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Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
It is remarkable that among all...

It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.

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p. 489
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month ago
To preserve the life…

To preserve the life of citizens, is the greatest virtue in the father of his country.

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The quote is from a Roman tragedy Octavia; Act 2, Line 444, where Seneca advises Nero against carrying out his tyrannical plans. Seneca's attribution to the play is generally discredited by modern scholarship.
Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
3 weeks 5 days ago
In the new order a Locke...

In the new order a Locke was free-with almost no danger of being interfered with-to think his sublime thoughts, to seek the first causes of all things, to understand the nature of things. He could talk with his friends and teach the young. And there was money enough. The academies and universities satisfied Socrates' demand to be fed in the prytaneum.

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Commerce and Culture, p. 289.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 5 days ago
It is not truth that makes...

It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 3 weeks ago
They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals],...

They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals], the best food and drink are at hand, the attendants are very diligent, the physicians are learned, the beds and coverings are very clean, and the bedsteads are painted. As soon as a sick man is brought in, all his clothes are taken off in the presence of a notary and are faithfully kept for him. He is then laid in a handsomely painted bed with clean sheets. Two physicians are fetched at once. Attendants come with food and drink, served in immaculate glass vessels; these are not touched with as much as a finger but are brought on a tray.

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3930
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
You have just dined, and however...

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

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Fate
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
3 months 2 weeks ago
There are people with whom everything...

There are people with whom everything they consider a means turns mysteriously into an end.

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Philosophical Fragments, P. Firchow, trans. (1991) § 428
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
3 months 1 week ago
All nature abounds in proofs of...

All nature abounds in proofs of other influences than merely mechanical action, even in the physical world. They crowd in upon us at the rate of several every minute. And my observation of men has led me to this little generalization. Speaking only of men who really think for themselves and not of mere reporters, I have not found that it is the men whose lives are mostly passed within the four walls of a physical laboratory who are most inclined to be satisfied with a purely mechanical metaphysics. On the contrary, the more clearly they understand how physical forces work the more incredible it seems to them that such action should explain what happens out of doors. A larger proportion of materialists and agnostics is to be found among the thinking physiologists and other naturalists, and the largest proportion of all among those who derive their ideas of physical science from reading popular books.

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Lecture II : The Universal Categories, §3. Laws: Nominalism, CP 5.65
Philosophical Maxims
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
4 months 2 weeks ago
Thus I may be said….

Thus it may be said that not only the soul, the mirror of an indestructible universe, is indestructible, but also the animal itself, though its mechanism may often perish in part and take off or put on an organic slough.

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La monadologie (77). Sometimes paraphrased as: The soul is the mirror of an indestructible universe.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
5 months 5 days ago
The man of virtue makes...

The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration: this may be called perfect virtue.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 1 week ago
The possibility of democracy on a...

The possibility of democracy on a global scale is emerging today for the very first time.

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(xi)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 2 weeks ago
I think people who are unhappy...

I think people who are unhappy are always proud of being so, and therefore do not like to be told that there is nothing grand about their unhappiness. A man who is melancholy because lack of exercise has upset his liver always believes that it is the loss of God, or the menace of Bolshevism, or some such dignified cause that makes him sad. When you tell people that happiness is a simple matter, they get annoyed with you.

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Letter to W. W. Norton, 17 February, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 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
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Woe to the book you can...

Woe to the book you can read without constantly wondering about the author!

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 3 days ago
All that the conscious ego....
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Main Content / General
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
Of course, he who has put...

Of course, he who has put forth his total strength in fit actions, has the richest return of wisdom.

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par. 28
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 1 week ago
Youth instinctively understand the present environment...

Youth instinctively understand the present environment - the electric drama. It lives mythically and in depth.

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Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
3 months 1 week ago
Because the peculiarity of man is...

Because the peculiarity of man is that his machinery for reaction on external things has involved an imaginative transcript of these things, which is preserved and suspended in his fancy; and the interest and beauty of this inward landscape, rather than any fortunes that may await his body in the outer world, constitute his proper happiness. By their mind, its scope, quality, and temper, we estimate men, for by the mind only do we exist as men, and are more than so many storage-batteries for material energy. Let us therefore be frankly human. Let us be content to live in the mind.

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p. 64
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our...

Knowledge, having irritated and stimulated our appetite for power, will lead us inexorably to our ruin.

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 2 weeks ago
The life-giving Spirit is the very...

The life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you; the first thing the life-giving Spirit says is that you must enter into death, that you must die to, it is this way in order that you many not take Christianity in vain. A life-giving Spirit, that is the invitation; who would not willingly take hold of it! But die first, that is the halt!

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
Religious persecution may shield itself under...

Religious persecution may shield itself under the guise of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (18 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Tenth (1899), pp. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 months 1 day ago
Sound knowledge respecting the habits and...

Sound knowledge respecting the habits and mode of life of the man-like Apes has been even more difficult of attainment than correct information regarding their structure.

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Ch.1, p. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Judith Butler
Judith Butler
2 months 2 weeks ago
Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from...

Nonviolence does not necessarily emerge from a pacific or calm part of the soul. Very often it is an expression of rage, indignation, and aggression.

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p. 21
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 6 days ago
All that Mankind has done, thought,...

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of Books.

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Philosophical Maxims
Montesquieu
Montesquieu
3 months 2 days ago
It is a paralogism to say,...

It is a paralogism to say, that the good of the individual should give way to that of the public; this can never take place, except when the government of the community, or, in other words, the liberty of the subject is concerned; this does not affect such cases as relate to private property, because the public good consists in everyone's having his property, which was given him by the civil laws, invariably preserved.

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Book XXVI, Chapter 15.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
There are many aspects of the...

There are many aspects of the universe that still cannot be explained satisfactorily by science; but ignorance only implies ignorance that may someday be conquered. To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 2 weeks ago
[E]xperience has taught me that those...

[E]xperience has taught me that those who give their time to the absorbing claims of what is called society, not having leisure to keep up a large acquaintance with the organs of opinion, remain much more ignorant of the general state either of the public mind, or of the active and instructed part of it, than a recluse who reads the newspapers need be.

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(p. 262)
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 month ago
The cause of anger…

The cause of anger is the belief that we are injured; this belief, therefore, should not be lightly entertained. We ought not to fly into a rage even when the injury appears to be open and distinct: for some false things bear the semblance of truth. We should always allow some time to elapse, for time discloses the truth.

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De Ira (On Anger): Book 2, cap. 22, line 2 Alternate translation: Time discovers truth. (translator unknown).
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
If there be light, then there...

If there be light, then there is darkness; if cold, heat; if height, depth; if solid, fluid; if hard, soft; if rough, smooth; if calm, tempest; if prosperity, adversity; if life, death.

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As quoted in Bibliotheca Sacra and Theological Review by ? Vol. IV, No. 8 (1847) by Dallas Theological Seminary, p. 107
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
3 months 1 week ago
If there is a devil in...

If there is a devil in human history, that devil is the principle of command. It alone, sustained by the ignorance and stupidity of the masses, without which it could not exist, is the source of all the catastrophes, all the crimes, and all the infamies of history.

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On the Program of the Alliance (1871), in Bakunin on Anarchy (1971), translated and edited by Sam Dolgoff Variant translation: If there is a devil in history, it is the power principle.
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
4 months 2 weeks ago
The worst of misfortunes is still...

The worst of misfortunes is still a stroke of luck, since one feels oneself living when one experiences it.

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p. 275
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Whoever has used what means he...

Whoever has used what means he is capable of, for the informing of himself, with a readiness to believe and obey what shall be taught and prescribed by Jesus, his Lord and King, is a true and faithful subject of Christ's kingdom; and cannot be thought to fail in any thing necessary to salvation.

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§ 233
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
4 months 2 weeks ago
Reason, if consulted with, would advise,...

Reason, if consulted with, would advise, that their children's time should be spent in acquiring what might be useful to them when they come to be men, rather than to have their heads stuff'd with a deal of trash, a great part whereof they usually never do ('tis certain they never need to) think on again as long as they live: and so much of it as does stick by them they are only the worse for.

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Sec. 94
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
5 months 5 days ago
Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't...

Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters... We are lucky to have them... They make the battle. Ah but the One, One of them is a Warrior... and He will bring the others back.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
5 months 1 week ago
Once you've dissected a joke, you're...

Once you've dissected a joke, you're about where you are when you've dissected a frog. It's dead. Banquets of the Black Widowers (1984), p. 49; comparable to "Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind."

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months ago
No man is free who is...

No man is free who is not master of himself.

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Fragment 35 (Oldfather translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Joseph de Maistre
Joseph de Maistre
1 week 6 days ago
Religious beauty is superior to ideal...

Religious beauty is superior to ideal beauty, since it is the ideal of the ideal.

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p. 287
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 3 weeks ago
Dispose thy Soul to all good...

Dispose thy Soul to all good and necessary things!

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Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 2 weeks ago
All the better; they do not...

All the better; they do not force me to do anything that I would not have done of my own accord if I did not dread scandal. But since they want it that way, I enter gladly on the path that is opened to me, with the consolation that my departure will be more innocent than was the exodus of the early Hebrews from Egypt.

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Statement after his excommunication from Jewish society, attributed by Lucas, in The Oldest Biography of Spinoza (1970) by A. Wolf; also in Spinoza: A Life (1999) by Steven Nadler
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 2 weeks ago
Our inventions are wont to be...

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.

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pp. 60-61
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 2 weeks ago
The retinue of a grandee in...

The retinue of a grandee in China or Indostan accordingly is, by all accounts, much more numerous and splendid than that of the richest subjects of Europe.

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Chapter XI, Part III, Third Period, p. 240.
Philosophical Maxims
Antonio Negri
Antonio Negri
1 month 1 week ago
Beginning in the 1970s, however, the...

Beginning in the 1970s, however, the techniques and organizational form of industrial production shifted toward smaller and more mobile labor units and more flexible structures of production, a shift often labeled as a move from Fordist to post-Fordist production.

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82
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 1 week ago
I thought that the only action...

I thought that the only action a man could perform without shame was to take his life; that he had no right to diminish himself in the succession of days and the inertic of misery. No elect, I kept telling myself, but those who committed suicide.

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Philosophical Maxims
Antisthenes
Antisthenes
4 months 5 days ago
One should attend….

One should attend to one's enemies, for they are the first persons to detect one's errors.

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§ 5
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 2 weeks ago
These principles it is necessary strictly...

These principles it is necessary strictly to attend to, because they will serve much to explain the whole course both of government and real property, wherever the German nations obtained a settlement; the whole of their government depending for the most part upon two principles in our nature,-ambition, that makes one man desirous, at any hazard or expense, of taking the lead amongst others; and admiration, which makes others equally desirous of following him from the mere pleasure of admiration, and a sort of secondary ambition, one of the most universal passions among men. These two principles, strong both of them in our nature, create a voluntary inequality and dependence.

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An Essay towards an Abridgment of English History (1757-c. 1763), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI (1856), p. 282
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
3 months 1 day ago
The petit-bourgeois is a man unable...

The petit-bourgeois is a man unable to imagine the Other. If he comes face to face with him, he blinds himself, ignores and denies him, or else transforms him into himself.

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p. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
4 months 2 weeks ago
Whenever a theory appears to you...

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

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Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
1 month 6 days ago
Much has been said of Mahomet's...

Much has been said of Mahomet's propagating his Religion by the sword. It is no doubt far nobler what we have to boast of the Christian Religion, that it propagated itself peaceably in the way of preaching and conviction. Yet withal, if we take this for an argument of the truth or falsehood of a religion, there is a radical mistake in it. The sword indeed: but where will you get your sword! Every new opinion, at its starting, is precisely in a minority of one. In one man's head alone, there it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it; there is one man against all men. That he take a sword, and try to propagate with that, will do little for him. You must first get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can. We do not find, of the Christian Religion either, that it always disdained the sword, when once it had got one.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
5 months ago
We ought neither to fasten our...

We ought neither to fasten our ship to one small anchor nor our life to a single hope.

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Fragment 30 (Oldfather translation)
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 2 weeks ago
The law of the table is...

The law of the table is beauty, a respect to the common soul of the guests. Everything is unreasonable which is private to two or three, or any portion of the company. Tact never violates for a moment this law; never intrudes the orders of the house, the vices of the absent, or a tariff of expenses, or professional privacies; as we say, we never "talk shop" before company. Lovers abstain from caresses, and haters from insults, while they sit in one parlor with common friends.

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Philosophical Maxims
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