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C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 2 weeks ago
God made us: invented us as...

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself.

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Book II, Chapter 3, "The Shocking Alternative"
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 2 weeks ago
Science may be described as the...

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification - the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

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The Open Universe : An Argument for Indeterminism (1992), p. 44
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months 3 weeks ago
No man can justly censure or...

No man can justly censure or condemn another, because indeed no man truly knows another.

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Section 4
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 4 days ago
The tool....
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John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 weeks ago
For my own part, not believing...

For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 2 weeks ago
Ideas do not exist….

Ideas do not exist separately from language.

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Notebook I, The Chapter on Money, p. 83.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
The only government that I recognize-and...

The only government that I recognize-and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army - is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 days ago
So the wise man will develop...

So the wise man will develop virtue, if he may, in the midst of wealth, or, if not, in poverty; if possible, in his own country-if not, in exile; if possible, as a commander-if not, as a common soldier; if possible, in sound health-if not, enfeebled. Whatever fortune he finds, he will accomplish therefrom something noteworthy.

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Philosophical Maxims
David Pearce
David Pearce
3 weeks 5 days ago
When one is gripped by excruciating...

When one is gripped by excruciating physical pain, one is always shocked at just how frightful it can be.

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"The Abolitionist Project", Talks given at the FHI (Oxford University) and the Charity International Happiness Conference, 2007
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 2 weeks ago
Condemn me if you choose -...

Condemn me if you choose - I do that myself, - but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is.

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"Letter to N.N.," quoted by Havelock Ellis in "The New Spirit" (1892) p. 226
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
...and if you are common, you...

...and if you are common, you can dress up as a woman, show you behind or write poems: there's nothing offensive about a naked behind if it's everybody's; each person will be mirrored in it.

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p. 463
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
Our psychological experiences are all equally...

Our psychological experiences are all equally facts. There is nothing to choose between them. No psychological experience is "truer," so far as we are concerned, than any other. For even if one should correspond more closely to things in themselves as perceived by some hypothetical non-human being, it would be impossible for us to discover which it was. Science is no "truer" than common sense, or lunacy, or art, or religion. It permits us to organize our experience profitably; but tells us nothing about the real nature of the world to which our experiences are supposed to refer. From the internal reality, by which I mean the totality of psychological experiences, it actually separates us. Art, for example, deals with many more aspects of this internal reality than does science, which confines itself deliberately and by convention to the study of one very limited class of experiences - the experiences of sense.

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"One and Many," p. 5-6
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
3 months 3 weeks ago
Music is a hidden….

Music is a hidden arithmetic exercise of the soul, which does not know that it is counting.

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Letter to Christian Goldbach, April 17, 1712.
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 2 weeks ago
Although meaningless in a tribal context,...

Although meaningless in a tribal context, numbers and statistics assume mythic and magical qualities of infallibility in literate societies.

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(p. 114)
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
4 months 2 weeks ago
I will not by suppression, or...

I will not by suppression, or by performing tricks, try to produce the impression that the ordinary Christianity in the land and the Christianity of the New Testament are alike. "What Do I Want?"

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 2 weeks ago
Freedom is what you do….

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 2 weeks ago
If the inner psychic ground of...

If the inner psychic ground of our individual appearance were not always the same, there could be no science of psychology, which qua science relies on a psychic "inside we are all alike," just as the science of physiology and medicine relies on the sameness of our inner organs. The monstrous sameness and pervasive ugliness so highly characteristic of the findings of modern psychology, and contrasting so obviously with the enormous variety and richness of overt human conduct, witness to the radical difference between the inside and the outside of the human body.

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pp. 34-35
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months ago
As to the objection that these...

As to the objection that these rules are common in the world, that it is necessary to define every thing and to prove every thing, and that logicians themselves have placed them among their art, I would that the thing were true and that it were so well known... But so little is this the case, that, geometricians alone excepted, who are so few in number that they are a single in a whole nation and long periods of time, we see no others that know it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 2 weeks ago
God said, I am tired of...

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

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Boston Hymn, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 weeks ago
While there are manners and compliments...

While there are manners and compliments we do not meet, we do not teach one another the lessons of honesty and sincerity that the brutes do, or of steadiness and solidity that the rocks do. The fault is commonly mutual, however; for we do not habitually demand any more of each other.

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p. 490
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 6 days ago
The object of oratory alone is...

The object of oratory alone is not truth, but persuasion.

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'On the Athenian Orators', Knight's Quarterly Magazine (August 1824), quoted in The Miscellaneous Writings of Lord Macaulay, Vol. I (1860), p. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months ago
Corruption of politics has nothing to...

Corruption of politics has nothing to do with the morals, or the laxity of morals, of various political personalities. Its cause is altogether a material one. Politics is the reflex of the business and industrial world, the mottos of which are: "To take is more blessed than to give"; "buy cheap and sell dear"; "one soiled hand washes the other." There is no hope even that woman, with her right to vote, will ever purify politics.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 days ago
Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so...

Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is not, so far as I am aware, inconsistent with any known biological fact; on the contrary, if admitted, the facts of Development, of Comparative Anatomy, of Geographical Distribution, and of Palaeontology, become connected together, and exhibit a meaning such as they never possessed before; and I, for one, am fully convinced that if not precisely true, that hypothesis is as near an approximation to the truth as, for example, the Copernican hypothesis was to the true theory of the planetary motions.

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Ch.2, p. 127
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 3 weeks ago
I want death to…

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

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Ch. 20. Of the Force of Imagination (tr. Donald M. Frame)
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month ago
We shall have to share out...

We shall have to share out the fruits of technology among the whole of mankind. The notion that the direct and immediate producers of the fruits of technology have a proprietary right to these fruits will have to be forgotten. After all, who is the producer? Man is a social animal, and the immediate producer has been helped to produce by the whole structure of society, beginning with his own education.

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Surviving the Future (1971; Oxford UP, 1972) p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 2 weeks ago
Such would be the successive phases...

Such would be the successive phases of the image:it is the reflection of a profound reality;it masks and denatures a profound reality;it masks the absence of a profound reality;it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.In the first case, the image is a good appearance-representation is of the sacramental order. In the second, it is an evil appearance-it is of the order of maleficence. In the third, it plays at being an appearance-it is of the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer of the order of appearances, but of simulation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
In democratic countries, the most important...

In democratic countries, the most important private organizations are economic. Unlike secret societies, they are able to exercize their terrorism without illegality, since they do not threaten to kill their enemies, but only to starve them.

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Ch. 12: Powers and forms of governments
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
The measure of a man...

The measure of a man is a man. Justice, morality, ethics, fairness, goodness all based on the preservation of life. You can do other things, but you'd be Good by coincidence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 3 weeks ago
Monopoly of one kind or another,...

Monopoly of one kind or another, indeed, seems to be the sole engine of the mercantile system.

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Chapter VII, Part Third, p. 684.
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
1 month 3 weeks ago
One cannot demand of a scholar...

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his way of judging a thing must even in the smallest matters be such that people can see what it will amount to when, quietly and self-collected, he puts this power to scholarly use.

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J 85
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 2 weeks ago
I should like to believe my...

I should like to believe my people's religion, which was just what I could wish, but alas, it is impossible. I have really no religion, for my God, being a spirit shown merely by reason to exist, his properties utterly unknown, is no help to my life. I have not the parson's comfortable doctrine that every good action has its reward, and every sin is forgiven. My whole religion is this: do every duty, and expect no reward for it, either here or hereafter.

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Greek Exercises (1888), written two days after his sixteenth birthday.
Philosophical Maxims
William Godwin
William Godwin
2 months 2 weeks ago
I took some pains to convince...

I took some pains to convince you that the Whigs, as a party in the state, were of the highest value to the public welfare, and constituted the party to which a liberal-minded and enlightened man would adhere.

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Letter to H. B. Rosser (7 March 1820), quoted in C. Kegan Paul, William Godwin: His Friends and Contemporaries, Vol. II (1876), p. 263
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 1 week ago
Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto...

Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the day of judgment, than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. But I say unto you, That it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee.

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11:21-24 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Paracelsus
Paracelsus
2 days ago
The art of medicine has its...

The art of medicine has its roots in the heart. If your heart is false, then also the doctor in you is false. If it is fair, then also the doctor is fair.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
There never, gentlemen, was a period...

There never, gentlemen, was a period in which the steadfastness of some men has been nut to so sore a trial. It is not very difficult for well-formed minds to abandon their interest; but the separation of fame and virtue is an harsh divorce. Liberty is in danger of being made unpopular to Englishmen. Contending for an imaginary power, we begin to acquire the spirit of domination, and to lose the relish of honest equality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ptahhotep
Ptahhotep
3 months 1 week ago
Do not repeat slander; you should...

Do not repeat slander; you should not hear it, for it is the result of hot temper.

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Maxim no. 23.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 1 week ago
When we see men of...

When we see men of worth, we should think of equaling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 2 days ago
In each separate thing that you...

In each separate thing that you do consider the matters which come first, and those which follow after, and only then approach the thing itself.

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Book III, ch. 15, 1 (= Enchiridion 29, 1).
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Fourier
Charles Fourier
1 week 6 days ago
The Turks teach women that they...

The Turks teach women that they have no souls, and are unworthy to enter paradise. The French would persuade them that they have no intellects, and are not made to engage in mental labors, and to tread the paths of art and science.

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The Theory of Social Organization
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
3 months 3 weeks ago
Exclusion....

You're either excluding the right people or including the wrong people.

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ComfortDragon
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
3 months 2 weeks ago
Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at...

Long discourses, and philosophical readings, at best, amaze and confound, but do not instruct children. When I say, therefore, that they must be treated as rational creatures, I mean that you must make them sensible, by the mildness of your carriage, and in the composure even in the correction of them, that what you do is reasonable in you, and useful and necessary for them; and that it is not out of caprichio, passion or fancy, that you command or forbid them any thing.

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Sec. 81
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nothing less will content me, than...

Nothing less will content me, than whole America.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 1 week ago
Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes...

Anxiety destroys scale, and suffering makes us lose perspective.

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The Sealed Treasure (1960), p. 62
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 2 weeks ago
The most important subject, and the...

The most important subject, and the first problem of philosophy, is the restoration in man of the lost image of God; so far as this relates to science.Should this restoration in the internal consciousness be fully understood, and really brought about, the object of pure philosophy is attained.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 days ago
We are weak, watery beings standing...

We are weak, watery beings standing in the midst of unrealities; therefore let us turn our minds to the things that are everlasting.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
4 months 2 weeks 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
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 1 week ago
In France at least, the history...

In France at least, the history of science and thought gives pride of place sciences, sciences of the necessary, all close to philosophy: one can observe in their history the almost uninterrupted emergence of truth and pure reason. The other disciplines, however - those, for example, that concern living beings, languages, or economic facts - are considered too tinged with empirical thought, too exposed to the vagaries of chance or imagery to age old traditions and external events, for it to be supposed that their history could be anything other irregular. At most, they are expected to provide evidence of a state of mind, an intellectual fashion, a mixture of archaism and bold conjecture, of intuition and blindness. But what if empirical knowledge, at a given time and in a given culture, did possess a well defined regularity.

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Foreword to the English edition
Philosophical Maxims
Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal
4 months ago
These five rules [above] form all...

These five rules [above] form all that is necessary to render proofs convincing, immutable, and to say all, geometrical; and the eight rules together render them even more perfect.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 3 days ago
Our patriotism comes straight from the...

Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

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p. 220, also in The Need for Roots : prelude towards a declaration of duties towards mankind
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 weeks ago
I think I can hardly overrate...

I think I can hardly overrate the malignity of the principles of Protestant ascendancy, as they affect Ireland; or of Indianism, as they affect these countries, and as they affect Asia; or of Jacobinism, as they affect all Europe, and the state of human society itself. The last is the greatest evil.

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Letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe (26 May 1795), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
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