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Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 6 days ago
The first condition of unity is...

The first condition of unity is a subjective principle; and this principle in the Positive system is the subordination of the intellect to the heart: Without this the unity that we seek can never be placed on a permanent basis, whether individually or collectively. It is essential to have some influence sufficiently powerful to produce convergence amid the heterogeneous and often antagonistic tendencies of so complex an organism as ours.

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p. 24
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months 2 days ago
Both in England and on the...

Both in England and on the Continent a graduated property tax (l'impôt progressif) has been advocated, on the avowed ground that the state should use the instrument of taxation as a means of mitigating the inequalities of wealth. I am as desirous as any one that means should be taken to diminish those inequalities, but not so as to relieve the prodigal at the expense of the prudent.To tax the larger incomes at a higher percentage than the smaller is to lay a tax on industry and economy; to impose a penalty on people for having worked harder and saved more than their neighbours. It is not the fortunes which are earned, but those which are unearned, that it is for the public good to place under limitation.

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Book V, Chapter II
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 week ago
In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is...

In Administrative Behavior, bounded rationality is largely characterized as a residual category - rationality is bounded when it falls short of omniscience. And the failures of omniscience are largely failures of knowing all the alternatives, uncertainty about relevant exogenous events, and inability to calculate consequences. There was needed a more positive and formal characterization of the mechanisms of choice under conditions of bounded rationality... Two concepts are central to the characterization: search and satisficing.

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p. 502; As cited in Barros (2010, p. 464-5).
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 6 days ago
Hatred and anger are the greatest...

Hatred and anger are the greatest poison to the happiness of a good mind.

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Section II, Chap. III.
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 week ago
There are and can be only...

There are and can be only two ways of searching into and discovering truth. The one flies from the senses and particulars to the most general axioms, and from these principles, the truth of which it takes for settled and immovable, proceeds to judgment and to the discovery of middle axioms. And this way is now in fashion. The other derives axioms from the senses and particulars, rising by a gradual and unbroken ascent, so that it arrives at the most general axioms last of all. This is the true way, but as yet untried.

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Aphorism 19
Philosophical Maxims
Mikhail Bakunin
Mikhail Bakunin
1 month 4 weeks ago
What all other men are is...

What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society. The outcast is my daily menace. Whether I am Pope, Czar, Emperor, or even Prime Minister, I am always the creature of their circumstance, the conscious product of their ignorance, want and clamoring. They are in slavery, and I, the superior one, am enslaved in consequence.

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Solidarity in Liberty: The Workers' Path to Freedom
Philosophical Maxims
Aristotle
Aristotle
4 months 2 days ago
Music directly represents the passion of...

Music directly represents the passion of the soul. If one listens to the wrong kind of music, he will become the wrong kind of person.

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Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
2 months 2 weeks ago
Authority and place demonstrate and try...

Authority and place demonstrate and try the tempers of men, by moving every passion and discovering every frailty.

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Comparison of Demosthenes and Cicero 3 (Tr. Dryden and Clough)
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 2 weeks ago
The erotic is never free of...

The erotic is never free of secrecy.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 3 weeks ago
The rise of new science in...

The rise of new science in the seventeenth century laid hold upon general culture in the next century. The enlightenment... testified to the widespread belief that at last light had dawned, that dissipation of ignorance, superstition, and bigotry was at hand, and the triumph of reason was assured -- for reason was counterpart in man of the laws of nature which science was disclosing. The reign of law in the natural world was to be followed by the reign of law in human affairs.

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Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 weeks 4 days ago
The tool....
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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 days ago
My poor opinion is, that the...

My poor opinion is, that the closest connexion between Great Britain and Ireland, is essential to the well being, I had almost said, to the very being, of the two Kingdoms. ... I think indeed that Great Britain would be ruined by the separation of Ireland; but, as there are degrees even in ruin, it would fall the most heavily on Ireland. By such a separation Ireland would be the most completely undone Country in the world; the most wretched, the most distracted and, in the end, the most desolate part of the habitable Globe.

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Letter to an unknown correspondent (February 1797), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.)
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 4 weeks ago
Few persons care to study logic,...

Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to one's own ratiocination and does not extend to that of other men. We come to the full possession of our power of drawing inferences the last of all our faculties, for it is not so much a natural gift as a long and difficult art.

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Illustrations of the Logic of Science First Paper - The Fixation of Belief", in Popular Science Monthly, Vol. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 4 days ago
It is a want of feeling...

It is a want of feeling to talk of priests and bells while so many infants are perishing in the hospitals, and aged and infirm poor in the streets, from the want of necessaries.

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Worship and Church Bells, 1797
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
1 month 1 week ago
We will likely also find that...

We will likely also find that the nature of the problem to be solved will be a principal determinant of the mix. With our growing understanding of the organization of judgmental and intuitive processes, of the specific knowledge that of the specific knowledge that is required to perform particular judgmental tasks, and of the cues that evoke such knowledge in situations in which it is relevant, we have a powerful new tool for improving expert judgment. We can specify the knowledge and the recognition capabilities that experts in a domain need to acquire, and use these specifications for designing appropriate learning procedures.

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p. 137.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
I do not forgive myself for...

I do not forgive myself for being born. It is as if, creeping into this world, I had profaned a mystery, betrayed some momentous pledge, committed a fault of nameless gravity. Yet in a less assured mood, birth seems a calamity I would be miserable not having known.

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Philosophical Maxims
Martin Buber
Martin Buber
1 month 3 weeks ago
The concept of guilt is found...

The concept of guilt is found most powerfully developed even in the most primitive communal forms which we know: ... the man is guilty who violates one of the original laws which dominate the society and which are mostly derived from a divine founder; the boy who is accepted into the tribal community and learns its laws, which bind him thenceforth, learns to promise; this promise is often given under the sign of death, which is symbolically carried out on the boy, with a symbolical rebirth.

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p. 178
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
1 month 2 weeks ago
The poor, stupid, free American citizen!...

The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suffrage, and, by that right, he has forged chains about his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, in fact, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor.

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Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months 2 days ago
A living language can stand on...

A living language can stand on a higher level of culture in comparison with another, but it can never in itself attain that perfection of development which a dead language quite easily attains. In the latter the connotation of words is fixed, and the possibilities of suitable combinations will also gradually become exhausted. Hence, he who wishes to speak this language must speak it just as it is; but, after he has once learnt to do this, the language speaks itself in his mouth and thinks and imagines for him.

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Consequences of the Difference p. 85
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
I find that the best virtue...

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

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Book II, Ch. 20. That we taste nothing pure
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
2 months 2 days ago
I must say, that the whole...

I must say, that the whole Scheme of the war is mistaken, (or appears to me to be so), for it ought to be, not for Dunkirk, or this or t'other Town-but to drive Jacobinism from the world.

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Letter to Dr Charles Burney (14/15 September 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.)
Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 4 days ago
"Let us work without reasoning," said...

"Let us work without reasoning," said Martin; "it is the only way to make life endurable."

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 1 day ago
The case of the conscience of...

The case of the conscience of Eichmann, which is admittedly complicated but is by no means unique, is scarcely comparable to the case of the German generals, one of whom, when asked at Nuremberg, "How was it possible that all of you honorable generals could continue to serve a murderer with such unquestioning loyalty?," replied that it was "not the task of a soldier to act as judge over his supreme commander. Let history do that or God in Heaven."

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Ch. VIII
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
2 weeks 4 days ago
From the point of view of...

From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiator's show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight-whereby the strongest, the swiftest and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given.

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(February 1888) "The Struggle for Existence: A Programme". The Nineteenth Century 23: 161-180. (quote from p. 163)
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 3 weeks ago
A scholar who loves comfort is...

A scholar who loves comfort is not worthy of the name.

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Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months 2 days ago
When our life ceases to be...

When our life ceases to be inward and private, conversation degenerates into mere gossip. We rarely meet a man who can tell us any news which he has not read in a newspaper, or been told by his neighbor; and, for the most part, the only difference between us and our fellow is, that he has seen the newspaper, or been out to tea, and we have not. In proportion as our inward life fails, we go more constantly and desperately to the post-office.

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p. 491
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
Nature forms us for ourselves, not...

Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.

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Book II, Ch. 37. Of the Resemblance of Children to their Brothers
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 6 days ago
The world neither ever saw, nor...

The world neither ever saw, nor ever will see, a perfectly fair lottery.

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Chapter X, Part I.
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
2 months 3 weeks ago
If life becomes hard to bear...

If life becomes hard to bear we think of a change in our circumstances. But the most important and effective change, a change in our own attitude, hardly even occurs to us, and the resolution to take such a step is very difficult for us.

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p. 53e
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
To detach yourself elegantly from the...

To detach yourself elegantly from the world; to give contour and grace to sadness; a solitude in style; a walk that gives cadence to memories; stepping towards the intangible; with the breath in the trembling margins of things; the past reborn in the overflow of fragrances; the smell, through which we conquer time; the contour of the invisible things; the forms of the immaterial; to deepen yourself in the intangible; to touch the world airborne by smell; aerial dialogue and gliding dissolution; to bathe in your own reflecting fragmentation...

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 4 weeks ago
I simply don't think it is...

I simply don't think it is reasonable to use IQ tests to produce results of questionable value, which may then serve to justify racists in their own minds and to help bring about the kinds of tragedies we have already witnessed earlier in this century.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Once we can see how this...

Once we can see how this question of freedom of the will has been vitiated by post-romantic philosophy, with its inbuilt tendency to laziness and boredom, we can also see how it came about that existentialism found itself in a hole of its own digging, and how the philosophical developments since then have amounted to walking in circles round that hole.

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p. 214
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month ago
At the very high speed of...

At the very high speed of living, everybody needs a new career and a new job and a totally new personality every ten years.

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Philosophical Maxims
Voltaire
Voltaire
3 months 4 days ago
Don't think money does everything or...

Don't think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 3 weeks ago
What is called "objectivity," scientific for...

What is called "objectivity," scientific for instance (in which I firmly believe, in a given situation) imposes itself only within a context which is extremely vast, old, firmly established, or rooted in a network of conventions ... and yet which still remains a context.

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Limited Inc
Philosophical Maxims
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
3 months 5 days ago
In the metaphysical elements of aesthetics...

In the metaphysical elements of aesthetics the various nonmoral feelings are to be made use of; in the elements of moral metaphysics the various moral feelings of men, according to the differences in sex, age, education, and government, of races and climates, are to be employed.

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Part III : Selection on Education from Kant's other Writings, Ch. I Pedagogical Fragments, # 58
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 1 week ago
I am further of opinion that...

I am further of opinion that it would be better for us to have [no laws] at all than to have them in so prodigious numbers as we have.

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Book III, Ch. 13. Of Experience
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months 2 days ago
He who carries self-regard far enough...

He who carries self-regard far enough to keep himself in good health and high spirits, in the first place thereby becomes an immediate source of happiness to those around, and in the second place maintains the ability to increase their happiness by altruistic actions. But one whose bodily vigour and mental health are undermined by self-sacrifice carried too far, in the first place becomes to those around a cause of depression, and in the second place renders himself incapable, or less capable, of actively furthering their welfare. In estimating conduct we must remember that there are those who by their joyousness beget joy in others, and that there are those who by their melancholy cast a gloom on every circle they enter.

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Ethics (New York:1915), § 72, pp. 193-194
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 4 weeks ago
Isn't history ultimately the result of...

Isn't history ultimately the result of our fear of boredom?

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 2 weeks ago
Could it be that sexual perversion...

Could it be that sexual perversion and romanticism sprang from the same longing for distant horizons?

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p. 17
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 weeks 6 days ago
I hold agitation to be essential,...

I hold agitation to be essential, not only to the obtaining of good and just measures, but to the existence of a free Government itself. If you choose to adopt the principle of Bishop Horsley, that the people have nothing to do with the laws but to obey them, then, indeed, you may deprecate agitation; but, while we live in a free country, and under a free Government, your deprecation is vain and untenable... I say that the slave-trade would never have been abolished without agitation. I say that slavery would never have been abolished without agitation... What is agitation when it is examined, but the mode in which the people in the great outer assembly debate?

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Speech in the House of Commons, 29 January 1840
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 3 days ago
Every man would like to be...

Every man would like to be God, if it were possible; some few find it difficult to admit the impossibility.

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Ch. 1: The Impulse to Power
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 1 week ago
Finally, every man will become dear...

Finally, every man will become dear and pleasing to every other man; all will be beloved by all! and, what is still more desirable, beloved also by Christ; to become acceptable to whom is the highest felicity of human nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
2 months 3 weeks ago
As soon as we cease to...

As soon as we cease to believe in such an engineer and in a discourse which breaks with the received historical discourse, and as soon as we admit that every finite discourse is bound by a certain bricolage and that the engineer and the scientist are also species of bricoleurs, then the very idea of bricolage is menaced and the difference in which it took on its meaning breaks down.

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"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," Writing and Difference, tr. w/ intro & notes by Alan Bass. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago, 1978. p. 285
Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 4 days ago
In discussing tradition, we are not...

In discussing tradition, we are not discussing arbitrary rules and conventions. We are discussing answers that have been discovered to enduring questions.

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(p. 21)
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
2 months 3 weeks ago
My principal motive is the belief...

My principal motive is the belief that we can still make admirable sense of our lives even if we cease to have ... "an ambition of transcendence."

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Introduction to Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, Volume I (1991).
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 4 weeks ago
If the sensation that precedes the...

If the sensation that precedes the present by half a second were still immediately before me, then on the same principle, the sensation preceding that would be immediately present, and so on ad infinitum. Now, since there is a time [period], say a year, at the end of which an idea is no longer ipso facto present, it follows that this is true of any finite interval, however short.

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Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
3 months 1 day ago
I have at last come to...

I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do - so much have I enjoyed it.

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On Edmund Spenser's long poem in a letter to Arthur Greeves (7 March 1916), published in The Collected Letters of C.S. Lewis
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month 1 day ago
To recognize this clearly is enough...

To recognize this clearly is enough to drive a man out of his senses or to make him shoot himself. And this is just what does happen, and especially often among military men. A man need only come to himself for an instant to be impelled inevitably to such an end.

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Chapter V, Contradiction Between our Life and our Christian Conscience
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
2 months 3 weeks ago
Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising...

Generally speaking, all the authorities exercising individual control function according to a double mode; that of binary division and branding (mad/sane; dangerous/harmless; normal/abnormal); and that of coercive assignment, of differential distribution (who he is; where he must be; how he is to be characterized' how he is to be recognized' how a constant surveillance is to be exercised over him in a individual way, etc.).

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Part Four, Complete and austere institutions
Philosophical Maxims
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