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Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
2 months 3 weeks ago
The peoples' revolution .... will arrange...

The peoples' revolution .... will arrange its revolutionary organisation from the bottom up and from the periphery to the centre, in keeping with the principle of liberty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 2 weeks ago
Verily I say unto you, That...

Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

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19:23-24 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
Each of us must pay for...

Each of us must pay for the slightest damage he inflicts upon a universe created for indifference and stagnation, sooner or later, he will regret not having left it intact.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
When you know quite absolutely that...

When you know quite absolutely that everything is unreal, you then cannot see why you should take the trouble to prove it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
I am excluded from the possession...

I am excluded from the possession of a determined object, not through the will of the other, but only through my own free-will. If I had not excluded myself, I should not be excluded. But I must exclude myself from something in virtue of the Conception of Rights.

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** P. 182
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 2 weeks ago
I have no knowledge of either...

I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.

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Philosophical Maxims
Mencius
Mencius
2 weeks 4 days ago
He who outrages benevolence is called...

He who outrages benevolence is called a ruffian: he who outrages righteousness is called a villain. I have heard of the cutting off of the villain Chow, but I have not heard of the putting of a ruler to death.

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1B:8, In relation to righteousness and the overthrow of the tyrannous King Zhou of Shang, as translated by Sir Robert Kennaway Douglas, China (1904), p. 8
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
Die before you Die. There is...

Die before you Die. There is no chance after.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 1 week ago
With Puritanism as the constant check...

With Puritanism as the constant check upon American life, neither truth nor sincerity is possible. Nothing but gloom and mediocrity to dictate human conduct, curtail natural expression, and stifle our best impulses.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
1 month 4 weeks ago
Particularly in the case of all...

Particularly in the case of all professional of press-images which testify of the real events. In making reality, even the most violent, emerge to the visible, it makes the real substance disappear. It is like the Myth of Eurydice : when Orpheus turns around to look at her, she vanishes and returns to hell. That is why, the more exponential the marketing of images is growing the more fantastically grows the indifference towards the real world. Finally, the real world becomes a useless function, a collection of phantom shapes and ghost events. We are not far from the silhouettes on the walls of the cave of Plato.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
When one considers the sublime disposition...

When one considers the sublime disposition underlying the tmly universal educatiOn (of traditional India) ... then what IS or has been called religion in Europe seems to us to be scarcely deserving of that name. And one feels compelled to advise those who Wish to witness religion to travel to India for that purpose ....

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quoted in Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture. New Delhi: Pragun Publication.
Philosophical Maxims
Roland Barthes
Roland Barthes
2 months 1 week ago
Bourgeois norms are experienced as the...

Bourgeois norms are experienced as the evident laws of a natural order-the further the bourgeois class propagates its representations, the more naturalized they become.

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p. 140
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 1 week ago
Bourgeois sport [wants] to differentiate itself...

Bourgeois sport [wants] to differentiate itself strictly from play. Its bestial seriousness consists in the fact that instead of remaining faithful to the dream of freedom by getting away from purposiveness, the treatment of play as a duty puts it among useful purposes and thereby wipes out the trace of freedom in it. This is particularly valid for contemporary mass music. It is only play as a repetition of prescribed models, and the playful release from responsibility which is thereby achieved does not reduce at all the time devoted to duty except by transferring the responsibility to the models, the following of which one makes into a duty for himself.

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p. 296
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
To suffer is the great modality...

To suffer is the great modality of taking the world seriously.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months 3 weeks ago
Manufacture was all the time sheltered...

Manufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the hoe market, by monopolies in the colonial market, and broad as much as possible by differential duties.

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ibid, pp. 183
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
1 month 3 days ago
Hayek's blind spot with regard to...

Hayek's blind spot with regard to politics was clear in the early 1980s when the first Thatcher government, in an attempt to reduce inflation and bring the public finances closer to a balanced budget, was raising interest rates and cutting public spending. As he had done during the 1930s, Hayek attacked these policies as not being severe enough. It would be better, he told me in a conversation we had around this time, if Thatcher imposed a more drastic contraction on the economy so that the wage-setting power of the trade unions could be broken. He appeared unfazed by unemployment, which was already higher (more than three million people) than at any time since the 1930s, and would rise much further if his recommendations were accepted.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
Maurras, with perfect logic, is an...

Maurras, with perfect logic, is an atheist. The Cardinal [Richelieu], in postulating something whose whole reality is confined to this world as an absolute value, committed the sin of idolatry. ... The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State.

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p. 199
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Büchner
Georg Büchner
2 months 3 weeks ago
The state is therefore everyone; the...

The state is therefore everyone; the rules within the state are laws which safeguard the welfare of all and which must originate from the welfare of all.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 week ago
Christ's whole body groans in pain....

Christ's whole body groans in pain. Until the end of the world, when pain will pass away, this man groans and cries to God. And each one of us has part in the cry of that whole body. Thou didst cry out in thy day, and thy days have passed away; another took thy place and cried out in his day. Thou here, he there, and another there. The body of Christ ceases not to cry out all the day, one member replacing the other whose voice is hushed. Thus there is but one man who reaches unto the end of time, and those that cry are always His members.

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p.423
Philosophical Maxims
Theodor Adorno
Theodor Adorno
2 months 1 week ago
Philosophy ... must not bargain away...

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
1 month 2 weeks ago
A free society is a community...

A free society is a community of free beings, bound by the laws of sympathy and by the obligations of family love. It is not a society of people released from all moral constraint-for that is precisely the opposite of a society. Without moral constraint there can be no cooperation, no family commitment, no long-term prospects, no hope of economic, let alone social, order.

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"The Limits of Liberty," The American Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 3 weeks ago
By phonemic transformation into visual terms,...

By phonemic transformation into visual terms, the alphabet became a universal, abstract, static container of meaningless sounds.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Penitence follows….

Penitence follows hasty decisions.

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Maxim 961
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 4 days ago
We must remove the Decalogue out...

We must remove the Decalogue out of sight and heart.

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Wilhelm Martin Leberecht De Wette, 4, 188. As cited by Jonathan Ramachandran (January 1, 2019), Lake of Fire - Hope for the Wicked One Day? - Essays in First Christianity, 5 Loaf 2 Fish Publications, p. 1264.
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
2 weeks 6 days ago
We seek not what God could...

We seek not what God could have done but what He has done.... God could have caused birds to fly with bones of solid gold, with veins full of quicksilver, with flesh heavier than lead and very small and heavy wings, so as to better show His power ... but He wanted to make their bones, flesh and feathers very light ... to teach us that He likes simplicity and ease.

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Notes in a copy of Jean-Baptiste Morin's "Famous and ancient problems of the earth's motion or rest, yet to be solved" (published 1631).
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
3 months 1 week ago
It is requisite to defend those...

It is requisite to defend those who are unjustly accused of having acted injuriously, but to praise those who excel in a certain good.

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Pythagorean Ethical Sentences From Stobæus
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 1 week ago
With all our boasted reforms, our...

With all our boasted reforms, our great social changes, and our far-reaching discoveries, human beings continue to be sent to the worst of hells, wherein they are outraged, degraded, and tortured, that society may be "protected" from the phantoms of its own making.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 3 weeks ago
They pronounce absurdly who thus speak,...

They pronounce absurdly who thus speak, as the Pythagoreans assert: for at the same time they make the infinite to be essence, and distribute it into parts.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
The love of power is a...

The love of power is a part of human nature, but power-philosophies are, in a certain precise sense, insane. The existence of the external world, both that of matter and of other human beings, is a datum, which may be humiliating to a certain kind of pride, but can only be denied by a madman. Men who allow their love of power to give them a distorted view of the world are to be found in every asylum: one man will think he is Governor of the Bank of England, another will think he is the King, and yet another will think he is God. Highly similar delusions, if expressed by educated men in obscure language, lead to professorships in philosophy; and if expressed by emotional men in eloquent language, lead to dictatorships. Certified lunatics are shut up because of the proneness to violence when their pretensions are questioned; the uncertified variety are given control of powerful armies, and can inflict death and disaster upon all sane men within their reach.

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Ch. 16: Power philosophies
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
6 days ago
No wild beasts….

No wild beasts are such enemies to mankind as are most of the Christians in their deadly hatred of one another.

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Reported in Ammianus, Res gestae, bk. 22, ch. 5, sec. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 3 days ago
The Philosopher of this age is...

The Philosopher of this age is not a Socrates, a Plato, a Hooker, or Taylor, who inculcates on men the necessity and infinite worth of moral goodness, the great truth that our happiness depends on the mind which is within us, and not on the circumstances which are without us; but a Smith, a De Lolme, a Bentham, who chiefly inculcates the reverse of this,-that our happiness depends entirely on external circumstances; nay, that the strength and dignity of the mind within us is itself the creature and consequence of these. Were the laws, the government, in good order, all were well with us; the rest would care for itself! Dissentients from this opinion, expressed or implied, are now rarely to be met with; widely and angrily as men differ in its application, the principle is admitted by all.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 week ago
You cannot conduct....
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Main Content / General
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
The harm that is done by...

The harm that is done by a religion is of two sorts, the one depending on the kind of belief which it is thought ought to be given to it, and the other upon the particular tenets believed. As regards the kind of belief: it is thought virtuous to have faith-that is to say, to have a conviction which cannot be shaken by contrary evidence. Or, if contrary evidence might induce doubt, it is held that contrary evidence must be suppressed.

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preface xxiii
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 3 weeks ago
There is no power relation without...

There is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 2 weeks ago
I have been deep in Plato,...

I have been deep in Plato, Aristotle, and Theocritus ever since I left home, and admiring more and more every day the powers of that mighty language which is incomparably the best vehicle both for reasoning and for imagery that mankind have ever discovered, and which is richer both in abstract philosophical terms and poetical expressions than the English, French, and Latin tongues put together.

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Letter to Zachary Macaulay (19? August 1820), quoted in The Letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay, Volume I: 1807-February 1831, ed. Thomas Pinney (1974), p. 145
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 2 weeks ago
Apparently the rise of consciousness is...

Apparently the rise of consciousness is linked to certain kinds of privation. It is the bitterness of self-consciousness that we knowers know best. Critical of the illusions that sustained mankind in earlier times, this self-consciousness of ours does little to sustain us now. The question is: which is disenchanted, the world itself or the consciousness we have of it?

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A Matter of the Soul (1975), pp. 75-76
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
1 week 4 days ago
Live among men…

Live among men as if God beheld you; speak with God as if men were listening.

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Line 5.
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
Our psychology is ... a science...

Our psychology is ... a science of mere phenomena without any metaphysical implications. [It] Treats all metaphysical claims and assertions as mental phenomena, and regards them as statements about the mind and its structure.

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Psychology and Religion: West and East (1958), p. 476, as cited in Psychotherapy East and West (1961), p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Martin Luther
Martin Luther
4 months 4 days ago
Now when God sends forth his...

Now when God sends forth his holy Gospel, He deals with us in a twofold manner, the first outwardly, then inwardly. Outwardly he deals with us through the oral word of the Gospel and through material sings, that is, baptism adndthe sacrament of the altar. Inwardly He deals with us through the Holy spirit, faith, and other gifts. But whatever their measure of order the outward factors should and must procede. The inward experience follows and is effected by the outward. God has determined to give the inward to no one except through the outward.

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Luthers Works, 40 p. 146 as quoted in Against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvinby Carlos M. N. Eire, p. 72
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
... it may be hoped that...

... it may be hoped that the white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence. But it is to be hoped that the religious prejudices which have hitherto hampered the spread of birth control will die out, and that ... the whole world will learn not to be unduly prolific. Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 weeks ago
I quite understand the principle of...

I quite understand the principle of confining employment as far as possible to the British without regard for efficiency. I think, however, that the Ministry is not applying the principle sufficiently widely. I know many Englishmen who have married foreigners, and many English potential wives who are out of a job. Would not a year be long enough to train an English wife to replace the existing foreign one in such cases?

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Enclosed reply to the Ministry of Labour, in defense of A. S. Neill (who declined to send it), 27 January, 1931
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 week ago
The ethic of Reverence for Life...

The ethic of Reverence for Life prompts us to keep each other alert to what troubles us and to speak and act dauntlessly together in discharging the responsibility that we feel. It keeps us watching together for opportunities to bring some sort of help to animals in recompense for the great misery that men inflict upon them, and thus for a moment we escape from the incomprehensible horror of existence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
An observer studying the Solar system...

An observer studying the Solar system dispassionately, and finding himself capable of bringing the four giant planets to his notice, could reasonably say that the Solar system consisted of one star, four planets, and some traces of debris.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
Let us try to teach generosity...

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

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Ch. 1. Why Are People?
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
3 months 3 weeks ago
To him who looks upon the...

To him who looks upon the world rationally, the world in its turn presents a rational aspect. The relation is mutual.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 3 weeks ago
We all remember how many religious...

We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Schlegel
Friedrich Schlegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
Honour is the mysticism of legality....

Honour is the mysticism of legality.

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Aphorism 77, of Ideas as translated in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996) edited by Frederick C. Beiser, p. 131
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 3 weeks ago
If A were not allowed his...

If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is.

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Chapter II, Section 17, pg. 103
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 3 weeks ago
I find the Englishman to be...

I find the Englishman to be him of all men who stands firmest in his shoes. They have in themselves what they value in their horses, - mettle and bottom.

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Manners
Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 1 week ago
The Word takes to Himself one...

The Word takes to Himself one man, for He takes unity. He does not take schisms to Himself, nor does He take heresies. So it is one man who is taken, and his Head is Christ. This is that "blessed man who hath not walked in the council of the ungodly" (Ps. 1:1); this is he that is assumed. He is not outside of us. Let us be in Him, and we shall be assumed; let us be in Him, and we shall be chosen. Therefore this one man that is taken to become the temple of God, is at once many and one.

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p.430
Philosophical Maxims
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