the light of being or the nothingness of shadow.

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Part Two: 2. The Transcendence of Delirium
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
3 months 5 days ago
Rome is the Great Beast of...

Rome is the Great Beast of atheism and materialism, adoring nothing but itself. Israel is the Great Beast of religion. Neither one nor the other is likable. The Great Beast is always repulsive.

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p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 4 weeks ago
I know nothing.....
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Main Content / General
Alfred North Whitehead
Alfred North Whitehead
3 months 4 days ago
I have always noticed that deeply...

I have always noticed that deeply and truly religious persons are fond of a joke, and I am suspicious of those who aren't.

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As quoted in Church and Home, Vol. 1 (1964) by United Methodist Church, and Evangelical United Brethren Church, p. 21.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
All-powerful god, who am I but...

All-powerful god, who am I but the fear that I inspire in others?

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King Aegistheus to Jupiter, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 2 weeks ago
The very man who has argued...

The very man who has argued you down will sometimes be found, years later, to have been influenced by what you said.

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Reflections on the Psalms (1958), ch. VII: Connivance, p. 73
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Mahomet can work no miracles; he...

Mahomet can work no miracles; he often answers impatiently: I can work no miracles. I? "I am a Public Preacher;" appointed to preach this doctrine to all creatures. Yet the world, as we can see, had really from of old been all one great miracle to him. Look over the world, says he; is it not wonderful, the work of Allah; wholly "a sign to you," if your eyes were open!

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Philosophical Maxims
Ian Hacking
Ian Hacking
2 months 3 weeks ago
Probability fractions arise from our knowledge...

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.

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Chapter 14, Equipossibility, p. 132.
Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
4 months 2 weeks ago
All affected can accept the consequences...

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation.

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p. 65
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
A great profusion of things, which...

A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our idea of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

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Part II Section XIII
Philosophical Maxims
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
2 months 2 weeks ago
There is certainly some chill and...

There is certainly some chill and arid knowledge to be found upon the summits of formal and laborious science; but it is all round about you, and for the trouble of looking, that you will acquire the warm and palpitating facts of life.

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An Apology for Idlers.
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
5 months 2 weeks ago
Perhaps then we must begin with...

Perhaps then we must begin with such facts as are known to us from individual experience. It is necessary therefore that the person who is to study, with any tolerable chance of profit, the principles of nobleness and justice and politics generally, should have received a good moral training.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 1 week ago
Whoso belongs only to his own...

Whoso belongs only to his own age, and reverences only its gilt Popinjays or smoot-smeared Mumbojumbos, must needs die with it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 weeks ago
Men that look no further than...

Men that look no further than their outsides, think health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that fabric hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can die but once.

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Section 44 Compare: "I know death hath ten thousand several doors / For men to take their exits.", John Webster, Duchess of Malfi (1623); Act IV, scene ii.
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The world is his, who has...

The world is his, who has money to go over it.

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Wealth
Philosophical Maxims
Gilles Deleuze
Gilles Deleuze
2 months 4 weeks ago
It is at work everywhere, functioning...

It is at work everywhere, functioning smoothly at times, at other times in fits and starts. It breathes, it heats, it eats. It shits and fucks. What a mistake to have ever said the id. Everywhere it is machines - real ones, not figurative ones: machines driving other machines, machines being driven by other machines, with all the necessary couplings and connections. from Anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia,

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p. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 months 1 week ago
Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries...

Tocqueville predicted that in democratic countries the public would demand larger and larger doses of excitement and increasingly stronger stimulants from its writers. He probably did not expect that public to dramatize itself so extensively, to make the world scene everybody's theatre, or, in the developed countries, to take to alcohol and drugs in order to get relief from the horrors of ceaseless intensity, the torment of thrills and distractions. A great many writers have done little more than meet the mounting demand for thrills. I think that this demand has, in the language of marketing, peaked.

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The Distracted Public
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 weeks ago
The thought is the significant proposition....

The thought is the significant proposition.

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(4) Original German: Der Gedanke ist der sinnvolle Satz.
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
3 months 2 weeks ago
It is comparatively easy for the...

It is comparatively easy for the philosopher in his closet to invent imaginary schemes of policy, and to shew how mankind, if they were without passions and without prejudices, might best be united in the form of a political community. But, unfortunately, men in all ages are the creatures of passions, perpetually prompting them to defy the rein, and break loose from the dictates of sobriety and speculation.

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History of the Commonwealth of England. From its Commencement, to the Restoration of Charles the Second. Volume the Fourth. Oliver, Lord Protector (1828), p. 579
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
2 months 3 weeks ago
Once animals had a more sacred,...

Once animals had a more sacred, more divine character than men. There is not even a reign of the "human" in primitive societies, and for a long time the animal order has been the order of reference. Only the animal is worth being sacrificed, as a god, the sacrifice of man only comes afterward, according to a degraded order. Men qualify only by their affiliation to the animal: the Bororos "are" macaws. "

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The Animals: Territory and Metamorphoses," p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
4 weeks ago
One indeed is the Creator of...

One indeed is the Creator of all things, but many are the creative powers revolving in the heavens; we must, therefore, place the influence of the Sun as intermediate with respect to each single operation affecting the earth. Moreover, the principle productive of Life is vastly superabundant in the Intelligible World; our world, also, is evidently full of generative life. It is therefore clear that the life-producing power of the sovereign Sun is intermediate between these two, since the phenomena of Nature bear testimony to the fact; for some kinds of things the Sun brings to perfection, others of them he brings to pass, others he regulates, others he excites, and there exists nothing that, without the creative influence of the Sun, comes to light and is born.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
Valor withers….

Valor withers without adversity.

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De Providentia (On Providence), 2.4
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is no man alone, because...

There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.

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Section 10
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
3 months 2 weeks ago
Hegel ... proceeds abstractly from the...

Hegel ... proceeds abstractly from the pre-existence of the intellect. ... He does not appeal to the intellect within us.

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Z. Hanfi, trans., in The Fiery Brook (1972), p. 68
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 weeks 2 days ago
Always take the short cut; and...

Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.

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IV, 51
Philosophical Maxims
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
1 month ago
Proverbs about truth are well-loved in...

Proverbs about truth are well-loved in Russian. They give steady and sometimes striking expression to the not inconsiderable harsh national experience: ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD. And it is here, on an imaginary fantasy, a breach of the principle of the conservation of mass and energy, that I base both my own activity and my appeal to the writers of the whole world.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month 4 days ago
Why does...

Why does God afflict the best of men with ill-health, or sorrow, or other troubles? Because in the army the most hazardous services are assigned to the bravest soldiers: a general sends his choicest troops to attack the enemy in a midnight ambuscade, to reconnoitre his line of march, or to drive the hostile garrisons from their strong places. No one of these men says as he begins his march, " The general has dealt hardly with me," but "He has judged well of me."

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De Providentia (On Providence), 4.8, translated by Aubrey Stewart
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
In particular, at this point also...

In particular, at this point also urge governing authorities and parents to rule well and to send their children to school. Point out how they are obliged to do so and what a damnable sin they commit if they do not, for thereby, as the worst enemies of God and humanity, they overthrow and lay waste both the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world. Explain very clearly what kind of horrible damage they do when they do not help to train children as pastors, preachers, civil servants, etc., and tell them that God will punish them dreadfully for this. For in our day and age it is necessary to preach about these things. The extent to which parents and governing authorities are now sinning in these matters defies description. The devil, too, intends to do something horrible in all this.

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Foreword to the small catechismus, as quoted in the Preface, The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church (2000) by Robert Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, p. 19
Philosophical Maxims
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