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René Descartes
René Descartes
4 months 5 days ago
I suppose the body to be...

I suppose the body to be nothing but a statue or machine made of earth, which God forms with the explicit intention of making it as much as possible like us.

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Descartes, René (1662). Le Homme (The Treatise on Man), XI:119, CSM I:99 in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "Descartes and the Pineal Gland - 2.1 "The Treatise of Man".
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 3 weeks ago
Has woman the same rights in...

Has woman the same rights in the state which man has? This question may appear ridiculous to many. For if the only ground of all legal rights is reason and freedom, how can a distinction exist between two sexes which possess both the same reason and the same freedom. Nevertheless, it seems that, so long as men have lived, this has been differently held, and the female sex seems not to have been placed on a par with the male sex in the exercise of its rights. Such a universal sentiment must have a ground, to discover which was never a more urgent problem than in our days.

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P. 439
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 5 days ago
World,-this man is not a slave...

World,-this man is not a slave with thee! None of thy promotions is necessary for him. His place is with the stars of Heaven: to thee it may be momentous, to him it is indifferent, whether thou place him in the lowest hut, or forty feet higher at the top of thy stupendous high tower, while here on Earth. The joys of Earth that are precious, they depend not on thee and thy promotions. Food and raiment, and, round a social hearth, souls who love him, whom he loves: these are already his. He wants none of thy rewards;

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 weeks 5 days ago
These things, which we state lightly...

These things, which we state lightly enough here, are yet of deep import, and indicate a mighty change in our whole manner of existence. For the same habit regulates not our modes of action alone, but our modes of thought and feeling. Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart, as well as in hand. They have lost faith in individual endeavour, and in natural force, of any kind. Not for internal perfection, but for external combinations and arrangements, for institutions, constitutions, for Mechanism of one sort or other, do they hope and struggle. Their whole efforts, attachments, opinions, turn on mechanism, and are of a mechanical character.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
3 months 3 weeks ago
At the end of Being and...

At the end of Being and Nothingness, ... Being in-itself and Being for-itself were of Being; and this totality of beings, in which they were effected, itself was linked up to itself, relating and appearing to itself, by means of the essential project of human-reality. What was named in this way, in an allegedly neutral and undetermined way, was nothing other than the metaphysical unity of man and God, the relation of man to God, the project of becoming God as the project constituting human-reality. Atheism changes nothing in this fundamental structure.

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Chicago, 1982. (original French published in Paris, 1972, as Marges de la philosophie). p. 116
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months ago
I cannot recall a time when...

I cannot recall a time when American education was not in a "crisis." We have lived through Sputnik (when we were "falling behind the Russians"), through the era of "Johnny can't read," and through the upheavals of the Sixties. Now a good many books are telling us that the university is going to hell in several different directions at once. I believe that, at least in part, the crisis rhetoric has a structural explanation: since we do not have a national consensus on what success in higher education would consist of, no matter what happens, some sizable part of the population is going to regard the situation as a disaster. As with taxation and relations between the sexes, higher education is essentially and continuously contested territory. Given the history of that crisis rhetoric, one's natural response to the current cries of desperation might reasonably be one of boredom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 3 weeks ago
You will die - and it...

You will die - and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything - or cease asking.

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Bk. V, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Slavoj Žižek
Slavoj Žižek
8 months 3 days ago
The object of desire

What is at stake here is precisely the problem of the fulfillment of desire: when we encounter in reality an object which has all the properties of the fantasized object of desire, we are nevertheless necessarily somewhat disappointed; we experience a certain this is not it; it becomes evident that the finally found real object is not the reference of desire even though it possesses all the required properties.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 1 day ago
A farewell does not...
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Main Content / General
Plato
Plato
4 months 3 weeks ago
If the very essence of knowledge...

If the very essence of knowledge changes, at the moment of the change to another essence of knowledge there would be no knowledge, and if it is always changing, there will always be no knowledge, and by this reasoning there will be neither anyone to know nor anything to be known. But if there is always that which knows and that which is known if the beautiful, the good, and all the other verities exist I do not see how there is any likeness between these conditions of which I am now speaking and flux or motion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
1 week 1 day ago
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of...

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property were just what Aristotle did not talk about. They are the conditions of happiness; but the essence of happiness, according to Aristotle, is virtue. So the moderns decided to deal with the conditions and to let happiness take care of itself.

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Commerce and Culture, p. 284.
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 2 weeks ago
To give one's self earnestly...

To give one's self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
3 months 3 weeks ago
The trouble with fiction... is that...

The trouble with fiction... is that it makes too much sense. Reality never makes sense.

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"John Rivers" in The Genius and the Goddess, 1955
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
3 months 3 weeks ago
Inequalities are permissible when they maximize,...

Inequalities are permissible when they maximize, or at least all contribute to, the long term expectations of the least fortunate group in society.

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Chapter III, Section 26, pg. 151
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 2 weeks ago
As we speak…

As we speak cruel time is fleeing. Seize the day, believing as little as possible in the morrow.

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Book I, ode xi, line 7
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence...

Stars and blossoming fruit-trees: utter permanence and extreme fragility give an equal sense of eternity.

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p. 277
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 4 weeks ago
We need a science to save...

We need a science to save us from science.

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NY Times Magazine, as reported in High Points in the Work of the High Schools of New York City, Vol. 34 (1952), p. 46
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 1 week ago
Direct action, having proven effective along...

Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach upon his being, and only persistent resistance to them will finally set him free. Direct action against the authority in the shop, direct action against the authority of the law, direct action against the invasive, meddlesome authority of our moral code, is the logical, consistent method of Anarchism. Will it not lead to a revolution? Indeed, it will. No real social change has ever come about without a revolution. People are either not familiar with their history, or they have not yet learned that revolution is but thought carried into action.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 weeks 1 day ago
It is often said that experiments...

It is often said that experiments should be made without preconceived ideas. That is impossible. Not only would it make every experiment fruitless, but even if we wished to do so, it could not be done. Every man has his own conception of the world, and this he cannot so easily lay aside. We must, for example, use language, and our language is necessarily steeped in preconceived ideas.

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Ch. IX: Hypotheses in Physics, Tr. George Bruce Halsted
Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
1 month 2 weeks ago
Human beings can lose their lives...

Human beings can lose their lives in libraries. They ought to be warned.

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Him with His Foot in His Mouth, from Him with His Foot in His Mouth and Other Stories (1984) [Penguin Classics, 1998, ISBN 0-141-18023-4], p. 11
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
4 months 1 day ago
But love for an object…

But love for an object eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, and a joy which is free from all sorrow. This is something greatly to be desired and to be sought with all our strength.

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I, 10; translation by W. Hale White (Revised by Amelia Hutchison Stirling)
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Kuhn
Thomas Kuhn
2 weeks 4 days ago
Few people who are not actually...

Few people who are not actually practitioners of a mature science realize how much mop-up work of this sort a paradigm leaves to be done or quite how fascinating such work can prove in the execution.

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p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
The history of science is full...

The history of science is full of revolutionary advances that required small insights that anyone might have had, but that, in fact, only one person did.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 4 weeks ago
The great writers to whom the...

The great writers to whom the world owes what religious liberty it possesses, have mostly asserted freedom of conscience as an indefeasible right, and denied absolutely that a human being is accountable to others for his religious belief.

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Ch. 1: Introductory
Philosophical Maxims
Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei
3 weeks 1 day ago
I esteem myself happy to have...

I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as you in my search for truth. I will read your work ... all the more willingly because I have for many years been a partisan of the Copernican view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypothesis. To refute the latter I have collected many proofs, but I do not publish them, because I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he had won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid).

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Letter to Johannes Kepler (1596), as quoted in The Story of Civilization : The Age of Reason Begins, 1558-1648 (1935) by Will Durant, p. 603
Philosophical Maxims
Erich Fromm
Erich Fromm
2 months 1 week ago
Optimism is an alienated form of...

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie, concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.

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p. 483
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 4 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
José Ortega y Gasset
José Ortega y Gasset
2 months 2 weeks ago
The surrealist thinks he has outstripped...

The surrealist thinks he has outstripped the whole of literary history when he has written (here a word that there is no need to write) where others have written "jasmines, swans and fauns." But what he has really done has been simply to bring to light another form of rhetoric which hitherto lay hidden in the latrines.

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Chapter XI: The Self-Satisfied Age
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months 4 weeks ago
Pass in, pass in, the angels...

Pass in, pass in, the angels say, In to the upper doors; Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise.

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Merlin, I, st. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 4 weeks ago
Economy is a distributive virtue, and...

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 6 days ago
If we accept values as given...

If we accept values as given and consistent, if we postulate an objective description of the world as it really is, and if we assume that the decision maker's computational powers are unlimited, then two important consequences follow. First, we do not need to distinguish between the real world and the decision maker's perception of it: he or she perceives the world as it really is. Second, we can predict the choices that will be made by a rational decision maker entirely from our knowledge of the real world and without a knowledge of the decision maker's perceptions or modes of calculation. (We do, of course, have to know his or her utility function.)

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
2 months 6 days ago
Broadly stated, the task is to...

Broadly stated, the task is to replace the global rationality of economic man with a kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access to information and the computational capacities that are actually possessed by organisms, including man, in the kinds of environments in which such organisms exist.

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Simon (1955) "A behavioral model of rational choice", The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 69 (1); As cited in: Gustavo Barros (2010, p. 462).
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Opposition brings concord. Out of discord...

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
3 months 3 weeks ago
When you live alone you no...

When you live alone you no longer know what it is to tell a story: the plausible disappears at the same time as the friends. You let events flow by too: you suddenly see people appear who speak and then go away; you plunge into stories of which you can't make head or tail: you'd make a terrible witness.

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Diary entry of Tuesday, 30 January
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 1 week ago
When you close your doors, and...

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

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Book I, ch. 14, 13, 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
The division between human and robot...

The division between human and robot is perhaps not as significant as that between intelligence and nonintelligence.

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Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
3 weeks 3 days ago
The newspaper is in all its...

The newspaper is in all its literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct.

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What Modern Liberty Means, p. 47. Essay first published in The Atlantic (November 1919).
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
3 months 3 days ago
The long habit of living indisposeth...

The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying.

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Chapter V
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
1 week ago
As a general rule, all that...

As a general rule, all that has been hitherto advanced respecting the nature of this deity, must be understood to refer to his properties: for the nature of the god is not one thing, and his influence another: and truly, besides these two, his energy a third thing: seeing that all things which he wills, these he is, he can, and he works. For neither doth he will that which he is not; nor is he without strength to do that which he wills; nor doth he will that which he cannot effect. Now this is very different in the case of men, for theirs is a double nature mixed up in one, that of soul and body; the former divine, the latter full of darkness and obscurity: hence naturally arise warfare and discord between the two.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 1 week ago
We do not obtain the most...

We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in search of them but by waiting for them. Man cannot discover them by his own powers, and if he sets out to seek for them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will be unable to discern falsity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henri Poincaré
Henri Poincaré
3 weeks 1 day ago
Le but principal de l'enseignement mathématique...

The principal aim of mathematical education is to develop certain faculties of the mind, and among these intuition is not the least precious. It is through it that the mathematical world remains in touch with the real world, and even if pure mathematics could do without it, we should still have to have recourse to it to fill up the gulf that separates the symbol from reality.

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Part II. Ch. 2 : Mathematical Definitions and Education, p. 128
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
And the conversion of the other...

And the conversion of the other Don Quixote - he who was converted only to die - was possible because he was mad, and it was his madness, and not his death or his conversion that immortalized him, earning him forgiveness for this crime of having been born. Felix culpa! And neither was his madness cured, but only transformed. His death was his last knightly adventure; in dying he stormed heaven, which suffereth violence.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 3 weeks ago
Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like...

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art, like the universe itself (for God did not need to create). It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
2 months 3 weeks ago
By creating the world market, big...

By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others. Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
2 months 1 week ago
This, I feel, is missing a...

This, I feel, is missing a vital point: that the sceptic is often a totally honest person who, for perfectly good, sound reasons, simply cannot see a case for belief. In fact many -- like Courty Bryan -- admit that they would like to be convinced, but find it impossible.

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p. 77
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
2 months 3 weeks ago
Your vision will become clear only...

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.

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Letter to Fanny Bowditch, 22 October 1916
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
4 months 3 weeks ago
A fate is not a punishment.

A fate is not a punishment.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 1 week ago
In theory there is nothing to...

In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.

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Book I, ch. 26, 3.
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 3 weeks ago
A fire eater must eat fire...

A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.

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Philosophical Maxims
Robert Owen
Robert Owen
1 month 3 weeks ago
As there are a very great...

As there are a very great variety of religious sects in the world (and which are probably adapted to different constitutions under different circumstances, seeing there are many good and conscientious characters in each), it is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting the inhabitants of the village into one family, that while each faithfully adheres to the principles which he most approves, at the same time all shall think charitably of their neighbours respecting their religious opinions, and not presumptuously suppose that theirs alone are right.

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"Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitants of New Lanark"
Philosophical Maxims
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